Lightroom or NX2

  • Thread starter Thread starter Deleted member 68495
  • Start date Start date
D

Deleted member 68495

Guest
For the purposes of looking at my Nikon-taken photos I have used Nikon NX2 for several years and all has been fine. I have been able to do some minor adjustments, certainly all I have ever needed to as I like to take my pictures 'in camera' with an absolute minimum of post processing.

However, I bought a Fuji X20 last year and it has been great for a take anywhere camera but NX2 will not handle the Fuji's RAF files. So that I could handle both in the same package I bought Lightroom and it's been fine apart from the file-handling which I find annoying and frustrating.

With NX2 I can use the files as they are on my hard drive, the file layout is almost exactly the same as in Windows Explorer and as I copy my files to disk before messing with them I have no need to 'import'. Lightroom on the other hand requires me to 'import' my pictures even if I have already put them on the hard drive and I feel less in control of where and how my pictures are being stored.

Lightroom seems to work like Googles Picasa in the 'import' category.

Why is it necessary for Lightroom to import pictures before I can use them? What is the advantage over just using them from the hard drive like NX2 does? Also, is there any way of using Fuji RAF files in NX2 as at the moment I have started shooting on my Fuji in JPG so that NX2 can access them?
 
[quote="ShinySideUp,Lightroom on the other hand requires me to 'import' my pictures even if I have already put them on the hard drive and I feel less in control of where and how my pictures are being stored.[/quote]

Lightroom does not import image files. It imports the link to the location of your images on your disc.
 
Lightroom is far superior in organising than NX, you can set it however you want it.

As above, you don't have to import the images into Lightroom, you are importing a catalogue of where the files are. If they are already on the hard drive, Lightroom will ask if you want to move them into its own structured catalogue, or leave them where they are and it will just reference them.

If you insert a card fill of images, then Lightroom will copy them off the card into the pre determined location you set. It will arrange them in day/date/month, or by location or by any other parameter you set.

Think of Lightroom as a computer in a library, itself doesn't hold all the books, but tells you exactly where you can find them on the many shelves. Slightly crap analogy but you get the gist.
 
TCR4x4 said:
If you insert a card fill of images, then Lightroom will copy them off the card into the pre determined location you set. It will arrange them in day/date/month, or by location or by any other parameter you set.
.
Click to expand...

Thanks for this I can only get mine to put in a year (2014) folder followed by date folder making finding files very difficult.
Can someone point me in the right direction for naming individual imported folders, the year folder isn't a problem.
Can I rename my existing date folders so the files are easier to find?
 
Last edited:
vRSG60 said:
Thanks for this I can only get mine to put in a year (2014) folder followed by date folder making finding files very difficult.?
Click to expand...

TBH you're better off using Keywords and Collections to find and organise your images. Keywords in particular are searchable and can be applied easily while you're importing files into Lightroom. Collections can span across multiple dates (folders on disk)

A directory structure is a pretty crude instrument for applying Metadata.

Can someone point me in the right direction for naming individual imported folders, the year folder isn't a problem.
Click to expand...

You can import photos to a folder name of your choice in the Import dialog. Check the 'Into Subfolder' box in the Destination panel and enter your desired name in the field to its right.

Can I rename my date folders so the files are easier to find?
Click to expand...

If you want to rename folders, then right click on the name of the folder in the left hand column while you're in Library mode.
 
I have to labour this a bit as I've never used photo organisation software apart from View NX and Picasa.

If LR isn't importing my pictures to another place why does it take so long? I always copy my pictures to a named and dated folder on my hard drive then use LR to 'import' them from there rather than directly from my SD card, if LR was just making a catalogue of pictures, why does it take so long? The thumbnails are ticked then I press IMPORT and off it goes and one of the stages shows three little dots on each thumbnail which disappear one at a time as LR does whatever it is doing -- so what IS it doing?

I am being paranoid I know but I have many, many photographs which are precious to me and I like to know where they are and what is happening to them at all times, it also makes it easier for me to save them (and their file structure) to two portable backup drives. View NX allows me to see my file structure more clearly than LR and that gives me peace of mind.

You will say "well, use View NX then", but it is basic and I have used a lot of the functions on LR and since I've bought it I may as well use it.

