Tip01 - How to show all images, including those in collapsed stacks

LrC Tip 01 – All Photos Really

4/14/2022 – (LrC 11.2)
 

SITUAITON

LrC (Lightroom Classic) has a special collection at the top of the “Catalog” panel in the Library Module called “All Photogrpahs”.  However, when you select it, it does not necessarily show you all the photographs.  In the screen shot below, you will notice that the “All Photographs” special collection indicates the there are 105,160 photos known to LrC.  But after selecting this “All Photographs” special collection and then selecting all the images in the grid, the count at the top of the film strip show that there are only 50,107 images being shown.  What happened to the other 55,053 images?

Screenshot 1

Well, the answer is that when you have images stacked, the images buried in collapsed stacks are not shown when you select the “All Photographs” special collection.  In most situations this is desirable as the reason you put images into stacks and collapsed those stacks was to hide all but the first image in the stack as the rest are for the most part redundant with the top image.  In other words “out of sight, out of mind”.  But, there are times when you actually do want to see “ALL” your images regardless of their stack participation and position in the stack.

TIP

The solution to this problem comes in the form of a Smart Collection.  As it turns out Smart Collections ignore stacking when displaying images.  So, what we want is a Smart Collection that selects all images.  Here is such a Smart Collection

Screenshot 2

This Smart Collection has a single rule which selects all photos where the star rating is >= 0 stars.  In other words, every photo. 

If I click on this Smart Collection rather than the standard All Photographs special collection I now get them all.

Screenshot 3

Now you can see that the Smart Collection is providing all 105,160 images as the current source.  Of course, as is the same with the the “All Photographs” special collection, you can still narrow down your selection through the use of the filter bar but you are working with the entire set of images – including those buried in stacks.