importing questions

[instinctive]

So I'm about to make the jump to Lightroom. I'm really looking forward to it and to having an organized photo library. I plan on having Lightroom copy the files to its own organization, and

Sadly, the current state is one of disorganization, with photos scattered across different hard drives and computers. I shoot RAW + JPG, but this question is not about the RAW + JPG issue - I think I will be happy with the JPG as a sidecar file.

My questions are:

1. I have in some cases separated my RAW and JPG into separate folders. Will I have to manually put them back together into the same folder before importing?

2. The same photos have been copied around from drive to drive and, in a few cases, renamed. Will Lightroom detect that these copies are duplicates if they come from (a) different folders, and (b) different drives.

3. Does Lightroom do an md5 hash or equivalent on the contents of the file to determine whether they are duplicates, or does it just rely on timestamps or other non-content based data?

4. Any extra tips on doing the initial import from a widely scattered set of drives/folders/raw+jpg?

Thanks, and looking forward to joining the community.

Charles

 

[Victoria Bampton]

Hi Charles, welcome to the forum!

What's your reasoning behind shooting raw+jpeg? Do you actually want to keep both? Do you use them all the time?

1. If you want them as sidecar files, then yes. Otherwise, you could leave them where they are and let Lightroom move and import them as separate images.

2. Lightroom will recognize duplicates based on filename + exif capture date/time + the file length (i.e. size), regardless of where they are. If they have different names at the time of import, both will be imported.

3. As 2.

4. Do a chunk at a time. It's easier to track, and slower systems have been known to have problems with huge imports (i.e. 2'k images +, although I did a 22'k on one occasion just fine...)