burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

It doesn’t matter where, just that you back up all the originals you intend to keep, PLUS the Lightroom Catalog file. The catalog contains all the metadata and file change information about the originals.

It’s best to keep two copies of each, one of which is in a different place!

amfoto1 Loc: San Jose, Calif. USA

That's correct.

JUST TO CLARIFY... There are two different types of "backups" you might be concerned about with Lightroom. One is backing up your original image files for safe-keeping. The other is backing up your LR catalog itself, with all your selections, edits and adjustments.

First - maybe you're already aware - your photos actually aren't "in" Lightroom at all. LR is actually a database of sorts that contains smaller "thumbnails" of your images along with the selection, editing and adjustment notations associated with each image. LR is "non destructive", meaning it doesn't actually apply any of these changes to the original image until you "export" the image from LR... and even then it will want to do so on a copy of the image, not the original.

Original RAW files are never directly changed because LR has to convert them to a JPEG, TIFF or other type of file for them to be usable. The original RAW is untouched, but LR maintains a "sidecar" file with info about how you want the conversions done, the changes and edits you made.

If the original from your camera is a JPEG, LR will ask you before making any direct changes to the original... it will want to make a copy with changes instead (unless you override it and force it to change the original... which may not be a good idea).

Now, regarding the two types of backups....

1. Image backups: During LR "Import" you have option to have LR save backups of all your originals to the location of your choice. For safest backup this is usually best done to an external drive of some sort or to "cloud" storage. I.e., backups should be somewhere other than the same drive as the originals. Best of all is something that will be kept "off site". Of course you can simply make backups yourself by copying the originals via the computer's operating system. But an advantage of having LR make your backups this way is that it will continue to associate the selections and changes you make to your images within LR to both the originals and the backups.

2. LR catalog backups: In LR preferences you can set the program to perform backups automatically in a variety of ways. You can set it to do so each time you exit the program... or to perform weekly backups.... or whatever interval you're comfortable with. It's up to you... It takes some time for LR to perform the catalog backup, so you'll have to weight that against how much work you'd be willing to lose and have to re-do later, if something happens to the catalog, since it's last backup. Maybe once a week is adequate. Maybe not.

During the LR catalog backup it is also possible to have LR "optimize" the catalog. This helps it perform better and is a good thing to do. Once again, it might be most ideal to save your LR catalog backups to a separate hard drive... not the same one where it's keeping the original catalog (also can be a different drive in the computer, if it has multiple drives... or an external drive of some sort).

Make note of where LR is saving the backups and check if it's replacing the old one whenever a new backup is created... or if it's keeping each successive backup (in which case you will probably want to clean out old ones periodically.)

Personally I back up my images before doing much work on them in LR... right after downloading, importing, sorting and renaming them (which are always my first steps). NOTE: I always leave the originals on my memory cards, until I am sure the downloads and backups are safely done.

And I have my LR set up to ask me if I want to backup it's catalogs weekly, upon exit. I will go ahead and make a backup when I've done some actual editing work on a new batch of images or made any significant changes to older files in my archive. But if I was only using LR to locate an older image and didn't make any changes, there's nothing new to backup so I'll tell it to "skip". Note that for best performance you should occasionally go ahead and optimize, even if you don't backup. Also, LR catalogs can start to bog down and run slowly when they contain 100,000 or more images. Create additional catalogs as needed. (I create a new one for each year and currently have sixteen catalogs.)

BigGWells Loc: Olympia, WA

I do continuous back up, 24/7. I backup up to 2 ext HD's, then to BackBlaze, a cloud backup. If I am out and about, I can access backblaze anywhere.

drklrd Loc: Cincinnati Ohio

Easiest is to just drag and drop to a file on an external hard drive. I upload the shots to named and dated files. Then I copy the best after review to a file explicitly for editing. I then have two of the same files. Once edited with Adobe it is saved in the editing file and renamed. Close Adobe and find the file then drop it in outside hard drive in a file marked edited. You then have all of the shots you edited saved twice. on internal and external drives. I know where my shots are due to title and dating of folders so I need no Lightroom keeping track of them.

DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA

My folders and files also have meaningful names that help me keep track of things.

