LIBRARY - Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3: Streamlining Your Digital Photography Process - page 84

Show Photos in Subfolders
When the Show Photos in Subfolders menu
option is active (see Figure 3-9), selecting
a folder in the Folders panel will show
its contents and also the contents of any
subfolders it contains. You can also enable
or disable this option from the menu that
appears when you click the + button on the
panel header.

3

h ough this is the default condition,
depending on your folder structure, this
may be neither necessary nor desirable.
For one thing, showing all the contents
of subfolders can slow Lightroom's
performance as it reads and makes previews
for the many i les in the subfolders.

Figure 3-9

With the Show Photos in
Subfolders option turned of ,
selecting a folder will only show
the contents of that folder and
not of the subfolders. h is can dramatically improve performance and give
you a more accurate read on the contents of individual folders. But a potential
drawback to doing this is that the i le counts of parent folders are also af ected
(see Figure 3-10). For this reason, I normally work with Show Photos in
Subfolders on, and turn it of temporarily when appropriate.

Figure 3-10

MANAGING FOLDERS
Before importing photos into Lightroom, it's a good idea to i rst organize them
as much as possible on the hard disk. But once photos are in the catalog, it's
usually best to manage them entirely from within Lightroom. h is ensures
that Lightroom can keep track of all the i les in its database. For example, you can
drag and drop photos between folders in Lightroom and this will also move them
on disk.

⌘ +Shift+N or
Ctrl+Shift+N
Make a new
folder

Adding folders
When you add new folders in Lightroom they are also created on your hard disk.

Click + on the Folders panel header then choose Add Folder or Add Subfolder
Type the folder name and press Return or Enter.