Help - new user

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galvanizer

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Hello

I'm looking to purchase Lightroom for my company, but my knowledge is very limited and I want to make sure that Lightroom will suit us.
We currently have all our photos stored on our network server. We've had problems with disc space so we want to store all our photos in a photo management system (such as Lightroom?)
I've downloaded a free trial but am unsure about the difference in Catalogue and Library. Where does all the information get stored - on my personal C Drive or on the network?
Also, although we want the photos to be accessible to the company (8 people) we only want myself to have the 'permission' to upload and assign keywords, while everyone else will 'read only'
Any help would be appreciated, thank you.
 
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Welcome to Lightroom Forums galvanizer.

Lightroom won't solve your disc space problems as you will still have to put the images somewhere. It is IMPORTANT to note that Lightroom is not a container for the images. It is more a database tracking where they are. For example, when you "Import" photos in Lightroom you have the choice of referencing them at their current location, move or copy them elsewhere to be referenced from there or convert to DNG...

What Lightroom will do tough is that it will find the photos you are looking for in a fraction of a second without having to scan endless folders (given you make good use of keywords and collections).

Catalogue vs Library. In Lightroom terms, the Catalog is the database containing all the information about your images and what you want to do with them like crop or lighten etc. The referenced image is not modified. If you need a version as you changed it in Lightroom, you will "Export" and Lightroom will create a new file from the original applying the adjustments you recorded in its database. So never export oven the original. The Library is one of the modules in Lightroom. It is where you rate your images, make collections, assign keywords or manage folders.

The Catalog MUST NOT be on a networked ressource and can only reside on a local drive as seen by the computer running Lightroom. The referenced images can be anywhere on the LAN or on a local drive.

For your last sentence (8 people...) we need to know more to give proper advice. What is the format of the images you will work with and how do you expect them to "read" those images?
 
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Thank you for your help, Denis.

Our images are mainly JPEG, with the occasional TIF.

We generally receive our images from external companies and they are stored within different Windows folders, within each of the staffs' folders.

I wanted to ultimately get all photographs from all the various folders and have them in one place, so that (like you say) I can search for what I'm looking for in a fraction of a second as opposed to searching through about 8 different folders. So, when a member of staff comes to me asking where they can find a particular image to copy into a powerpoint presentation, I can find it immediately. From what I understand so far, is it best to leave the images where they are but import them into Lightroom to keyword them, then just literally use LR to direct me to the folder where they reside?

I currently use Photoshop to do my resizing and cropping. From what I understand of your reply Denis, does that mean I can use Lightroom for editing rather than Photoshop?

As I said, my knowledge is basic, so any help would be appreciated,
Thank you
 
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Hi Galvanizer, welcome to the forum!

Yes, you could leave all the photos where they are, although if one of your staff moved their photos, you'd then have to go find them, so I'd be inclined to move them into one central location all together.

You certainly can use LR to do resizing and cropping - it'll work very well for that, and leave the originals untouched.

The only glitch will be if they need access to the catalog too, because the catalog can't be on a network drive, but has to be on a local drive. If you're the only one who needs full access, and they just need to be able to browse your catalog, I'd consider taking a look at LR/Viewer for them - using some kind of automated process to copy your catalog onto each of their machines at the end of the day, so they can browse it using the LR/Viewer tool without being able to change anything.
 
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[quote author=Victoria Bampton link=topic=8211.msg55877#msg55877 date=1256725444]
If you're the only one who needs full access, and they just need to be able to browse your catalog, I'd consider taking a look at LR/Viewer for them - using some kind of automated process to copy your catalog onto each of their machines at the end of the day, so they can browse it using the LR/Viewer tool without being able to change anything.
[/quote]

LRViewer will even work on a remote network share. So if your staff needs to look at the catalog read only, you wouldn't even have to copy the catalog to their machines periodically. You just have to give them read access to the share the catalog is on.

Beat
 
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Another method I considered is to use DNG originals. If you're consistent with updating the DNG embedded preview and metadata, and kept the originals read-only for the others, they could access them with any DNG capable viewers.
 
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[quote author=b_gossweiler link=topic=8211.msg559'5#msg559'5 date=1256765955]
LRViewer will even work on a remote network share. So if your staff needs to look at the catalog read only, you wouldn't even have to copy the catalog to their machines periodically. You just have to give them read access to the share the catalog is on.
[/quote]

That IS interesting, thanks Beat. I'd googled it yesterday to check, but could only find a really old thread which said it couldn't, so Marc must have added that since. That's a great tool!
 
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Thank you for all your help Victoria, Beat and Brad....I'm slowly getting my head round how this will best work for our company.

I'm looking to buy a book as a reference guide too - either 'Lightroom for Dummies' or 'Lightroom and Photoshop workflow Bible' but I'm sure I'll be posting for a while on here until I've got the hang of it!
 
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Post away to your heart's content.
 
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