archiving pictures for future alteration

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davecropp

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I have a folder full of RAWS that is taking up room on my hard drive. I've made plenty of alterations in Lightroom. I would like to write these files to dvd and then wipe them from my drive but I would like to be able to come back to them in future and still have all the alterations I have made in Lightroom. What is the best way to go about this?
 
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1. Get a bigger hard drive - an external one. ie Don't rely just on one DVD copy of your pictures if they have any importance.

2. Answering your direct question. Burn them to a DVD. Then with the DVD in LR, right click the folder and update the folder location, pointing to the DVD. Then delete the hard drive folder in Explorer.

John
 
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Thanks for your reply John.
I'm already running a couple of external drives and it's one of these that I'm looking to make some room on.
All I'm bothered about really is not loosing all the alterations I've made to a RAW.
I remember in photoshop it used to write an xmp file with all the adjustments in but I know Lightroom keeps all the alterations / history to itself.
What would happen if I just copied the folder to another drive not connected to the computer (so not seen by Lightroom) then deleted the folder on my computer. I know lightroom tells me that it can't find these and greys out the reference on the lefthand menu. As long as I don't delete that reference , can I bring say a couple of those files back to work on in future, and will Lightroom recognise them and add all the previous alterations that were made to them. If I delete the greyed out reference on the menu does this delete all the work I have done on them from the Lightroom catalogue?
Thanks
 
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It's as you think. Providing you leaving the thumbnail (your "reference") in LR, LR would still have all your work, adjustments and keywords etc, and you would be able to add new keywords or other metadata to those offline images. You just wouldn't be able to adjust them. Then when you decide to edit one, just put in the DVD (or connect the drive that's offline) and LR realises the file is now online and lets you work on it.

Do a test run.

John
 
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Select the photos of interest in the grid, and then Ctrl-S will save the metadata (captions, etc.) and the editing final position (but not the edit history) to an .xmp file that should be saved with the raws. (Note: if your raw photos are really DNG files, then no separate .xmp file is created; instead the information is written into the DNG file).
 
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Why not select the RAWs then export as catalogue making sure the include negatives is checked for security I would also create the .xmp files as noted above. Then make sure the new catalogue opens OK and make at least a second copy of it (not a DVD or CDROM) before deleting the files from the original catalogue.
 
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[quote author=trevorguy link=topic=8859.msg59565#msg59565 date=126299449']
Why not select the RAWs then export as catalogue making sure the include negatives is checked for security I would also create the .xmp files as noted above. Then make sure the new catalogue opens OK and make at least a second copy of it (not a DVD or CDROM) before deleting the files from the original catalogue.
[/quote]Because it misses the excellent advice given by John Beardsworth in the first response. Get a bigger/another external HD and maintain all in one catalog.
 
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[quote author=trevorguy link=topic=8859.msg59565#msg59565 date=126299449']
....before deleting the files from the original catalogue.
[/quote]
I'd disagree with this course of action. The beauty of Lightroom is that it can record the location of files that are offline. The original poster wants to economise on hard drives, not lose control of those pictures too.

John
 
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Thanks for all your replies guys. I don't know if I'm more confused as to what is the best course of action to take now or what!
I think the best thing for me to do is to do a little experimenting.
I've been using Lightroom for awhile and backing up catalogues but I 've never had the need to re-import one so it will be a good learning process.
 
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Cletus, John,
I wholeheartedly agree with both of you, I’m an advocate of the one catalogue, all on line approach myself and with the price of HD storage see no reason not to be.
I was simply answering the OP’s original question; I guess I should have started the first paragraph with “IF YOU MUST”.
 
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[quote author=davecropp link=topic=8859.msg596'2#msg596'2 date=1263'35225]
I've been using Lightroom for awhile and backing up catalogues but I 've never had the need to re-import one so it will be a good learning process.[/quote]

Just to be clear -- don't re-import anything!. Recovering from backups has nothing to do with importing. You just rename the backup catalog back to whatever name you prefer, and open it normally (like, double-click on it, or from Lightroom's File menu, or however you normally open catalogs).
 
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[quote author=davecropp link=topic=8859.msg596'2#msg596'2 date=1263'35225]
Thanks for all your replies guys. I don't know if I'm more confused as to what is the best course of action to take now or what!
[/quote]

Let's try this for a summary then:

  • [li]If you can just buy another hard drive, do that, or at least make sure you've got more than 1 image backup.[/li]
    [li]Don't delete the photos from the catalog - but possibly update the location to show which DVD they're on (put them in a named/dated folder on the DVD if you're going to do that, as the DVD's may just show as a single volume). To edit, you'd then just update the location of the missing file.
    [/li]
    [li]Write to xmp as a handy second backup before writing the files to the DVD's
    [/li]
 
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