Thombar Loc: Hominy, OK

I believe I'm correct in thinking LR is one big data base and doesn't actually store photos but links to them. If I load all my photos into LR would I then be safe to delete all the old files that I originally had the photos in? Say I put all my iPhotos into LR can I then safely delete the iPhoto albums?

creativ simon Loc: Coulsdon, South London

You need to save your photos in more than one place and on more than one device, just in case

Thombar Loc: Hominy, OK

Thanks for your responses. But I still a bit confused. I know it's important to backup files but does that mean I shouldn't delete my iPhoto photos?

Mr PC Loc: Austin, TX

If you Import your photos into Lightroom with the default setting of leaving the photos in place (where they exist already) it only brings in a thumbnail and adds it to it's database. If you delete the original photo, it's gone...

bsprague Loc: Lacey, WA, USA

LR needs and expects you to have the photo files it "sees" on your computer wherever you put them prior to telling LR where there are.

If you delete the photo with iPhoto, DOS, Explored, Photoshop, Finder or whatever, LR will show a thumbnail with a broken link symbol.

I don't know Appple at all. But, if "iPhoto Albums" are lists of photos, you could PROBABLY delete them. If "iPhoto Albums" are user friendly names for file folders, deleting them would delete the photos themselves and LR would have nothing to work with.

Hope this helps.

indycaver Loc: Indianapolis

Don't delete the originals! Lightroom only has a file containing the image information including the changes/edits you made to the original and any keywords, meta-data, etc. NOT THE ORIGINAL IMAGE ITSELF. You need to keep them in your picture file somewhere outside of LR.

Jbat Loc: Charleston, SC

I would be very careful. I just moved to an Apple computer earlier this year and was not familiar with iPhoto but was using Lightroom for everything and am very familiar with it. First thing out iPhoto wanted to start grabbing some of my photos that came to me over email from others. I had a difficult time ever figuring out where they put them on the hard drive and I don't use iPhoto for anything.
If I were doing what you are going to do, I would want to see the photos in the files on my hard drive and make sure they are separate from any connection to iPhoto. Then I would test out deleting a few photos from iPhoto and make sure they do not disappear from my hard drive. Make sure you are looking at the hard drive, not Lightroom. Photos can be deleted from the hard drive and still have a thumbnail remain in Lightroom unless the photo is actually deleted while in Lightroom so you don't want to be confused by that. If you try a few and all goes well, you can always try a bigger batch and make sure it goes alright before going full delete mode in iPhoto. Also, as someone else already said, I would make sure to have at least one additional copy of all the photos on a different drive before I even begin which we should always have anyway. I keep two extra external hard drives with all my photos on each of them to make sure I never lose the valuable work of many years of photography.

Dngallagher Loc: Wilmington De.

I can tell you what I did to convert from Aperture to LR.

I exported every picture to a temporary folder structure, then had LR import the temp files.

This allowed LR to import - copy the files into LR's file structure where I wanted them to be placed on an external drive, added them to the LR catalog and left me with the originals still sitting in my Aperture library untouched, plus the exported versions in the temporary folders.

Of course after confirming things made the trip, I deleted the temp folders and files, archived my Aperture Library and have been in LR ever since.

rpavich Loc: West Virginia

LR does one of three things depending on what you tell it to do when you import photos

1.) Copy those photos to another location.

2.) Move those photos to another location.

3.) Make a "pointer" that remembers where they are.


You are responsible to figure out what you want to do with the original files; throw them out..back them up...whatever.

Yooper 2 Loc: Ironwood, MI

I save all the photos I PP in Lightroom to a dated and named folder withing my Lightroom (year) folder in My Pictures. Once all the photos I intend to keep are saved to that folder I delete the original folder. If I think I will want to work with photos in the future I keep the original folder after I delete photos I won't need. After this is done I save my Lightroom folder and the original folder to an external hard drive. I also use Carbonite which has unfailingly restored files I have lost due to computer crashes or were accidently deleted.

Royalruler Loc: Rancho Cucamonga

I would suggest that you watch and or read several introductions to LR. Especially the parts where they tell you about the storage structure of LR and how it can do what you want. This will save a lot of headache later.

DavidPine Loc: Fredericksburg, TX

On Lynda.com, Jan Kabili has an easy to understand course on the fundamentals of LR5. I am going through it for the second time and I may go through it even again. I strongly suggest you watch this before you start importing photographs. I did not and I ended up with a mess that I am slowly correcting. LR5.5 is an extremely powerful database management system and a fantastic photo editing program. Most people who knock it probably just jumped into it without complete understanding of the database aspects. Frankly, that was the hard part for me. The editing or Develop module is fairly easy to grasp. The Print module is also extremely powerful. Of course, LR5.5 works really well in conjunction with Photoshop where you can polish with layers. You will end up doing 90-95% of your post processing in LR and the balance in PS. I avoided LR and PS for many months and sought a magic solution with plugins and other programs. The only magic is within LR and Photoshop but you have to spend time learning it. Good luck.

Thombar Loc: Hominy, OK

Just want to give a thumbs up to everyone who answered my question about saving photos from files imported into LR. I almost deleted without asking and that would have been a disaster!

DavidPine Loc: Fredericksburg, TX

An important thing to remember is that LR provides "non-destructive editing". You will always have your digital original whether it is a RAW (data) or Tiff/JPG/PSD (image file).

BobHartung Loc: Bettendorf, IA

When you import to LR you can choose to ADD which just adds the photo where it is to the database, COPY which makes a copy of the image file to the folder that you specify, or MOVE which actually moves the image to the folder that you specify.

You also have the option to make a copy of the file to a second storage location/device and you can simutaneously rename the file if you desire.

Many tutorials exist online to explain this process very clearly.

https://forums.adobe.com/message/4318950
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5748443?tstart=0

HTH