Today’s Question: On the filmstrip of images at the bottom of Lightroom Classic some images have a circle in the top-right corner. What does that mean and how does this work?
Tim’s Quick Answer: The circular icon that appears at the top-right of thumbnails in Lightroom Classic is an indicator for the Quick Collection. A light circle appears when you hover your mouse over an image, and you can click on the circle to add the image to the Quick Collection, with a solid circle then indicating that the image is included in the Quick Collection.
More Detail: The Quick Collection found in the Catalog section near the top of the left panel in the Library module is intended as a temporary holding area for photos you are using for some brief purpose. For example, you might use the Quick Collection to group photos together that you want to export for a project.
You can add photos to the Quick Collection by dragging and dropping them into the Quick Collection. By default, the Quick Collection is also the target collection, which means that pressing the letter “B” on the keyboard will add the current photo to the Quick Collection.
When a photo is included in the Quick Collection a circular icon will appear at the top-right of the thumbnail for the image. A lighter circle icon appears when you hover the mouse over an image thumbnail, and that icon can be clicked to add an image to (or remove the image from) the Quick Collection.
Note, by the way, that if you have added photos to the Quick Collection and then decide you want to preserve that grouping more permanently, you can create a new collection containing the photos in the Quick Collection. To do so right-click on the Quick Collection in the Catalog section of the left panel in the Library module and choose “Save Quick Collection”. In the dialog that appears enter a name for the new collection. You can also turn on the “Clear Quick Collection After Saving” checkbox if you want the photos removed from the Quick Collection after they are added to the new collection. Then click the Save button to create the new collection.
