At the office we have a say :
PEBKAC = Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Chair.
I've been upgrading to W10 for a while, on private basis and customers. All problems are small minor problems related to drivers. People still believe in Plug-And-Pray, and it works, but let's be honest, some things has to be done manually. And thats where users fail.

Kudos to Nikon_Jon : "if it ain't broken,don't fix" and this should be rule nr.1 for everybody on MS system with little knowledge on how to perform technical tasks as driver updates, partitioning, bios settings.

I have always inserted my SD card into my laptop, selected photos, then dragged them into a dated and named folder that I then put in my main photo folder with all my saved, dated and named ones.

Windows 10 would not allow me to do this. At least I couldn’t figure how to. It loaded thousands of my stored photos into a new program that I didn’t understand. Is there a way to simply drag and drop photos from a SD card into folders with Win 10?

I managed to use Win 10 otherwise, but my photos are one of the most important uses of my laptop. For now, I went back to Windows 7.

As you can tell, I’m not a computer wiz. Back when my grandson was in elementary school he taught me how to use my first one. He is now married and I have a Great-granddaughter. Time flies, but I’m still not that good with computers. So I need help.

And yes, I back up all keepers on CDs or DVDs and an external memory.

Lightroom is mechanically very simple to use, but it can be very confusing to use if you are a new user and more accustomed to the "Open a file - Edit the file - Save the File" kind of program.

First concept to understand and probably the most important is that LR does NOT IMPORT your files at all.

The easiest way to describe what is going on is to follow a raw file from the camera through the process.

I am not going to bog this post down with loads of technical stuff, so if I over-simplify things please forgive me.

This morning I photographed a snap of my garden in Nikon Nef, popped the card into a reader and LR opened automatically in the Import Module.

A raw file is actually a container, inside the container is a load of information - all the data which when interpreted is formed into an image, all the information which Nikon allows as NOTES, such as the white balance setting on the camera, the lens and camera used, the capture date and a host of other information collectively known as Exif data.

Also tucked into the Nef container are up to three copies of the image in jpeg form. (Large, Medium and Small.)

One of those jpeg images is copied by LR and displayed onto the Import Screen. You can't see the raw file because it isn't an image file and can't be displayed directly.

When the Import button is clicked, the Nef file is copied to the destination folder which I have set in the Import Module, (the original file remains on the camera card), a catalogue entry is created which copies all the Exif data into a database, a preview is created (a modified jpeg), an xmp file is created which lives in the destination folder next to the original Nef file and the Import screen is closed.

The image now shows up in the Library. This image is the newly created preview jpg - it can be enlarged or reduced and even a limited amount of work can be done to the Library copy.

Any serious editing is achieved in the Develop Module.

My early morning snap is underexposed, so in the Develop Module I increase the exposure.

As soon as I finished with that exposure slider, the History panel is updated, the database is updated with the edit, the xmp file is updated and the jpeg image on the screen is updated with the edit.

If at this point I closed LR and viewed the original image, I would see that the exposure is not changed, the original is still as it was.

Original Raw files are not changed by editing.


To get an image out of LR which is fully edited, the image has to be exported.

In the Export dialogue, the destination, file type, resolution and size are set up by the user, the file is exported. All the edits are applied to the exported image.

On your hard drive you will now have the original (unaltered) raw file, an xmp file and the newly created image with the correct exposure.

I hope this post goes a little way to making LR understandable and more fun to use.