My Lightroom Catalog is a Mess...

[Bennp2000]

When I first installed Lightroom I didn't really fully understand what it was and whether or not I'd stick with it.

I imported stuff, didn't use any keywords and manually changed folder names from their import date (something I've just fixed tonight...it was tedious).

As I tried to get more organised I've starred things, with 5's being the picks from each set and a smart collection of 5's with a colour being my current portfolio.

Unfortunately roughly half of my images are un-starred and I'd say about 70% have no tags. This needs fixing as my computer is filling up rapidly and I know there are tonnes of shots that can simply be deleted and about the same amount that I can never find (without flicking through folder after folder).

Is there anything else I might as well do whilst I'm carrying out this less than thrilling task? (LR 3.7). What tricks and tips do people have for keeping their catalogs organised?

Do people use flags for their first pass of images so that anything that can be binned is easily identifiable?

 

[EOS_JD]

Press X to mark images as rejected (so easy to delete)
5s should be reserved for the best of the best.

In your hard drive, make sure that you have an appropriate structure. If you have a structure you can find images much easier especially so if they're not tagged.

Once images are sorted on your drive you can synchronise folders and Lr will adjust the location and fix the catalogue so that images are pointed to the right folders and images. If moving images just make sure the xmp files move to the same folder as the RAWs.

You could create appropriate collections for your images too if you like.

Loads of ways of sortig these.

Most importantly make sure you have a backup of all images and the Lr catalogue.

 

[Bennp2000]

Thanks. I have a NAS drive with redundancy, I really could do with an off-site backup though too (the best stuff is backed up, online, but not all of it).

 

[happy haggis]

I would suggest that any folder structure changes you make are done within LR itself rather than through your file manager externally. LR will automatically update the locations for you and you don't have to faff about pointing LR to the correct folders.

 

[Kerioak]

I don't use stars and colours much except for when I am actually working on a batch, I do try and keyword well though as find this the most useful. As and when I get time I am currently going though deleting pictures that I took years ago and feel I will never use the whole or part of them as they do take up a lot of space, and rekeywording others as I know have more specific requirments then I did then

 

[Bennp2000]

I would suggest that any folder structure changes you make are done within LR itself rather than through your file manager externally. LR will automatically update the locations for you and you don't have to faff about pointing LR to the correct folders.

I did it in LR itself. I'm glad I did otherwise it'd have ended in trouble!

 

[EOS_JD]

Yes doing it in Lightroom works but it's not difficult synching the folders back or searching and locating missing files. That's one of the great things in Lr

 

[Chappers]

I'd take a few moments and decide how you want to organise your images. OK it may be a bit late for the stuff you have already but thinking about it now will help in the future.

It may also be possible for you to reorganise the current set of images to be partly if not fully in line with your new procedures. Now I don't keyword everything. Sometimes it not necessary. However what I do do is to rename the files within a certain batch with an appropriate file name. These are then stored withing a main folder then within in a year folder

For example

2012/
Cornwall 2012/
Mevagissey

Images renamed Mevagissey 2012 101.....112 etc


This is how they are also stored on the computer. So even if I have a major computer problem I can manually find the image I need ( Hopefully).


Now within 2012 there will be everything I shot this year. Inside Cornwall will be other locations.. Some images of Mevagissey may contain keywords, such as Fishing boat or Fishing harbour. Even without keywords I could possibly find a harbour shot by just entering Mevagissey or even Cornwall into the search fields.

Another thing you might like to try is to set up a trail catalog. Import some images from your files and see how the structure works. If it works fine then continue, if not just delete it.

Yes we all have a lot of junk on the computer. Duplicated shots ( or even more) Every so often I go through mine a delete the absolute rubbish ( not sure why they were on there in the first place ) as suggested mark those for deletion with the X key and the use the cmd/ctrl backspace command to delete them. Remember though you have an option here, delete from Lightroom or delete from disk.

Finally Back up . Not only your images but also your Lightroom catalog. The catalog is very stable but things can happen and having a recent back up can save a whole world of grief

 

[garryknight]

Tagging a lot of photos can be a real chore unless you organise it. I would spend a bit of time deciding on some good 'top-level' keywords to make it easy to find any particular photo. Place names for example. And subject categories, e.g. street, portrait, landscape, plant, wildlife, event, are a few of the ones I'd use.

Then go through your collection tagging photos one category at a time. Click or Ctrl-click to select everything for one category then add the tag. Then onto the next category. All you need to do when you take a break is keep track of which category you did last. It's a lot faster doing it this way than tagging the photos one at a time and either typing a tag a lot more than once or finding it in the list to add by clicking it.

Rather than going through your folders one at a time adding top-level tags, you can click the topmost folder then select Library/Show photos in subfolders. This will put your entire collection in the Gallery window ready for tagging. If that's too many to handle, you could temporarily drag some folders inside a newly-created empty folder and click the new folder to display everything in its subfolders. Once you've finished tagging, drag the folders back where they were.

You might decide once you've added top-level tags that you don't need to tag any more. If one day you're looking for that picture of Auntie Maude, you only have to look through the ones with the portrait tag rather than through your entire collection.