Today’s Question: Is there a way to assign a keyboard shortcut for adding photos to a specific collection in Lightroom Classic? It seems very slow and cumbersome to have to drag photos into a collection.
Tim’s Quick Answer: Yes, if you assign the intended collection as the target collection you can press the letter “B” on the keyboard to add the currently selected photo(s) to the target collection.
More Detail: Many photographers think of the letter “B” as a keyboard shortcut in Lightroom Classic as being associated with the Quick Collection, which is found in the Catalog section of the left panel in the Library module. But in fact, the letter “B” is the keyboard shortcut for adding photos to the target collection. It’s just that the Quick Collection is the default target collection.
To change the target collection to the collection you want to add photos to, right-click on collection in the Collections section of the left panel in the Library module and choose “Set as Target Collection” from the popup menu. When you do so you’ll notice that a plus symbol (+) appears to the right of the collection, which is a marker indicating this is the current target collection. By default, that plus symbol would have been to the right of the Quick Collection.
With the target collection set you can now select photos and simply press the letter “B” on the keyboard to add the selected images to the current target collection. When you’re done working with that collection I do recommend right-clicking on the Quick Collection and choosing “Set as Target Collection” so that the letter “B” keyboard shortcut will be set back to the default behavior of adding to the Quick Collection, just to avoid confusion about which collection photos will be added to.
