It’s easy to get excited about Lightroom 1.1’s obvious new features such as Clarity, catalogs, and its powerful new sharpening controls. But there are many less sexy yet helpful improvements that all add up to make 1.1 a fantastic upgrade. Take for example, Color Label Sets.
UPDATE: After I’ve wrote this blog, a reader pointed out very politely that I was wrong. Color Label Sets were in LR 1.0. MY BAD! I aplogize for my mistake. But I still think Color Label Sets are really cool, as you’ll see if you read on.
As you probably know, LR offers many ways to assign informative “tags” to an image that make it easier to search, organize or sort an image collection. You can use keywords, stars, flags, or color labels, and often a combination of any or all is good image management policy. Up to LR 1.1, color labels where just that: color labels. You could designate a color for a particular task, say “for email”, but you’d need to remember what you assigned a particular color to. If you used that same color in another edit session, with a different meaning, things would get confusing.
With Lightroom 1.1 you can make as many Color Label Sets as you want and assign different values to each color within a set.
Here’s how to do it:
1. Select Metadata> Color Label Sets> Edit
2. Type in values for each color in the Edit Color Label Set dialog box.
3. Select Save Current Settings as New Preset from the Preset pop-up menu
4. Now your new set shows up in the Color Label Sets Menu.
When you assign a color to an image from a particular Color Set that color will only appear on the thumbnail in the Library grid mode when you are working within that Color Label Set. Change sets and the color is not visible on the thumbnail. However, you can always go the Metadata Browser pane in the left panel and see the list of labels there select your choices from there.
Ok, I told you this wasn’t sexy, but I still think it’s pretty cool.
i just discovered that you can do this. though i used parentheses in my labels which caused problems.
the problem was this: say you have some images that are labeled yellow (or whatever the name is for the tag you assigned to it) and you want to pick a few to be green. if you have filters on for green and yellow, when you tag one of your yellow pictures to green, it doesn't show up! i tried this with yellow and purple (which there were no parentheses in the name i chose for the purple tag) and it worked just fine.
point being, it doesn't seem to work well with parentheses in the label so i would recommend to avoid using them.
@Mikkel
yepp I meant that it was already possible in v1.0 to create multiple color sets and assign different meanings to the colors. Its a nice feature, but not new in 1.1 ;-)
>> quote
>> "that was already possible in 1.0?" You mean creating multiple Color Label Sets? I don't have a recollection of that, at least in the last version of 1.0 I used. Correct me if I am wrong.
Thanks Mikkel,
I actually use them for a visual guide. I have NONE for DNG's and BLUE for JPG's, Green for TIFF's and Yellow for PSD's - This is not for sorting of selection, yes I do that other ways, but in the grid I may have a DNG original, (maybe copies) and then an identical JPG and / or TIFF and / or PSD all from the same image. It is just my way of visulising without filtering. I agree each to their own...
Strange the labels do not show up in the left panel depending on the set selected, methinks a bug per-chsnce.
Anonymous, it's been so long since I used 1.0 and now I can't load the app...but what do you mean "that was already possible in 1.0?" You mean creating multiple Color Label Sets? I don't have a recollection of that, at least in the last version of 1.0 I used. Correct me if I am wrong.
Anonyrat, I use color labels when I edit and sort my images. I don't need them to "stick" to my images the same way a keyword would. When I'm done with my edit I use color labels to help sort my images into various Collections or add appropirate keywords. So the behavoir you describe is not necessary bad for me. In any case, as I said in my blog, you can always go to te Metadata Browser and sort your images by Label, regardless of which Color Label Set you use.
Under default select any 6 pictures and assign the colour Purple. You can select purple and they show as purple in grid mode. Now create a new SET and assign the purple to the name ARTWORK and save new set. ARTWORK does not show anywhere i.e. you cannot select label ARTWORK only purple and it doesn't show as purple anymore in grid. What's the point???
that was already possible with v1.0