Lightroom :: All Image Folders In One Master Catalog On One Disk
Aug 31, 2012
I keep all my image folders in one Master Catalog on one disk.
My system of filing is to have a main folder, say "Airshows", with sub folders named "Original-RAW Files" and "Finished Files".
Each sub folder is then further sub divided into "Show 1", "Show 2", "Show 3", etc.
This system also enable me to duplicate my files in such a way that they can be accessed by programmes other than Lightroom.
I also like to make Collections of specific planes which appear and therefore the Collections can include images taken at any number of individual shows but as LR3 keeps the Folders and the Collections in different sections, this entails looking in two different locations for any images taken at Airshows.Another disadvantage is that I believe LR Collections cannot be accessed by other third party programmes should I wish to change from Adobe.
I would like maintain my current filing system (which suits my purposes), but wish to find a way to file say,"Spitfire" Collection as "AirshowFinished FilesSpitfire" so that all files are kept together.
Is there a way to achieve this without resorting to making duplicate image files ?
I have created virtual copies of an image in Lightroom 4 and I am wondering what will happen to these if I delete the folder containing the master image and its virual copies from the LR4 catalog? Will the virtual copies be automatically deleted? If so, is this reversible in any way? Will i recover these virual copies if I add the folder back into LR's catalog later on?
Also will Adobe Bridge be able to read these virtual copies in both before and even after the folder has been removed from LR4? Or is the 'virtual copy' functionality specific to LR and that the only way to preserve it is to keep the original image within LR and never delete it?
I don't want to have the original files on both laptop and desktop.
I want to make a copy of a Lightroom 3 catalog to put on my laptop so while on the move I can be geo-tagging and keywording to 8000 photographs. I don't want to drag an external drive with me. I just want to be able to work on the catalog metadata and have all the updates/changes stored there (on the laptop)(in the catalog) and then transfer the catalog back to the desktop (to the primary archive) and have all the updates/changes pushed back into the DNG's or the XMP sidecar files alongside the CR2's. These changes would be only keywording and possibly writing GPS data into them….NOT image edits (that would probally require access to the original image files)
As a test, I tried "exporting as catalog", TWO images (with the source images "unavailable"). I flash-drived the resulting catalog to my laptop. I opened the catalog in LR3 and made changes to the metadata. I tried both "saving metadata to file" and "updating DNG previews" (which would be useless anyway since I could not write data back to the missing originals) and also tried doing nothing and just closing LR, then pulling the flashdrive and plugging it into the DESKTOP.(knowing the changes are stored within the catalog itself only) I open the 2 picture catalog in LR and see the keyword updates. Hurrah!
I switch over to the master catalog. All I want to do is import the updated metadata (keywording, contrast, etc…) back into the master catalog and push the data into the original DNG or XMP. On import I select "replace: Metadata and develop settings only" (with or without "preserve old settings" checked) and click import. Voila! NOTHING HAPPENS and the updated keywords are NOT picked up.
I know that the metadata updates were carried out because they showed up when I opened it separately in LR! For some reason they don't seem to making through the import process to the master catalog…
I'm using Lightroom 1. I tried to merge catalogs by importing a catalog into a master catalog, but there were some problems. The one I noticed immediately was that the collections are not correct. It imported the collections, but for example one collection now has only 4 photos when the originbal had 140? How can I fix that? (Although not necessariy a problem, it seems to have the wrong number of photos imported too. It says the previous import was 3175 photos when it was more like 10,000.)
I have been forced to check under the hood in LR due to the fact that I have lost a big chuck of my keywords, and I'm contemplanting if its worth importing a copy of my backup copy. I am debating if I should just go back and re-enter all the missing keywords, or retrieving a backup copy. However, I read somewhere that its wise to change the name of the master catalog before retrieving a backup copy.
However, I found multiple folders of my catalog in my master folder. I'd like to know which one should I delete without causing any major collateral damage.
1- folder 176-2.lrcat created 3-26-11 2:51 PM 289 MB 2- folder 176-2-2.lrcat created 2-12-13 10:32 PM 363 MB 3- folder 176-2-3.lrcat created 2-24-13 5:24 PM 287 MB 4- folder 176-2 copy.lrca created 3-26-11 2:31 PM 179 MB
In addition, there are corresponding Previews.lrdata for each folder.
I just cloned my hard disk (named PI) to a new one named TAU. Now they both contain my enormous catalog of 800 GB of Lightroom catalog and files.
I removed my initial hard disk PI and put it in a safe location (just saying this so you know I have a backup)
I start Lightroom 5 and open the ircat file on TAU but all the pictures have an ! meaning they are missing (but the pictures are all there). How do I get Lightroom to recognize the new location?
In my catalog settings the path correctly points to the new hard drive and the folder where the photos and catalog are located, however within the application there is no way to navigate among the files and folders of my collection as there was before.
When the 'up' arrow appears in a thumbnail and comes up with the message:
The metadata for one or more of these photos has been changed by another application. Should Lightroom import settings from disk or overwrite disk settings with those from the catalog?
What exactly does that mean? This seems to happen every time I export an image to PS (CS5) and return to LR. What exactly has changed? What settings are being imported if I choose 'import settings from disk'.
Why I cannot see all my folders from my external disk on the navigator? When I go into import mode I see the missing folders BUT all the pics are greyed out meaning that they are part of the catalog already how do I get them in the Navigator library?
I merged a small catalog with my master catalog and I am unable to open the master catalog. The error message reads "The Lightroom catalog named “master_catalog-2” cannot be opened because another application already has it opened.". There are no other applications running the catalog.
A small set of 36 images in a catalog of 12500 are behaving strangely and virtual copies do not appear to be linking to masters correctly.
