Having decided where to store your photos, you also need to decide how to organize them. Why not just organize your photos by topic? Before you used photo management software, such as Lightroom, you may have organized your photos into folders by … Click to continue
Where should you store your photos?
Where should you store your photos? And why does it matter? Because Lightroom doesn’t hide your photos away from you, they’re kept as normal image files in folders on your hard drive. It's one of the common misunderstandings we discussed here. The … Click to continue
How do I consolidate photos from multiple drives?
When you start to run low on hard drive space, you may try to solve the problem by buying additional hard drives. However, over time, it's easy to end up with photos all over the place, and then it’s hard to check that they're all being backed up. In … Click to continue
Lightroom thinks my photos are missing—how do I fix it?
At some stage, most people run into worrying exclamation marks or question marks denoting missing files. These warnings appear when Lightroom can no longer find the photos at their last known location. But if Lightroom thinks my photos are … Click to continue
How do I move only my photos to another hard drive, leaving the catalog where it is?
If you need to move photos to another hard drive, perhaps because you’ve outgrown your existing hard drive, there are two main options. As a rule of thumb, you can use option two for moving a few photos/folders, but option one is safer when moving … Click to continue
How do I clean up duplicate photos?
Over time, you may have ended up with a load of duplicated photos that you need to clean up. Merging catalogs can introduce duplicates, but so can importing photos with Don't import suspected duplicates unchecked, importing exported photos or using … Click to continue
How do I rearrange existing photos into a new dated folder structure?
In a previous post entitled How do I reorganize my Folders panel we discussed how to create, rename and delete folders, and how to move photos between folders. If you're moving to a dated folder structure, Lightroom won't create the folder structure … Click to continue
How do I reorganize my Folders panel?
Lightroom only automatically organizes photos (for example, into dated folders) while importing. But if your existing folder structure is a mess, you can tidy it up manually by creating, moving, renaming and deleting folders and photos. While … Click to continue
How do I copy metadata or edits between photos?
It's easy to end up with duplicate photos in your catalog that need cleaning up. These may be real files on the hard drive or virtual copies. Either way, some will have edits you don't want to lose. For example, you may have edited one copy of the … Click to continue
How do I clean up my keyword list?
In the previous post, we learned how to start keywording from scratch, but many Lightroom users have already added a few keywords, so this week, we'll do some cleanup. How do I edit an existing keyword? If you want to edit a keyword, perhaps to … Click to continue
How do I assign keywords to my photos?
Having decided how you’ll keyword your photos and whether to use a flat list or hierarchy, you can either start by building your keyword list in the Keyword List panel and then apply these keywords to your photos, or you can start keywording the … Click to continue
Should I use flat or hierarchical keywords?
In the last post, we were talking about the kind of keywords to add to your photos, but this week, let's talk about the pros and cons of flat vs. hierarchical keyword lists. On the left, we have a single long flat list of keywords, and on the … Click to continue
What kind of keywords should I assign to my photos?
In previous weeks, we've discussed the benefits of keeping all of the photos in a single catalog and using Lightroom's tools to organize them. For the next four posts in the series, we're exploring keywords. Keyword tags are text metadata used to … Click to continue
My rating workflow
In the previous post in the series, we discussed how to apply flags and star ratings to your photos, and how to filter them... but when you're faced with thousands of photos, where do you start? How do you decide which photos deserve which ratings... … Click to continue
How do I use flags and star ratings to identify my favorite photos?
In the last post, we discussed using collections to group photos. You don't need to create additional collections for your best photos, because you can use flags/stars and filter them. Flags vs. Stars Lightroom offers multiple ways of … Click to continue