Today’s Question: You’ve talked about the risk of color label mismatches for photos, such as if you’ve assigned color labels in both Adobe Bridge and Lightroom Classic. Does the same problem exist for changing color labels for folders [and collections], or is it OK to change the definitions for those?
Tim’s Quick Answer: You can safely change the definitions for color labels for folders or collections (but not photos) at any time in Lightroom Classic, because those definitions are only stored within the catalog and not in metadata for the source image files.
More Detail: It is perfectly safe to change the definitions for color labels for folders and collections (but not for photos) in Lightroom Classic at any time. For example, I use the text “To Review” for the red color label for folders rather than the default of “Red”, because I use the red color label to remind me that a folder contains photos that still need to be reviewed to identify favorites versus outtakes. Updating the text provides a reminder of what each color label represents, just in case I forget.
So, you can go to the menu in the Library module and choose Metadata > Color Label Set > Edit, and then update the text for color labels on the Folders or Collections tabs. Then click the Preset popup and either choose the “Update Preset” option if you want to save the current preset to reflect the changes, or “Save Current Settings as New Preset” if you want to create a new preset with the updated definitions. Then click the Change button to apply the changes.
This flexibility does not extend to color labels for photos, because those are represented as a field in metadata. For example, because the default color label definitions in Bridge versus Lightroom Classic are different, if you had assigned color labels in Bridge the label would appear as white in Lightroom Classic because the definitions don’t match.