One last question (probably):

I keep my photos like this:

C:
Media
Photographs
2012
2013 (etc)
2014
2014Jan
2014Feb
and so on

but it's getting cumbersome and I have to ensure I give the photos a suitable name and then search for them when I want them.

My question is how do others do it? If I do it by category I'll just have thousands of categories and if I make a mistake on the category I may never find the file again.

Sorry to be so long-winded.
 
ShinySideUp said:
If LR isn't importing my pictures to another place why does it take so long? I always copy my pictures to a named and dated folder on my hard drive then use LR to 'import' them from there rather than directly from my SD card, if LR was just making a catalogue of pictures, why does it take so long? The thumbnails are ticked then I press IMPORT and off it goes and one of the stages shows three little dots on each thumbnail which disappear one at a time as LR does whatever it is doing -- so what IS it doing?
Click to expand...

Possibly it depends on exactly what you're doing when you import your images to Lightroom.

In the Import dialog, do you have Lightroom set to Copy, Move or Add your photos?

View attachment 4396

View attachment 4398

View attachment 4397


If you have it set to Copy, then it's making a copy on your hard disk, leaving the files you copied from the SD card where they are, which will obviously take some time (the disk is doing simultaneous read and write operations).

If you have it set to Move, that will take some time, as it does them one at a time, and will depend on disk speed.

Add should be the quickest of the three.

While it's adding the pictures to the Catalog, Lightroom is reading all the existing metadata currently embedded in your files (such as EXIF). It has to read the entire file to do that, which will likely be a disk speed limited operation.

It also renders JPEG preview files at your default settings for displaying the image on screen within Lightroom. This speeds up subsequent operations while you're editing, especially if you've shot RAW.
 
ShinySideUp said:
My question is how do others do it? If I do it by category I'll just have thousands of categories and if I make a mistake on the category I may never find the file again.
Click to expand...

Simple answer: Keywords.

My file structure is very simple

2014
01
02
03
01
02
03
04
31​
04​

I keyword everything on import.

Files just get renumbered with a date and sequence number on import: YYYYMMDD_0001 (e.g. 20140103_0038.ARW) so with an image file at hand I can always go straight to the folder for the date it was taken without needing any other information.

If I'm looking for a photo of my friend and band-mate, David, I search for the keywords for 'David' and it finds all the photos with him in. If I'm looking for a photo of him at a gig in Surbiton, I search for Contains All 'David Surbiton' and it pulls up only those.

To limit the search to the gigs we did in Surbiton in 2013, I just preselect the 2013 folder in the Library and it ignores the photos I took at gigs we've done in January.

If I then want to see the other photos I took that same day, I right click on the photo and choose Go to Folder in Library
I don't have many Collections. I tend to use them for Longer term projects rather than individual events that are likely to be wrapped up in one day.
 
Thanks for that Rob. So if I've already copied the photos to my hard drive I only need to 'ADD' and this will add the files to the catalgue and basically only do a read of the file which as you say should be much quicker.

I like the keyword idea but would I then be tied to Lightroom and couldn't find the file using any other means, or perhaps the keyword is universal?
 
Keep your existing folder structure if you want to. Lightroom references that on import (can echo your existing folder structure, but cumulatively adds all the files to its catalogue) and maybe more importantly stores any subsequent adjustments to your RAW files in its database. To me, it's not exactly intuitive, but that's the way it works.

If you then abandoned Lightroom, you wouldn't lose any original RAW files, just the non-destructive changes you'd made to them in Lightroom - which, of course, could be a considerable investment of time and effort. But if you 'export' from Lightroom as 'finished' tiffs or jpgs, those should remain on your hard drive etc even if you uninstall or stop using Lightroom.

Complicated?
 
Last edited:
droj said:
If you then abandoned Lightroom, you wouldn't lose any original RAW files, just the non-destructive changes you'd made to them in Lightroom - which, of course, could be a considerable investment of time and effort. But if you 'export' from Lightroom as 'finished' tiffs or jpgs, those should remain on your hard drive etc even if you uninstall or stop using Lightroom.
Click to expand...

You can save the develop recipe to XMP Sidecar files, which is readable by other applications, principally Adobe ACR, so that you can restore the developed image with that and the original RAW but without Lightroom.

Edit: http://photographyconcentrate.com/lightroom-tip-turn-automatically-write-changes-xmp/
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top