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Starting over in Lightroom
- Thread starter tomdoran3
- Start date
Re-importing everything is usually not a good idea. You lose all your edits and added metadata such as keywords. And you will lose things like collection memberships and other organisation. Please describe your situation in a bit more detail, so we can give you better advice than to start all over.
Thank you Johan for your response. As indicated, I have thousands of images that I have imported over the years. They are in various catalogues and locations. The files for the most part have not be edited, have not been put into collection nor keywords added. I plan to proceed with doing this with all of my images and that is why I want to re-import. I am not losing any prior work. I know this goes against the grain of Lightroom, but the re-import is important to me. Hope that makes sense. Thank you again for your time and I look forward to your response.
Tom
Tom
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Just create a new catalogue: File->New Catalog...
Then import your images into it.
Then import your images into it.
- Joined
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As someone who has come to regret it, I would suggest sticking with your current catalogue and moving files and folders around inside it. I'm still only part way through my reimport which was mainly to realign directories.
Now a caveat to that is that if you are renaming all your files while importing, there may be a justification for stating over.
Now a caveat to that is that if you are renaming all your files while importing, there may be a justification for stating over.
If you really want to start all over, then it’s as easy as Hal says. Just create a new catalog and start importing the images.
Jimmsp
Senior Member
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How many catalogues do you have?
You can also merge multiple catalogues. That way you maintain the work that you have already done.
If you are going to really start fresh, be sure you consolidate all those photo's & folders into a single location before you have Lightroom take over. That will make the future a bit easier for you. And then work out a good naming scheme before you start.
And another thought - it won't hurt to back up everything you currently have before you start over.
You can also merge multiple catalogues. That way you maintain the work that you have already done.
If you are going to really start fresh, be sure you consolidate all those photo's & folders into a single location before you have Lightroom take over. That will make the future a bit easier for you. And then work out a good naming scheme before you start.
And another thought - it won't hurt to back up everything you currently have before you start over.
MarkNicholas
Mark
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If from within your existing catalogs you do a "Save Metadata to File" (ctrl +S on a pc) on all your photos then when you reimport you should be able to salvage most of the editing / keywording information. Also, like Jim said above, before you reimport get all your files sorted into a tidy and logical folder structure.
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Hmmm, why all the advice to organise before importing into Lightroom? Get Lightroom to do the organisation for you - create a single new "master" catalog, import your images using either the "Move" or "Copy" option (not "Add"), and set the destination to be organised by date. Create a logical file-renaming scheme for the imports, if you wish. Lightroom will then put all your images into a nice date-based structure. Easy.
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