LR Confused (Page 5): I am fond of, in fact thrilled, with Lightroom. I don't have trouble with it. I've taken a few lynda.com courses and watched Julieanne Kosts tutorials several...

bsprague Loc: Lacey, WA, USA

mborn wrote:

I have 207,000 pictures in my catalog, the majority are keyworded, starred and or color-coded. It doesn't take me long to find a picture. Lightroom can do what you wanted to do. If you are having difficulty, utilizing Lightroom, take a course of find someone close to you that would be willing to help you navigate the idiosyncrasies of this wonderful program

I am fond of, in fact thrilled, with Lightroom. I don't have trouble with it. I've taken a few lynda.com courses and watched Julieanne Kosts tutorials several times. I have books from Kelby and Evening.

My frustration at this moment is finding a way to efficiently explain "where does LR put my pictures" for someone that has not studied LR and does not understand operation system folders.

Psergel Loc: New Mexico

bsprague wrote:

I am fond of, in fact thrilled, with Lightroom. I don't have trouble with it. I've taken a few lynda.com courses and watched Julieanne Kosts tutorials several times. I have books from Kelby and Evening.

My frustration at this moment is finding a way to efficiently explain "where does LR put my pictures" for someone that has not studied LR and does not understand operation system folders.

Yep....the answer is sort of....."Lightroom doesn't put your pictures anywhere but........you can USE it to put your pictures wherever you want."
Now how the hell do you explain that?

I have a lot of respect for those writers who can clearly explain technical things to a wide audience.

chuckw514 Loc: Newport Coast,CA

chuckw514 wrote:

Hi PhotoKat,
How did you get into my head. That's exactly how I feel about Lightroom. I don't get it. I feel comfortable with Bridge and Adobe photoshop, but a lot of people feel Lightroom is better.
Chuck

RichardE Loc: California

Agreed, I just finished scanning about 1000 very old family photos. Hard to get the dates from those, my film days were as yours, dated, location, subject, etc. That info is easily added to LR but takes time. The film is still stored as before after scanning.
My structure is:
2014
05 May
13 Allison's 5th Bday Party

Then, of course, keywords galore.

RichardE Loc: California

Sorry, last response was for bsprague previous post. I guess I cannot include a reference with a 'quick response'.

MtnMan Loc: ID

gemlenz wrote:

If LR does not actually import images, how do they end up on my hard drive after I Import them??

It does when you set it to copy. Look at the center top of the Import page. You tell it where to copy to on the right.

RichardE Loc: California

Psergel wrote:

Yep....the answer is sort of....."Lightroom doesn't put your pictures anywhere but........you can USE it to put your pictures wherever you want."
Now how the hell do you explain that?

I have a lot of respect for those writers who can clearly explain technical things to a wide audience.

You can tell lightroom to put your photos in any folder you wish upon import. See upper right corner to change locations; then add a subfolder if you wish a little further down the right side of the import dialogue screen in LR.

Psergel Loc: New Mexico

Oh I'm very aware of that, use it every day.
The point is that when "importing" using Lightroom it can either tell the computer where to put the files AND add info about the location of those files to the Lightroom database OR if the files are already where you want them it can simply Add the file location information to to the database.

And now I'm starting to sound like a nit picking propeller head and those people really annoy me so.....this is Paul Sergel signing off

smith934 Loc: Huntsville, Alabama

Gene51 wrote:

Here is another approach. You can use Lightroom to... (show quote)

Gene,thanks for that. It's a simple explanation of what I want to do with LR5 and keep the actual images external to my MacBookAir due to limited SSD space on board.

dusty3d Loc: South Florida

I have LR5 and once you learn it you will find it quite easy to learn. When you import your files from the camera you will store them in your computer or external hardrive which is highly recommended. I have a folder in my ext. hd labeled "My Photo Collection". All my imported photos wind up there and stay put. I have folders in side of My Photo Collection, ie landscapes, portraits, cars, boats, etc. In LR you will copy the photos you have selected from your photo collection into LR. In LR you will only have a copy. The original photo remains in the computer or your ext. hd.

RichardE Loc: California

Psergel wrote:

...And now I'm starting to sound like a nit picking propeller head...

Actually, nit-picking will allow people to see how different people use Lightroom import, storing, and back-up options. So many ways, so little time...

But, as one gets used to LR and learns from books, videos, UHH, and their own experience. they will come up with a solution that best suits their workflow.

Mark7829 Loc: Calfornia

The issue may be with the terms. Lightroom does not really import. That is to say, it does not grab your image, make a copy and put it somewhere else. If any thing, it links the file. But be careful if you move images and folders around outside of LR as there could be a break in the link which has to be reestablished.

Dngallagher Loc: Wilmington De.

Mark7829 wrote:

The issue may be with the terms. Lightroom does not really import. That is to say, it does not grab your image, make a copy and put it somewhere else. If any thing, it links the file. But be careful if you move images and folders around outside of LR as there could be a break in the link which has to be reestablished.

Actually, it DEPENDS on how you use it....

I use LR 5 and import directly from my SD card to a Picture folder on one of my disks, LR converts to DNG on import from NEF, The NEF's are left on my SD card. The DNG files are stored by LR on my disk in the picture folder by year & day.

I also rename all pictures on import as DNG - YYYY MM DD - HH - MM - SS.dng, my folder structure is handled automatically by LR, filed by year, month and days....

Basic keywording, is handled on import, more detailed keywording is done in batch or during edit/selection.

In my case, YES, LR does indeed import my picture into my folder structure for me, as well as ad them to my catalog.

With good keywording I can find any picture out of 30k worth in seconds, never needing to worry about what folder it is in.

I started with Aperture and recently switched over to LR CC, glad that I did!

With Aperture it was not as clear what was going on as it is with LR, at least that is my thought.

(Download)

Mark7829 Loc: Calfornia

If you download from camera you are not importing correct? I think you are downloading, correct? I was referring to the process where the files were already residing on your computer through a number of other download processes including PS Bridge..

Dngallagher Loc: Wilmington De.

Depends...

For me, yes I am because I let LR read the files from my SD card, convert to DNG, then copy to my Pictures folder and import into my catalog in one fell swoop...

Because you mention "download" it may be that you connect your camera via a USB cable, then copy all the pictures to a file folder somewhere on your computer, then "import" them into lightroom
from there.

That works too. I find that letting LR do all the leg work of converting, copying and importing is quicker and easier for me.

This is what I was used to with Aperture on my Mac, and LR does a fine job at it.