Leaps in technology leaving me lost and overwhelmed in organizing photos!

[PhilGF]

I'm 57, I wish I was born later and able to jump into photography in the digital age as a teen and not have negatives & slide scanning issues.

Well my concern isn't about scanning and could be the same issue to someone who never touched a film camera.

Just a few years ago it seemed simply enough, pictures I take go into the Lightroom catalog, old stuff gets digitized and also goes into Lightroom. But between Lr and google Photos with great camera phones like the Pixel 3 organization is chaos!

So yesterday, Christmas as an example I used my Nikon and my Pixel. I also bought a Moment lens for portraits for the phone but I want RAW images, so I picked up the Nikon with the 105mm on it for that. The normal camera setting on the Pixel 3 allows for RAW.

Okay so now I'm getting lost in my problem. So great, my Pixel pictures get uploaded to Google Photos, the Nikon I add to Lr. It's easy to upload to online services from Lr, but I'm having issues with downloading from Google, between dng files and sometimes using other formats such as the Portrait or night sight. Bottom line if I get all this to Lr, then it's all the editing and then get the edited ones back up to google so when the assistant creates albums or animation it works with the corrected photos.

Maybe this is why I haven't uploaded to my Smugmug account in over a year!

I need a therapist and a seminar, or maybe I'm getting to old to keep up!

 

[Jimmsp]

I only use Google Photos for some photos for classes I teach.
And I use the "free" version - that is the photos there are smaller in size, so not a real back up.

But when I take Photos with my phone, an iPhone, I use the LR CC app to control the camera. After it gets uploaded to the cloud, I go to my pc and Lightroom Classic. If it a shot I want to keep and maybe process, I drag it from LR Mobile to an appropriate folder on the Hard Drive. If I want it up on Google Photos, I then export it as a smaller web sized photo into a "google photos" folder, then drag it (with WIn File Explorer) to an open google photos web page. The original and processed photo gets backed up in the usual way to an external HD along with my DSLR photos.

 

[Dale Strumpell]

Personally, I find using the cloud to import and sync photos from my phone adds a layer of unnecessary complexity. I recommend thinking of your phone as a camera which needs to be connected to your computer with a cable to transfer photos to a local drive. Lightroom then imports from that drive.

 

[PhilGF]

I did connect my Pixel 3 to the PC, unlike previously doing this with my Samsung the transfer would be interrupted when the screen shuts off. Love using Google photos as a backup. Digital is great but just adds to the complexity and it shouldn't, just too many choices and cameras to use.

 

[PhilBurton]

I'm 57, I wish I was born later and able to jump into photography in the digital age as a teen and not have negatives & slide scanning issues.

Well my concern isn't about scanning and could be the same issue to someone who never touched a film camera.

Just a few years ago it seemed simply enough, pictures I take go into the Lightroom catalog, old stuff gets digitized and also goes into Lightroom. But between Lr and google Photos with great camera phones like the Pixel 3 organization is chaos!

So yesterday, Christmas as an example I used my Nikon and my Pixel. I also bought a Moment lens for portraits for the phone but I want RAW images, so I picked up the Nikon with the 105mm on it for that. The normal camera setting on the Pixel 3 allows for RAW.

Okay so now I'm getting lost in my problem. So great, my Pixel pictures get uploaded to Google Photos, the Nikon I add to Lr. It's easy to upload to online services from Lr, but I'm having issues with downloading from Google, between dng files and sometimes using other formats such as the Portrait or night sight. Bottom line if I get all this to Lr, then it's all the editing and then get the edited ones back up to google so when the assistant creates albums or animation it works with the corrected photos.

Maybe this is why I haven't uploaded to my Smugmug account in over a year!

I need a therapist and a seminar, or maybe I'm getting to old to keep up!

Phil,

You don't need a therapist, at least not for photography.

I'm a bit older than you and I also have years and years and years of slides (fortunately Kodachrome) and negative, and a Nikon DSLR and an iPhone 6. Yes, like can seem more complicated now, but at least you don't have to choose between Kodak and Fuji films, or which particular film to use. And digital cameras give you flexibility with ASA (ISO) settings and color balance that film never gave you.

Lightroom metadata can show you which camera was used for a particular image, and you can filter on that metadata.

Phil Burton

If you feel that Lightroom is a bit much, with a steep learning curve, I highly recommend Victoria's books.

 

[Blaze]

PhilGF, I'm new to this forum, but will offer that as a hobbyist my use of Google Photos is similar to yours. I take photos with an older Nikon, as well as from both my iPhone and my wife's. We both share our iPhone photos with each other via Google Photos (free version), where all photos taken are automatically backed up. In addition, my son and daughter, both college students, take tons of photos which they text to us, of which I save about half o them to my phone.

To get the iPhone photos into LR, I've been pulling them off the phones to my PC via a USB cable, as you and others here have mentioned. I don't take them from Google Photos simply because of the compression they put the pics through (great for viewing on a phone, not so much anywhere else). I also pull the Nikon photos off the card directly to my PC. They all then get imported into LR. After any post-processing, I then export the Nikon photos out to my Google Photos folder on the PC and let them sync up to our devices. If I can get the phone-taken photos (DNGs) to look any better via LR post-processing, then I simply delete the ones that were backed up automatically by the Google Photos app directly from the phones, and replace them with the post-processed ones.

That all being said, now that I've bitten the bullet and subscribed this week to Classic LR, I think I am going to try and leverage the LR CC mobile app on both my phone and my wife's. This will hopefully eliminate the need to automatically back up photos with Google Photos, eliminating that step, and also simplify how I get the photos into LR desktop. Time will tell if this workflow suits me or not.

Anyway, just wanted to share.

Blaze.