Lesson Info
11. Light Room Organization Q&A
Lessons
Storing Your Photos
06:03 2Understanding the Catalog
10:18 3Organizing and Naming Your Folders of Images
06:20 4First-Time Import
19:43 5Maximizing the Import and Flag Ratings
05:53 6Color Labels and Star Ratings
08:12 7Assigning Keywords
03:41 8Updating Metadata
02:21Lesson Info
Light Room Organization Q&A
What if you are one of those people who does not have everything organized right now, you have a ton of images in there? Sure. What would you recommend doing so I once he brought everything in the light room. As I said before, once you've started using light room as your primary tool for organizing your images, you really need to commit to maintain using light room as your soul, or at least your primary source for organizing your photos. But it's surprising how much you can do actually within, like, room. There's a few things I'll give a couple of examples, which hopefully help to kind of, you know, explain, Start if you already were all, I would start with folder structure. And so we talked about that a little bit in the context of ideally cleaning things up beforehand. But I can also do that after the fact. So let's go look at an example this visit to San Francisco folder that I have here, I'm gonna turn off all my filter criteria so we can see the images I could just inside of light...
room itself. I can right click and then rename that folder so Let's just call it, for example, just San Francisco and using that same structure that I was using before something like that and Save. And that folder has been renamed not just in light room, but actually on my hard drives. If I go out to my hard drive, I'll be able to see that the folder itself was renamed. So that's one thing. If you've made other changes a really good example. I find a lot of photographers start off with pick flags because they seem to make a lot of sense, and then they learn a little bit more and they decide they want star ratings. So let's assume, won't go back into all photographs and I'll filter based on pick flags. So here's some images to which I signed pick flags, but they really should have gotten a one star rating, for example, based on my approach toe workflow. Well, look, I've already filtered based on the pick flag. Now I can select all make sure I'm in the grid views that I'm able to assign updates to multiple images all at once. If I'm in the loop, you then light room assumes that I'm working on one image. If I'm working in the grid view, it assumes I'm working with multiple images, so select all of those images after having filtered them. And then I compress the number one to assign a one star rating, and I can press the letter you to remove the pick flag, and now I'll go ahead and switch that filter to one star. And among all those other images, there are the images that I just changed from a pick flag, too. A star rating. And so, by cleaning up your folder structure, we can move folders around, move images around. So if I had multiple images in a folder that were actually from two different trips, I could create a new folder. There's an option here to add a folder, and so I could create a brand new folder. Copy Samoon News moves. Some images into that new folder rename the folders as needed. So a lot of times, photographers don't realize that we can create new folders inside of light room, weaken rename folders inside of light room. We can move images on the hard drive within light room, and so there's so much that we can do here. Don't ever go outside of like room to do that. Because if you do like, room will get confused about weight. The folders, Not where I thought it was gonna be. Where the photos were, not where I thought they were going to be. Actually was going to be the next question, right? I was going to ask you from Phil Birdie, can you move a folder after it has been catalogued in light room will likely find it. And I think that's really important to note for people, because if you try to move it right in the file, it won't find. So, yes, you absolutely can move. In this case, I have a pretty flat folder structure. So, you know, dragging and dropping. Let's just pretend like Central Park flowers belongs inside of my Austria folder. Just for some arbitrary reason, I could drag and drop right here inside of light room. And the folder appears there. If I change my mind, I could drag it out to my top level folder, for example. Again, I can rename I could move images, but let's take a look mawr importantly, at what happens, I'm gonna go out to that folder location. Here's the workshop at M. M W folder that we earlier decided was named really bad. So we'll just call Main. We'll just call this main workshop 2012 Dachau seven. And now we come back in the light room and look what happens. The images. You see the exclamation point? The images are missing. The folder. You see the question mark. The folder is missing because I broke the rule. I got outside a light room and renamed my folder. Removed my folder renamed my Images. And so now I need to reconnect. If it's an individual image, I can click the exclamation point for that image and bring up a dialog where I can choose to locate Or, in the case of a folder, I can right click and shoes, find missing folder and then go out. So note that on in light room on that folder list, it's indicated. Still, as workshop at M. M. W. It still is referencing the old name. If I go out to my storage location and find the new name, which is main workshop, select that folder. I'm basically saying that folder in light room relates to this folder on my hard drive. I'll choose that and everything gets reconnected and light room is happy again. But