Today’s Question: In Adobe Lightroom [not Lightroom Classic] on the Local tab is there a way to browse photos from multiple folders at once? I downloaded photos into folders by day during a three-week trip and need to correct the capture time for the photos from five days of the trip.
Tim’s Quick Answer: On the Local tab in Adobe Lightroom you’re only able to select a single folder at a time, and there isn’t an option to see the contents of subfolders. The easiest solution in this case might be to simply apply the capture time correction individually to each of the five folders.
More Detail: I have to assume that at some point Adobe will update Lightroom to include the option to select multiple folders (as you can do in Lightroom Classic) or to show all photos from all subfolders (as can be done in both Bridge and Lightroom Classic).
If the five folders in question share a common parent folder that doesn’t contain any other folders, you could use Adobe Bridge to update all the photos in one step. Simply select the parent folder and turn on the option on the menu at View > Show Items from Subfolders.
If the folders don’t share a common parent folder, you can create a new collection on the Collections panel and add the photos from the five applicable folders to the collection. Then select all photos in the collection and update the capture time for all of them there.
Note, by the way, that while you can mix and match the use of Bridge and the Local tab in Lightroom, I do not recommend adding Lightroom Classic to the mix. If you’re using Lightroom Classic you should only use Lightroom Classic to manage your photos, and if you’re using something else you should not use Lightroom Classic. That’s because Lightroom Classic involves the use of a catalog, whereas Bridge and the Local tab in Lightroom are browsers that don’t use a catalog.
