Organization By State. If there’s any-
thing that one should gather by the fact
that I’m even writing a four-part article
series on organization, it’s that workflow
can be a big task. And to be honest, four
articles will just allow me to scratch the
surface. Workflow is time-consuming
even for those well versed in working
with Lightroom or other databases.
Oftentimes, I’ll find myself editing and
developing a shoot in chunks. During
one, I might get through half of my key-
wording, while in another sitting I may
get through half of my developing. There
are ways to track your progress and begin
to think about organizing things by the
state that they’re in, or whether or not
your work is finished or unfinished.
The Power of Metadata
Most of us have some idea what meta-
data is, but it’s critically important to
understand the concept as we take our
organizational skills to the next level.
The simple definition is: Metadata is
data about data. It’s information that
describes other information.
With Lightroom, there are two kinds
of metadata, developmental and organi-
zational. Every time you move a slider
in the Lightroom Develop module, that
adjustment is saved in the catalog as
metadata. Every time you add a keyword
to an image, that keyword is also saved
as metadata. One is used for developing
and the other for organization.
Metadata is the fuel that runs a data-
base and the key ingredient in under-
standing how to organize things in your
Lightroom catalog. If you can master
what metadata is and how Lightroom
uses it, you’ve mastered Lightroom. To
breakdown things a bit more, there are
different kinds of organizational meta-
data. There’s XMP (Extensible Metadata
Platform), EXIF (Exchangeable Image
File Format), and IPTC (International
Press Telecommunications Council)
metadata. There’s more, but generally,
this is what we use most in Lightroom.
XMP is an ISO standard created by
Adobe and is where developmental andFigure 4. The Metadata panel in the
Library Filter allows you to search
through any kind of metadata you
can think of that may be attached to
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