again, we can avoid most of those problems by making sure that we start every task related to our photos inside of light room. Once we're using light room to organize our photos, stick with light room for organizing our photos and again really important be consistent about that workflow as well. I have two questions. So when you re named that folder just now, you said it would rename on your hard drive. But your devices are on your external hard drive. Does it have to be plugged in when you do it? Yeah. The folder itself would have to be available for likened access like you plugged it in later. It would update, then correct. Well, you wouldn't have the option to rename it if the drive was disconnected because the folder would be missing. You wouldn't be able to find it to recanted. My other question is, if you have 300,000 images in your catalog, how does light room not run slowly? So how does like I'm not slow down when I've got 300, years. This actually is much less of an issue than it used to be. So light room version one version to some around in there. If you got up to about 30, images, things would slow to a crawl, with 300, images now in the latest versions of Light Room. So like 15 Right now, the only thing that's a little bit slow is when I initially launch light from the catalogue. It's a little bit slow to populate the numbers for how many images Aaron each folder. But Aiken filter once, in other words, once like when it's finished loading, I'm able to work really quickly. So it's surprising but true. All right, with regard to your actual mobile raw files, I'm a little confused as to why we're making a copy and working from a copy. And are you backing up 1/ copy then of your original raw files and you're not working off of that? So no, I'm so I am working off my, you know, original, so to speak. So I guess you could say the original was on my media card in the camera. Then I copy it to two locations. My photos drive, plus a backup dry. And so that photos Driver's where I'm actually and that's where you're importing from. Okay, so you've already downloaded and backed up. I'm just making sure from the memory card also is to an external hard drive and then import into light room. That's all in one process. When we import from a card, we're copying the images from the card to the external hard drive. We're putting them into the light room catalogue ratting keywords, perhaps adding metadata were able to do all sorts of things all in one step. That's the actual time when those images are being copied. From my card to my hopefully two different hard drives. I've got two copies of the photos, plus 1/3 copy on the card. But I can then reform at the card and use it again. But it's that actual process. The light room is referencing my original raw captures, which is why, for example, I mentioned the smart previous if I have all of my images on an external hard drive, but it's not connected to my computer, then, like room can't see the images and I can't work in the develop module, for example, I can still work in the library module. I can still add keywords. Aiken still assigned star ratings, etcetera. I just can't adjust the images in the develop module unless I've made the smart previous. In which case I can. You have a lot of flexibility in terms of being able to work without this source images. But generally speaking, I would say he want to have the source Image is available. Okay, I see that you're able to change thymus faras full on ours. But can you change time by the minute also, do you know well, so changing time You're able to shift time zone by hours. Yeah, times. And you can change the time to a specific time. But then you would need to apply that change on image by image basis so you can adjust the shift by a specific in a specific direction. But if you want to get down to the second, for example, that you're gonna be adjusting individually just for multiple photographers, if one cameras off, then it messes the format, everything, and that it really comes down to that notion. You can certainly make adjustments but it's gonna be a little bit tricky, but it underscores the importance of at the time of getting set up to synchronize. And even if it's one photographer with a couple of camera bodies, you know, even if it's just your IPhone plus your SLR, making sure that you've synchronised the time ahead of time across those images. Yes, you could make the adjustments. It's just not as quick and easy its just a time zone adjustment.
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Ratings and Reviews
jen
I have discovered a new teacher I LOVE. I love the pace of Tim's teaching as well as his linear pratical advise. He stays on task as he teaches and is thorough. He even adds a little humor. This is a great to the point course!
Gary Hook
Tim has a great style and a wealth of knowledge. I appreciate that he not only talks about a technique, but takes the time to actually demonstrate the 'how' and the results. Although I've been using LR for some time, I came away with some great tips and insights in some areas such as using the Maps function as a search tool
Michael Griffith
I've been using Lightroom for a number of years, but thought it might be helpful to review the program. Tim Grey does is an expert in the program and does a wonderful job of explaining the intricacies of the program. He uses a lot of self deprecating humor and his examples stick with you. The map feature is one LR tab I've never before used. Having updated some of the metadata tags, I can easily find my pictures of Costa Rica or Taos, NM. (plus its fun to see my travels plotted on a map)
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