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Moving Photos and Lightroom--Mac
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Feb 25, 2021 17:45:52   #
jaymatt Loc: Alexandria, Indiana
 
1. On a Mac, what is the best way to move photos from the internal hard drive to an external drive?
2. How, then, to tell LR where the photos are so they can be accessed?

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Feb 25, 2021 18:03:59   #
wrangler5 Loc: Missouri
 
Why can't you just connect the external drive, make sure it's recognized in LR, and drag your top-level photo folder from its current position on the internal drive to the external drive? Let LR do the move and it will keep track of where everything is throughout the process.

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Feb 25, 2021 18:27:34   #
jaymatt Loc: Alexandria, Indiana
 
wrangler5 wrote:
Why can't you just connect the external drive, make sure it's recognized in LR, and drag your top-level photo folder from its current position on the internal drive to the external drive? Let LR do the move and it will keep track of where everything is throughout the process.


This sounds simple, but how do I “let LR do the move?” I’ve never tried anything like this before. I have LR 6.

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Feb 25, 2021 18:56:47   #
wrangler5 Loc: Missouri
 
Dragging an image - or a folder - to another location on the sidebar in LR tells LR to move the item. You may get a popup box telling you that this will move things on your disks - which is what you want to happen - so you just click OK (or whatever the go-ahead box is - I use it all the time, but forget what the actual words are.)

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Feb 26, 2021 06:33:30   #
AFPhoto Loc: Jamestown, RI, USA
 
one of the lessons that I learned the hard way is to NEVER move or rename files outside of Lightroom. Do all your moving and renaming in Lightroom and everything will stay aligned. If not, Lightroom will not be able to locate the file in the develop mode

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Feb 26, 2021 06:53:55   #
DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA
 
AFPhoto wrote:
one of the lessons that I learned the hard way is to NEVER move or rename files outside of Lightroom. Do all your moving and renaming in Lightroom and everything will stay aligned. If not, Lightroom will not be able to locate the file in the develop mode


Although LR will not be able to locate the image files on its own, it provides you with a way to tell it where they went, so all is not lost.

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Feb 26, 2021 07:01:16   #
AFPhoto Loc: Jamestown, RI, USA
 
DirtFarmer wrote:
Although LR will not be able to locate the image files on its own, it provides you with a way to tell it where they went, so all is not lost.


Yes indeed, I should have mentioned that. But in my case I did this to over 70,000 images (renamed and moved). Then when using the the internal method to "relocate" the file it would only relocate one at a time because the file name was changed as well as the location. Needless to say, it took me the better part of a week to straighten out this self created mess.

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Feb 26, 2021 07:19:39   #
DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA
 
Moving within LR is fairly easy but I don’t know of a way to rename the files within LR other than one at a time.

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Feb 26, 2021 07:44:35   #
scubadoc Loc: Sarasota, FL
 
DirtFarmer wrote:
Moving within LR is fairly easy but I don’t know of a way to rename the files within LR other than one at a time.


When you select all your images in Library mode that you want to rename, simply go to the Library tab and select rename. This will rename all selected images both in the catalogue and on the drive where the original images are stored.

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Feb 26, 2021 08:39:52   #
sodapop Loc: Bel Air, MD
 
I found the using the F2 key in Lightroom will allow you to name or rename as many photos at time you want.

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Feb 26, 2021 08:44:42   #
DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA
 
scubadoc wrote:
When you select all your images in Library mode that you want to rename, simply go to the Library tab and select rename. This will rename all selected images both in the catalogue and on the drive where the original images are stored.


I rename all my files before importing to LR, so I haven't tried that. But I would expect that it would rename the files based on some sort of template. Not all files are amenable to a generic renaming.

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Feb 26, 2021 08:56:27   #
AzPicLady Loc: Behind the camera!
 
I only once tried moving things inside LR. It was a disaster, and I ended up losing a LOT of images. Now I do it in WIN and tell LR where the folder is. Easy peesy.

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Feb 26, 2021 10:41:31   #
wrangler5 Loc: Missouri
 
AzPicLady wrote:
I only once tried moving things inside LR. It was a disaster, and I ended up losing a LOT of images. < snip >


Counterpoint: ALL 100,000+ images in my LR catalog have been moved at least once, inside LR, and not one of 'em has gone missing from the place I put it.

Images from camera cards are imported into a single folder. They are renamed during the import process to a date/time format that I use for all images. I do an initial scan for obvious discards while they're in that initial folder and delete them. Then I move the remaining images into the folder structure I have set up for images. If they need to go into a new folder, I create that folder in LR, then make the move.

It took a while to train myself to do things this way, after decades of managing file structures and moving files with the operating system (beginning with DOS.) But when I realized that the sidebar in LR's Library module was just showing the file structure through a different window, it became routine to do the pointing and clicking inside LR.

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Feb 26, 2021 10:59:41   #
Ednsb Loc: Santa Barbara
 
wrangler5 wrote:
Why can't you just connect the external drive, make sure it's recognized in LR, and drag your top-level photo folder from its current position on the internal drive to the external drive? Let LR do the move and it will keep track of where everything is throughout the process.


Correct approach. Do not move from Apple file structure as LightRoom will lose all connections to the images.

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Feb 26, 2021 11:00:48   #
scubadoc Loc: Sarasota, FL
 
DirtFarmer wrote:
I rename all my files before importing to LR, so I haven't tried that. But I would expect that it would rename the files based on some sort of template. Not all files are amenable to a generic renaming.


The rename dialogue box has a custom setting where you can name it anything you want, i.e. 2021.Wedding.Jones or Vacation.2021.Alaska.Icebergs. You get the idea. I use this instead of key wording each image.

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