New Lightroom User Has Questions About Iphoto And Lightroom

[douvidl]

I have used Iphoto for a number of years and want to convert to Lightroom. My iphoto files reside on two external hard discs, one to use and one to backup.
How do I move the files to Lightroom? The original files are a combination of RAW and Jpeg.
(When I tried to transfer a series of raw files, it also transferred the jpeg equivilent. How do I avoid that transfer in the future?)
How do I maintain an external hard disc as a backup?
I am trying to avoid have two organizers, iPhoto and Lightroom. It simplifies work flow.
Thanks in advance.

 

[Victoria Bampton]

Just bumping this one, as I haven't used iPhoto.

 

[rcannonp]

I don't think that there is a way to tell LR to ignore a particular file type on import. If the jpegs that you don't want are companions to raw files that you are importing, you could try setting LR to not treat them as separate photos. That way LR keeps track of the jpegs, but they are effectively ignored as far as processing and display are concerned. You will see a badge that indicates that the files are raw+jpeg, but you are only viewing the raw file. If you don't want any trace of the jpegs in your LR catalog, I think that the easiest thing to do would be to set LR to treat jpegs and raw files as separate photos, import everything, and then remove the jpegs. Once all of the photos are imported, you can use the Metadata Browser in the Library module to show just the jpegs, select all of them and remove them from the catalog. That way you wouldn't have to do any manual sorting for each folder that you might have.

As for backing up files, you might try using SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner to clone your working drive to your backup. I use SuperDuper because at the time that I bought it, CCC wouldn't make incremental backups. I think that feature has been added to CCC now though. Since it's free, it might be the first one to check out. Before you start cloning, make sure that there aren't any stray files that you want to keep on your backup drive that aren't reflected on your working drive.

 

[douvidl]

Thanks

Thanks for the tip. I shall check out both programs.
David