Lightroom 3 organzing question

So I just wanna start out with................. MY LAPTOP IS FINALLY BACK!!!!!!!

So I'm using lightroom 3 to import all photos off my camera and memory cards. Is there a simple way of organzing them thru Lightroom. Right now it is all done by date but I'm a little more anal then that. I want to be more descriptive.... Exp: New Years Eve photos, Christmas Photos, Fun times with sister and son at park photos.... some of these which were on more than one day taken. Do yal get what I'm trying to say lol

Thanks guys! IM BACK!

 

You can add tags, or you can do collection.

 

Yes I've had better luck with tagging as well...

 

ok another dumb question how do you add tags?

 

under library.. should be on the right somewhere.

Tagging is messier. You can put whatever tag on a photo. For example if you took a photo of me.. you can tag that photo as:

awesome, handsome, sexy, dreamy, asian


Then when you search a tag for dreamy, you will see photo of me along with photos of Brad Pitt and Tim Tebow

A collection is almost like a virtual folder. You can have a collection called "FAVORITE WEDDING PHOTOS". Then every time you see one you really like, just add to that collection.

 

Thanks guys for the help! Greatly appreciated

 

Saw I were to look thru my photos in windows viewer. It won't show that orginization tho would it?

 

Nope. But if you send the raw file to someone else, they will see the tag on their Lightroom.

 

The key to using Lightroom effectively is in keywording your images and putting them into collections. Collections are virtual folders.

None of your photos are actually uploaded to Lightroom. The folderrs stay in the regular folder structure on your computer.

Another key to using Lightroom effectively is to put all of your images into a single catalog (folder) arrange into collections, because Lightroom can only search 1 catalog at a time, one of Lightroom's biggest problems.

Lightroom is database mangement software first, and it's image editing function is in about 8th place.

I highly recommend The DAM Book: Digital Asset Management for Photographers if you want to learn how manage your photos in a way that makes them easily retrievable.

 

Thanks I'll get that book. I do want to be able to just look thru easily and organize easily. I did just make a whole bunch of collections with the 3 months of photos I had stored. They're all raw anyways so its not like my windows viewer can look at them. lol