Lightroom 5 (All discussions)

Hammie

Mine is weekly, but I may change to whenever I close... and also move to a different location.

sevencrossing

I had my external SSD drive where I keep all my photography files plugged into my laptop. The light just started flickering on my external drive. It is alive again!
I am backing up EVERYTHING right now.
.

That is indeed good news

I case people don't know the LR catalogue contains the data on ALL your PP; your RAW files are not changed
( PP is only applied when you export the image )
By default, LR backs up, to your main hard drive, not an issue if you back up the hard drive daily, but if you only back your RAW files, you could be for a nasty shock

Still interested in hearing how everyone is using and organizing their catalog

On import, LR puts the all RAW files from each day in a separate folder and renumbers the files using date / time
( so there is separate folder for every day)
by default LR copies ALL my RAW files to a separate external drive,

Next I deleted the rubbish from my main drive but keep everything on the back up drive
I then use the painter tool, to add keywords
next I add a tag to the ones I like ( keepers )
I use the attributes bar to select the keepers
Similar shots are viewed in grid view and the one I don't like get untagged
All the remaining keepers get 3 stars
The best get 4 Stars ( about 1 in 10)
Anything exceptional gets 5 stars
(less than 10 shots a year get 5 stars)
When I am at a loose end, I look through the untagged images and delete most of them

I only shoot and keep RAW files
when I export images as jpegs, they go in a temporary folder They may be deleted, once the client confirms they have received them and hopefully made a back up


Finally, from time to time, practice restoring stuff you have backed up

Hammie

I made the mistake of only getting the 256GB hard drive in my new MBP. I need to be selective on what files I store locally. My older MBP had dual 512GB SSD drives so I could save EVERYTHING locally and just do backups to my NAS.

I like the idea of making a copy to a different drive. I may look into implementing it into my workflow.

As an added backup, I also have my RAW files (and older JPEGs from before I went DSLR) saved to Amazon Cloud and Microsoft OneDrive. I usually batch upload them weekly.

sevencrossing

......As an added backup, I also have my RAW files ...... saved to Amazon Cloud .....

have you tried restoring them ?
how long does it take ???

Hammie

I have not tried restoring them. I know uploading them was pretty quick, but I don't know how many you have in comparison to me.

I did 14 years worth of JPEGs and NEFs in about a day... not continuous since I was multitasking. That was about 40,000 files -- roughly 225GB of files.

sevencrossing

last year 5,000 keepers 165 GB

WestEndFoto

You uploaded 225gb in a day? Really?

Hammie

@WestEndFoto

I have 105 Mbps cable Internet at my house. Since the head-end is a couple blocks away, I often get closer to 200Mbps. Average is about 130 Mbps. I know that id download speeds. Upload is probably about 80-100Mbps on average.

WestEndFoto

Very impressive! Where are you?

Hammie

Frederick, Maryland

WestEndFoto

Hmmmmm........ I need to take our Vancouver, B.C. providers to task.

Photobug

@WestEndFoto
I have 105 Mbps cable Internet at my house. Since the head-end is a couple blocks away, I often get closer to 200Mbps. Average is about 130 Mbps. I know that id download speeds. Upload is probably about 80-100Mbps on average.

Hammie, that is terrific. I though I died and went to heaven when my Internet provider upgraded their 30 Mbps to 60 Mbps for free. I never get lower than 62 and it typically runs at 64 Mbps. I am envious about your download speed.

Vipmediastar_JZ

I have all my nikon folders from the d80 to the the d810 in a folder like this

Photo drive\pictures\nikon\D80, d90,- D810 etc..
Inside each folder i put the event, location or shoot \D810\chicago 1-14-15 or \d810\Adriana model shoot 1-14-15 etc.
I need to re-arrange to year like this d810\2014 and \2015\Adriana model shoot 1-14-15 so that I have a quick find.

it gets like a maze especially when 300 shoots start with d800\chicago etc..

That drive is then backed up to to an external storage called king and then that is backed up to a another external storage called queen.

I have more backups for archives but I need to complete them. Every since Yosemite I haven't re-configured my Carbon copy cloner setup and that is a mistake as one of my SD cards died but I already had those files saved.

I like carbon copy cloner, you can schedule tasks for a whole drive image, folder or files.
I seperately scheduled the backup of the LR catalog to a weekly backup externaly as well.

I hope that helps.

Hammie

I also use CCC. Love that program. I just updated it today to include a few more backup paths.

