Hello. This article is for users of Lightroom Classic. If you don’t use Lightroom Classic move along to another of my work efforts because this will not matter to you. If you just use Photoshop, you already are accountable for your file storage model and there’s nothing here pertaining to that all manual process for you here either. However if you do use Lightroom Classic, and import images with its excellent Library module, you may choose to invest in your own sanity to ensure that you are using it properly to your maximum advantage.

Of all the Lightroom Classic modules, the majority of licensees only use two to of them and in too many cases are creating sticks for self beating in how they use the Library module. This is not necessarily intentional, as often this self beating happens because of a reluctance to use newer tools in the manner for which they were designed.

What makes Lightroom Classic different from most other post-processing tools is that it has a very robust digital asset manager as part of the package architected specifically for still images. It can handle video, sort of, and you can even force it to DAM other stuff but forget that and let’s focus on what it was actually built for. Still images.

Most users only use Library and Develop. If all you ever want to use is Develop, consider using only Photoshop or any one of the cheaper and as powerful Photoshop alternatives, such as Affinity Photo. However if you want the DAM, then Lightroom Classic is a really good one, certainly the most popular and the most widely installed. Don’t confuse Adobe Lightroom Classic with Adobe Lightroom which is a cloud based app designed for picture snappers more than for photographers and in my opinion was lobotomized from the word go. There I said it with no regrets.

What Is The Adobe Lightroom Classic Library Module?

The Library module is Lightroom Classic’s way of linking physical files and the folders that they physically reside in to its own internal database called the Catalog. The Catalog is like an index card system as was found in libraries when I was younger. Instead of manually going through all the stacks book by book, you would look up in one of the many card indexes what you were looking for and then based on a standard sorting model called the Dewey Decimal Classification, you would then know exactly where to go to find the book you wanted, and so long as it was not out, or stored incorrectly, your quest was done. Quickly and efficiently. It was first published in 1876 and is still in use today with its last revision in 2011. When something works, why try some workaround that is slower, less efficient and more prone to error?

Inside the Library Module, you find two ways of looking at files. The first is called Folders and this is a software representation of what Lightroom Classic believes is where your files are located physically and named. When you IMPORT to Lightroom Classic, these folder entries get created, but if you do ANYTHING to the files and folders outside of Lightroom Classic after Import, you will really screw things up. It’s usually fixable but you may need to hire an LrC AND Operating System professional to get it right. This is lengthy, often expensive and you did it to yourself. Don’t do that. You see the Folders that you see in the Lightroom Classic Library module are NOT the actual folders at all, they are just indexes to what LrC thinks are in the folders and where those folders physically exist.

A Fatal Flaw

Thus Folders in Lightroom Classic should be, might be, could be, what is actually on the disks, but could be completely farked if you or someone else started moving stuff around at the OS level. This is a fundamental issue with Lightroom Classic and exists because of a decision made way back in Lightroom 1.0.

This is also the primary reason why working from Folders in Lightroom Classic is a really BAD methodology. Lightroom Classic wants to know where your files and folders actually are, but can do nothing to prevent you or someone else from messing with them from outside of Lightroom Classic. And it will never know if you did. Until something breaks and you see the dreaded File Not Found or Missing Files popup. Enter migraine.

The other file ordering part of the Library module is called Collections and it’s the ONLY one that actually matters. Collections are like those library index card drawers except they can be created by rules automatically and so long as you don’t fark around with files and folders outside of Lightroom Classic. In that regard they have the same risk as Folders. However they provide the fastest and most reliable way to get to your files and are the only file ordering tool available to any other Lightroom Classic module. If you IMPORT into Lightroom Classic and do not create and load the photos into a dedicated collection at time of Import, you are missing out on a massive value of Lightroom Classic. People spend hours generating previews but won’t spend seconds on making an import collection. I cannot fathom why not, but if I understood why people do what they do, I would be wealthy beyond my ability to count or completely sociopathic.

Where The Development Work Gets Done

When you edit your images, unless you use the massively global and completely unintelligible editing sliders in the Library module (if you do, STOP IT RIGHT NOW, sell your real camera, use only a phone and the phone maker’s picture fixer and cancel your Adobe subscription), the real development work gets done in the powerful Develop module. Use of any of the so-called editing tools in the Library module is akin to hammering a two penny nail with a 45 pound maul. And remember that NO module in Lightroom Classic other than the Library has a Folders concept or provides the illusion of folder level access. This is because Lightroom Classic has a digital asset manager. Lightroom Classic doesn’t actually understand folders, because even in the Library module there is NO folder integrity check that is automatically maintained. In a proper DAM design, you would never even know where the files were actually stored but Adobe made a decision to make this visible, likely to their everlasting chagrin. This is the fundamental issue noted earlier.

