Lightroom Isn’t Just for Editing
February 7, 2025If you’re processing RAW photos, there are a number of software options to choose from, but it’s very likely that you’re using Lightroom. It’s a great tool that has only gotten more robust over the years, but I think that one of Lightroom’s greatest strengths has nothing to do with its photo processing, and I’d be willing to guess that you aren’t using it as well as you could be. I’m talking about Lightroom’s cataloging and indexing capabilities. I know that there’s an aversion to the administrative tasks of keeping a collection of photos, but I promise that a little organization goes a long way! My experience is based on Lightroom Classic, so any references I make to panels and menus will be referencing classic and not the cloud or web based versions.
There’s a lot to explore, and I don’t really plan on getting into everything here, so I really want to encourage you to explore the options within the Library module. Making yourself familiar with navigating the sections can really come in handy later. There are three panels that I’ll be discussing in the Library module: Keywording, Keyword List, and Metadata.
I used to use keywording a lot. When I was starting out with photography, I shared a lot of my photos to Tumblr and Flickr, and those platforms were great because they could parse out the keywords embedded in the photo as content tags. Tagging made the photos searchable on those platforms, and it was so convenient to only have to set those keywords once in Lightroom. I may not use either of those platforms regularly anymore, but keywording still helps me index my photos both in and out of Lightroom.
The Keywording panel is where you can add tags to your photos. It’s pretty straightforward—type the word you’d like to apply to the photo you have selected in the filmstrip/grid, and separate them with commas. When you export your photos (if you’ve included all metadata), those keywords will be embedded into the exported images, and not only will you be able to use those keywords to locate the photos within your catalog, but you can also use them to find the exported files on your computer, since File Explorer (Windows) and Finder (Mac) can read these keywords and use them for indexing.
Lightroom remembers what keywords you’ve used as well, and will offer to autocomplete words as you reuse them. You can even make keyword sets if you know that there are certain keywords that you always put together. Once you’ve set these things up, you can apply them at any point in your workflow—even immediately upon import. If you’ve worked with digital asset management platforms like Mediagraph, your keywords will flow through seamlessly.
The Keyword List panel appears just below the Keywording panel, and it shows you what keywords you’ve used, how many times you’ve used each one, and if you click on the arrow that appears next to each keyword, it will show you all the photos in your catalog containing that keyword. I don’t personally use this panel all that much, but it’s a nice way to see an itemized list and jump to that content without having to think of what keywords you’ve already used.
Under that is the Metadata panel, and this is the one that I use the most. You can embed your copyright and contact info into your images here; you can add captions, alt text, and titles; you can even batch rename files. A lot of portfolio hosting sites can read this data and save you time when importing your photos, and that can help with your discoverability and SEO.
My favorite reason to use all of these features is by far the library filter. If you use the text filter, you can search by any word that you’ve included in any field. In the example below, I haven’t added any keywords to the selected photo (shame on me), but I did add a title and caption. When I use the library filter and search for the word “barclays,” every photo with that word somewhere in its metadata will appear.
Even if keywording and captions are not your thing, the Library module can help you organize your work with the data already embedded in the files. Do you want to find every photo you’ve taken in portrait/vertical orientation? You can see that by using the aspect ratio metadata. Want to see only photos you’ve processed in black & white ? Use the treatment metadata. As someone who revisits photos I’ve taken often, I find the depth of data that I can sift through to be really useful. Julieanne Kost has a great in-depth guide on viewing and editing metadata that you can check out if you’re interested in knowing more.