DanielB Loc: San Diego, Ca

I lost a hard drive also so I started backing up with Time Machine and a Cloud service as well. Don't throw away the old drive - it can be sent in for recovery.

Keven Loc: Grandview, WA

Gene:

Could post for me what an example of your collections list would look like in Light Room?


Thanks,

Keven

cmoroney Loc: Pasadena, California

Lightroom works perfectly on Macs as well as Windows so just keep on using LR as it's far superior to the built-in Apple software! And LR works with literally any folder structure you can think of so no need to change your system, unless you want to. Like others, I suggest using keywords to tag the subject of the photo: flowers, sunsets, family and friends, cars, etc. Personally I use a hybrid of location and date taken: the upper-level is all indexed by location (Europe/Ireland/Dublin) and then when I import (directly from the card into LR, no need for any extra steps) I use LR to create date subfolders underneath the top-level location (2018/2018-05-04 for example so the entire folder hierarchy would be /Users/cmoroney/Pictures/Lightroom/Europe/Ireland/Dublin/2018/2018-05-04). I would then use keywords to tag the photo subject and then use smart collections to catalogue all my sunset shots.

There's a very reasonably priced backup software for Macs called SuperDuper that will copy any hard (internal or external) to another and the backups can be scripted so they run at 3 am on a Tuesday when you're not likely to be using the computer and also gives you the capability to exclude certain folders from the backup if you want.

Catherine

Bullfrog Bill Loc: CT

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Set everything up in LR not on the Mac or else!!!

Al K

The procedure you used in Windows using Light Room is the exact procedure you should use with a MAC, assuming you worked within LR to start with.

via the lens Loc: Northern California, near Yosemite NP

On a Mac you simply drag and drop things where you want them to go. I would not use the Apple photos app, especially if you plan to use LR. So, you would have one main folder, then a folder for each identified subject and you just put things in them. Having said that, you have set up a system that seems very time consuming to me. I just link everything shoot up to LR, then use keywords to find it all. Easy and quick. How in the world do you determine where a photo goes if it has kids and animals in it? That would boggle my mind. In LR, you just pop two keywords on it and you can check it either way. LR simply uses whatever system you have set up on the hard drive.

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

Here is a partial list of my Collections and Smart Collections in LR.

But because I use long descriptive folder names with dates on them organized by year, the folder names are just as helpful (they are searchable) as collections. So my system is hybridized.

(Download)

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

Part of the confusion Mac users face is the default setup of MacOS. Out of the box, it wants to automatically import your images into Photos, so they can be shared with all your other Apple devices.

You can change this! It’s a preference.

Lightroom handles file management in two different ways. You can let Lightroom manage your filing entirely, or you can “import from files in place,” meaning from where you manually stored them. There are quite valid reasons for both methods.

DanielB Loc: San Diego, Ca

I suggest a Time Machine backup and/or Crash Plan for small business or Carbonite (cloud backup) for about $10 a month. I use both now and its well worth it.

via the lens Loc: Northern California, near Yosemite NP

You can buy a drive with a "RAID" capability where the drive stores your data on some portion of the drive but also backs up your data on a different drive within the same drive container: I am not a "techie" and someone else can explain it better I'm sure. The system has separate drives I believe. When I import to LR I have set the application to store all my RAW files on an external drive and to back up all my RAW files to a different external drive. My catalog is backed up separately.

See example below:

fstoprookie Loc: Central Valley of California

Where on an Apple iMac do you find "Apple Image Capture Utility" ????? I have looked in my Utility file and don't see it

via the lens Loc: Northern California, near Yosemite NP

When I did a search for this item on my Mac a Read Me.rtf came up for ViewNX2, the Nikon image program.

cmoroney Loc: Pasadena, California

Applications/Image Capture

Very handy for deleting unwanted photos off your iPhone en masse.

Catherine