Today’s Question: As a follow-up to the question about browsing only the photos in a parent folder [in Lightroom Classic] is there a way to browse the photos in only the several subfolders without seeing the photos from the parent folder? Sort of the opposite of the option to not show photos in subfolders?
Tim’s Quick Answer: You can easily browse only the photos in a group of subfolders without seeing the images from a parent folder by simply selecting the multiple subfolders within the Folders list in Lightroom Classic.
More Detail: Selecting multiple folders in Lightroom Classic is quite simple, but I find it is a feature that many photographers overlook. You can select a group of folders within the Folders list in the Library module in Lightroom Classic in the same way you can select multiple files or folders through your operating system.
For example, if you want to browse the photos within several folders in a range, you can click on the first folder in the range and then hold the Shift key on the keyboard while clicking the last folder in the range, and all folders within that range will be selected.
You can also toggle the selection of multiple folders that are not in a contiguous range using the Ctrl key on Windows or the Command key on Macintosh. While holding the Ctrl/Command key and clicking on a folder, the selection status of that folder will change. So, for example, if you had selected a range of five folders and then held Ctrl/Command while clicking on the middle folder, only four folders (the first two and last two) would be selected.
Once you’ve selected multiple folders you will be browsing the photos in all of those folders. You can even use the filter criteria on the Library Filter Bar to only view photos that meet specific criteria within the selected folders. Note, by the way, that these same options are available for selecting collections in addition to folders.
