jedcardio

I am not a moron but am still confused by LR. Every time I exit it asks to back up photos;where is back up-how do I open it?Also pictures are grayed out and it reads they are already in the catalog;where is the catalog and how do I open it? Also a picture will be on the screen but it says picture could not be found. Help!!

AzPicLady Loc: Behind the camera!

I'm a little less of a moron, perhaps, and have learned a little about LR. You can set your LR to backup every time, once a week, etc. I've set mine to do it once a week. Back-ups aren't meant to be opened; they are meant to be RESTORED. I store my images on external hard drives, and I believe my backups go there. Somewhere you should see an icon of a blank page with a title that indicates a date. I recently went through and deleted a bunch of backups and actually changed the location of the backup. The same is true of the catalog. That's an internal thing (I think) in LR and isn't a file that can be seen or opened. Your third question is something that happens to me sort of a lot. I use external HD's, as I said, and I don't always have them all plugged in. So any of the images that are on a HD that isn't plugged in at the moment will not be found by LR. However, it retains the thumbnail in its memory, so you can see the image. This happens if you move a file or set of files with Windows (which I do). Then you have to tell LR where the new location is. If you'll click on the question mark beside the missing image, you can then go through the resulting screen to tell LR the new location of the image.

Hopefully this helps!

bsprague Loc: Lacey, WA, USA

The backup on exit is NOT backing up your photo files. It is making a backup copy of your catalog. On that screen is an option to say where.

Greyed out previews will be there when you are in the Import screen and those photos were previously imported.

The catalog is where it says in Edit > Catalog Settings. When you open Lightroom it automatically opens the same catalog you last used.

If Lightroom says it can't find a photo it is because you moved it or renamed it with something other than Lightroom.

CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City

I'll limit my response to this question of "back-up". This is a back-up of the catalog, not your photos. Unless you've taken actions to store the file elsewhere or to rename the file, the catalog is located in your "Pictures" folder inside a subfolder "Lightroom", having filename = Lightroom Catalog.lrcat.

When you're prompted to back-up the catalog, you're only making a copy of the "Lightroom Catalog.lrcat" file into another subfolder of "Backups".

Depending on the count of images you've imported into your catalog and the subsequent edits on this images, the file "Lightroom Catalog.lrcat" can be quite large. My file is 2.8GB this morning with about 60K images. Every back-up uses another 2.8GB is diskspace. If I make a back-up every day, after 10-days I'd have "lost" 28GB of diskspace to holding these files, after 100-days I'd be at 280GB, more than a quarter terabtye.

In the preferences section, you can adjust the prompt for back-up and consider if you should back-up the catalog weekly rather than daily.

Are the back-ups of any use? Not really, particularly the older the files are relative to your current LRCAT file. If on day-1 you had 10 images, the backup would have your edits for these 10 images. On day-20 you may have a catalog with 100 images, your original 10 from day-1 and the 90 additional images added since day-1. On day-30 you may have a catalog of 300 images, assuming you've been out with your camera and editing the results in LR. If you corrupted your catalog and considered the available backup catalogs going back to day-1, would you consider any backup other than the most recent to recover your edits back to the most recent backup?

LR does not provide a maintenance routine. You must manually access the Backup folder where the LRCAT backup files are stored and manually delete the out of date files. Otherwise, in a daily backup strategy, you can quickly be losing all your available diskspace to these virtually worthless backup files.

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

I strongly suggest you seek out some tutorials and/or online courseware to learn the fundamentals of Lightroom, file management in Lightroom, at the operating system, etc.

Backing up in Lightroom doe not back up your images - only the catalog and previews are backed up.

The file extension for the catalog is .lrcat. if you want to find it you can saerch for it in Windows Explorer (Windows) or Finder (Mac).

If you have already imported an image, Lightroom does it's best to keep you from doing it again and making a disaster on your drive.

For now it's best to do all file mgmt from within LR. This will avoid the "file not found" error. Unless you deleted it outside of LR, the file is probably still on your drive. It's the main reason you need to do all file management in LR.

bsprague Loc: Lacey, WA, USA

"I strongly suggest you seek out some tutorials and/or online courseware to learn the fundamentals of Lightroom"

Me too. Lightroom works so very well when you understand how it works and why it works that way.

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

The truth is I was in the OP's shoes several years ago (LR3), expecting it to work just like every browser I had ever used, including Capture One. You find an image on the computer, right click on it, and viola! The image opens up in the associated application, which in this case was Capture One. Well that was a no-go for LR. It sat on my computer for a year - like an old girlfriend that you knew was no good for you but, like a moth to flame, somehow continued to draw me in, only to get totally frustrated in disgust.

