Managing Folders and contents

[Merlyn]

Hi Susan

Ok, stop a minute.

I wouldn't recommend removing the photos from your catalog, as you'll lose anything you've done to the photos in LR (there are some exceptions, but...). I'm sure we can tidy them up within LR.

So what's the eventual aim here? Just to have everything in a parent folder for easy backup? Or were you wanting most photos in a dated folder structure?

You probably don't want to scan your whole computer, as it'll find the little icons included with programs and all sorts of rubbish. Scanning your normal data folders would definitely be an option though.

Hi
I am new to LR and new to this forum (and really impressed I must say). So if this question is inappropriate in this thread my apologies. After having read some of the entries in the forum I think my question is likely relevant to others.
So my issue:
I have imported into LR all of my folders with pictures. The folder structure was a work in progress and shows remnants of a number of different strategies to achieve different things - well more than just remnants. I should have cleaned things up before importing - noting that any cleanup would be imperfect and then I would still have the same problem. So I have duplicated photos (mainly intentional), photos in folders that I should have moved to other folders etc. So I think the general question is to what extent can I do this cleanup or file management work from LR.

My problem with duplicated photos is resolved - I wanted LR to show them in the folders they were in, and not ignore them - it was just a matter of ticking the right box at import time.

However while I can see LR lets me do some file management - eg delete photos from a folder, create new folders; I can't see how to do other things. An example: from grid view I would like to select photos and then move them to another folder - I tried dropping and dragging without luck.

Is there an article or link that covers Folder and File Management from LR comprehensively?

My list of things would be (some of which LR does - the other I'm not sure about)
- Creating folders
- Moving folders with associated nesting
- Deleting folders with contents
- Here's a good one - Deleting folders but leaving contents to aggregate into the parent folder (great for those who have Year / Month /Day folders and want to convert to Year / Month - they would just select all the children folders in a month, ie the day folders and delete them, leaving all of the photos sitting underneath the month folder.)
- Copy selected photos to another folder
- Move selected photos to another folder
- Delete selected photos (LR does this in an interesting way ie non intuitive way with Raw+JPeg - I imported without ticking the JPEG as separate files option in Edit>Preferences, and my understanding is that LR only imports the RAW file and unless I do a specific import I can't access the JPEG - however when I delete from LR it deletes both)
Thanks

[Victoria Bampton]

Hi Merlyn, welcome to the forum!

I've split your question off into another thread so we don't end up talking at cross-purposes.

One of the best (free) descriptions I've seen of LR's catalog/folders is George Jardine's video: http://tv.adobe.com/watch/george-jar...troom-catalog/ It was recorded a long time ago, so you'll notice that some bits of UI have changed a bit, but the principles remain the same.

Main things to remember:

* Anything you do in Lightroom (in terms of file management - moving, renaming, deleting) is replicated on the hard drive. Doing stuff on the hard drive isn't automatically replicated into LR.

* Once you've imported photos into LR, you're usually best managing them there too. If you move/rename files/folders using Explorer, then LR won't know where you've put them and will expect you to relink the photos to their new location.

* You can't COPY files into a different folder in LR, as the idea is you have a single copy on the hard drive (backed up elsewhere of course) and use different tools in LR to group them (i.e. keywords, collections, etc).

As far as clearing out duplicates goes, there's a plug-in which can help to identify the duplicates, if you think you have many that you need to sort out.

Watch the video to get a quick overview, and then feel free to come back and ask more questions.

[TNG]

One more thing to add: drag and drop does work (on single or multiple-selected images in the grid), but you have to drag from the actual image, not the surrounding grey frame. Just about everybody gets caught by that at least once.....

[Merlyn]

Thanks. I will chase up the links. (I'm humbled by how patient you guys are.)

Jim - yep I've got drag and drop to work as you described. Just click in the centre of the thumbnail, drag and drop and its all good.

Now there is still one "puzzlement". If i shoot RAW+JPEG, copy onto my drive using whatever, and then import the RAW files only into Lightroom (ie WITHOUT ticking the box "Treat JPEG files next to RAW files as separate photos" in Edit>Preferences) in LR, I can't access the JPEG because I presume it has not been imported (even though the file name is shown as xxxx.NEF+JPG for Nikon or xxxx.CR2 +JPEG for Canon). However if I delete the photo or move the photo, both the RAW and JPEG images are dealt with on the hard disk - ie deleted or moved. So my presumption "the JPEG is not imported" is not really true - it appears its "half imported".

Also can anyone confirm that if I have done an import as described above, that I cannot access the JPEG from Lightroom presumably until I do another import with the relevant box "Treat JPEG files next to RAW files as separate photos" in Edit>Preferences ticked.

[TNG]

"Half imported" is a reasonable way to describe it....in fact if you look at the metadata panel for one of the Raw files you'll see that the associated Jpeg is recorded as a 'sidecar' file. As such there's nothing much you can do with it in Lightroom, and as you have discovered being a sidecar file any OS-type change you make to the Raw from within Lightroom (such as move, rename, delete) is equally applied to the sidecar file.

Also as you have discovered, if you change the Preference setting then it doesn't work retrospectively.....previously "imported" jpeg sidecars don't suddenly appear as new images in Lightroom. If you want them brought is as independent files you can import them, or perhaps a slightly quicker way would be to synchronise the folder (after you tick that Preference setting of course).

[Merlyn]

Many thanks Jim for advice and patience. I've bought "LR4 classroom in a book" and will work my way through that before posting any more questions - I was getting a little (perhaps way) ahead of myself.