Today’s Question: Is there a way in [Lightroom Classic] to view photos from a folder and all of the subfolders within that folder? I have divided photos from a trip into folders by key locations and want to be able to view all photos from the trip at one time.
Tim’s Quick Answer: You can browse photos in all subfolders in Lightroom Classic by either selecting all of the folders you want to browse, or by enabling the “Show Photos in Subfolders” option.
More Detail: When you want to browse the photos contained in multiple folders, one option is to select multiple folders. This works whether you want to browse multiple subfolders within the same parent folder, or a variety of folders in various locations.
Start by clicking on the first folder you want to browse within the Folders list on the left panel in the Library module. You can then select additional folders using the same keyboard shortcuts you might already be familiar with for selecting multiple files. If you want to select a series of contiguous folders, after clicking on the first folder in the range you can hold the Shift key on the keyboard and click on the last folder in the range, and all folders in between will also be selected.
If you want to select folders that are not adjacent to each other, you can toggle the selection of folders on and off by holding the Ctrl key on Windows or the Command key on Macintosh while clicking on the other folders you want to browse.
Another option is to enable the view of photos within subfolders of the currently selected folder. In this case you would select the parent folder when you want to browse the photos within that folder and all subfolders within the selected folder. Then, on the menu bar, make sure the “Show Photos in Subfolders” option is enabled on the Library menu. When this option is enabled a checkmark appears to the left of it on the menu.
If you enable the “Show Photos in Subfolders” option, just be sure not to get confused into thinking there are multiple copies of photos. For example, you would see the same photos appear when you select a parent folder or the subfolder that actually contains the photos, which might lead you to believe there are duplicate copies of some photos, when in fact there are not.