jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

I signed onto the webinar about organizing in Lightroom yesterday, but I left about 3/4 through it. It's better if the presenter is doing a scripted show, rather than rambling and looking for things. And then people send their questions, which might be important to them, but there are lots of other people watching. The presenter has to explain the question and then explain the answer. Time wasted.

Since the webinar was about organizing, I had expected him to show me how to organize. Instead, he spent most of the time showing how important it is to organize images. He was 35 minutes into the 60 minute program before he actually got down to going over Lightroom.

He did show how he organizes by year, month, and location, but he didn't explain how to get that organizing done. It was the same with keywords. He showed what he had and explained how keywords can be useful, but he gave no instruction.

I could have used the time better going through Lightroom on my own and figuring it out.

I've watched several presentations on creativeLIVE, and they were very well done, so it is possible to get information across on the Web.

bunuweld Loc: Arizona

Thanks for a good warning.

Kuzano

I teach a Managing Digital Photos class in the Community Ed department of our local Community College.

The class is based on using the functions that every Windows computer comes equipped with .... the files and folder functions in the Libraries system folders.

I dislike Adobe's catalog based systems. They are easily corrupted by any manual rearrangement of files or folders using the manual methods. They develop broken links if you don't marry yourself to the catalogs in Elements Or LR. The catalogs are static and do not follow moves you make in Windows Files and Folders.

Perhaps I would feel differently if Adobe did not take a proprietary position on advertising, and followed your filing system in the computer dynamically.

I only endorse two programs that are dynamic, and follow your manual arrangements in Windows.

They are Faststone Image Viewer, and Windows Live Photo Gallery. Of those I consider Faststone the better, because it also has editing functions and a number of Batch capabilities.

The only attractions to Elements and Lightroom in terms of organizational features are Tags, Version Sets and Stack, which are overly time consuming in application. They do not save time. They only take time to set up and manage.

Windows Live Photo gallery can deal with Tags, and again Faststone Image Viewer does Tags also, even better than WLPG.

Sign me,

Sick of repairing and replacing corrupt catalogs in Adobe product for my clients.

Oh, yes... Faststone Image Viewer also has an 80 plus page Tutorial for the program. Free software from Faststone.org.

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

Thanks for the info.

Psergel Loc: New Mexico

Hi Jerry,
Take a look at "The Adobe Lightroom 4 (or 5) book for digital photographers" by Scott Kelby. The first part is about importing and organizing. While I'm not a big fan of his style (of writing) he does an excellent job of explaining what, how and why.
After reading his book, If my library is lacking in organization it's due to discipline deficiency.
:) :) Don't hold it against him that he recently switched to Canon :) :)

BobHartung Loc: Bettendorf, IA

Although I do use LR for my master catalogue, I also have my images in a multi-tier photo system. In addition I always change the file name to [Location]+original file number when importing. Then if the Catalogue goes to h---, I can still always find my images. I also vigorously cull images to keep the size down.

I do this on a Mac.
Example
Year->State [or country]->City[or park or whatever]->individual files.

So far so good.

BobHartung Loc: Bettendorf, IA

What was the name of this less than optimal presentation?

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

Photoshelter -
Mastering Lightroom with Peter Krogh

sueyeisert Loc: New Jersey

For explaining Lightroom I've found the following people excellent.Hall Schmitt http://en.elephorm.com/tuto-lightroom-4-complete-training.html#video

Tim Grey You can find his presentation on the B&H tube

Laura Shoe laurashoe.com

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

Thanks. Adobe TV is good, too, with Julianne Kost. No charge for watching. I'm going to take a look at how she presents organizing.

EDIT: Lots here about organizing.

http://tv.adobe.com/videos/organizing/

Photo One Loc: Clearwater Florida

Hi Jerry. I like Creative Live. I sign up for many of there presentations. You can learn from them.

Kenny

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

They're running Photoshop courses all week.

Photo One Loc: Clearwater Florida

Yes I know they are, but I don't have Photoshop, I just have Elements 12.

Good to talk to you my friend.

Kenny

UtahBob Loc: Southern NJ

Hey Jerry,

I was on that same webinar. I read Peter's book in 2012 from cover to cover trying to identify the secrets of file naming and organizing. The book is "the DAM book" or "digital asset management". There is really only one chapter on file naming and much of the book is spent talking about backup schemes. It is a good but but now will have dated information as software moves forward. Peter's point is to rename each image into a date/time plus place/event format and then organize them on the hard drive so that they can be backed up to blue ray (formerly dvd). Not sure what the next generation of removable is? I lost interest too, but was into other things at the same time.

So my point is - did you see the Photoshelter webinar by Gavin Gough in the summer? I thought he had a good setup where he used collections to ensure that each image had been reviewed and appropriate metadata added. He sells his ebook and presets, etc. here:

http://www.gavingough.com/photo-workflow/

After looking to get it for almost half a year, I picked it up with a special deal that wrapped up all kinds of other ebooks and presents I was interested in. I've gotten through some of the ebook and loaded the presents but I have not gotten to the point that I can say this is the way to go but that's just because I haven't gotten through it that much at all. Perhaps others have their opinion of Gavin's ebook and setup.

The webinar looks like it is not available anymore but I did not do a lot of searching.

Bob

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

Thanks for the update. Creativelive is running PS and LR programs all week, and Collections was one of the topics.