LR works best with RAW files so you won't have any problems there. When you import into LR you have three different options: (a) COPY = copy the files from their existing location on your drive to a new one that you specify (b) MOVE = same as COPY except that after you're done, the files will no longer be in their original location and (c) ADD = keep the files where they are and just add them to the LR catalogue so the files themselves don't change their location.

A word of advice: think about how you want to structure your files/folder hierarchy before you start importing stuff into LR. I use a combination of folder names and keywords to identify photos - the folder names give me the place and date shot (i.e. "Europe/Ireland/Dublin/2017/2017-05-04") and then I use keywords to identify the subject of the photo such as "cathedral", "sunset", etc). If you settle on a well thought-out hierarchy to start with then you won't have to redo things later as your LR catalogue grows. Check out a few videos about how best to organize things in LR before starting this job to get some other ideas.

Catherine

I do most of my shooting on trips, so I'm on my feet all day walking about town or wherever I am, therefore versatility and convenience are key factors for me, much more so than speed and absolute sharpness. I love the fact that I can do essentially everything with the one lens (except for the extreme wide angle stuff since I can't justify buying a full-frame camera). So I've got one body, two lenses (one of them on my camera, the other in a fanny pack) and that's all I need to carry for a full days worth of photography. Therefore the Tamron suits me perfectly. If you want lightweight and convenience, it's a great lens to use! And for what you get, it's very reasonably priced indeed. I'm looking forward to many years of great travels with it!

I recommend Lightroom. It doesn't need to be complex and it will work with literally any folder structure that you can dream up. Since I take most of my pictures on travel, I use a combination of places/dates for my folder structure, and then use keywords to describe the subject of the picture.

For example /Europe/Ireland/Dublin/2011/<yyyy.mm.dd>
/Europe/Ireland/Dublin/2017/<yyyy.mm.dd>
/Europe/Ireland/Dingle/2017/<yyyy.mm.dd>

and then keyword pictures such as "churches", "architecture", "sunset", "coastline" and also whoever appears in the photo.

Then searching for a given picture is very simple: All the church photos taken in Dublin for instance - "folder name contains Dublin" and "keywords contain church". Piece of cake.

Catherine

I was having the same problem trying to get Luminar to play nicely with Lightroom. First you need to quit LR, install the plug-in from Luminar, and then restart LR. The key is that you access Luminar through the "presets" menu rather than the usual "edit in" menu from LR. I found this highly non-intuitive and I bitched to Luminar Tech support about it. In the end, they did get it working for me but not without a lot more back-and-forth than was strictly necessary. Why Luminar can't be called from "edit-in" in LR I have no idea ... some S/W engineer there must have gotten up from the wrong side of the bed one morning. But, once I figured out to call it from the "presets" menu it now works like a charm.

Apologies for my non-precise terminology of "presets menu" but I'm on my work computer and don't have access to LR now. If somebody can correct my wording, that would be appreciated.

Good luck!

Catherine

I just got this lens and it's working fine for me, on my Canon 7D (the original). Since I do most of my photography while on trips when I'm walking around all day portability and versatility are key selling points for me, more so than absolute lens speed or sharpness. I've been very pleased with it thus far: I don't find it too heavy and I can easily keep it still and get reasonably sharp photos even at maximum zoom. Compared to some of the older model zooms this is a lot smaller and lighter and therefore it works well when I'm on my feet for hours. This is great for travel photography: one body, this lens and a super-wide angle and I'm all set!

I use NIK with Lightroom 5.7 without any problems, but it is true that Google has stopped supporting and developing NIK. I'm not sure how it plays with the latest versions of the Mac OS but at some point Adobe/Apple are going to do away with a certain system call that NIK uses and that's when it's dead. I'm currently running 10.10 and it works just fine, but I know I'm pretty far behind the OS curve at this point.

Hello,

Can anybody confirm or deny that LR 5.7 and Elements 14 will work with Mac OS X Sierra (10.12)? I'm a couple of versions behind in my operating system, but don't want to upgrade only to find out that it breaks my two most important pieces of photo software. And, does OS X 10.12 also work with Topaz and MacPhun?

