bsprague Loc: Lacey, WA, USA

The catalog concept is confusing. Lightroom uses it to keep track of files and adjustments to the files. That is counter to everything else we do like word processing, spreadsheets, email, etc. where we actually make changes to the original file itself or make copies of the orignal for changes. How many letters have you written that have V1, V2, V3, etc in them?

Lightroom NEVER makes changes to the original photo file. Instead it records what you do to it in the separate catalog file.

This has the benefit of maintaining the quality of the original. It also has the risk that you can loose your work. You won't loose the original, but if the catalog file disappears or corrupts, you get to start over.

Some will preserve their critical work by exporting final copies when they are "perfect". Say you shoot an event, spend a week post processing and have a dozen or two "keepers". Select them, right click and Export as a batch of perfect .tiff files.

In my case, I may only get one or two wall hanging worthy "keepers" a month! I keep track of them differently than the other 40,000 pictures on my computer.

minniev Loc: MIssissippi

Sorry, I can't help you with the DNG thing, I have never fooled with it. I have enough misgivings about Adobe as it is. i'll take my chances with the camera company and hope for the best. Hopefully someone else will have an answer for you on this one!

sueyeisert Loc: New Jersey

The best advice I can give you is watch Hal Schmitt's tutorial on Lightroom 4. It doesn't matter that it's 4. IT'S FREE. Just scroll down (don't click buy). I'd watch the beginning modules on preferences and import. http://en.elephorm.com/tuto-lightroom-4-complete-training.html

waltchilds Loc: Central Florida

Bill, your workflow is the same as what I do and I have not had any issues either.

mborn Loc: Massachusetts

The pictures are stored in the folder you have selected and in the location you selected on your hard drive their location is known to the LR catalog but the actual image is not stored in the catalog. This is the way I import

Baysitter11 Loc: Cincinnati

This was great! Thank you so much.

Baysitter11 Loc: Cincinnati

I have been going through Hal's lessons. He is amazing! He has made it much easier to understand. I need visual. There is so much video help out there. Thank you so much.

Brian in Whitby Loc: Whitby, Ontario, Canada

This part of your question indicates a possible misunderstanding of the process. The photos are imported to the designated folder. They are not imported into the catalog. The catalog is just a database that stores information about the photos files you imported. The information includes the location of the files on the hard drive so Lightroom can find them.



You can do it that way or you can have Lightroom do it.
I have Lightroom create a folder inside my 2014 folder with the date of the photos as the name of the sub-folder. I also have the file renamed with the date and time prefacing the original file name so the file named img_5247.cr2is renamed as 20131123-082732img_5247.cr2 This ensures A unique file name for each photo and allows me to determine the date and time of the photo just from the file name. It also allows me to sort the photos in chronological order if I so desire.

birdpix Loc: South East Pennsylvania

For those of you who are concerned about backing up their files that they have imported prior to formatting their memory card, Lightroom has an easily overlooked method of doing that. In the import dialogue is a check box near the top of the right hand column named; "Make a second Copy to". What this allows you to do is literally make a back up copy as you are importing your photos. I have an external hard drive that I use for this. Since I cull my photos after I import them, this means that if I inadvertently erase a photo I didn't intend to, I still have a copy of it even if I have formatted my memory card.

Periodically, I will purge some of the older imports as they have been backed up to my ongoing backup system. It's like having both a belt and suspenders backup system. Because it happens as you are importing your photos, it is seamless and automatic.