Transitioning to LR - folders with RAW and JPG

[Deb27]

I am new to lightroom. I've been reading tons of web sites and posts on work flow. I'm still not comfortable that I know how to transition my existing photos into Lr.
My folders on my PC are organized by year and within them by "event". Each event folder contains a combination of DNG and JPGs.
Some of the JPGs have a "matching" DNG file. Some of them don't, such as those taken with a phone or created from panoramas or HDR.

From what I've read people say, don't import the JPGs into LR if you have the RAW file since you can always export a JPG from RAW. But how would I import these folders into LR when it's not easy to figure out which JPGs have an associated RAW and which do not? Note: sometimes the DNG has the same name as the JPG and sometimes they don't.

Should I just give up and import everything?
If I do import everything, what options are recommended on import?

• Should I leave the Edit->Preferences:General->Treat JPEG files next to raw files as separate photos checked or unchecked?
• Is there any way to ensure that metadata which I added with Picasa gets imported? Such as captions and keywords and stars?
• What other issues should I take into consideration before jumping off this cliff and beginning the import?

I have over 50,000 photos so I really don't want to screw this up!

Many thanks!

 

[clee01l]

I would import everything. making sure that you treat JPEGs next to RAW as a separate file. You can then Identify the JPEGs that accompany RAW files and then decide to keep or remove. There is another active thread on the forum atm that is describing how to ID these specific JPEGs.

Remember, anything that you do to create a LR catalog can be undone or recreated in a now catalog.

 

[tspear]

I differ from Cletus, but he knows Lr a lot better then I.
I would leave the Treat JPEG next to raw as separate files as unchecked.
By leaving the box unchecked, Lr will store a link to the JPEG where there is a matching raw file. Otherwise, it will never display the JPEG, show it, or do anything with it.

You can then ask or look on here later how to remove the duplicate JPEGs if desired.

This is predicated on the fact that the JPEG really is a duplicate image of the raw file....

 

[Johan Elzenga]

To separate the two types of jpeg files you could do the following. First, uncheck the option to treat jpegs as separate files and import everything. Lightroom will now only show you those jpegs that are not associated with a raw file. You can search for jpeg file type, and mark them (for example with a color label).

Next, check the option to treat jpegs as separate files, and then use 'Synchronize Folder'. That will make Lightroom show all jpegs, no matter if they are associated with a raw file or not. Again, search for jpeg files. You can now easily see the difference between those jpegs that are associated with raw files (not labeled) and 'orphaned' jpegs (labeled).

 

[Deb27]

To separate the two types of jpeg files you could do the following. First, uncheck the option to treat jpegs as separate files and import everything. Lightroom will now only show you those jpegs that are not associated with a raw file. You can search for jpeg file type, and mark them (for example with a color label).

Next, check the option to treat jpegs as separate files, and then use 'Synchronize Folder'. That will make Lightroom show all jpegs, no matter if they are associated with a raw file or not. Again, search for jpeg files. You can now easily see the difference between those jpegs that are associated with raw files (not labeled) and 'orphaned' jpegs (labeled).

Thank you! That's really helpful.