[UPDATE – ENDED!] In case you missed it, now through November 30, you can watch the recording of my October webinar, on getting and staying organized in Lightroom.
Getting and staying organized in Lightroom is critical to being able to enjoy and work efficiently with your photo library. In this webinar I discuss what role folder structure should play in this, how to decide on a folder structure that works for you and how to import new photos into this, reorganizing your photos and folders using Lightroom’s Folders panel, resolving “missing” folders and photos, using keywords, collections and mapping, searching for your photos and more. I also tackle the question of how many catalogs you should use, discuss a plugin that can help you find duplicates, and more. Length: 75 minutes.
While access to this webinar has ended, sign up below to be alerted of my new free live webinar broadcasts on your favorite Lightroom topics!
[sc:signup_notext]
I have been a photographer for a while now.
However I never had a web site. I have slowed down quite a bit in my photo shoots.
Some one told me about light room and it is now on my computer windows 7.
I can tell that Lightroom a very good program. I just need to learn how to use it correctly.
Pls. Help!
Much Thanks
Hi Clement,
You’ll find that my Fundamentals & Beyond video series will get you off to a great start, and will help you avoid mistakes new users often make.
I hope you enjoy the program!
Laura
For the last several years I organized slides by date format:
2014/November/21.
Can I retroactively change these previous’ years Date Formatted slides to the new method I now want to use:
2014/11/21 ??
I don’t like that they alphabetize the months so they are not in chronological sequence when cleaning up imported images. The numerical system will place them in the right order.
Thanks.
Hi Klaus,
I apologize for the delay in responding. You can right-click on a folder and choose Rename to switch to the format you prefer. To have Lightroom automatically do them all, you would have to remove your photos from Lightroom and reimport, choosing Copy to create a new folder hierarchy. Of course this gets into possibly losing, work, etc. This is covered in my article on starting over in Lightroom.
Laura,
I just discovered your training, and am eagerly going through the organizing videos about naming conventions for folders and photos. I have about 10,000 images of scanned genealogy photos from the 1910’s forward, how do you suggest handling those types of photos since the scanning date is so different than the actual date?
Hi Marie,
I would probably either put them all in one “scans” folder, or in subfolders broken out by actual captured dates (even just groups of several years). When you import them, put them all in a “scans” folder, and then as you sort through them, use the Folders panel to create subfolders and drag them into.
Hi , I wish I could have watched this webinar and hope to catch it next time. I have about 30,000 photos scattered everywhere. All original files are downloaded onto external hard drives and not my mac desktop. I have 4 different hard drives each holding a Lightroom catalog associated with folders on the corresponding LRCAT. HOWEVER , though each of those catalogs hold the approx. same amount of photos, there is 80% overlap/duplication in them. How can I merge them all into a master folder eliminating the duplicates? If I move photos that are associated with the folders on one hard drive to another hard drive won’t it then come up as a “?”. Thank you in advance for taking the time to answer this. Happy holidays to you and yours, Liz
Hi Liz,
I believe you’ll find a video by Terry White on YouTube on merging catalogs. Essentially, decide which will be your master, and in this one go to File > Import from Another Catalog and navigate to your secondary one. It helps to understand which has more up to date work, as you’ll have to decide, for photos that are in both, whether you want to keep the work from the master (Replace Nothing), or from the secondary (Replace Develop Settings and Metadata). If in doubt you can keep both by having it keep the editing work from the second as a virtual copy – but that is a lot of virtual copies to sort through!