Organizing Photos in my Lightroom Catalog

[junbug]

Hello everyone,

I just started using Lr two days ago so I am a real virgin! I have been using Iphoto to organize/view my photos until I made the switch to Lr. I have a ton of photos already in my hard drive and I want to organize them according to a "date/place" system. Currently, it's organized according to "Rolls" through Iphoto (1.e., Roll1 , Roll 2, etc. where each roll contains photos taken on different dates and in different places.)

My question is: how can I use Lr to organize photos that are already in my hard drive and that are already imported to my Lr catalog. I basically just moved the original files into a folder "My Lightroom Pictures" and then imported these files into my LR catalog without moving them. I now want to organize these according to a more systematic "date/place" system. Can I do this in Lr? Or is it better to do this organization while importing my photos into my Lr catalog.

Thanks!

 

[Mark Sirota]

Welcome to Lightroom Forums!

I think the most straightforward way would be to reimport into a new catalog, choosing one of the Move or Copy options from the File Handling pulldown in the Import dialog, and then choosing one of the "by date" options from the Organize pulldown.

Once they're in and you're comfortable that everything looks good, you could delete the old copies and catalogs.

 

[Gene McCullagh]

Hi junbug! Welcome to the forums! When you have a moment please fill out your signature via the USER CP link above.

There are several ways you can organize your images in LR. You can bring them into collections or utilize smart collections. This would not move the actual source files around and has the advantage of allowing images to be in more than one collection at a time.

If you want to move files around into a hierarchical folder structure you can do that in the Folders panel in the Library module.

These two are not mutually exclusive. You can organize physically on the drive and still sub-organize via collections.

Yet another organizational strategy is to use keywords. That can tie into collections and smart collections organized via certain keywords.

There are many many ways to organize within LR. That is one of it's great strengths.

 

[dj_paige]

I recommend putting your effort into Lightroom Keywords and Collections, plus adding captions, titles and other metadata. :!:

I always advise people to stop thinking about getting a nice folder structure, and instead begin thinking about putting effort into the Lightroom structures. Why? Because Lightroom gives you many more search capabilities to find your photos than Windows does. You want to find a photo that is tagged "Niagara Falls" and has caption "Wax Museum" and was taken in 2''7? Piece of cake in Lightroom, quite difficult in Windows. The search capabilities in Lightroom are almost endless, while they are quite limited in Windows. Further, because Lightroom is a database, the searching is quite fast compared to a similar search of your Windows folders.

Now I know that some experts (yes, I am looking at you, Scott Kelby) recommend putting metadata (such as dates, locations, etc) into the file or folder name as well as into Lightroom metadata. I am not a professional photographer, and maybe for professional photographers, having all this metdata in your Windows file and folder names is valuable, but I have firmly concluded that for me, there is no value in "beefing up" my folder names, folder structure and file names with metadata; and it is double the effort (metadata in Lightroom plus metadata in Windows). Zero benefit at twice the effort — not for me.

What to do with the photos that are already on your hard drive? Leave them right where they are. Don't do a thing in Windows. Don't even plan to move them around using Lightroom. Don't even worry about what folders they are in. What to do with any new photos? Put them in default folders, leave the folder structure as simple as possible (mine is simply the capture date).

And from this point forward, make a mental note to stop searching for your photos in Windows, and instead make use of the powerful features of Lightroom to search for your photos.

 

[Gene McCullagh]

Very well said, Paige!

 

[Replytoken]

I always advise people to stop thinking about getting a nice folder structure, and instead begin thinking about putting effort into the Lightroom structures. Why? Because Lightroom gives you many more search capabilities to find your photos than Windows does.

While I agree on relying on LR for searching, I still advise people to pay attention to their folder/naming structure. While it may not be important for searching, it can play a critical role with respect to Digital Asset Management. This is especially true if you have some catastrophic event that requires a complete rebuild of your image library and associated LR catalog. I usually recommend some date related structure as this is fairly easy to work with when doing a partial or complete restoration.

--Ken

 

[liquidmonkey]

i'm a big fan of LR and its ability to organize photos using keywords, metadata etc, but i'm still a much bigger fan of folders and sub folders in windows.

my reasoning is simple, i can easily find my photos in windows if LR stops working AND maybe one day i'll switch from LR to another better program and will need to have the original folders in place for ease of transfer.

they are both BIG IF'S but i'd rather be safe than sorry, especially after a few years and having photo numbers in the 6 or 7 digit figures.

thats just my opinion, use or ignore as needed...

 

[Brad Snyder]

I mostly agree with Paige, that Lr (or some similar DAM tool) should provide the bulk of the heavy lifting.

That said, the fact of the matter is there are finite and practical limits on folder and directory size. Therefore, one big flat folder won't work. Given that I then 'must' have subfolders, how should they be organized? Peter Krogh's DVD size buckets? Raw vs. JPG? Canon vs. Nikon vs. ... ?

Since I shoot them day by day, it's easy enough to folder them day by day, and move forward. Even with a 'temporary' total dB meltdown, I can still home-in pretty quickly.

What was it Reagan said, 'Trust, with verification'?

 

[dj_paige]

Folders by capture date is what I do too. I also have Lightroom write keywords/metadata to .xmp so I can use Windows search to find my keywords/metadata just in case there is ever a Lightroom meltdown (knock on wood).

 

[liquidmonkey]

from what i've seen on these forums is that most use LR to do the bulk of organizing BUT they also have a back up way of organizing as well, which varies from person to person.

and then of course there are your actual backups, which are a must for EVERYONE!