Lightroom Filter by "Aspect Ratio"

This past week I encountered a scenario that you may well be familiar with yourself.  I was made aware of a photo contest for the front cover of a local publication and thought I'd throw my hat into the ring and see what happens.  The first thing that came to mind was that the image(s) I submit should probably be in a portrait orientation to best accommodate a front page layout.  Makes sense, right?  So how can I use Lightroom to find all of my images having a portrait orientation?

Way back in September we discussed the Lightroom Library Filters.  One thing we didn't touch on, however, is that there are a whole bunch of additional fields you can filter on from within the Metadata library filter and one of them just happens to be "Aspect Ratio".


Click for larger image


First, make sure you're in the Library module and press the "\" key to reveal the Library Filter.  To display the list of all available filter fields, simply click on any of the existing column headings.  In this case, I clicked on "Date".  If you select a different field from the list, it will replace the column you clicked to display the listing of options.

Click for larger image

As you can see from the above screen capture, "Date" has been replaced with "Aspect Ratio".  Now I can easily find all of my "Portrait" orientated shots from the current collection.  With this filter in place, I can also select the "Text" filter option to specify a particular subject matter to further narrow in on the images matching my criteria.

And you thought Lightroom was all just about the Develop module... ;-).

Until next time, keep click'n.
-Ken