LR3 back up questions

[Clonetrooper]

Couple of noob questions regarding the backing up on lightroom 3. I have just started working through Kelbys book. I have used LR3 for a while editing but always for just that and then exporting to my usual pictures file.

I've never used the libary features and thought it's about time I did.

I'm a OCD back up freak. In the book he mentions when closing LR have it automatically back up your collections. Am I reading this right, does backing up your collections just back up the way LR has ordered your pictures/settings and tags etc.

This doesn't physically make a complete hard back up of your pictures to a seperate destination?

So I still have to do a manual back up of the picture files?

Sorry for the basics, I'm just still at the point of concern that using LR I might delete stuff I don't want to In the book he metions altering collections deleting etc will not destroy the main file, but I can't find much on backing up automatically all your raws and Jpegs

Any help gratefully received

 

[arad85]

Correct. The backup LR does is of your catalogue, not of the images (or edits) themselves.

 

[treeman]

Couple of noob questions regarding the backing up on lightroom 3. I have just started working through Kelbys book. I have used LR3 for a while editing but always for just that and then exporting to my usual pictures file.

I've never used the libary features and thought it's about time I did.

I'm a OCD back up freak. In the book he mentions when closing LR have it automatically back up your collections. Am I reading this right, does backing up your collections just back up the way LR has ordered your pictures/settings and tags etc.
That's what I've always understood it to be.

This doesn't physically make a complete hard back up of your pictures to a seperate destination?

No

So I still have to do a manual back up of the picture files?

Yep, and preferably one to an HD that can be taken off site, no matter how many HD's you have, if they're all in the same place and you get burgled or a fire, you still loose the lot!

Sorry for the basics, I'm just still at the point of concern that using LR I might delete stuff I don't want to In the book he metions altering collections deleting etc will not destroy the main file, but I can't find much on backing up automatically all your raws and Jpegs

When you do the initial import of your images from the card, that's when I do chose to back up to a separate drive, as well.

Any help gratefully received

Have fun

 

[Clonetrooper]

Thanks very much guys for help clearing up my confusion

I thought it was just my back up OCD worrying about having a drive away from home, seems not

I'm thinking of getting another external drive to store at the mother in laws

Ok last area of confusion, so if I make my edits to the raws (I still shoot Jpeg and Raw combined) and want to save my edits I can export these edits to my main picture file and over write the originals on my physical drive?

^ I hope that makes some sense

Reading though the power of the library tools I should have made this step a long time ago

 

[arad85]

Ok last area of confusion, so if I make my edits to the raws (I still shoot Jpeg and Raw combined) and want to save my edits I can export these edits to my main picture file and over write the originals on my physical drive?

When you edit the photo in LR it doesn't change the original file at all. It edits by reading the file and then applying the edits and storing the editing steps in a sidecar file. The only time you get a file with all your edits in is when you export them somewhere.

 

[Clonetrooper]

Thanks that clears it up nicely for me and presumably when I export I can export to 2 separate hard drives at once to back up as I export?

 

[arad85]

Thanks that clears it up nicely for me and presumably when I export I can export to 2 separate hard drives at once to back up as I export?

Just backup the original file.

I only export when I'm sending to a lab for printing, mailing to someone else or displaying the processed image elsewhere (web or on display devices around the house). Everything else is done through Lightroom.

 

[treeman]

Thanks that clears it up nicely for me and presumably when I export I can export to 2 separate hard drives at once to back up as I export?

You can only export to one place at once, you'd have to do the export twice if you wanted it in two locations. Or alternatively, do what I do, if you're on a Mac, and let Time Machine do the auto backup for you

 

[aeronic]

You can only export to one place at once, you'd have to do the export twice if you wanted it in two locations. Or alternatively, do what I do, if you're on a Mac, and let Time Machine do the auto backup for you

Do you let time machine back up the original file, or the lr3 files or both?
Also, what is the location of the 'sidecar' files?

