In the next six minutes you’ll learn all about a small easy-to-miss Lightroom icon that one of our favorite instructors says is a huge timesaver when editing multiple photos and keeping the files organized so they’re right at your fingertips when you need them.

Photographer Matt Kloskowski is a post-processing expert who says his personal mission is to create tutorials that simplify the process of shooting and editing images to perfection. The quick episode will save you from the frustration of digging through hundreds of folders because your library is a disorganized mess.

This helpful trick dramatically accelerates your workflow whether you’re creating an image-rich slide show, photo book, or online gallery; in other words, any task that requires you to go through multiple photos, folders and collections in Lightroom and gather a large number of images in a hurry.

As Matt explains, “this little trick that you can do with Collections makes the task a lot simpler.” There’s a bit of initial setup and Matt quickly walks you through the process for different types of projects. He begins by creating a new Collection, and he points out a checkbox in the Create window called Set as Target Selection. It’s easy to overlook but must be enabled before proceeding.

Now your newly created Collection appears in the panel with all of your others. But this one is identified with a + symbol that identifies it as a Target Collection with a keyboard shortcut that’s extremely helpful when prepping your project.

Then as you’re looking through your photos for the task at hand all you have to do is this: Click on the photo, tap the letter “B” and your image is immediately added to the Target Collection. Simply continue accordingly to include as many photos as you wish. Interestingly, you can do the same with any of your other Lightroom collections to add them to your project.

At this point you’re only halfway through today’s lesson and the remainder is devoted to a straightforward demonstration of how to put your new Collection to work. Take a look at Matt’s informative YouTube channel once the video concludes and you’ll find many more how-to videos for editing your work in Lightroom and Photoshop

We also recommend watching the tutorial we featured earlier with another post-processing expert who demonstrates a fast-and-effective Lightroom solution for fixing underexposed photographs without introducing ugly noise.

Adobe just unloaded a boatful of innovative updates across their entire Lightroom and Photoshop ecosystem, and we’ll be bringing you all the details one at a time. But there’s one impressive capability, known as Variance, that seems to be flying under the radar and that’s what you’ll use learn how to use today so you don’t miss it later on.

We often turn to photographer Glyn Dewis for straightforward shooting tips, post-processing advice, and valuable insights into new software updates. In the next 11 minutes you’ll learn why he insists that “out of everything that was updated yesterday, I think that Variance is the most exciting.”

Dewis illustrates the concept with a graphic of green swatches of varying tones. He explains the initial process like this: “Let’s imagine that we want to make all of these swatches match the one in the middle.” This is super easy to do by opening the Filter menu, choosing Camera Raw Filters, using the Color Mixer panel, and following his instructions. You’ll note that Variance appears under Point Color.

In basic terms, moving the Variance slider left or right tells Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) how much difference you want between the color swatch you selected and the other swatches in the illustration. By doing it right “you now have one complete tone going across the entire document.”

So what does all this mean in practical terms? Dewis opens an interesting, moody portrait and demonstrates how the new Variance tool enables him to quickly remove the reddening in his subject’s cheeks.

Dewis walks you through the simple steps, and then he opens another portrait photo and does much the same—this time to balance his model’s uneven skin tones. It’s all quick and very effective, and you’ll definitely want to add Variance to your everyday post-processing workflow.

There are many more shooting and editing tips and techniques to be found on Glyn’s instructional YouTube, so be sure to pay a visit and explore.

And speaking of brand-new Adobe features, don’t miss the tutorial we featured earlier with another image-editing expert who demonstrate the power of Lightroom’s updated non-destructive Enhance tools for Denoise, Raw Details, and Super Resolution.