I'm SO unorganized

[elavats]

Greetings all,

I'm new to your forum and as pretty close to what AnitaD has described in another area as a lightroom beginner...

"...people who, perhaps because they haven't been using the app very long, (1) haven't fully explored or learned all the functionality in alll the modules and/or (2) haven't become fluent enough to know the best ways to expedite tasks and work as efficiently as possible in the app"

I've looked through the forum but haven't really found the answer I'm looking for. If it's here, I missed it so if you could direct me to the information that would be great.

Here is my situation. For years I've used the photo editing program "Jasc photo album" which was absorbed into the new Corel line up of photo editing programs such as Paint Shop Pro. Over the years, I stored, copied, edited, etc... into folders and onto a number of different places. I now have photos on my Mac hard drive as well as on 2 other external hard drives. My organizational goal is to keep current projects on my laptop, store edited and previous projects onto an external drive and then copy that onto a 2nd external drive.
As of today, I am using Lightroom 1.4.1. and use it to edit photos that are stored in 3 different places.

My question is this. What would be the best way to get my organization project started, which is moving all my digital images to one hard drive? Would it be better to move all the images using Lightroom or copy and past all the photos manually to one drive and then direct Lightroom to the drive I store the images?

Thanks for any and all your suggestions. :-\

 

[dj_paige]

I think the best advice I can give you is to stop thinking about folders.

Lightroom is the tool that organizes your photos, with its own structures: keywords, captions and other metadata, and collections. You see, when you have organized via Lightroom structures, you no longer need to know what folders the files are in, you no longer need to keep "finished projects" in one place and originals in another. You use Lightroom search to find things; which is a whole lot faster and more powerful than using folders to find things.

 

[maiaibing]

[quote author=dj_paige link=topic=8124.msg55321#msg55321 date=1255865431]
I think the best advice I can give you is to stop thinking about folders.[/quote]

I have to disagree. Lightroom has a lot of good potential for organising your pictures. But it would be foolish to only rely on software for all organising thousands and thousands of pictures. What if LR is discontinued, you have a disastrous disk failure, get hit by an evil virus?

Keep viable folder structure to complement LR (or any other software). LR itself suggests different ways to organise your new pictures into pre-defined folders. I let LR automatically make folders and sort pictures by year and date.

 

[elavats]

Thank you for your quick responses, it's nice to see that I've found knowledgeable people to help me out. I'm not unappreciative of your answers but perhaps my question wasn't so clear.

I'll try to explain better. I currently have digital images in 3 separate places,
1, my Mac HD,
2, external drive A,
3, external drive B.

I have imported all images into Lightroom and I'm able to edit and save them with no problem, everything works fine.

I understand that my old practice of saving things in folders is no longer necessary and that Lightroom does a great job of organizing my photos. The problem I have is that my digital images are located in 3 different places and I think it would be better if they were all in the same place.

Here is an example of what I have in mind. I would like to move all my digital images from external drive B, and my Mac HD so that they all live on my external drive A.

Once that is completed I'd like to use external drive B to back up all my images. The Mac HD will be uesd specifically for current projects.

My dilemma is this. I'm not sure what the best way is to actually move the images to the external drive A.
1. Should I to move all the digital files to my external drive A using Lightroom? (is it even possible?)
2. Should I move all the digital files manually (cutting and pasting) to drive A and then use Lightroom to "find" all the images and import them?

I hope this makes more sense because I'm starting to confuse myself.

 

[James_N]

Here's what I would do if I were in your position.

1. Move all the images to a single drive. Actually I would COPY them to make sure they are all intact.
2. Then use an application like Downloader Pro or ImageIngester to IMPORT those images to your hard drive where you want to permanently store your photos.
Both DLPro (my favorite) or ImageIngester will read intact EXIF and will automatically route your files to date based folders, or whatever other organizational preference you have. Also, both applications are much more powerful than the Import features of Lightroom.
http://www.breezesys.com/Downloader/index.htm
http://basepath.com/ImageIngester/
3. After organizing in folders, then import your images in Lightroom.

 

[Kiwigeoff]

[quote author=elavats link=topic=8124.msg5533'#msg5533' date=1255876369]
Thank you for your quick responses, it's nice to see that I've found knowledgeable people to help me out. I'm not unappreciative of your answers but perhaps my question wasn't so clear.

I'll try to explain better. I currently have digital images in 3 separate places,
1, my Mac HD,
2, external drive A,
3, external drive B.

I have imported all images into Lightroom and I'm able to edit and save them with no problem, everything works fine.

