Organize photos

Lightroom offers many ways to organize your photos. You can manage your photos as albums or stacks; or organize them using keywords, metadata, flags, and ratings. Easily find and filter photos in Lightroom desktop. 

When you launch the application for the first time, you can view the Help icon highlighted in the upper-right corner. Select the   icon to access the Contextual Help menu. Select the tools and features you want to learn more about.

Follow a Getting Started tutorial

Follow a guided tutorial for tools and features

Access advanced editing tutorials

Search resources using keywords

View photos

In the All Photos panel in the left pane, you can quickly select what photos you want to view in the grid to the right:

• Recently Added
• Recent Edits
• By Date (arranged chronologically)
• Connections
• Deleted

View Albums in Lightroom

You can view and arrange albums in Lightroom using the Albums and Shared panels. 

Album

You can view all your Lightroom albums by selecting the Albums panel. You can also create an album and folders in Lightroom by selecting the    icon. To sort your albums, select the   icon and choose from the menu.

Shared 

View and organize all the photos and albums you have shared with others or vice versa. Select Shared to view:

• Shared with You
• Shared Albums 
• Shared Photos

Select the   icon to sort your albums and photos. 

View photos in Lightroom

To specify how you want to display photos in the grid, choose one of the views from the bottom of the photo grid:

• Photo Grid (): Displays photos as thumbnails with no borders or badges
  
• Square Grid (): Displays photos as equal-sized thumbnails along with their flag status, sync status, and rating
• Detail (): It lets you work with and edit individual images. Edit controls are active only in this view. 

View photos on full screen

To view your album photos on full-screen, do the following:

1. Switch to Detail () view. You can enter the full-screen mode only from this view.
2. Press F key to enter the full-screen mode. Alternatively, choose View > Detail - Full Screen from the menu bar.
   
3. Lightroom hides all the panels and maximizes your photo to display on the full screen. While in this full-screen view, you can perform any of the following actions:
   1. Cycle through your album photos by pressing Left or Right arrow keys.
   2. Flag a photo as Pick or Rejected by pressing the Z or X keys, respectively.
   3. Rate a photo by pressing the 0-5 number keys. 
      
4. To leave the full-screen mode, press F or the Esc key.  

Add your photos to an album

Organize albums into folders

Folders can contain albums or other folders.

Show which albums a photo belongs to

In the Albums section at the bottom of the Info panel, you can check all the albums that your currently selected photo belongs to.

Stack photos

Assign keywords to photos

Rate and flag photos

Note:

In the Square Grid and Detail views, you can also rate and flag photos directly in the grid area. In the Square Grid, mouse-over the photo to view the rating and flag options.

Search, filter, and sort photos

Search photos

Find photos using the Search bar. Aside from searching photos by metadata and keywords, Lightroom can find and display photos based on the objects in them, facets associated with the photo, or photos that are not in any album.

Type any of the object name , or a facet name followed by a colon ':' in the Search bar. For example, you can type mountains in the Search bar to quickly search for all photos that have mountains in them, or you can type camera: to display a list of camera models used. The terms used in Search bar are not case-sensitive.

When you begin typing in the Search bar, Lightroom automatically adds a search facet of the album or the folder you are currently viewing. For example, if you are viewing photos from an album named Landscape, a search facet for this album is automatically added in the Search bar as you begin typing your search keyword.

Type 'not in any album' in the Search bar to view all photos that are currently not part of an album.

Starting from Lightroom desktop version 3.0, simply click the search bar to view an array of options based on which you can search photos. These options include ratings, flags, camera settings, metadata such as location or keyword, and file. Click an option to include it in your search and see a list of possible values for the chosen facet.

To search your photos, you can use any of the facets listed below. In the Search bar, type a facet name followed by a colon ':'.

Filter photos

Click the  icon next to the Search bar to bring up the filter options:

• Ratings: Choose a star rating to view photos rated higher than or equal to the specified star rating. For example, you can select three stars to view photos rated three stars or higher.
• Flags: Choose flagged, rejected, or unflagged option to filter photos based on their flag status. 
• Show Photos Only: Click to show photos only and exclude videos. 
• Show Videos Only: Click to show videos only and exclude photos. 
• Keywords: Choose a keyword from the drop-down list to show photos that are tagged with that keyword.
• Cameras: Choose a camera model from the drop-down list to filter photos based on the camera that was used to shoot them.
• Locations: Choose a location from the drop-down list to filter photos based on their location tag.
• Sync Status: Choose an option from the drop-down list to filter photos based on their sync status - Syncing, Synced and Backed Up, Original Stored Locally, or Synced From Lightroom Classic. To know more about the meaning of these Sync Status, see View photo metadata below. 
• People: Choose an option from the drop-down list to filter photos based on people in them.
  

Sort photos

In any view, click the   icon at the lower-left corner of the Lightroom window to bring up the sorting options. 

Choose one of the sorting option from the pop-up menu - Capture Date, Import Date, Modified Date, File Name, or Star Rating.

Clicking Reverse Order switches between ascending and descending order of the selected sorting option.

Change photo capture time

Lightroom allows you to adjust the date and time of an individual photo or a group of photos. Sometimes you need to change the capture time for your photos after clicking them. For example, you might need to change the capture times if you traveled to a different time zone and didn’t change your camera’s date/time setting before you started photographing. Another scenario could be that you added a scanned photo to Lightroom and want the capture time to show the date on which the image was photographed rather than the date on which it was scanned.

View photo metadata

• Select a photo in the grid and then click the  icon. Lightroom displays the Info panel that lists the metadata for the photo and its Sync Status.
  

• Here are the possible Sync Status badges that you may see:
  •  Synced and Backed Up 
    Lightroom may purge original files that haven't been accessed in a while, leaving a smaller smart preview that you can edit.
  •  Synced and Stored Locally
    The original file is backed up to the cloud and and also saved on your computer as part of the album you've stored locally.
  •  Syncing changes up to the cloud
    Lightroom is currently syncing your changes to the cloud.
  •  Synced from Lightroom Classic
    There is no original backed up to the cloud, but a smart preview is available.
  •  Asset has error
    For further information, view the Sync Status area in the Info panel or click this badge icon in the Square Grid view.