In Lightroom how can I see all photos that have been modified after they were exported

Question

I am using Adobe Lightroom 4 and shoot RAW+JPG. I normally post process all my images and then bulk export them back out to JPG when done overwriting the original JPGs but sometimes I might forget to export a day or two. Is there a way in Lightroom to display all the photos that have been modified but NOT exported?

I imagine there is someway to define a filter or smart collection to do this but have not been able to find the correct combination of fields to choose.

Asked by Joe Solano

Answer

According to the Lightroom 4 Missing FAQ the only place that you can currently determine whether a photo has been exported is in the develop history, which is not searchable, ruling out filters/smart collections.

A hard drive publish service would keep track of unexported photos, but you would need to manually add the images to the service, and unlike the export dialog there is no option to automatically import the images back into the catalog, you would need to synchronize the folders containing the published images every time.

Until Adobe makes it possible to filter images based on being exported the best approach would seem to be either, as @Akram suggests, use a specific collection for images that need to be exported or have a 'not-exported' keyword added to your images when they are imported, which would permit you to create a smart collection of images that both have adjustments and have not been exported. Either way requires manual intervention to keep accurate however.

Answered by Steven Cunningham

Check more discussion of this question.

Why doesn't my Lightroom smart photoset have any pictures in it?

Question

I've created a "Smart Photoset" in Lightroom to publish photos to Flickr, configured to match all of the following rules:

1. Collection contains "Nepal"
2. Pick Flag is flagged

I assumed, possibly naively, that this meant that when I flagged any pictures (by clicking the little flag icon in the Library grid) in my "Nepal 2010" and "Nepal 2011" Collections, that they would automatically appear in my shiny new Smart Photoset. They do not. Can anyone point out what I'm doing wrong?!

Asked by ninesided

Answer

I think I may have discovered the solution to this myself, but for the benefit of others who stumble across this question later, this adobe forum post clears up the situation.

In summary: in Lightroom 3, the flagged status of a photograph is not global. Only photographs flagged in folders or other smart collections will show up in a smart collection configured to include flagged photographs. Apparently, this "feature" is no longer a problem in Lightroom 4.

Answered by ninesided

Check more discussion of this question.

Is there a way to sort Lightroom images by 'edit' status?

Question

Usually my workflow involves 'picking/flagging' photos to edit and leaving the rest alone (RAW files that is). However, sometimes I jump right in and start editing before rating/picking. In that case is there a way to filter images based on whether they've been edited/cropped? I haven't looked too hard, but nothing obvious stands out from the visible filtering options. I appreciate any insights.

Answer

Ditton on creating a Smart Collection, that's really the way to go. I'm wondering if "Has Adjustments" only applies to specific adjustments, i.e. will it catch if you just cropped the photo, for example? That's OK though, you can add the "Cropped" + "is true" rule to your collection.

You could also create a Smart Collection that will display recently edited photos. The rule could be "Edit Date" + "is today" or instead of "today" try "is in the last" + x + "days" (or "hours"). This can be combined with "Has Adjustments" of course.

Check more discussion of this question.

Can the Mac version of Adobe Lightroom 3 automatically create smart-collections for camera, lenses, date, etc.?

Question

I just installed Lightroom 3 on my Mac when I discovered that the license I had for it was valid for both Mac and Windows.

I seem to remember, but could be wrong, that Lightroom could/would create collections or whatnot that grouped photos by the lens I used, the camera I used, as well as by the date they were taken, but here I only have the Folders-view, which shows all the photos grouped by how they are organized on disk.

I can of course create smart collections for whatever, but I seem to recall that Lightroom 3 on Windows created lots of these smart collections by itself. In other words, what I remember is that if I took a photo with a new camera, a new lens, in a new month, a new year, and then imported that photo, Lightroom would add the required nodes in a tree-based collection.