I understand that my old practice of saving things in folders is no longer necessary and that Lightroom does a great job of organizing my photos. The problem I have is that my digital images are located in 3 different places and I think it would be better if they were all in the same place.

Here is an example of what I have in mind. I would like to move all my digital images from external drive B, and my Mac HD so that they all live on my external drive A.

Once that is completed I'd like to use external drive B to back up all my images. The Mac HD will be uesd specifically for current projects.

My dilemma is this. I'm not sure what the best way is to actually move the images to the external drive A.
1. Should I to move all the digital files to my external drive A using Lightroom? (is it even possible?)
2. Should I move all the digital files manually (cutting and pasting) to drive A and then use Lightroom to "find" all the images and import them?

I hope this makes more sense because I'm starting to confuse myself.


[/quote]

In answer to your questions:
You can do either, personally I would do #1. It keeps all the links intact and as I use a Mac as well and have have yet to have an issue moving within LR.
#2 is quite possible as well though.

 

[dj_paige]

[quote author=maiaibing link=topic=8124.msg55326#msg55326 date=1255871'69]
[quote author=dj_paige link=topic=8124.msg55321#msg55321 date=1255865431]
I think the best advice I can give you is to stop thinking about folders.[/quote]

I have to disagree. Lightroom has a lot of good potential for organising your pictures. But it would be foolish to only rely on software for all organising thousands and thousands of pictures. What if LR is discontinued, you have a disastrous disk failure, get hit by an evil virus?

Keep viable folder structure to complement LR (or any other software). LR itself suggests different ways to organise your new pictures into pre-defined folders. I let LR automatically make folders and sort pictures by year and date.
[/quote]

The solution to protect against "a disastrous disk failure, get hit by an evil virus" is to have proper backups on a different physical media. Organizing in folders doesn't protect you against these things.

If you write the keywords and other metadata to xmp, then if Lightroom is discontinued, that information is still available to any other program you choose to use.

Folders are an antique and weak organizing method compared to what Lightroom provides.

 

[Replytoken]

[quote author=dj_paige link=topic=8124.msg55343#msg55343 date=12559'3167]
The solution to protect against "a disastrous disk failure, get hit by an evil virus" is to have proper backups on a different physical media. Organizing in folders doesn't protect you against these things.
[/quote]

While it is correct that organizing in folders does not protect against these things, for many of us, having a basic organizational structure (e.g. chronological) for our folders and images does make proper backups much easier. For me, it would be quite a challenge to back up images that were not organized in some fashion. And, I am not certain what my back up would look like, as I prefer my backups to mirror my original file/folder structure since this helps speed things up in the event of a problem. But, YMMV.

--Ken

 

[dj_paige]

[quote author=Replytoken link=topic=8124.msg55345#msg55345 date=12559'8276]
While it is correct that organizing in folders does not protect against these things, for many of us, having a basic organizational structure (e.g. chronological) for our folders and images does make proper backups much easier. For me, it would be quite a challenge to back up images that were not organized in some fashion. And, I am not certain what my back up would look like, as I prefer my backups to mirror my original file/folder structure since this helps speed things up in the event of a problem. But, YMMV.

--Ken
[/quote]

Folders do serve a purpose. I am all in favor of using folders as you describe for ease of backup, and in fact I use this scheme myself.

This is not the same as organizing using folders (in other words, making your photos easier to find by identifying the content), which I still contend is not as efficient and powerful as organizing inside Lightroom.

 

[Kiwigeoff]

I think the Op's question of how to move folders has been answered

 

[Replytoken]

[quote author=dj_paige link=topic=8124.msg55349#msg55349 date=12559'9934]
[quote author=Replytoken link=topic=8124.msg55345#msg55345 date=12559'8276]
While it is correct that organizing in folders does not protect against these things, for many of us, having a basic organizational structure (e.g. chronological) for our folders and images does make proper backups much easier. For me, it would be quite a challenge to back up images that were not organized in some fashion. And, I am not certain what my back up would look like, as I prefer my backups to mirror my original file/folder structure since this helps speed things up in the event of a problem. But, YMMV.

--Ken
[/quote]

Folders do serve a purpose. I am all in favor of using folders as you describe for ease of backup, and in fact I use this scheme myself.

This is not the same as organizing using folders (in other words, making your photos easier to find by identifying the content), which I still contend is not as efficient and powerful as organizing inside Lightroom.
[/quote]

I fully concur with your distinction about the best use of folders, as well as your approach to letting LR do the organizing. And Geoff is correct that the OP's question has been answered.

--Ken