Lightroom catalogues/workflow

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 Andy Hudson 03 May 2017
Just started to try to use lightroom a bit more efficiently and have a few questions which maybe someone can answer.....no doubt there may be different viewpoints

So I have a folder "Pictures", its on an external drive but it could well be the pictures folder on the PC, i don't think its relevant?.

Within that folder there are sub folders e.g. dales walks, peak climbing, etc. I then have a sub folder for each walk /climbing day e.g. Scafell Pike January 2017, Stanage July 2016.

Once i've created the sub folder e.g. Stanage 2016 within that I copy the raw images and also have a sub folder "edited" where i export the edited versions from lightroom as JPEGS

Am i better just having 1 folder called for example "walks" with walks from everywhere and creating keywords.

Am i right in saying you can't search for a keyword in multiple catalogues?

Where is the best place to keep the raw images?

Where is the best place to create the catalogue?

Any advice in general on catalogues, keywords and workflow appreciated.













 Phil West 03 May 2017
In reply to Andy Hudson:

I'm fairly new to LR but here's what I do:

All my photos are in one folder 'Photos' on a portable HDD
One LR catalogue on the same portable HDD
Both backed up to a desktop HDD
I then use LR to create collections. I have smart collections for year and then manually created collections such as 'Climbing' and one called 'Holidays' with sub-collections such as 'Barcelona Aug 2016'
I'm currently in the process of adding keywords to all my images as I hadn't done my historical ones which I transferred from iPhoto. All my recent photos are tagged as is everything up to 2011. Just got 2012-16 left to do now. Then I'm going to look at embedding the metadata in sidecar .xmp files so I never have to do it again!

I do all this because I like to keep everything in one place other wise I'd have to remember which catalogue an image is in. Easy if you have work/personal or something but it would be a nightmare for me if I had to remember which year's catalogues it is in!

Everything opens lightning fast on my macbook pro. No lag anywhere.

You could create smart collections to group your RAWs and JPEGs

Hope that helps.

Phil
 MrRiley 04 May 2017
In reply to Andy Hudson:

Hi Andy, I would take a look at some of the youtube tutorials on this - there are many excellent ones showing the typical import workflow while explaining all about the catalogue, metadata etc.

One thing to bear in mind though is that the catalogue (AFAIK) is just where all your metadata and develop settings are stored, rather than the images themselves. So it doesn't really matter where/how you store your RAW files as long as they're in the same place if you ever go back to them via LR.

I've never used multiple catalogues so not sure about searching many simultaneously. My catalogue sits in the default location on my HD - Pictures=>Lightroom=>catalogue, but I back it up weekly to cloud storage. All my photos are also on cloud storage as well as a USB HDD incidentally.

Dave
 ChrisJD 04 May 2017
In reply to Andy Hudson:
Q: for what purpose are you creating jpgs?


I used to keyword images, don't anymore as takes far too long.

I just now use flags and stars.

And a Time Line folder structure hierarchy (time line is the important thing for me):

2015
2016
2017

Then sequential folder within each year for separate trips, days out and monthly general foldersin the order they took place.

01-2017 Jan trip xxxx
02-2017- Jan General
03-2017-Feb Peaks Ladybower Walk
04--207-Feb Half Term Hols

On Import I use a rename Preset so that a date YYMM prefix is added to the start of the file name.

Then use Collections using similar folder hierarchy.

And Publish Services to export to FaceBook and Flickr.

Don't routinely create any jpgs. Printing all done from LR, saved 'Prints' in Collections.

Use one Master Catalog.

I won't bore you with my hard drive and backup set up!
Post edited at 18:08
 ChrisJD 04 May 2017
In reply to Andy Hudson:

Also look at this past thread:

https://www.ukhillwalking.com/forums/t.php?t=657499
 The Lemming 04 May 2017
In reply to ChrisJD:


Thanks for that. I've just re-read the whole discussion and learned a little bit more about my choice of work flow.

You'll be pleased to know that I have finally stopped the practice of converting to JPEG. However my work-flow still differs from the considered best practice of trusting in Lightroom Catalogues. Catalogues can fail and/or become corrupt and this scares me.

