By now you should have hundreds, if not tens of photos ready to rock and roll, so how do I sort all of mine out?

Firstly After the geotagging and import I move them down a level (as I said on Christmas Day�) to year/month/day – just to tidy it up a bit more.

Folders within Lightroom, three levels

Then I do a sweep through the folder simply to look for the rubbish, hitting X to reject any that are out of focus. In the case of multiple shots reject all but the best quality one. After that – and this is the only time I do it – the magic Del key comes out and deletes the technically poor shots. The rest stay around – for good.

Just because you can’t see a shot artistically now – you may need to in the future. I’ll go over the way I secure the photos later in the week.

For now lets talk about the collections I have set up…

My Normal and Smart Collections

The only Normal Collection I have is basically a private collection – photos I can’t publish as they’re either not mine, they’re scans of other’s photos or they’re of family / in private property.

Then I have 4 collections that are smart – based upon metadata. For some reason I can’t make a smart collection based on another, which is ANNOYING!

The first collection is basically everything that’s from 01/01/08 (Yes I’m gonna detach this collection on the 31st and start a new one – but there are odd bits in this collection from last year – and none of them are any good for publishing)

My "Publishable" Smart Collection

My next collection is anything I’ve rejected for artistic reasons – shots which I don’t really feel – but they’re kept here as every now and again I’ll dip in and pull them back out – perhaps processed in a very different way.

My Rejected Smart Collection

Next is the collection I spend my time in – the one with shots that are to be worked on on a daily basis that I scroll up and down looking for a shot to post that day.

My In Progress Smart Collection

Once the photo’s processed (cough tomorrow ;) ) and exported (cough Monday) I press the giant P button and it goes into the final resting place – the published pile.

My Published Smart Collection

Oh OK there is one last final collection – those that are published and landscape to be exported periodically. If only it was automatic.

The final collection - those which go onto my wallpaper ;)

So that wraps up collections – tomorrow its the processing bit, you lucky things! Presets and all!