However, Lightroom is still very helpful. The names on the files and folders are really limited. They tell me the general subject of the shoot but the details are not there. Using Lightroom, I can add a more complete set of keywords to every image. And each image has its own unique set of keywords. For example, I place the names of the people in the image as a keyword on that image. The overall description may be "Suzie's Birthday Party" along with the date, but that doesn't tell me that aunt Harriet was there. When I want a photo of aunt Harriet, I just use Lightroom to search for her and it will present me with those images from the birthday party along with photos of her at Christmas, at family reunions, wherever I have a photo of her.

In addition, Lightroom allows me to collect photos of individual subjects/people in collections. An image is only in one folder (unless I have duplicates in other folders) but in Lightroom there is no limit to the number of named collections you can put the image in. The collections can be named just like the folders but since you're only storing the image location you don't have to duplicate the image to put it in several different collections.

Although Lightroom is demonstrably better than sliced bread, it's still useful to store your images with meaningful names in folders with meaningful names. Lightroom could not care less what the names of your files or folders are, but when I'm no longer around, my family will have a useful folder structure to look through for family photos even though none of my family knows how to use Lightroom.

PHRubin Loc: Nashville TN USA

I have a PC, not a Mac. I use a free utility (kids call them apps these days) called SyncBack for backups. It will do a scheduled backup whenever you set it to of whatever you tell it to. There can be many of these settings, I have one for music/video media, another for data files, and another for downloaded executables.

I have different schedules for the different tasks. For data files I backup daily. For the rest, weekly.

DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA

Question:
Does it use an open compression algorithm?
I had an automated backup system many years ago. When it went defunct I was left with a lot of compressed backups without any good way to extract the data from them.

bweber Loc: Newton, MA

I keep my Capture One Catalogs, with the original raw files on an external hard drive. I have multiple backups. I use time machine, a backup photo hard drive using Carbon Copy Cloner, and CrashPlan in the cloud. All backups are automatic, they occur on a regularly scheduled basis, at least daily. If one of my hard drives crashes, Capture One can open the identical file on the backup drive.

Dale40203 Loc: Louisville, KY

Apple's Time Machine is built in to the Mac's operating system and will backup any drives you tell it to. Every 15 minutes, Time Machine backs up new data to a drive you dedicate to the task. You can even specify a second Time Machine drive for redundancy. If one of the backed up drives fails, Time Machine will restore it to a replacement.

Fotoartist Loc: Detroit, Michigan

Keep 3 backups one of which should be off-site. One back-up should be maintained daily, one weekly, the off-site maybe monthly.

drklrd Loc: Cincinnati Ohio

I have Nikon view NX2 which does similar to light room. I work cheap so I never got into the light room program since it never came with my Adobe Photoshop. I use the Adobe premier occasionally so I got Elements 15 and about to go Elements 18. Since I am old school computer I am glad they let you use longer file names now. I started organizing by file names and the drag and drop to add more to the subject line. As a professional this is all the studio ever needed so my method works for me. The Nikon NX2 actually confuses me sometimes. So if light room is similar then I think for me I will continue with file names. Thanks for the info on light room. I understand its use more now than before.

drklrd Loc: Cincinnati Ohio

I do not think any off site is as secure as it they claim they are. The concept of 3 backups is a great concept though. One in computer and two on different external drives would be great. Possibly cheaper to due to a one time payment for the drive versus a monthly charge. I do keep a website for portfolio use which contains many of my more important shots that show my work. It just does not have all of my work. I just might put more of my best shots there as I do trust this site since it does not let you right click and copy. I asked about right click when I texted a GoDaddy rep and found that GoDaddy had no idea of right clicking and copying of pics. I went with a cheaper name supplier and stuck with the one storage and web site place I already knew. I do like the concept of three drives three copies. thanks

DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA

I agree that security is always a concern, even with off-site cloud storage. However, archives require maintenance, and the off-site cloud providers do the maintenance, probably more reliably than the guy at home. So the cloud storage has a slight edge in security. It loses out in convenience since a lot of bandwidth is required for a large archive.

There is no foolproof. The best you can do is fool resistant.

billnikon Loc: Pennsylvania/Ohio/Florida/Maui/Oregon/Vermont

When your done with the editing process. Then save both.

JD750 Loc: SoCal

But the problem is the fools keep getting the upper hand. ;)

- I am the greatest danger to my own data.