akamerica wrote:
I am trying to.
My leadership "problems:"
I have on my computer drives - primary and backup - just over 65,000 pictures digitized from slides, prints, and progressive Nikon cameras to my current D850. (This compendium includes my grade school graduation.)
Admittedly I am an amateur with expensive equipment.
Current subscriber with Adobe Bridge, Lightroom, and Photoshop.
To save coping space in my brain that is somewhat fragmented I avoid creating an app managed Catalog required by Adobe that adds a additional layer of worry and management. No way I am going to import 65,000 pictures and hope for the best. I understand this is necessary to maintain a "sidecar?" with the non-destructive edits of my JPG and RAW pictures. I have limited myself to Adobe Raw for 99.9% post process.
My file organization is simple i.e. 2021-03-31 Trooper Dog at the Doggie Beach.
Making "destructive" edits to my RAW pictures is not a problem and to me a positive as I know that is the way they will present when copy pasted or viewed off my computer.
I am trying to. br My leadership "problems:&q... (
show quote)
No such thing as destructive edits on raw files in raw converters. Even if you are editing a raster file (jpeg, psd, tiff, png), the original file is left intact, and only the exported file will have your new edits. In Lightroom, the raw and raster edits are stored in the catalog's preview database. Additionally you can set LR to store the edits in an xmp (sidecar) file. It is not automatic - by default the writing of metadata changes to xmp is not turned on.
The catalog is what sets LR apart from most other applications - it's implementation is flawless. The problem most people have with it is that it the try to approach it as if it were a file browser - like Bridge - which it is not.
Now, even creating a catalog and importing your existing images using the "Add" mode will leave all of your images in their current places, and only "add" them to the catalog. Therefore, as far as Bridge, ACR and anything else you want to use to edit your images - nothing has changed.
When you edit an image in LR, you are editing the preview image (or a copy of the raster image), you are not editing the original. If you are in LR and you have the subscription, when you use the Edit In command, it will create a duplicate raster image in the format of your choosing - and pass it along to Photoshop as a raster file AND add the raster file to the catalog. When you finish your editing of the raster file and save the changes in PS, the version of the raster file is updated in the catalog.
I know that by this point this all sounds daunting, but it really isn't.
My folder and file naming is a little more informative for those situations were I use other applications to edit the files.
I have a parent folder named Pics
Beneath it their is a list of folders that are organized by year.
Beneath each year there is a collection of folders that look like the following:
01.01 - small birds at the park - 01-05-21 This would be the folder name for the first time in January I took the camera out, what I shot, and the actual date. The first four numbers is an index of sorts that shows me the folder list for year in the sequence I took them.
Now, once you start using the LR catalog, you'll discover the one-to-many/many-to-one relationships you can set up with collections. I might have taken a picture of a Great Blue Heron on 1/5/21, but I have a virtual collection called waders, where I have all sorts of birds, including herons, egrets, cranes, storks etc. I have other collection of just herons, just egrets, just cranes, etc - so my GBH is part of the wader collection, but it is also part of the heron collection - without needing to create and manage any duplicate files.
These are just a couple of examples of how LR's catalog helps to organize things and ensure that you don't accidentally delete things.
If you decide to go down this path, keep one thing in mind. You are editing previews, not actual files, and these previews are based on where LR found them when it imported them. If you drop into Finder (on a Mac) or Windows Explorer and move things around, LR will not be able to find the moved/added/deleted files. So you'll need to update LR by opening the moved/deleted/added folder or folder containing the moved/deleted/added files, right click on the folder(s) or file(s) and select Find Missing Folder or Files - and everything will be back in sync.
You have absolutely nothing to worry about once you figure it out and start using it. Turn on automatically write changes to xmp in Catalog Settings (Ctrl+Alt+,), Metadata tab, so that if you decide to stop using LR for cataloging at least your raw file changes will be in the sidecar file. Changes to raster files will be in the duplicate created when you exported the raster file to disk.
If you don't have a headache after reading this you are a better person than I am. And I wrote it.