Video & Free Downloads - Lightroom Smart Collection Settings

[To listen to the audio hit play and then give it a second to buffer. The audio is high quality]

I'm just in the midst of preparing my annual 'Looking Back' post, where I review the images I made during the past year. Its the annual retrospective exercise that we should all be doing as photographers. It helps one to gain some perspective as to where it was we were back in January compared to just how far we've come in those 12 months to December.

This year I plan on doing more than just sharing 10 my favourite images from 2016 though. I'm going to revisit the 5 most popular blog posts as visited by you guys and I'm also going to give a complete break down of the gear I used for the year, including how much use each lens actually got.

In order to achieve this, I'm using Adobe Lightroom's Smart Collection feature to sort my images into folders (effectively) based on an the attributes of an image.

For example, I can set a smart collection to look through all of my images and pick out those that were shot with the 40-150mm f/2.8 PRO. I can repeat this for each lens and camera I own. This tells me just how I used each lens by simply showing me the number of images for each smart collection.

Whilst this isn't a hard thing to configure, it can be time consuming. So, I've saved all of my settings into files for you to download and import into your own instance of Lightroom.

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This Smart Collection in Adobe Lightroom shows me how many images I shot with the 40-150mm f/2.8 PRO lens from Olympus during 2016

Given that the smart collections I have used look at images made between specific dates, I've gone ahead and made Smart Collections for both 2016 and 2017. Feel free to download them using the links below.

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Various Adobe LIghtroom Smart Collection Settings Files available for download

For details on how to import the smart collections into lightroom, just watch the video below. In this I also go into a little detail as to how it is I made these smart collections (if you so wish to make your own for lenses I have not included). Alternatively, skip down past the video for the bulleted version of the instructions if you can't watch video where you are right now. 

 > Download Olympus 2016 Smart Collection Files here

 > Download Olympus 2017 Smart Collection Files here

Importing Smart Collection Settings into Adobe Lightroom (Video)

Importing Smart Collection Settings Into Adobe Lightroom

1. Download the Smart Collection Settings Files from this post
2. Save somewhere on your computer
3. Open Adobe Lightroom
4. In the Library Module Expand 'Collections' in the left pane
5. Create a new Collection Set
6. Name the collection set '2016'
7. Right Click on the 2016 Collection Set
8. Choose 'Import Smart Collection Settings
9. Browse to the files I have made available for you that you saved back in step 2.
10. Choose the Smart Collection Settings you wish to use
11. Ta Dah!
12. (repeat for the Smart Collection Sets applicable to you)

I hope you find these Smart Collection settings useful. I would love to know what your most used lens and camera was for 2016! Please do share a link to your own 2016 Look Back post if you have made one, I'll be sure to stop by and leave a comment on your post!

If you found these Smart Collection Settings useful be sure to share this post and subscribe to the blog today. My own review of 2016 will be out in just a couple of days. Subscribing is the best way to be sure you see that post first!