Do you have a web site so we can see some of your work? I’m alway interested in seeing other people’s work.

I use the C settings on my dial for specific situations that I may be encountering during a particular photography event...such as on Safari, I learned very early in the trip that most of the critters were rather sedentary, so I used my usual Aperture mode. But I also had to be prepared for a sudden preditor-prey chase, so I set up a custom setting for that with a pre-set shutter speed, aperture and auto iso, rather than switching around trying to get to that setting.

I was in settings where the scene went from very stark light to very dark (a old city medina) and it was driving me wonky trying to keep adjusting settings...so I recorded two C settings to basically had both extremes covered. This turned out to be quite helpful (see attached pics) when I came across a low light situation that was very fleeting.

On the rare times I do some sort of astro photography, I set up settings for that. At family events, I sometimes use flash in a M mode so I set up a setting for that (especially turning of the WYSIWYG feature of my mirror-less to make it simulate the view of a DSLR). I also know there will be a group picture, so I get that all set up, keep the setting in a C setting and then go on to take the spontaneous pics as usual and then can just switch to C right away when I finally wrangle the herd of cats and not waste time.

What I have also done is made business card sized cheat cards for a few photography events, such as using Oly's Live Capture mode (I am not all that deft with it) or air show settings (for remembering the settings to get propeller swirl in the shots.) I also have one for off camera flash just to help me remember the settings on my Godox stuff.

What I may do, after reading some of the comments here, is have a somewhat standard set of pre-sets so when I just go out on a regular day, I have a few options to quickly turn to.

My thoughts at the moment.

This is getting all fubar'd. As Chg said, just call Adobe and maybe they can help you out. Figure out what versions of LR you have before calling Adobe. And when you get that figured out, use one and only one version of LR...namely the subscription one that resides on your desktop, and leave it at that. That is called LRClassic. (Actually its called Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Classic. I have no idea why.) And as others mentioned you can simply export the photos in a DNG format, import them into your new catalog and move on. Its only 200 photos...so not a lot. And are those all keepers?

I strongly suggest that you look around for a few tutorials on what folders are vs. collections. Choosing to just have collections is not using LRC properly. You are asking for a massive amount of trouble doing that. You physically put your photos into an organized folder structure on what ever drive you chose. You should have only one copy of that photo so as to avoid duplicates. You do need back up copies, but you do not need multiple copies in the same resident catalog. Once you have an ORGANIZED folder system, you edit your pics as you normally would. And then, if you want to have a special collection of photos, you can make LR do that...it simply "points" to the photos selected in their existing folder virtually and organizes those into collections. You can have the same photo in many collections...say you want a collection of "Bridges" you select all the bridges in your catalog and make them into a collection. But say you want to have a collection of your best photos of the year and one of those bridge photos happens to be one of the best photos...well, you can tell LR to place that photo in that collection as well. Putting things into collections does not move your photos....because they are in folders, just like every other file on your computer or hard drives.

I think some folk said the same thing about movie making when Star Wars came out....in 1977. I think most normal people will separate AI from the real thing and the hobby will survive. My concern is not for the hobby aspects.

I am concerned about various AI renditions of child porn (which is happening). In addition, voice images are being duplicated with AI, etc. The Wall Street Journal had an article recently on the percentage of kids who are approached by ....bad guys...via Instagram and other sites. It was a large number...something like 75%. AI will feed that crowd as as well. I also think there was a similar article where a school had a rash of AI porn images of some of the kids in the school being circulated. That is a huge problem. Imagine an nude, albeit AI generated picture of your 14 year old daughter being circulated. People need to go to jail on that kind of stuff..but it is happening.

So, knowing the capabilities of AI, would I now post photos of my grand children anywhere on-line? Nope. Not any more. AI is going to be a challenge for sure. I wish I were confident, but given the fact that more people get their news from FaceBook or twitter than (somewhat) standard news services and looking/ reading at things critically and skeptically, AI could well be a problem. Add to that the issues mentioned about kids and it is a volatile mix.

Personally, think AI is kinda fun when used in a controlled manner. I had a mundane pic of a grandchild walking on a dirt path, so I added a tiger to the photo. Its goofy looking, but fun. I am hoping to make some super hero videos of the child doing various feats.

For photographers, I agree with you. But, Costco's stock price is up a little over $100 year to date. They know what they're doing to make money. And print photography was probably a resource vacuum. It was equipment, floor space and personnel intensive. Given the likely very tight margins coupled with competition from other sources, they made a decision to hand the photo reins over to Shutterfly for a piece of the action. I've not seen data, but if it were a big money maker, I'd bet they'd still have a photo section. I have not seen cameras in the stores, other than go-pro kits, in a long time. That too makes sense...purchases, returns, stock maintenance, competition from other stores, variety of models, etc. They'd have to chose just right as to what cameras to keep in stock. their I am still in a bit of mourning over them discontinuing their spicy polish dogs.

I do not often use Shutterfly, but have for various specialty items. But when I do, I do not have problems with the website. It possible that the website had a glitch then...When I need a print quickly, I do the Walgreens thing.

Hint to all Hogs: I typically use Firefox as my browser of choice. However, MS Edge has a feature that automatically finds digital coupons on checkout. I often save 50% on Walgreens print photo orders just by using Edge.

The sad thing about those chiles? We have better ones in Pueblo, CO. Ok, a bit of a joke. We have an on-going battle with NM over whose are best.

