Today’s Question: Is there a way to create a collection of my photos that I have picked [with a Pick flag in Lightroom Classic CC]?
Tim’s Quick Answer: Yes, you could accomplish this by creating a Smart Collection based on Pick flag status, which is effectively the same as a search result across your entire Lightroom Classic CC catalog.
More Detail: Lightroom provides a variety of ways to filter your photos, so you can find just the photos you need when you need them. This is certainly true for Pick (or Reject) flags. You could, for example, go to All Photographs in the Catalog section of the left panel in the Library module to browse all images in your entire catalog. You could then set a filter for Pick flag using the Library Filter bar or the quick filters available at the top-right of the Filmstrip.
If you want to preserve this set of photos as part of a collection, a Smart Collection is your best option. To create a new Smart Collection, click the plus (+) button to the right of the Collections header on the left panel in the Library module, and choose “Create Smart Collection” from the popup menu.
In the Create Smart Collection dialog, first enter a name for the new collection in the Name field. If you want the new Smart Collection to be included in a Collection Set, turn on the “Inside a Collection Set” checkbox, and choose the applicable set from the popup below.
For the “Match” setting, be sure the popup is set to “all”. Then change the criteria for your Smart Collection in the area that takes up the bottom half of this dialog. In this example you could set the first popup to Pick Flag, the second popup to “is”, and the third popup to “flagged”.
For a Smart Collection that contains all photos that have a Pick flag assigned, only this one row of criteria is required. If there are any other criteria rows you can click the minus (-) button to the right of those rows to remove the additional criteria.
When you have finished configuring the Smart Collection, click the Create button at the bottom-right of the Create Smart Collection dialog. You can then navigate to this new Smart Collection anytime you want to view only the photos in your catalog that have a Pick flag assigned to them.
Note that unlike a standard Collection, you can’t enable cloud synchronization for a Smart Collection. Therefore, the contents of the Smart Collection would only be available within the Lightroom catalog, not via cloud-connected options such as Lightroom CC on a mobile device.
You could also create a standard Collection, and add photos that have a Pick flag to that collection. However, unlike a Smart Collection, a standard collection will not update automatically. So if you want to have quick access to all photos with a Pick flag that will be updated in real time, a Smart Collection provides a solution.