Thread: Lightroom Users: Help please?

There should be 3 folders inside the package: masters, originals and modified. You should be concentrating only on the "masters" I believe.

Another thing, iPhoto **should** roughly organize photos by events. Have you organized the photos into events the way you want to get them out?

There is likely still a lot of manual work involved.

Originally Posted by wt21

There should be 3 folders inside the package: masters, originals and modified. You should be concentrating only on the "masters" I believe.

Another thing, iPhoto **should** roughly organize photos by events. Have you organized the photos into events the way you want to get them out?

There is likely still a lot of manual work involved.

Truly, I'm not worried about getting photographs out of iPhoto. That's the easy part: I've done it lots of times in the past when wanting to reduce the size of my iPhoto library... Its importing to Lightroom without bringing dupes in that is my issue, I'm sorry I seem to have confused everyone by mentioning iphoto and implying that I didnt know how to do it ( I didn't think I had, but there ya go.. we all speak english, but differently). What I thought I had said was that there was no way to import from iPhoto to Lightroom...

Sadly, there does not seem to be a way to import to Lightroom sans dupes automagically, so yes, manual work at that end.

Easy.

This will take a fair bit of time although you don't need to be there for most of it.

Once you have your images on your biggest external drive, hook up the new drive. You then open Lightroom and get to the import dialogue. On the left select the big external where your images are. Up the top select either "copy" or "move". On the right in the file handling section select " do not import suspected duplicates". In the section below select where you want your images to end up.

Doing it this way will make Lightroom copy your images (or move if you selected that) to a nice clean folder structure on the new drive. If you tick the do not import duplicates box and sort by capture time (down the bottom of the import area) then you should be able to scroll through and see where Lightroom has found duplicates. You can also unselect any images you don't want to import into LR.

If your images are on more than one drive hold down the command key and select multiple drives but don't try to import more than the fresh drive you have available.

Then hit the import button. Go find something to do for a while.

Note: LR stores RAW+JPEG as one file (but moves both). If you want hem seperately it's in the preferences.

Gordon

Gordon

if you use the ..."Source" .... to ... "Destination" ... method/approach in the "Import" Section of LR ....if you copy all the images from your existing LR library onto a new, (fresh and clean), external storage device ...... will the process copy all the files and the lightroom adjustment files, (i.e. the side kick files).

Or can this still only be done by using the "import" and "export" as a catalogue method

What I would like to do is to copy all my images and LR "sidekick" adjustments onto a new external hard disk so that I can start using this disk as my main access device, (rather than the hard disk on my Mac), for the LR app - I can then duplicate this for back up plus I can, (?), move it between my iMac and MacBookPro when moving around, i.e. when we go back to the UK.

I'm at a similar stage to many - in that I have thousands of images on my Hard disk - I think 99% are in Lightroom - but I have really lost control of what is happening in that I never really understood completely how LR works and how to control it - I have moved stuff around, put images in different folders, done this and that , (all in LR I hope/think), but if it all went "belly up" .... well it would not surprise me ..... I'd like to "start again" with a fresh external storage device that contains all my images and LR adjustments, that I can easily duplicate, carry around with me and plug into any computer that has the LR app on it.

Hope that I have made myself clear

with respect to Sue, the OP, although slightly off topic, I think that my posting helps with the understanding and problems that some may have

Originally Posted by flash

... On the right in the file handling section select " do not import suspected duplicates". In the section below select where you want your images to end up.....
Gordon

Gordon, I thank you. This is the missing piece of my puzzle.

[edit] Then again... maybe not. Don't import suspected dupes seems to be selected by default. However, I just showed LR another folder that I know has hundreds of dupes, and it did not find any, it had every single photograph checked. That said, however, on the earlier imports, (yes, I failed to wait for an answer) many shots were greyed out, and they were shots that I knew were dupes. I dont know whats different about the second folder. I think I've got it working though, and my 15k+ is now only about 5k (because I also had a deletefest)

Originally Posted by BillN

with respect to Sue, the OP, although slightly off topic, I think that my posting helps with the understanding and problems that some may have

Its not really OT, Bill, it all helps everyone :)

Bill,

You'd use the "export to catalogue" function from within Lightroom. All you'd need to do is ensure that you selected the bottom option which makes a copy of the actual image files as well as the catalogue and previews.

Then go make lunch or have a nice stroll while LR does its thing.

Gordon

Originally Posted by kyteflyer

Gordon, I thank you. This is the missing piece of my puzzle.

[edit] Then again... maybe not. Don't import suspected dupes seems to be selected by default. However, I just showed LR another folder that I know has hundreds of dupes, and it did not find any, it had every single photograph checked. That said, however, on the earlier imports, (yes, I failed to wait for an answer) many shots were greyed out, and they were shots that I knew were dupes. I dont know whats different about the second folder. I think I've got it working though, and my 15k+ is now only about 5k (because I also had a deletefest)



Its not really OT, Bill, it all helps everyone :)

Lightroom uses a few things to determine whether an image is a duplicate and it always errs on the side of caution. (say for if you have two camera bodies - eventually you'll get two different files with the same name) It looks at the file name and time of creation data mainly (but also sees the camera serial number and pixel size). Hence it's not a 100% effective. After you have you new catalogue and images on your new drive you can then select all images in the catalogue and sort by capture time. Then it's simply a matter of scrolling through and marking any extra duplicates by hitting the "x" key. They'll then be greyed out.

When you're done you can then filter for the rejects (that's what the x key does - mark an image as a reject) and delete them all in one go. If you've done the copy from an old location to a new one like I sugested, you can delete them from the disc. If you're paranoid you can keep them and just remove them from the catalogue.

Gordon

After all that kerfuffle (though its very useful information) I found that I was still doing 90% of editing in Photoshop anyway, so I have reverted (yes, already!) to using iPhoto to store, and Photoshop to edit, I guess it's what I will keep doing. I moved my iPhoto library to the external drive, and my edits folders, and imported all the shots I had previously deleted/moved/whatever. Also continuing to maintain a backup on another drive. Its all good.

Originally Posted by flash

Bill,

You'd use the "export to catalogue" function from within Lightroom. All you'd need to do is ensure that you selected the bottom option which makes a copy of the actual image files as well as the catalogue and previews.

Then go make lunch or have a nice stroll while LR does its thing.

Gordon

Thanks Gordon - I'll give it a try when I feel brave as I have almost 20,000 images on my hard disk, (I am going through them to "prune" them, but It just takes so long to decide which to keep and which to delete).

Originally Posted by kyteflyer

After all that kerfuffle (though its very useful information) I found that I was still doing 90% of editing in Photoshop anyway, so I have reverted (yes, already!) to using iPhoto to store, and Photoshop to edit, I guess it's what I will keep doing. I moved my iPhoto library to the external drive, and my edits folders, and imported all the shots I had previously deleted/moved/whatever. Also continuing to maintain a backup on another drive. Its all good.

Get out of iPhoto. It's the work of the devil. If you like the iPhoto way of things try Aperture. But get out of iPhoto. No image program that tries to hide your images in a proprietary database is a healthy thing in the long run.

Gordon