 

[neil_g]

all you need to back up is the catalogue files (you can use the built in options if you like) and the RAW files.

if you ever have to restore just load the cat file and if necessary point each collection to its new location and bobs your cross-dressing uncle.

 

[arad85]

all you need to back up is the catalogue files (you can use the built in options if you like) and the RAW files.

What about the xmp files? At a guess these are in the catalogue, but how do you regenerate them if they are not there?

 

[neil_g]

What about the xmp files? At a guess these are in the catalogue, but how do you regenerate them if they are not there?

those are just the view caches though arent they? i cant check as i accidentally unplugged my cat hard disk the other day and havent had a chance to reconnect :bonk:

if i remember rightly, again i cant check, they get regenerated when you load the collection or view the image. the built in backup routine just backs up the lcatr file which ive restored from when building the i7 box

 

[neil_g]

lrcat files not lcatr

 

[neil_g]

ah..

"Sidecar XMP files are required only when working with files with both Lightroom and Adobe Bridge or Photoshop CS5 for use in Camera Raw."

in which case they shouldnt hold any edit data for LR on its own.

 

[treeman]

Do you let time machine back up the original file, or the lr3 files or both?
Also, what is the location of the 'sidecar' files?

I have Time machine clone my folders where my images and LR folders are, so effectively copying all my RAWs and LR catalogue and all the associated files to an ext HD. This is the HD thats taken off site and swapped after any major additions.

 

[Byker28i]

If you're really anal like me, I have my raw files on two separate drives, one with this years and another larger one with previous years. The lightroom cache is on another and the catalogue on yet another drive.
Any exported jpegs are on yet another drive.

All get exported to an external USB disk weekly

 

[fixedimage]

My thread in the computer section hasn't had many replies so I'll tack this on here if it's ok?

When I work in LR I don't tend to actually do much in LR itself, instead editing a copy of my images in Silver Efex Pro (most of my pp work is conversions).

Now I know that if I backup the LR catalogue it saves any changes I make in the sidecar files BUT when I work in SEP I'm copying the original image and this won't be covered by the LR catalogue backup. (changes to the file would be but the actual file isn't.)

So I need a way of reliably backing up that newly created file.

I use Time Machine but not 100% confident since I lost a logic board middle of last year and old TM backups became useless as they were tied into the old mac address on the old, dead logic board.

I have 3 external HDs so use one for TM and do a manual backup into the other two by copying across any of the dated folders that aren't already on the external drive once a week.

My problem is, say I shoot on the weekend and upload on sunday night, backup on monday then edit the images from the weekend on tuesday, saving the files back into the sat/sun folder. The following Monday when I copy across the new dated folders I won't catch the files I created on Tuesday because I already have a sat and sun folder on the external drive.

I could try and remember what I've edited during the week and go through picking up the new files manually but if I shoot everyday of the week (common occurrence) then that's gonna take ages.

Is there a software solution that can do that check for me automatically? Or a better way of working? I suppose I could save/move my edited images into a new folder of finished images (used to work this way before LR) but I like that LR puts everything in the same place.

 

[treeman]

I use Time Machine but not 100% confident since I lost a logic board middle of last year and old TM backups became useless as they were tied into the old mac address on the old, dead logic board.

Are you sure about that? I've not had to restore anything other than to the machine I'm copying from, but I've been using it thinking that if my iMac died, I could just take the ext HD with the TM backup on, plug it into my MBP, and be up and running in no time :shrug:

Makes it next to useless if I can't?

 

[fixedimage]

Em, I'm not actually sure. Think I might be moaning about something that's a non issue actually.
I've remembered that the most annoying thing was that I couldn't just carry on where I left off with Time Machine because the old backups were from the old logic board and then the newer ones couldn't tie into that but I think the files were all there and could, possibly, have been dragged out onto the iMac hd if needed.

 

[Clonetrooper]

Just backup the original file.