My preferred work-flow, following advice and guidance from both yourself and other Lightroom Jedi is as follows:

Import RAW files to Lightroom
Use a preset profile, adapted from your initial sample profile
Kill off the duff images
Tinker with the best images, if so inclined.
Add key words to the images
Export the images as DNG files, with their Key words imbedded into the images, into a file structure on my computer.
And for those with a sensitive mind look away now. I delete the RAW files to save space.

My thinking is that the DNG files are as good as RAW flies with the added benefit of having key words attached for finding images that I want through a quick search of those key words.

As for file structure on my computer:

I keep all my images in a main folder titled with the year that I took the images.
Inside that main annual folder I keep smaller folders of the events that I photographed. The folder gets a name and date when taken.

And all this has its own back-up structure. I find backing up my images more important than the concept of backing up a Lightroom catalogue. At the moment I have resisted in creating a Lightroom catalogue as it can be somewhere between 5Gb and 10GB and I find this too big to rely on for a piece of software that could be made obsolete in 10 years.

At least I've stopped saving to JPEG.

 ChrisJD 04 May 2017
In reply to The Lemming:

> At the moment I have resisted in creating a Lightroom catalogue as it can be somewhere between 5Gb and 10GB and I find this too big to rely on for a piece of software that could be made obsolete in 10 years.

Eh? How can you not have a LR Catalog if you are using LR! Or did you mean create backup

And my main LR Cat is only c. 2GB (many 10,000s of images, not that they are stored in the Cat. Catalog is backed up weekly). Not sure why you think the size makes it too big to rely on?

 The Lemming 04 May 2017
In reply to ChrisJD:

> Eh? How can you not have a LR Catalog if you are using LR! Or did you mean create backup

I'm getting confused, I ment backup the catalogue. And yes, previous catalogues are >5Gb.

I only have 23,500 images as well, which is confusing for such a big catalogue. I must have something set up wrong. I'm using LR 5.7.
 ChrisJD 04 May 2017
In reply to The Lemming:

>5Gb.I only have 23,500 images as well, which is confusing for such a big catalogue. I must have something set up wrong. I'm using LR 5.7.

Have you Optimised the Cat?
 HeMa 04 May 2017
In reply to The Lemming:

You're including the (smart) preview images in the size...

I seem to recall that my catalog of well over 50 000 RAWs is actually not that big (sub 1Gb if I recall correctly), but naturally the size is big if including the smart previews.


For what it's worth, I made the blunder of having separate catalogs for RAWs and the other for Jpegs (from other cameres)... An currently in the process of harmonising and then merging them together (hell of a job, not adviced).

As for basic hierarchy, I use year/trip stucture to store the images (on RAID5 NAS), and then include the following naming convention for the always copied as DGNs.

Oh, and I generally also generate Smart Previews, as I mostly edit "off-line" from the NAS. Also copy the catalog (not the previews) to the NAS, as I use LR from either a laptop (more often) or an iMac (rarely).
 The Lemming 04 May 2017
In reply to ChrisJD:

> Have you Optimised the Cat?

I think I can safely say, that's a no.

 The Lemming 04 May 2017
In reply to HeMa:

> and I generally also generate Smart Previews, as I mostly edit "off-line" from the NAS. Also copy the catalog (not the previews) to the NAS, as I use LR from either a laptop (more often) or an iMac (rarely).


I keep my images on a seperate drive on my computer, and then back-up those images to a NAS box.

You back your catalogue to the NAS box?

I'm also confused to what smart previews are and why you would save them to the computer but not the NAS?
 ChrisJD 04 May 2017
In reply to The Lemming:

Click 'File' in top bar then select 'Optimize Catalog'
 HeMa 05 May 2017
In reply to The Lemming:

Smart Preview is an editable offline copy of the pic. So If you have smart previews, you can edit them without actually having the big DGN on the laptop (or connected to the NAS).
OP Andy Hudson 05 May 2017
In reply to ChrisJD:
Q: for what purpose are you creating jpgs?

In the past just for uploading onto facebook and flickr although i am aware and have used the plugins for that.
Also for uploading on websites for printing.
Putting onto discs for people e.g if we've taken photos at a wedding
viewing edited images on laptop





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