Stop Stabbing Yourself in the Neck

Now I know people who will open the Library module, scan through a ton of photos and then double click on one to edit it. This opens the image in the Develop module for editing. All the edits get saved in the Lightroom catalog but NOTHING actually happens to the original photo. Ever. Many tutorials and educators use the phraseology “returned to Lightroom” or “returned to the catalog”. It’s important to know that as nothing is ever removed for editing, there is nothing to return. But later if you want to find that again, you have to go on a search and retrieval mission back in the Library module.

At the risk of being offensive, this is really sloppy workflow.

Imagine the US Library of Congress with all the books and papers and file folders in one giant pile in the middle of the floor with no labels except maybe a file number, but there might be duplicates. Or completely different items with the same identifier. Now go find one item. Like putting a Cadillac up your nose, it’s impossible - with all credit to Steve Martin.

At one time, physicians prescribed leeches, bloodletting and shoving long needles up your nose. Those proved to be bad and were stopped. The Lightroom Classic equivalent of lobotomizing probes are called Folders.

Folders Are Useless in a DAM Ok?

I know that there are lots of people who hate the idea that Lightroom Classic creates structured folders automatically on import using a Date / Time model. They feel it is impossible to find anything that way. This could very well be true, if one never bothered to learn the Library module, but the Lightroom Classic DAM gives you a free and blindingly fast route to this and it has existed since the beginning and is called a Collection. A collection holds nothing but an index to where to find an image. An image can be a member of one or many collections, and there is only ever one copy of the image. It is fast, it is efficient and it works brilliantly. The caveat is that the user must invest a tiny bit of time to learn how to use it. I have yet to discover anything ever where the knowledge of how to use it magically seeps into the brain case.

But I Want to BE IN TOTAL CONTROL

But wait, I want to put all the pictures that I took on my trip to Upper Rubber Boot in their own folder so I can find them easily. Excellent. Make a collection called Upper Rubber Boot Trip and drag all the URB trip images to that collection. Perhaps while on your trip to Upper Rubber Boot you visited the village of Vibram. You want to be able to find your pictures specifically from Vibram. DON’T MAKE A FOLDER in the Library module. Use Lightroom Classic the way it was built to be used and make a collection called Vibram that contains the photos from Vibram, the same photos which you may also have in the collection called Upper Rubber Boot Trip. One image, with multiple indexes to find it. This is basic library science circa Dewey. It works. Globally. But some people just insist on ice skating up hill - thank you Wesley Snipes. Although in retrospect, he didn’t say “people”, I believe it was a conjunction of two nouns.

Now if you don’t use Lightroom Classic, or another DAM, you are absolutely 100% on your own from a file storage perspective and good luck with that. You can do it with work. But apparently sometime, someone figured out that round wheels worked better than skids in general. The same is true for a DAM versus manual file storage management. Use whatever method you choose, it’s your shoebox of photos except one is far more efficient than the other.

Where Am I Going?

If you choose to use Lightroom Classic, go sit down and watch some good tutorials on using the Library module. And I don’t mean some yutz’s Seven Point System that just adds a ton of work for no actual return. Adobe’s Julianne Kost and Terry White have really good content on how to use the Lightroom Classic Library module PROPERLY as designed, not like it’s some Rube Goldberg designed game of mousetrap (look it up). Face it gang, unless you have a PhD in library science, your system is NOT better than what the architects who built the Library module did so consider embracing it the way it was built to work and stop trying to beat square pegs into round holes, or yourself in the forehead with a ball-peen hammer. Or don’t. It’s your stuff not mine.

Wrapping Up

Collections are the BEST way to go in Lightroom Classic because ONLY Collections appear in every Lightroom Classic module. Folders only appear in the Library module and nowhere else and working one by one is hardly an efficient path. And remember, the folders are not the actual folders at all. By the way, a secondary benefit when creating a collection on import is that you won’t have to wait building Standard or ARRGGHH 1:1 previews on every import taking time and space without any good reason. Choose the embedded type of preview and stop wasting time and space. Use Lightroom Classic as it was designed and spend more time photographing and editing and less time playing 17th century file clerk. You’d look silly at one of those tall small desks and running out every hour to hunt down some coal.

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