Lightroom : Workflow and filestructure.

Thanks...Ive been watching the Michael Tapes tutorials for a few weeks now.

ive imported every photo on my machine now... and keyworded them...so at least I will be able to find what I want. so thats a start! :thumbs:

Next step to make some folders. I think I'll get there.... just did my usual panic thing!! :embarrassed:
 
The way I've been using LR so far is to import automatically from the camera into Year\Date folders (which LR recognises as "Folders") then manually create and organise the photos into "Collections".

You can then view the photos by when they were taken using the date folders, or look at suitably grouped photos using the collections.

Also, a photo can exist in more than one collection, so a photo of a crow sitting on the wall in Conwy Castle could be added to both the "Crows" and "Castles" collections.
 
MrGrumpy said:
a photo can exist in more than one collection, so a photo of a crow sitting on the wall in Conwy Castle could be added to both the "Crows" and "Castles" collections.
Click to expand...

cant you just find it by keywords of crow, and castle?

do you put all the RAW files in their named folders and remove them from their dated folders, or make copies and keep both?

also, like marcel asked a while back.......once you have worked on a photo in photoshop and made it a tiff or a jpg and saved it onto your computer...lightroom then doesnt have a copy of this saved version.

Do you then have to IMPORT each photo you have worked on and saved?
 
Heh, everyone here seems to be either too organised, too fastidious about backing up or too scared to let Lightroom do all the work!

I literally let Lightroom do it all.

1. Plug in camera
2. Convert NEF to DNG and import using date based file structure, (YYYY/MM/DD-01..NN)
3. I then flag as picked or rejected for all the photos and star rate the picke ditems for those that I like.
4. Develop as normal, creating virtual copies for greyscales.
5. Tag with matching tags to flickr where possible, and if the image has been uploaded to flickr or printed, (just another keyword).

Something that people here do a lot of which I dont understand is saving folders for web/print. Surely if you keep the developed, post-processed file in LR, you can explort it when you want. Why save a JPEG too?

Maybe I just trust LR too much.
 
beseku said:
Something that people here do a lot of which I dont understand is saving folders for web/print. Surely if you keep the developed, post-processed file in LR, you can explort it when you want. Why save a JPEG too?

Maybe I just trust LR too much.
Click to expand...

Good question ;)

Personally I keep a folder of websized versions, not only for quick uploading and sharing with people, but mainly so I can quickly browse through my shots...Much quicker using Windows Pic / Fax viewer, browsing through 700px jpegs, than waiting for the thumbnails of 100's of TIFFs of 100meg or so each to appear..lol
 
How do you do an initial import of all your photos into Lightroom (or reference shall we say)...it wont import a yellow folder only actual photo files. I have loads and loads of dated folders..........do i have to open every one and import the files separately :eek:

Im fine with doing the new ones off the camera.........but cant see a way to get all my older ones in en masse.
 
This is my work-flow (for what it's worth)

Scan all my card files using exifpro (free download), and tag all the ones I want to work on, these are then copied (as raw files) to a date/subject folder on a separate internal hard drive.

Start working on each in photoshop, and save as uncompressed/unsharpened tiffs in another (but with identical date/subject) folder on a different internal hard drive.

That means I have two copies (one processed & one unprocessed of each file) on separate drives.

I can recommend exifpro as a very quick method of initial sorting of files, it's quick and automates a lot of the processes.

I tried lightroom, and found it a little complex (for this task) and a lot slower than exif.
 
SW4peter said:
I think sub foders are also imported janice...
Click to expand...

Unfortunately not, Steve.. you browse to your PHOTOS folder and cant import that... so you browse int there to your yellow dated folders and cant import those either....the only way is to open each one until you find the actual tiff, jpg, raw files.. then the import is enabled.
 
Janice,

I import folders only. I rarely import photos on their own. When I select on a folder the 'import' button comes active. It even takes subfolders.

The first time I imported about 50 folders at once. (subs et al) and the Pc went very busy for a very long time). I then deleted it all and did it again folder by folder with keywording...

Ahh well at least I learned :D
 
ah ive done it.......it seemed odd to me not to have a folder name in the first box but have it empty when I pressed select folder.

Done it now.......thanks!! :thumbs:
 
Janice said:
ah ive done it.......it seemed odd to me not to have a folder name in the first box but have it empty when I pressed select folder.

Done it now.......thanks!! :thumbs:
Click to expand...

Yeh i should have said, click on folder in the window and then click 'choose selected'. Glad to see u got it sorted :)
 
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