I know I can sign up for Adobe Creative Cloud but my use of LR and PSE is "bursty" enough (some months I do a lot of work and others almost nothing) that it's a better deal for me financially to stick with the versions that I own outright. I am, however, hoping that they release LR 7 as stand-alone sometime soon!

Catherine

I use a combination of place name for the top-levels and date for the bottom and that works well for me. I take most of my photos on various travels so the top-levels of my folder structure are by place (Europe/Ireland/Dublin for example) and then I have the yyyy/yyyy-mm-dd folder structure underneath the Dublin folder (which LR automatically creates for me). Then I use keywords to tag the subject of the photo (cathedrals, stained glass, sunset, city streets, etc).

This way, if i'm thinking of a cathedral photo that I took in Dublin in 2015, it's very easy to navigate to the correct folder and then look at all the pictures in that folder with the keyword(s) I'm looking for.

I tend to remember the place where I took a particular photo first, and then I may or may not remember the year. So my "dual-boot" filing system works very well for me.

Catherine

Hey if he works at JPL he has access to all the Mars images! Could be could be ...

I was wondering if Photomatix had died, given that the time to version 6.0 was so much longer than their website kept promising. I'm glad to know that it's still alive and kicking! I'll see if I can upgrade for free, but I may pass on this one given that I was able to get a screaming deal on Franzis' HDR software. BTW - for those who like the Franzis HDR software, StackSocial is offering the latest/greatest for only $39 whereas the list price is about $200. I was always a Photomatix fan, but I'm finding Franzis to be a much more full-featured piece of software that can generate much more realistic looking images.

Catherine

I always found this to be an extremely limiting feature of Aperture. LR allows you to load in an almost unlimited number of external editors. Another reason to make the switch if that's the way you're going.

Catherine

I once bent the pins in my old Canon Rebel (entirely due to my own brain-dead mistake, never again!) and took it to a local camera repair shop. $50 to fix it, and good as new for years afterwards. My advice would be to hunt up a local independent camera repair guy and take it to him/her. Canon would just want to replace the entire assembly which seems like overkill for this problem.

If it's a good camera and you like using it, keep it! That's my attitude towards cars as well - as anybody who's ridden in my old banger can attest to.

Catherine

I'm slowly switching over to Lightroom from Aperture and it's been quite smooth, and I really appreciate being able to set up my own folder structure in LR rather than using Aperture's default. I highly recommend using the "Aperture Exporter" as it's been a life-saver for me. I tried using LR's own "Aperture Exporter" and found it to be exceedingly limited as it forced me into organizing all my photos by date. Instead, using ApertureExporter, I get separate folders for each "event" in my Aperture library that I can then import into my new LR folder structure one at a time.

Even though I'm a hard-core Mac head, I think LR is far superior to Aperture: I can organize my folder structure literally any way that I want to, I can load in any third party editor and have it interface seamlessly with LR, and so on.

You can learn LR just by "playing around" if you take care to abide by the house rules: no moving files/folders outside of LR, back up your photos as well as the catalogue file. Photoshop is a whole other kettle of fish - I appreciate its power in the hands of those who know what they're doing but the complexity is unnerving.

Good luck!

Catherine

I recommend Photoshop Elements. It's not the "big kahuna" like the full-blown Photoshop is, but is still very capable, very reasonably priced (no subscription needed) and it has a very nice "graduated learning" to allow you to progress from very simple to quite complex at your own pace. It's very difficult to learn Photoshop just by playing around, but Elements has a much gentler learning curve.

You do not give up one iota of control to Lightroom and its cataloguing system. You can design literally any file/folder system you want, and LR will work with it. And if (an incredibly unlikely if) LR does go away all your photos are still right there, where you put them in the first place. The only thing you would lose (again very very unlikely) is the edits that you made to your photos from within LR. LR does not "hide" your photos from you, unlike Aperture/iPhoto/Photos. Just remember to back up the disk containing the raw images as well as the LR catalogue, and do all of your rearranging of files/folders from within LR (very simple) and you're set.

And every 3rd party editor that I've seen (Photoshop, Nik, Topaz, Photomatix, MacPhun, etc) have a LR plug-in so it's very simple for you to send the image out to the editor, do your work, and then the edited image is automatically imported back into LR with no extra action needed on your part).

Switch to LR. You won't regret it.