Finally one day, I decided to sit in my office, locking the door, turning off the phones, turning off the office phones, put a "Disturb At Your Own Risk!" sign on the door, and grabbed my favorite single malt and a large glass, and decided I would not emerge from that room until I had LR working. Long story short - in about 4 hours I was done - and the single malt only lost 2 fingers. I have been using it ever since, and it has saved my 100s if not 1000s of hours of time spent in processing and image management.

But . . .

I still like the quality I am getting out of Capture One, and I am still using it.

Kmgw9v Loc: Miami, Florida

The only meaningful adVice here has been given: You must watch basic Lightroom tutorials--maybe over and over again. There are many.
There is a learning curve--but it is well-worth the effort.

mborn Loc: Massachusetts

Many excellent answers have all ready been posted. Obtain a good book on LR or watch the many tutorials that are available

julian.gang

Lightroom at first confused me too, keep trying though cause when you figure things out everything is a breeze! For my back-ups I bought a Western Digital 2TB portable hard drive, then it's a matter of clicking on the icon and hitting the back-up button...Julian

SusanFromVermont Loc: Southwest corner of Vermont

The backup screen specifically says it is backing up the LR Catalog, not your images. This is a point where many have become confused about what is going on. Those Catalog files reside in the pictures folder, and when you click on one of them it opens up the entire catalog. They are not a backup of the images but rather a "snapshot" of what your Hard Drive [HD] folder looked like at the time of backup. Can come in handy but you do not need to keep all of them. I usually keep 1 or 2 months and delete the oldest ones.

Your images actually reside on your hard drive in a folder you have created for them. However you want to organize them, LR will let you do it. But you MUST create new sub-folders and your organization system from WITHIN LR, not in the folder on your hard drive.

Explanation of this is that as you upload images to LR, they are actually placed into your HD folder. And because you got them into LR's Catalog and into your HD folder at the same time, LR "knows" where those images are located. When you make changes outside of LR, it breaks that connection between the LR catalog and those images or sub-folders. Another way to look at it is that LR is a viewer, in that it allows you to see your images inside the program where you can also edit them.

If you go to the HD folder, you will also be able to see your images, they are all there. Except that any images edited in LR and left in the RAW format, those edits will NOT be visible in the HD folder except as a .xmp "side car" to the original. That is, it is a set of instructions that lets LR "see" the edits and show them to you in LR. [I usually finish my editing in PS, which has a "Save As" function which allows you to change the format to .tiff, .jpg, etc., whereas LR does not - images have to be exported in order to change the format.]

Backing up your images is important. It is recommended that you have at least 2 backups, and that they should be on separate HDs. Some people do it manually, but it can also be set up to back up your images every day. Most external drives you can purchase include software for scheduling automatic backups. I use external HDs that do not have that software, so I use a program called Synchback to schedule the backups. Reasons for backing up your images are 1. If something happens to your computer's HD, you won't lose all your images. 2. It is not a question of IF a HD will fail, it is a matter of WHEN! You can go for several years without a failure, but those drives are not "bullet-proof". So you need backups to preserve your work. I had an external HD fail after less than a year of usage, still under warranty so I got a replacement.

When a picture has been moved but not from within LR, and LR loses its connection to it, there will be an exclamation point symbol on frame around the image. Right-click on that and it will let you find that image - it is undoubtedly right where you put it! This re-establishes the connection between the image and LR Catalog.

I hope my brief explanation has helped. I agree with the OP who have suggested you use online or printed resources to learn more about using LR. Keep an eye on CreativeLive.com - they have free tutorials as well as ones you can purchase. Periodically they have a 1-2 week "Bootcamp" for LR or PS. MattK.com is another resource for tutorials, PHLEARN.com is another. These two also have Facebook pages where you can ask questions and get a response from them as well as from other members. You can also find some good free tutorials on YouTube, but that takes time to find the good ones.

Susan From Vermont

jedcardio

Very helpful-Thanks!

PeterBergh

I recommend Victoria Bampton's books on Lightroom Classic CC and Lightroom CC (I have read the "Classic" book and it's very good; I make the assumption that her Lightroom CC book is equally good.)

SusanFromVermont Loc: Southwest corner of Vermont

You are welcome. I hope you understand it better now. More questions, feel free to ask.

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