I only export when I'm sending to a lab for printing, mailing to someone else or displaying the processed image elsewhere (web or on display devices around the house). Everything else is done through Lightroom.

Trying to understand your workflow here

So when you finish editing your raws you just leave them in lightroom? What I have been doing is shooting in raw and jpeg combined for now. I load all the pictures onto my hard drive pictures. I then fire up lightroom and edit the raws. I then convert them to jpeg and export them and over write the jpegs from the camera.

I think I'm getting to the stage where I can forget about shooting both modes, I did it to make it easier for my wife to view the pictures prior to editing the raws

I think I will then still convert to jpeg and export. Does lightroom then easily handle both file in your library? I tend to keep the processed jpeg and raw side by side in the same file.

Also when exporting a shot you will be printing do you use the output sharpening and select paper etc for a jpeg or just leave it default. Has it made much difference?

Thanks again guys for helping clear up these things in my head

 

[arad85]

Trying to understand your workflow here

So when you finish editing your raws you just leave them in lightroom?

Yes. I export ONLY when I want to view them elsewhere, mail them to someone or print them. I did a trip to the US recently and my workflow was as follows:

• Shoot RAW only
• Import photos every day or so, into laptop applying lens correction on import
• Sort through the raw files and marking the ones that are to be processed further
• Process the small subset that appear to be worth processing
• Reject any images that still don't appeal after processing
• Choose images that have been processed and export to Facebook so friends can see trip progress
• When we arrived home, merge the laptops catalogue with my main desktop catalogue. This preserves all the processing/marking already done on the laptop. I copied the raw and xmp files to a new location on my desktop and reconnected the locations in LR.
• Rechecked the processing done on the laptop on my main calibrated monitors. Some were redone but I could go back in the LR history to any point for a photo with the edits and start again as LR is non-destructive.
• Decide which images I liked and wanted to be able to display as a slideshow and exported those to a shared network drive. This drive can be seen by all PCs/media centres around the house so can be displayed by anyone at any time.
• Decide on a subset of images I wanted printing and apply the paper profile and print sharpening and export those for upload to a lab (I haven't done any experiments on different sharpening amounts)

The key thing is that I never manage any exported images in LR. They are just that - exported. I have the RAWs + processing list in LR, an export to Facebook - managed by LR, a set of JPEGs for display around the house - not managed by LR and some images I've printed via DSCL.

 

[Clonetrooper]

Interesting Andy thanks for that. I guess my worry would be if something happens to the catalogue file you lose all that processing and changes to your raws?

I guess it's backed up so not such a worry.

 

[arad85]

Interesting Andy thanks for that. I guess my worry would be if something happens to the catalogue file you lose all that processing and changes to your raws?

I guess it's backed up so not such a worry.

Backup strategy is entirely different (I have 3 copies of my data - 2 copies of which are on mirrored disks, so in reality I have 5 copies of my data). Backups are automated and happen every 20 minutes.

 

[Craikeybaby]

Interesting Andy thanks for that. I guess my worry would be if something happens to the catalogue file you lose all that processing and changes to your raws?

I guess it's backed up so not such a worry.

You can set Lightroom to write changes to XMP (or DNG), so even if the catalog is lost the changes are embedded in the sidecar file (or actual file for DNG).

 

[pablo_paul]

You can set Lightroom to write changes to XMP (or DNG), so even if the catalog is lost the changes are embedded in the sidecar file (or actual file for DNG).

Are you saying here that if I export an image as dng lightroom writes in the changes i have made (WB, Exposure, corrections, metdata,etc) or is it just raw data?

Reason I ask is I've been exported all of my final images using the publishing service as tiff's upto and then syncing to the cloud as my final last resort backup, if i used dng and all of the edit info is included I can save about a 1/3 of the disk space.

Sorry for the stupid question i don't know much about dng other than it's open raw with better loss less compression.

 

[pablo_paul]

I will answer my own question YES edits are embedded into dng when exporting from LR I just did some testing