Using lightroom to catalogue Jpegs as well?

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Quick one. :D

I'm currently working out which method to use for assembling my catalogue, old and new. Prior to lightroom I would just edit my raws and export them to jpeg.

They then just sat in files in my photo folders on windows with both the jpegs and the raws backed up.

I notice when I import photos lightroom is only dealing with the raws so I'm basically still editing the raws and exporting them to jpegs but lightroom is not cataloging the Jpegs to view.

I have thousands of older pictures than I took on point and shoot that I would like to include and catalogue and jpegs I took when I started out with the dslr.

Is this possible and worth it or do I have to manage these separately from raws? If possible I'd like to include, tag and catalogue those older files to have all my photos in one easier to seach and view place :)

Any workflow help or advice gratefully received :)
 
Lightroom does handle RAWs & JPEGs properly. If they have the same name, Lightroom sees them as the same file so stacks them. If you want to change this set:

Edit->Preferences->General->Treat JPEG files next to raw files as separate photos
 
ah ok thanks Andy, sorry I'm a noob with this :(

So If I want to catalogue all my older Jpegs and import all X thousand of them older pictures that didn't have a raw will show the jpeg anyway?
 
It will manage what you want it to manage. You can import pictures and add them (rather than copy) so that leaves them where they are in the file structure. Have a play for a day or so with a copied directory to get used to it.
 
Thanks Andy, I keep having to remind this old brain that Lightroom in non destructive and is linking to my already created folder system.

One last question for now. All my folders are on my G drive (of course backed up to 2 other places) Lightroom will create a catalogue file when I started organising which I will then back up. If my G drive fails, I can of course replace it and does the lightroom catalogue file then work straight away without having to re-tag/name everything?
 
dannyjo22 said:
One last question for now. All my folders are on my G drive (of course backed up to 2 other places) Lightroom will create a catalogue file when I started organising which I will then back up. If my G drive fails, I can of course replace it and does the lightroom catalogue file then work straight away without having to re-tag/name everything?
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Yes. If you put everything back to where it was in the previous drive, same names etc... it is seamless. If you move the directory elsewhere in your filesystem, LR will put a ? on the folder and you can reconnect the folder with a right click (although it is just easy to move files within LR).
 
Thanks Andy you have been a great help. Currently importing all my photo's as I type and will try to make some head way into coming up with a decent importing workflow from now on. Can't be bothered to rename all my old files but I will on future imports :)
 
FWIW I've drawn a line under before I got my SLR and just left all of my old images in the folder structure they were in rather than clogging up my Lightroom catalogue.
 
Craikeybaby said:
FWIW I've drawn a line under before I got my SLR and just left all of my old images in the folder structure they were in rather than clogging up my Lightroom catalogue.
Click to expand...

I perhaps should have done the same. I have it set up now to my liking, but because of how I numbered some jpegs to others the import was a bit hit and miss as to whether it put them next to the raw or even imported them at all. As obviously just importing the raw before lightroom wasn't showing my finished jpeg.

I've sorted it now. I just need to sort through the pictures and tag them with keywords to make searching a bit easier but my file structure is basically the same as it was in windows pictures anyway.

Now i've everything imported I can switch to just raws and have the changes saved by lightroom, although I can see I will still export then to jpeg in my old file system as well :D
 
A Lightroom catalogue can handle 100s of thousands of image details, so don't feel you have to chop out loads of old images, the catalogue won't slow things down.

I would suggest using the smart collections facility to automatically sort out sub-sets of images such as "JPEG files", "raw files", 2012 files, 1975 files", etc. etc. An image can be referenced in multiple sets as well, which is really handy.

Anthony.
 
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