John Geyer

Im an IT personal trainer. My experience with Lightroom and Mac Book Pro is...I have a client who has traved the world..Africa, Antarctica, Grand Canyon, Iceland etc. He used iphoto to view his photos on his travels. When he installed Lightroom, Apple IOS would not let him see the photos, as Apple does not make Lightroom so they block it. REMEMBER APPLE KNOWS WHAT IS BEST FOR YOU. To solve the issue we had to buy an external hard drive...export all the photos to the hard drive....delete all the photos on the Mac...import all the photos into Lightroom. The thing to learn here is dont use iphoto EVER and import from mem card directly into Lightroom.

jeep_daddy Loc: Prescott AZ

I've never liked the way iPhotos and Photos allows Mac users to just put the pictures on the drive in such a way that makes no sense. I've played around with my sisters Mac and tried to help her but she can't follow my directions because she is not knowledgeable about folder structure. This is one of the things about the Mac that has kept most of it's users dumb about folder, or directory structure, that I've never liked. If you were to use your Mac's "Finder" to find the actual location of your picture files, you'll see that they are buried deep into many folders. This is ridiculous but it's how iPhoto and Photos works. It decides where to put them and keep them safe from people that don't know anything about folder structure. This way people are less likely to delete them etc.

For starters, I'd probably try to organize them in different folder by date and if you can briefly look at some of the pictures taken on that date add some location information. I do this so that if I don't get around to "key working" or "tagging" my images I can still find them fairly easy by the date and the brief description of the images.

You can skip this step if you install LR, and then let LR find all your images. It should be able to find them no matter how deep into your folders that they are. After LR has built a catalog (database) of all the pictures, you can search for pictures by the metadata. In other words, you can search for all pictures in january of 2011 and then all those pictures will be shown in the grid as thumbnails. Then you could select them all, and drag them to a new folder that you can create named 2011-01 or something like this. I would start with a folder named "Pictures" and then have new subfolders (folders under the Pictures folder) with those new dates. This way you keep everything organized by the year and month to start. Then you can look at all the pictures for that month and move them to new folders that are more descriptive like "2011-01-10 Lake Ming" . If you have more pictures taken that month, say a wedding, you could make another folder like "2011-01-16 Smith Wedding". and so on. You must do this from LR so that the LR catalog keeps track of the files and folders. If you go to "Finder" and delete or move a file or folder, LR will lose them and you will back here asking how to make LR find the files again.

Anyway, that's as simple as I can make it now. It wouldn't hurt to install LR and then start watching some Youtube videos on how to get organized in LR so that you can practice what they are teaching and follow along.

By the way, I learned all about LR by paying about $150 for an online video course by Ben Wilmore on a website called CreativeLive.com. If you want to know more about this 2 or 3 day step by step video PM me and I'll let you know more about that.

FredCM Loc: Central Illinois

Organizing by the date in the metadata is a great way unless.... I have pictures from other places and people who were not careful about the time and date in their camera. I had things (note -- had) organized logically in iPhoto and life was good. Along comes Photos which organizes by the metadata date info and now stuff is scattered all over the place. Not so good any more. And of course Photos does not yet have an easy way to use a 3rd party editing program. "They" say to wait for further releases and Apple will put that capability in Photos. I'm not holding my breath. End of rant.

Martino Loc: Northwest Florida

Joyce, as Chief Rob recommends, the book 'The Missing FAQs' is the way to go. This (Victoria Bampton) is 'The Lightroom Queen'. If you get the book and sign up with her on her website (http://www.lightroomqueen.com) you don't have to register your book and I think the price is slightly cheaper.

Also if you're moving folders and images around on your drives, do it from within LR as then the catalog keeps track of where everything is and you don't have to keep on indexing. Victoria Brampton explains this all very well.

Joyce James Loc: California

Wow, Lots of info from so many of you. Thank you, was not sure anyone was going to reply to my question.
Worked all night long on my I photos, deleted duplicates, etc. Anxious to get L.R.- It was good to hear I could download it but still will work slow, read info and then move into LR.

Question? do I need to names my files before I move the photos into them? I will get a hard copy info book (as you recommend) to read before I do anything.

---- Could not have spent all this time on the computer before I retired, Having so much fun and eager to move on, thanks again everyone. Hope some day to know more about L.R so I can help someone out with their problem- pay back time
.

Martino Loc: Northwest Florida

You can also download Victoria's book before the hard copy arrives. It's good to have both.

LR has a good file renaming scheme that also keeps the original file name in the background, so you never loose track!

cmoroney Loc: Pasadena, California

I'm also in the process of moving from Aperture to Lightroom and I highly recommend making this move: I find LR far superior in its organizational capabilities and it's the "gold standard" for a reason. But there are a few Gotcha's to be aware of: (a) DO NOT MOVE/RENAME photos outside of LR as this will cause LR to "lose" them. Note: it hasn't lost them - the photos are still there and just fine, but LR no longer knows where they live. Just do all your organization/reorganization within LR and you'll be fine. (b) LR does not "store" your photos, instead it merely has links to them (imagine following a piece of string to the actual photo ...). (c) You need to back up your LR catalogue and photos separately because, as stated before, the LR catalogue does NOT contain the actual images.

I recommend using ApertureExporter (available from the App store) to export your pictures from Aperture into a folder structure that can then be imported into LR. I've exported my Aperture libraries (one folder per project/event) onto my hard disk and then I import them into LR one folder at a time. LR has 3 importing methods: move, copy and add. Use "move" to move the photos from the AE folder into another one and then delete them from the original location, "copy" to do the same thing except then not delete the originals (use this method when importing from a CF or SD card), and "add" to retain the original folder structure but simply add links to these photos to LR. I personally use "add" for my Aperture to LR transition because I'm structuring my LR catalogue in an entirely different way, and then once I'm satisfied that the import went ok, I go back and delete the AE folder.

One of the beauties of LR is that you can organize your photos into literally *any* folder structure you can dream up. I take most of my photos on trips so my folder structure is organized by place ("Europe/Germany/Cologne") and then I use LR to automatically create the "year/year-month-day" subfolder structure beneath the top-level "Europe/Germany/Cologne". I then use keywords for subject matter like sunsets, cathedrals, friends, family, etc.

The Lightroom FAQ book is recommended. At the very least, take a careful read through the LR quick-start guide by the same author (free on the internet) before doing anything.

Good luck and feel free to PM me if you have any questions. LR is a much better product and if you take care to obey the few cardinal rules you'll be fine. Another bonus is LR's integration with not only Photoshop but most of the other photo software out there.

Catherine

cmoroney Loc: Pasadena, California

Correction to above message: I use "copy" for adding photos from my ApertureExport to my LR catalogue, NOT "add".

cambriaman Loc: Central CA Coast

Just remember to make your organization decisions in advance, if need be, write them down and stick to them absolutely. Otherwise you end up with a mess as I have and have to spend even more time getting it all together. This is not a joke!