Destination for Import

[saileralan]

Operating System

1. macOS 15 Sequoia

I am trying to take a bunch of photos from an ON1 database and move them to Lightroom 6 manually. I have some questions
about the Destination section of the import dialog.

In ON1 I named each folder according to Month/Year ie April 2023. Ideally I'd like to keep this information when I import
the photos to Lightroom 6. The Lightroom Destination menu has three choices. Subfolder , Organize and Date Format.

Date Format juts appears to be various ways of specifying the inport date. All are the current date so that doesn't help.

Organize has two choices , by date or into one Folder. Not sure if I understand these options.

Subfolder allows you to create a Subfolder and give it a name. But a Subfolder to what?

I am trying to get this right. when I first started using Lightroom 1 I made some organizing decisions which still haunt me
(in a minor way). As a machinist once told me "If you can't find it, you don't own it".

Cheers.

 

[Johan Elzenga]

There is no reason to copy the photos during import (unless you want to), so what you can do is import the images from their current folders and choose 'Add' at the top of the import dialog. That will only add the images to the Lightroom catalog, and keep them in their current folder structure.

 

[saileralan]

Interesting. I never used Add before.
I'll have to look into that.

Thanks.

 

[saileralan]

I looked at Add. Maybe I am missing something but I don't think it will do what I want.

The photos I want to get into LR6 are on a thumb drive. The photos are in a folder called April 2022. I want to import
these files onto two hard drives, one primary one backup. I need them to go from the thumb drive to my two hard
drives. I'd like the resulting folders on my two hard drives to be called April 2022.

As far as I can tell Add just links the photos on my thumb drive to the LR catalog.

I am probably missing something but I'm not sure what...

Cheers.

 

[clee01l]

I looked at Add. Maybe I am missing something but I don't think it will do what I want.

There are three possible options with import. The most used is COPY where Classic copies files from the Source location to a destination folder as designated in the Destination Panel. The MOVE option does what it says. It MOVE the source files from the source location to a destination folder as designated in the Destination Panel. The ADD option uses the Source location as the Destination Lovation and sets the catalog path for these files to be the current source path.

If you want to keep using ON1 with these originals then ADD is the choice to make here. If you have created derivatives in ON1 that are edited versions of your originals, the you should probably move them to a new location although COPY and ADD will work too.

 

[Hal P Anderson]

I want to import these files onto two hard drives, one primary one backup. I need them to go from the thumb drive to my two hard
drives. I'd like the resulting folders on my two hard drives to be called April 2022.

LRC won't do that. You'll have to copy the folder full of images to the backup drive manually. If you're able to program, you could write yourself a small app that copies the images to two identically-named folders. Then you can import one of the folders using the Add option.

 

[clee01l]

I want to import these files onto two hard drives, one primary one backup.

You would be better served by using a real Backup app like timeMachine. It will backup all of your critical user data automatically. This can include your master image files, other important documents as well as app settings so that you can recover WHEN your disk drive fails. timeMachine is an app included with MacOS.

 

[saileralan]

Thanks.

I do not want to continue using ON1. I have two computers. One is more modern and is running ON1 2022. I'll call it ON.

The other is an old Mac Mini that has High Sierra installed. It is running LR 6 . I'll call it LR.

The task is to take all the photos ON, convert them to DNGs on a thumb drive. I then want to walk those files to the
LR computer and import them. I'd like them to go to two drives, a main and backup.

And finally, I'd like to keep the names I gave the folders when I was using ON1.

I do not want to use ON1 with LR. I don't like ON1. never did, it was attempt to avoid paying Adobe a monthly fee to
develop maybe 10-20 photos. It failed for reasons I don't want to go into.

Hope this is clearer. And I hope I am not misunderstanding your advice.

Thanks.

 

[clee01l]

The task is to take all the photos ON, convert them to DNGs on a thumb drive. I then want to walk those files to the
LR computer and import them. I'd like them to go to two drives, a main and backup.

I don't see a need to convert these to DNGs unless your LR6 doesn't recognise the filetypes from a newer camera. Just share the folder on the Source computer with the Mac Mini on your network and use Lightroom to import or if you have a sophisticated folder structure Use finder to copy the folders to the MacMini.

Then you can use timeMachine to backup these folders along with any other critical user data files that you don't want to lose when your disk drive fails

 

[saileralan]

All,

Thanks very much for your inputs. It turns out my understanding of what happens when you import photos into Lightroom was all screwed up. LR is smarter than I gave it credit for and is doing very close to what I want.

My only excuse is that I've been using LR since LR1 and this is the first time I've had to examine the import process closely. So once again, LR is smarter than I gave it credit for.

Let the transfer begin. I can stop using ON1 in a few days. Hurrah.

Cheers.

 

[Conrad Chavez]

The photos I want to get into LR6 are on a thumb drive. The photos are in a folder called April 2022. I want to import
these files onto two hard drives, one primary one backup. I need them to go from the thumb drive to my two hard
drives. I'd like the resulting folders on my two hard drives to be called April 2022.

OK, this is actually pretty simple:

1. Outside of Lightroom Classic, copy the folder from the thumb drive to where you want them to permanently live on your primary volume.
2. Start Lightroom Classic and import using the Add option. That will catalog the files where they are, without moving or copying anything.
3. Exit Lightroom Classic and use any good Mac backup/sync software (ChronoSync, Carbon Copy Cloner, etc.) to mirror the primary drive to the backup drive. In that type of software, you can create a backup preset so that after you add to or edit the files on the primary drive, you run the preset and it updates the backup drive to match.

If anything bad happens to the primary drive, you can switch to the backup drive and in Lightroom Classic, use the Update Folder Location command to point the catalog to the backup drive you swapped in to work from.