by Jeff Bondono
My recent vacation included a lot of outdoor photos at ISO 100, and also many interior photos where I couldn't use a tripod, so was forced to ISOs up to 6400. I use Lightroom's noise reduction, which takes a fairly long time, and locks out all other use of the program while running. I couldn't afford to do any of this noise reduction on my rather-slow laptop during vacation. So, once I returned home, I had 12 folders of 2000 photos, of which a few hundred required noise reduction. How could I find them easily?
I created a "Smart Collection" to contain all the high-ISO photos that hadn't yet had noise reduction applied. A Smart Collection is actually a set of rules a photo needs to fulfill in order to be included in the collection. Once you've created a Smart Collection, it looks just like a normal collection or a folder. When you select the Smart Collection, you see all the photos that meet the collection's rules, as if they're simply photos inside of the collection. But the evaluation of which photos belong in the Smart Collection happens dynamically and without any intervention on your part. For example, if you program a Smart Collection to include only photos with 4 or 5 stars, and change one of those photos to have 3 stars, it is magically removed immediately from the Smart Collection.
Here are the details. In the "Library Module", under my list of "Folders" is a panel called "Collections". I right-clicked within that "Collections" panel and picked "Create Smart Collection…". I gave my new Smart Collection a name of "high ISO". Then I had to specify which photos in my entire Lightroom catalog I wanted to include in this Smart Collection. I knew I only wanted photos from my vacation, so in the first rule, I opened the first drop-down and selected "Date --> Capture Date". Then the next drop-down is where I specified the operation I wanted to perform on Capture Date. I picked "is after". Finally, the third column of the rule is where I specified the value to compare against. I entered 2026-04-19, the day before my vacation began.
I clicked the Plus Sign at the right edge of the first rule, to add a second rule, and for that second rule I specified "Capture Date is before 2026-04-28", the day after my vacation ended. My third rule was "Camera Info --> ISO Speed Rating" "is greater than" "100.0". And my fourth rule was "Develop --> Has Denoise" "is false".
I made sure that above the rules, "Match ALL of the following rules" was selected so the collection would only contain photos that matched all four rules. Then I clicked "Save", and what do you know, my vacation photos with ISO over 100 that hadn't yet been denoised were shown inside the Smart Collection. I selected all those photos, ticked the "Denoise" checkbox in the "Detail" panel of the "Develop Module", then went to bed. In the morning, all of the noise reduction had completed and I could continue working on my photos.
When I want to use that Smart Collection again someday, I'll right click it, pick "Edit Smart Collection" and change the dates.
This is just one example of what I use Smart Collections for. For example, I have a simple one that shows photos that are missing my copyright info. When a photo appears in that collection (usually an iPhone photo), I know to add my copyright to it. I have another that I use when developing a day's photos which only includes photos that still require more work. This declutters my workspace, removing photos I've already finished working on.