Susan Taylor Brown
Active Member
- Joined
- Feb 7, 2012
- Messages
- 145
- Location
- Santa Cruz, CA
- Lightroom Experience
- Beginner
- Lightroom Version
- 6.x
After using Lightroom for a few months I'm no longer intimidated by it (and am more than a little in love with it) but like many newbies, I made some goofs in the beginning and I'd like to fix/change/improve some things.
Everything is great in the 2012 folder. That was when I got my new camera and installed Lightroom and let it import everything for me into the folder structure it wanted.
But then I went to get my other photos on the computer and they were all over the place in tons of folders (way too many folders deep with horrible names/structure.) Now that I've been using LR for while I can see how I can do away with all those folders and utilize keywords and collections to find what I need. One of the mistakes I made the first month was moving things around outside of LR so I have some of those missing folders to deal with. But mostly it is the idea that there are so many folders that make no sense and I want to get rid of that.
What I am thinking about doing is to remove everything from Lightroom EXCEPT for the 2012 folder. Then, outside of LR, move the photos however I plan to move them/dump them into one folder, whatever. Then re-import everything.
Here are my questions:
#1 - Does this seem like a good idea in order to gain better control?
#2 - I know I'll lose any collections those photos might be in but if I keyword them now, will I lose that as well? That's not a deal-breaker for me. I'm just curious. I'd rather redo it all just to get it done correctly. But if keywords would stay I have a lot of dumb collections that I could quickly keyword to make some quick sorting easier next time around. (I know I'll lose any changes made to photos but I haven't started to edit any of the pre-2012 photos so that's not an issue.)
#3 - In many of the posts I see reference to "create a new top-level folder to put all subfolders in" but I'm not sure where/how to do that so that LR will do what I want. LR created the 2012 folder in a folder called MY PICTURES. Right now I have all my photos that aren't in 2012 in another folder called MY PHOTOS > PHOTOMASTER. I'd like everything to be in one folder just for streamling, backups, etc.
Okay, this just came to me. Can I just remove everything from the catalog (except for 2012) have Lightroom import from all those folders and then have Lightroom, at the same time, MOVE them and would that get them into the other folder in a date format like 2012? And if that would work, could someone please talk me through how to do it so that I don't end up with all the folders, just photos by date?
#4 - Another question, not at all related to the ones above and just another curiosity one. I was at someone's house and she was using the same version of LR that I was (she was teaching me some things about develop mode so we were both working on identical photos on our own computers and the little preview window like you see on my screenshot, well hers was on the right side of the screen, above the develop tools and mine is always on the left. Just wondering why.
Whew! Thanks in advance.
Everything is great in the 2012 folder. That was when I got my new camera and installed Lightroom and let it import everything for me into the folder structure it wanted.
But then I went to get my other photos on the computer and they were all over the place in tons of folders (way too many folders deep with horrible names/structure.) Now that I've been using LR for while I can see how I can do away with all those folders and utilize keywords and collections to find what I need. One of the mistakes I made the first month was moving things around outside of LR so I have some of those missing folders to deal with. But mostly it is the idea that there are so many folders that make no sense and I want to get rid of that.
What I am thinking about doing is to remove everything from Lightroom EXCEPT for the 2012 folder. Then, outside of LR, move the photos however I plan to move them/dump them into one folder, whatever. Then re-import everything.
Here are my questions:
#1 - Does this seem like a good idea in order to gain better control?
#2 - I know I'll lose any collections those photos might be in but if I keyword them now, will I lose that as well? That's not a deal-breaker for me. I'm just curious. I'd rather redo it all just to get it done correctly. But if keywords would stay I have a lot of dumb collections that I could quickly keyword to make some quick sorting easier next time around. (I know I'll lose any changes made to photos but I haven't started to edit any of the pre-2012 photos so that's not an issue.)
#3 - In many of the posts I see reference to "create a new top-level folder to put all subfolders in" but I'm not sure where/how to do that so that LR will do what I want. LR created the 2012 folder in a folder called MY PICTURES. Right now I have all my photos that aren't in 2012 in another folder called MY PHOTOS > PHOTOMASTER. I'd like everything to be in one folder just for streamling, backups, etc.
Okay, this just came to me. Can I just remove everything from the catalog (except for 2012) have Lightroom import from all those folders and then have Lightroom, at the same time, MOVE them and would that get them into the other folder in a date format like 2012? And if that would work, could someone please talk me through how to do it so that I don't end up with all the folders, just photos by date?
#4 - Another question, not at all related to the ones above and just another curiosity one. I was at someone's house and she was using the same version of LR that I was (she was teaching me some things about develop mode so we were both working on identical photos on our own computers and the little preview window like you see on my screenshot, well hers was on the right side of the screen, above the develop tools and mine is always on the left. Just wondering why.
Whew! Thanks in advance.