A subtle change - but one which will change they way people work - is the addition of a little lock symbol in the Library's filter panel (shortcut ). Its purpose may not be clear from the tooltip “if locked, the filter will not disable when changing sources”. In plain English, when the lock is on, the filter will stay the same when you move to other folders or collections. So filter the view to 3 star more stars, activate the filter lock, and go to another folder or collection - it too will be filtered to 3 stars or more. Great.

What makes this even interesting is that another big annoyance has been quietly disappeared - “sticky” filters are gone. Lightroom 2 remembered that a folder or collection had been filtered and the filter would remain active - each time you went back to that folder or collection it would be filtered the same way. While that stickiness could be helpful during the current Lightroom session, or for a day or so after, it became troublesome when it was still hanging around a few months later. You would go to a folder, not see all the images you expected, PANIC - and then realise that a long-forgotten filter was hiding some of the folder's contents. It confused and irritated in equal measures. While it might have been better if Adobe had provided a way to wipe these persistent filters upon closing the program, removing filter stickiness altogether is another great move.

Thinking globally, add this global filter lock to the work Adobe have put into making bigger catalogues perform better, and it could well take a lot of wind out of the sails of those wanting multiple catalogues. Let