rtryan

OK I did it. Imported all my photos over last few years from Canon, iPhone and Sony into Apple Photo on my Mac. Now getting up to speed on LR and PS BUT the RAW files are only on iCloud (wanted to save space on Mac) and don’t know how I can easily import just the RAW files from cloud to LR. Any help appreciated. Yes could find all the SD cards and start again. Not sure I have from 10 years ago. Moral is save and label SD cards even if everything is on your computer - or cloud
Robert

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

Purchase an external hard drive and copy all the image files to it. Tell LR they are on that drive. Your Sony raw files look better when they are edited in Capture One compared to Lr.

cmoroney Loc: Pasadena, California

LR works best with RAW files so you won't have any problems there. When you import into LR you have three different options: (a) COPY = copy the files from their existing location on your drive to a new one that you specify (b) MOVE = same as COPY except that after you're done, the files will no longer be in their original location and (c) ADD = keep the files where they are and just add them to the LR catalogue so the files themselves don't change their location.

A word of advice: think about how you want to structure your files/folder hierarchy before you start importing stuff into LR. I use a combination of folder names and keywords to identify photos - the folder names give me the place and date shot (i.e. "Europe/Ireland/Dublin/2017/2017-05-04") and then I use keywords to identify the subject of the photo such as "cathedral", "sunset", etc). If you settle on a well thought-out hierarchy to start with then you won't have to redo things later as your LR catalogue grows. Check out a few videos about how best to organize things in LR before starting this job to get some other ideas.

Catherine

rtryan

Thanks,
But issue is how to easily get the RAW files from Apple Mac - iCloud to LR catalog. Apple does not want to help Adobe and vice versa. Sure would be great if we had common language that could easily communicate if even digitally

rehess Loc: South Bend, Indiana, USA

The point is that if software and a media/source don't play well together, you may need to work outside that software to copy from that media/source to one that the software does play well with.

mikegene1

When I have this problem I will move them to the desktop, then to the software I want to use.

wesm Loc: Los Altos CA

OK, there is a setting in the Preferences dialog for Photos which lets you specify that originals are stored in the System Photo Library for your Mac. Once you check that and everything synchronizes, then you can import those photos into Lightroom, or move them all onto an external drive first, then do the import. There is some restriction on where the system photo library can be, it has to do with how the drive is formatted. But, it basically sounds like you can have Photos just pull them all down, and then you're good to go.