A brief overview of folders and collections

Folders and collections are two distinctly different approaches to storing and managing a library of photographs, but we can work with them in a seamless way. The most important thing is to develop a new way of thinking about how we can access our photographs.

Folders

The most significant difference between folders and collections is that folders are referencing the actual locations of photo files on our hard drives. We learned in the previous chapter that by right-clicking on any folder and choosing the Show Parent option, we can display the exact path to the location of any folder on our hard drive. If we delete or move a photograph from a folder within Lightroom, the same will happen with the referenced file on our hard drive. Lightroom is as much an asset management system as it is a tool for making our photographs look better through the development process.

Access to all of the folders and collections is located in the left panel of Lightroom...