Note that I know I can pull down the filter bar, and it shows all the things there if I pick the metadata filter, but I remember that I had the same kind of stuff in the left hand panel, under the Navigator and Catalog sections, that I also had some kind of browser there that automatically grouped by the same things. However, the thing I remember was found in the left hand navigator pane, down below the folder view, I don't remember where it was in comparison to the Collections section.

Am I remembering wrong?

If not, does this function, ie. group by camera, lens, date, other types of metadata, exist in the Mac version?

If it does, how do I turn it on? I've scoured the catalog preferences and the program preferences and the view menu, but I can't find anything that matches.

Answer

Yes, you're correct: what you're describing are Lightroom Collections. You'll see the Collections pane in the left-hand panel, usually at or near the bottom (depending on which module you're in: in the Library module it's below Folders). If it's not there, just right-click on the left-hand panel and make sure Collections is ticked. You may have to scroll down (or close the other panes) to see it.

Collections are a way of building up virtual sets of photos without having to physically relocate them on disk. They come in two flavours: regular Collections, and Smart Collections. (If you're used to using iTunes, a useful analogy is with Playlists and Smart Playlists.) With a regular collection, you drag photos onto it to add them. When you create a smart collection you specify a set of criteria to match and photos then automatically appear in the collection if they match the criteria.

To create a new collection, just click the little + icon in the Collections pane header and choose either Create Collection... or Create Smart Collection....

The set of criteria you can use for smart collections is extensive and very versatile. Using the filters at the top of the Library module's grid view is a good way of filtering the current folder, but smart collections allow you to apply similar filtering across your entire catalog.

Check more discussion of this question.

Adobe Lightroom 3, auto/smart-collection(s) for camera, lenses, date, etc.

Question

I just installed Lightroom 3 on my Mac when I discovered that the license I had for it was valid for both Mac and Windows.

I seem to remember, but could be wrong, that Lightroom could/would create collections or whatnot that grouped photos by the lense I used, the camera I used, as well as by the date they were taken, but here I only have the Folders-view, which shows all the photos grouped by how they are organized on disk.

I can of course create smart collections for whatever, but I seem to recall that Lightroom 3 on Windows created lots of these smart collections by itself.

In other words, what I remember is that if I took a photo with a new camera, a new lense, in a new month, a new year, and then imported that photo, Lightroom would add the required nodes in a tree-based collection.

Note that I know I can pull down the filter bar, and it shows all the things there if I pick the metadata filter, but I remember that I had the same kind of stuff in the left hand panel, under the Navigator and Catalog sections, that I also had some kind of browser there that automatically grouped by the same things.

However, the thing I remember was found in the left hand navigator pane, down below the folder view, I don't remember where it was in comparison to the Collections section.

Am I remembering wrong?

If not, does this function, ie. group by camera, lense, date, other types of metadata, exist in the Mac version?

If it does, how do I turn it on? I've scoured the catalog preferences and the program preferences and the view menu, but I can't find anything that matches.

Answer

Yes, you're correct: what you're describing are Lightroom Collections. You'll see the Collections pane in the left-hand panel, usually at or near the bottom (depending on which module you're in: in the Library module it's below Folders). If it's not there, just right-click on the left-hand panel and make sure Collections is ticked. You may have to scroll down (or close the other panes) to see it.

Collections are a way of building up virtual sets of photos without having to physically relocate them on disk. They come in two flavours: regular Collections, and Smart Collections. (If you're used to using iTunes, a useful analogy is with Playlists and Smart Playlists.) With a regular collection, you drag photos onto it to add them. When you create a smart collection you specify a set of criteria to match and photos then automatically appear in the collection if they match the criteria.

To create a new collection, just click the little + icon in the Collections pane header and choose either Create Collection... or Create Smart Collection....

The set of criteria you can use for smart collections is extensive and very versatile. Using the filters at the top of the Library module's grid view is a good way of filtering the current folder, but smart collections allow you to apply similar filtering across your entire catalog.

Check more discussion of this question.