And, if I were without encumbrances I'd live in Santa Fe...I love that place and the entire state. It is enchanting. The State Capitol has amazing art from NM folks. Well worth going to see.

All gave some, some gave all.

I use carbonite and for one fee, it backs up a few drives, including my dropbox and a "d" drive full of photos. It works in the background and I do not notice it.

But...one of my photog colleagues had a total hard drive failure. He said Backblaze sent him an entire drive full of his files and it was quite easy to recover. I am not seeing the hard drive (probably an SSD) option on carbonite. The other thing with carbonite, as I found out just a few days ago, is that it only has the files to restore. One cannot go on line, click on the file and see, say, a thumbnail of the photo to see if that is the one pic you might want. I imagine restoring a whole hard drive of photos would be quite time consuming.

In my case, I am looking for one specific file that I deleted (its actually a bad pic that some on the Hog wanted to dissect.) I am not aware if backblaze has this option.

I don't have a dog in the fight on Sony. In fact, I have a little one. I shoot Olympus because I travel, lighter, lenses lighter, cheaper, I am an amateur, etc. I've used the "pre-capture" or otherwise known as "Pro Capture" that Oly (I think) invented. When that is used, it creates a lot of photos...a few hundred in a few seconds, actually. It quickly overwhelmed my storage...and I was using two 256 gig cards, I think. I am assuming Sony uses different storage cards with greater capacity. But for me, going through thousands of shots for one day photographing birds? Nope on out of here. I suppose the pros and dedicated amateurs will be willing to go through maybe 10,000 photos from one day...not me. I'm looking at 120 frame rate for pre-capture as a cool upper limit, but wow...that would be more work than fun for me. I don't need 120 shots per second to make mediocre photos...I can do it at a slower frame rate.

Good on Sony for their accomplishments. These features always bleed down to cheaper cameras....who knows, when they do, I just might go to the dark side. But for now, anyone who pays $6000 for a piece of equipment for a hobby is nuts, that or he is a fisherman (me).

I did not. I don’t have the large file anymore and would not show it if I did fix it. I am very sensitive to horizon issues as well and agree with you.

If you’re bored you can look at my portfolio on hipcoyote.com and will see I simply don’t do much landscape. And hopefully most horizons are as they should be.

The other thing was that there were about 50 people standing to the left and right of me...all with their tripods shooting away. I think this was on a tripod, believe it or not. I goofed somewhere. But, equally as important, to me, taking photos where everyone else and their brother is taking the same photo is boring. Its like painting by number.

So, over time, I developed a style, or at least interest in topics that I prefer. Landscapes on tripods ain't one of them.

On a bigger screen it was apparent. And also in print.

Chg_Canon posted a film shot he took that was out of focus....and provided some good feedback, along with good comments by others, on the photo and why it had problems. It was (which was his point) a delete-worthy shot with some good learning points.

I thought I might offer this up. This is the very first photo I ever entered into my photo club challenge...the topic was bridges. This was a beautiful shot, or so I thought. I was going to be rookie of the year of my club!

The judge took one look at it, and said, "I don't often score something this low, but it is a 4 out of 9. A shot has to be in focus. This shot is not" I was stunned. How could my perfect, wonderful bridge shot be a 4? But after about 9 years or so learning, improving, etc...that judge was dead on right. That danged thing is not sharp. It is a 4 out of 9, if that.

If the shot is not sharp, when it should be, there is no real way to fix it... maybe a little Topaz may help, but this shot should have never seen the light of day. I long since deleted the file but found it on my FB feed as a memory, so the file size is small.

Curate, curate, curate. Be critical.

Too bad other people in the Gallery (echo chamber) post things that they think are good and, well, not so good. It is not informative. This is a good instructive post on why something went awry, which happens to us all. Should someone spend time trying to resurrect this shot? Nope. Delete and move on.

Of course, do what you feel best to do. To quote Bruce Lee, "Simplicity is the key to brilliance."

IMO, you are making this waaay more complicated than it needs to be. As Burk said, LR is the hub of the wheel out of which all things happen. LR is perfectly designed to cull through images. Import pics, look at them, even in comparison view, hit X if you want to deselect the shot and P to "pick" the shot. You can filter from there just showing the selected shots, delete the rejected shots or filter in a 1000 different ways. There is no importing and exporting from PS to LR. the the two work seamlessly together. Converting in PS and exporting to LR makes no sense (in my mind anyway.) I also cannot understand how something looks different in LR than PS. Did you know there are different "Looks" in LR? Press L and you get different "looks" of the photos...going from the usual look to a totally black background. And you have to have a calibrated monitor and a darkish room...a mentor of mine said it had to be "theater" lighting. The capabilities of LR usually far surpasses the abilities of most photogs....I do very few things in PS...very little.

Add to that Bridge, overlay with PS, add a little LR and what you have is a big mess (my opinion, of course.) Simply import stuff into LR, organize it, cull it, rate it, and edit it. Need something that PS offers? Right click the pic in LR and simply chose "edit in PS." Do what you want to do in PS. When you close PS, the pic automatically comes back to LR all with a nice little bow on it....as designed by Adobe.

My brain has limited hard drive space so I just use LR and try to use it to its fullest. If I ever master it, I cannot imagine having other editing or organizational needs. And talking to Adobe engineering is going down an unnecessary rabbit hole. Use LR as intended and taught by experienced folks and your photography life will flourish. Simplify into the elegant solution.

Anyhoo, best of luck on what ever path you choose.