I am naturally nearsighted in my right eye and farsighted in my left. I find it very difficult to even see the information in the viewfinder with glasses because the angle of view caused by the glasses. I bought a -3 diopter for my Nikon and it allows me to see the viewfinder very well without my glasses. This works because I can still see distance with my left eye.

The OP could buy the appropriate diopter for his vision without the contact lenses and just not wear the right contact when using the camera.

6

The OP stated he was about to get into RAW. While a few responders mentioned shooting RAW, I think it should be emphasized. Regardless of the camera settings, it allows much more flexibility when the exposure was not quite right. Get into RAW before the trip.

IO

I started using Elements and changed to Lightroom so have used both, although I will admit to not using Elements since version 12, and I am sure it has more features than when I last used it.

In addition to what others have said, I feel that LR has a better system for organizing your images. The batch processing for keywords, face recognition, ratings, and other meta data is a time saver. One frustration I had with Elements is the catalog would only recognize one of the images if you happened to have files with the same name. With LR you can have duplicate names (same or different image) in different folders and LR will recognize them.

As with Photoshop, Elements makes permanent changes to your images. If you want to keep a copy of the original, You either have to save the edited version to a new file, or use layers to preserve the original image. LR is non-destructive. The edits you make are not applied directly to your image, rather LR is a database that keeps a record of the edits you make. Thus you can always change your edits or revert back to the original. You can also make virtual copies (a separate file is not stored on your disk, LR just stores a second set of edits). Your edits are not permanently to your images, but applied to a COPY when you export to a hard drive, CD/DVD, or email. You can also publish your images to many services, such as Facebook, SmugMug, etc. (no copies are put on your hard drive, and you can modify you image in LR and republish any time).

If you want to group images together from various folders, you don't have to move or copy the image files. You can organize your images into virtual Collections without moving or copying any files.

LR will save you lots of disk space because you do not have to save multiple versions of images. You will only need to save the images you edit with Elements, Photoshop, or other processing tools. When you export jpegs or tiff files to share with others, you can even delete those once you are done with them because you can quickly export them again.

You can do 90-95 percent of your processing within Lightroom, which once you learn it I think is easier to use than Elements. There are excellent courses on Udemy.com (wait for $10 sales). I think this one is the best: https://www.udemy.com/master-adobe-photoshop-lightroom-cc-from-beginner-to-advan/learn/v4/t/lecture/3458012?start=0. There are multitudes of free You-tube videos and many, many good books as well. To make the most of your 30 day trial, I would suggest you check out some classes, You-tube videos, or Adobe training first.

Mark,

If I understood your question correctly, it sounds like you are importing the same images onto an internal drive and an external drive using different folder configurations and then creating a separate catalog for each of the drives. Thus you have two catalogues with the same images? If so...

I humbly ask to be corrected by others if I am wrong or made this too complicated as I would not call myself a LR expert.

I believe you should have one catalog with a single copy of all your images. LR does not change your images, but saves a record of your edits that are only permanently applied to exported images when you export. So you do not need backup copies of your images to revert to the original images.

What you do need backup copies for is replacing your images should you active files become corrupt or lost. You also need to make backup copies of your catalog. Your images are not backed up with the catalog because they are not stored in the catalog, and backing up your images does not back up you catalog. Remember that your catalog only stores a record of your changes and meta data, among other things.

The backup images should be on an external or cloud drive, and several topics on UHH have been discussed on how, where and how often so I will not attempt to address that here.

I am sure you will get many opinions, but I think the best way to organize you backup files is to use the exact same file structure as you use for your active files and catalog. That way, if folders are lost, you can copy them right back to your hard drive organized the same way your catalog expects to see them. That will make it a lot easier for LR to rediscover the replaced images.

When you make changes in your catalog on your hard drive, those changes will not be applied to the separate catalog you made on your external drive. You would have to make the changes in both places, and that would not make sense. And you would not be able to use a of copy the catalog from your hard drive on your external because the file structures are different and LR would not know where to find the image files, so it would take a Herculean effort to associate the images to the LR data.

You can use a single catalog on your hard drive and reference images on both internal and external drives. But the images should not be duplicates (why waste drive space), and then backup both drives and the catalog for emergencies.

For better and more complete information:

There is a really good course on Udemy.com https://www.udemy.com/master-adobe-photoshop-lightroom-cc-from-beginner-to-advan/learn/v4/overview

And a very comprehensive book:

https://craftandvision.com/collections/all-resources/products/lightroom-6-cc-unmasked

Good Luck!

You can export the Lightroom keywords you have, organize them in hierarchical order in most word processing apps, and reimport the list back into Lightroom.

If there is interest, I can provide instructions.

Astropad requires a Mac. If anyone knows of a similar app that works with Windows, please let us know.
Thanks

Great website! Thanks Jerry

David, there is an plug-in for Google Photos in addition to the Picassa plug-in. I have not tried it to see if it works.

I apologize for duplicating this response; I started my response before yours was posted and took so long to write it up, and failed to check before l hit Send. No intention to one up you!

I recently bought a Lightroom publishing plug-in from the Adobe add-on site. They sell third-party apps and pre-sets, and there is one for Uploading to Google Drive.

I bought one that directly posts to my Dropbox account. I believe you are looking for something similar.

All I have to do is drag and drop the images into the publish service dropbox collection (which is virtual just like when you drop images into a collection), hit the publish button, and the images are posted in Dropbox. I do not have to export any jpeg images to a folder on my hard drive and move them to dropbox, which avoids having duplicate files taking up space on the hard drive. To remove an image from Dropbox, all l have to do is remove the image from the publish collection.

Here's how to get to Adobe's Add on site.

In the navigation panel in Lightroom, Click on the plus button next to Publish Services.
Click on Go to Publishing Manager.
Then Click on the Plug-in Manager button at the bottom left of the dialog box that opened.
At the bottom left of the next dialog box click on Adobe Add-ons.
The Adobe Add-ons website will open. In the left panel click on Lightroom to filter the selections.
Type Publish in the seach box. There you will find plug-ins for several services.

Good Luck.