Gjesdal

I have all my nikon folders from the d80 to the the d810 in a folder like this

Photo drive\pictures\nikon\D80, d90,- D810 etc..
Inside each folder i put the event, location or shoot \D810\chicago 1-14-15 or \d810\Adriana model shoot 1-14-15 etc.
I need to re-arrange to year like this d810\2014 and \2015\Adriana model shoot 1-14-15 so that I have a quick find.

it gets like a maze especially when 300 shoots start with d800\chicago etc..

This is by far the strangest way of organizing ones files I've ever come across (top that off with me working for a local municipality since 1999 as IT manager....) I'm not going to judge, but I would never recommend such a system.

What one shoots should naturally affect how to organize ones photos, like I have a friend who shoots eagles from a hideout, for him to organize his shots by place would be crazy as he always sits in one spot :-), but for a traveling photographer that might be a good idea.

YYYY/MM/DD is the way I do it, but had I started today I probably would have organized different, but when I started with Lightroom I had no idea that I would shoot the way I do now.
For me it probably would have been much better if I divided my Events and portrait shoots after clients/model name and then date..
I'm not going to reorganize it though...
I do tag my photos so if I can't remember when I took it I can easily find it from my tags.

Hammie

I agree with Gjesdal. That is a very confusing filing system. My files are imported with the format YYYY_MM_DD_HHMMSS_LH0xxxx where the year, month, day and time are when the photo was captured. They are located in folders such as \2015\01 - January. I add the numbers because when I look at my hard drive I like organization and easy flow chronologically.

spraynpray

Yeah, mine are similar, year/month/day with the exception of work which is year/Client name/month/day.

sevencrossing

another vote for YYYY_MM_DD_
work is the same. Each client has a collection

kenadams

So do you have a catalog for each of those? Like, for each client, event, etc.?

I'm currently running into the limits of my SSD and am trying to find a way how I can have the bulk / all photos on a NAS while only retaining the catalog files. Is that possible/feasible? Can I work locally when my raw files are on an external drive?

edit:
hmm, after all of a minute of googling, I found a forum topic that explained how to do the above... just move the folders and then back in LR right-click what's missing and do update location... certainly sounds simple enough..

How silly, isn't it... I'm about to move my pics from my laptop to a NAS and still am terrified I'll lose everything because it will be gone from TimeMachine backups..

sevencrossing

kenadams
I simply use something like the
Seagate Expansion 2TB USB 3.0 desktop 3.5 inch external hard drive
I COPY the RAW files to that
Then back up the LR catalog as well
Eg back up and test BEFORE you delete anything
if you have a desk top as well, why not try restoring to that, before deleting things on the laptop
As ever, Matt kloskowski has an excellent video on this, in Kelby Training
sorry if I am teaching my granny to suck eggs

Vipmediastar_JZ

I find it easier this way. If I want to go back 2-3 years ago to a car show to look for a picture of my cousin that went with me I know that I took the photo with the D7000.
So I go to the Pictures\nikon\d7000\tinley car show 8-1-20xx thats how i remember things.

If I want to go look at the chicago autoshow pictures from last year I know I had the d800 camera so i go to
pictures\nikon\d800\chicago auto show 2014.

Now if my cousin wanted photos of when I visited her at her home i'll go to
pictures\nikon\d80\araceli indiana 12-1-2007
Thats how I remember things.

enter 2015 it would be easier for me to go to
pictures\nikon\d810\2015\chicago auto show 2015 rather to look for the auto show in the root d810 folder.

I also have other camear brands that i took photos with like kodak, fuji and thats why I have a nikon folder.

If i want pictures of my 2005 trip to mexico i would go to my pictures\kodak\mexico vacation 2005


I have been tagging photos but usually for categories like car, portrait, chicago, chicago street, etc.

kenadams

Seven, thanks for the advice, much appreciated. Of course tests are in order before deleting anything. It's more the fact that my intention is to get everything off the laptop for good and keep it elsewhere - that being a big HDD, not an SSD, which is still considerably cheaper but possibly more prone to HW failure and all...

sevencrossing

Vipmediastar_JZ
If you use LR collections, the same shots can be filed in several different "virtual" locations

Vipmediastar_JZ

Perhaps a screen shot or reason why that method works better would be appreciated.


I do have collections based on the tags that I create. For example one collection is for tags with cars and one collection for tags of portraits.

sevencrossing

you seem to understand how collections work
I am surprised/ puzzled, why you still feel you need such a complicated folder system
but if it works for you, nothing wrong with it