Working our way down the left hand panel of the library module, the next couple of tabs, the catalog and folders tab, so we can sort of talk about them together because they do some pretty similar things. So the catalog tab is the big overview of all the images that have been imported into this catalog. And you can see here there's 1600, and 28 of them 1600 and 28. It tells me all the photos that I've got synced here. So all synced photographs refers to the Creative Cloud feature where I can synchronize my catalog with the Creative Cloud and access it from different computers, you'll see I'm not actually using that feature at the moment. The next option is the quick collection collections are a wonderful feature that we're going to look at in great detail in the I think the very next video, in fact from now, so we'll hold off on that for the moment.

Um, the previous input is obviously the images that we previously imported, so it's handy to be able to reference them Quickly and easily if I wanted right there in the catalog tab. But the most important thing here is all photographs 1600 and 28. Now moving on to the folders tab, it goes deeper into this all photographs business and tells us that all these 1600 and 28 photographs are actually in a folder called travel photos. And that folder has the subfolders, Bali Cambodia, China, etc. So if I just wanted to look at the Cambodia photos, I can click there and we're just in Cambodia, if I just want to go to Japan like such and Spain like such, so these folders The important thing to understand about this folders tab is the folders that it's looking at the Lightroom is looking at are actually outside Lightroom so this folders tab is looking outside Lightroom onto my hard drive, where there is somewhere there is a folder called travel photos.

Now if I want to know where it is, I can right click and a context menu. appears. And in this menu, I can say show in Finder, and that will show me where on my computer, the folder the folder is. If I was on a Windows, obviously it would say show an explorer Mac says show in Finder. So I go show in Finder, and it takes me here. Let's open to Windows there, it takes me here to my pictures folder, you can see every computer has a Pictures folder, when you install Lightroom Lightroom creates a Lightroom folder just there.

And here is my travel photos folder folder inside the Lightroom folder. So there's the sub folders, Bali, Cambodia, China, etc. So that's where these photos live on my computer, the travel photos folder that Lightroom is referencing. So that's useful to know. Now I just want to illustrate something that hopefully sort of helps you understand how Lightroom is working with this folder if I go into the travel photos folder, and I'm just going to take the Bali folder there and I'm going to Move it, I'm going to move it outside Lightroom, I'm going to move it into the pictures folder out of the travel photos into the pictures folder. So watch this, I move it across bang, and now it's no longer there.

Now if I go back to Lightroom, you're gonna see Lightroom is not going to be happy. Lightroom says, Hey, where did the Bali folder go? You told me there was a folder called Bolli in the travel photos folder, but now it's gone. So if you move things outside Lightroom, that's going to cause trouble. So I need to go back, I need to go and put it back. I'm going to go back and say show in Finder.

And I'm not sure it's opening to Windows each time. Then I'm going to go back in I'm going to grab my Bali photo photo, I'm going to take it into Lightroom travel photos, put it back and now Lightroom should be happy and the question mark goes away. So that's just to reinforce the fact that this folder does not live in Lightroom at all. Lightroom is just referencing it. And if I change any of its parameters outside of Lightroom, then that's not a good thing. So folders tab gives me access to all these folders in the this the next six six section of the videos, I go into a lot more detail about catalog management, importing and so forth.

But for now, I just want you to understand the role of the folders tab, the role of the folders tab, as opposed to the collections tab, which we're going to look at in our next movie. So collections and folders sort of work together in concert, I can, it is possible to create sub folders if I wanted to do right here. If I could click on travel photos right here, I can right click there and I can say create folder inside travel photos. And if I just call this test, he can say I've just created a new folder there. And now if we go show in Finder, or Explorer, you'll see there's the folder right there test, I can create that folder and in Lightroom and that will produce it outside of Lightroom. But if I create a new folder here outside of Lightroom that not automatically put it inside Lightroom.

So we can do that. And when I think the next movie, I should watch straight after this one is collections and collections will help you say how to manage your images in a sort of post folders sort of way really, you don't need to get too carried away with folders, because you can do a lot more with collections. So I'm just going to remove that test folder there again, because I don't want to use that. I would much rather use collections. So that's an overview of the catalog tab and the folders tab and what the information that is contained within and as I say in the next video, we'll look at collections which is where where the fun really begins.