Over the last few months, I’ve been extensively using the latest versions of both Aperture and Lightroom in gigs large and small. I’ve long been comfortable using both, but with the 2.0 versions of both, I’ve really wanted to dig and an understand, as thoroughly as possible, the real differences between the two applications. Most importantly, I’ve wanted to see how the differences between the applications affect the working photographer in the field instead of on the feature sheet.

Obviously, Lightroom 2.0 isn’t out yet, so many of the thoughts I have comparing the products are still pending. But, there’s one feature that has been in Lightroom from the start that I continue to lean on and which, though quite a small feature, makes a huge difference in day-to-day work. This feature is the Lightroom Quick Collection.

One of my most frequent workflows while in the heat of a conference shoot is picking out a group of representative images to publish the same day. I’d love to publish the absolute best images of the day, but there’s usually not enough time to really do a good ranking of the images until well after the conference is over. In such a situation, pushing star ratings into action isn’t necessarily the cleanest of solutions. Instead, when I have the Quick Collection feature available to me, I prefer to just zip through my library, hitting the ‘B’ key along the way and winnow out a set of images that will work.

This workflow becomes even more important when you are sitting down with a client or an art director going through images and they say, “Oh, let’s take a closer look at that one in a few minutes. Oh, and that one too.” By using the Quick Collection, you can accomplish this quickly and easily across folders and collections. Without it, you have to temporarily force a star rating into service with the intent that you’ll go back and revise those ratings later. Another way to deal with this workflow without a Quick Collection is to drag and drop photos into their own group. It works, but it’s tedious compared to hitting the the ‘B’ key and moving quickly on.

It’s a small feature, but sometimes it’s the smallest of features that make life easier. Every time I fire up Lightroom, it’s one of the things I appreciate the most about the product.