Difficult to remember exactly the steps taken but including
- adding initial selection of 100+ masters to Quick Collection - adjusting selection using colour flagging, star rating, and rejected photo marking - creating virtual copies of 35 images 4 star picks - adding virtuals to other manual collection - apparent duplicate virtuals appearing when I don't THINK I asked for new virtuals in collection but must have done - flagging duplicate virtual copies as rejected - editing 1 image in photoshop twice - various other editing post process
Anyway I now see in the Library panel that 35 master photos, the 2 photoshop files, and 1 of the vitrual copies are indicated as being 1 of 38, 2 of 38, etc. The virtual copies of all but 1, which was added at a later stage, do not indicate being 1 of 2 although the file name is _MG_9999/Copy 1 or Copy 2 varying from image to image. The images are sequencing the 38 "linked" photos first, then the virtuals and that 1 late master when the sort sequence is Capture Time or File Name.
Every thing is there but the reported linkage is obviously wrong and this worries me and I'd like to correct it if I can. The catalog is backed up every time Lightroom closes but as I have been opening and closing several times a day and did not recognise when this corruption happened I don't really want to be loading up a succession of backups and losing post process changes or causing other damage. I have just realised that I do NOT have Automatically write to XMP checked in catalog settings although I was meant to have.
I did export the folder of 1413 that the masters were selected from to another catalog and resynched. Didn't expect much and didn't get anything.
How do I move numerous folders and subfolders of photos to a different hard drive?
The hard drive I want to move to shows up in the LR Library Left Panel under Folders, but I can't drag and drop the photos from the C Drive to this D drive.
I have been working with LR for about a month; and I've uploaded about 2000 photos I have taken since about a year ago; organized by folders for year and date. I just realized LR has been putting almost all my photos on my C Drive. There is one folder of photos in LR on the D Drive. I don't recall how I got that folder to go on the D Drive while the rest are on the C Drive.
I don't want any data on my C Drive. I use my C Drive primarily for my Operating Systems and applications.
I have run out of space on my main hard drive ( C) and cannot resize it.I have another vacant disk drive in the same computer (300 gigs) that I would like to move the en tire catalogue to .
How I would redirect Lightroom to find and use it in the new location.
I have copied the contents of an intermitant disk into a new one; outside of ligthroom(4). How do I copy the edits embeded into a ligthroom catalog to the new disk? Both disks have the same files. My master catalog sees the edits in the original disk. This same catalog sees the new disk without the edits in the original disk.
I recently went bi-platform (IMac and Windows computers being used). I have a home network. My Lightroom cat and all my images originally resided on my Windows computer's harddrives (four on board). After purchasing the IMac, I installed Lightroom on it and copied my cat files to it as well. All my photos continue to reside on my Windows computer's four internal harddrives so I turned on Sharing on the Windows computer for a test drive. (Yep, the photos are backed up to external drives). Anyway, when I launched my cat on the IMac in Lightroom, the thumbs and corresponding data appear just fine but when I point the thumb to the photo file on the shared harddrive, the thumb in the catalog disappears. Major bummer! Fortunately, I haven't done a bulk "find" otherwise I would have lost the entire catalog contents.
Will Lightroom not work with photos stored on shared internal harddrives via home network?? I have read that it does work with photos stored on external harddrives but I would prefer to keep my photos on the four internal harddrives.
I've been using LR for 18 months or so now, and do pretty well with it. But my organization, I think, is lacking. I'm not sure when I would want to start a new catalog, or why. It seems to be a pain to go from one catalog to another, just to access different folders of pics that I've worked on in LR. I now have dozens of folders that I can access in my current catalog, and I'm wondering if it's getting to be too many. I shoot lots of events, from weddings to dance performances, so many of my folders might have 1,000 images or more.
Are there any links to information or instructional videos that really explain the organizational process of LR? What I've seen so far gets me started in LR. It hasn't really explained how long you can stay in one catalog, or how many pictures can be in there, before LR's performance starts tailing off. I am a member of Kelby Training, NAPP, and I use a Mac Pro on a SSD, 32 gigs of RAM, so I should have plenty of comp power. Not really facing doggish problems right now, but just curious about LR's optimal organization.
Prior to 2011 I was using Bridge/Photoshop and organized the files by client.
In 2011 I started using LR and let it import new sessions using the year/yyyy-mm-dd folder structure. I now use LR exclusively 99% of the time, and would like to "re-import" my older images into the year/yyyy-mm-dd structure and do away with my haphazard prior organization for those images. Is there a way to get LR to reorganize the files (i.e. move all the old images into year/yyyy-mm-dd folders) while keeping all other catalog/editing metadata intact?
How does this sound for an approach:
Synchronize to make sure the catalog is up to dateSave Metadata so that all metadata is written to sidecar files or into the image files for formats that support itIn LR "remove" the foldersImport the folders with the "Move" option but disable renaming.
All of my folders in my Lightroom 4.3 catalog vanished, though you can still see the folder/file structure when using my Mac Finder. So clearly the folder structure exists, but the program can no longer view them or reads them.
I have right clicked on catalog and none of the choices return the tree view of my folders. I did back up my catalog last time I used Lightroom (it and the ircat and ircat alias files are on an external drive) to another external drive. How to return all my folders that apparently are not viewable? Might the Carbon Copy Cloner software I used (recommended as being good for Lightroom 4.3 by several) have messed up the folder view.
Is it possible to use "Locate missing folders" feature for MANY folders which were just physically moved from one drive to another? I'm talking about HUNDERDS of folders which were moved from fast internal drive to slower external drives for archiving, however occassional access to the pictures is needed.
I imported pictures into LR from three different SD cards. On one of the cards, I inadvertantly created it in a subfolder. I have been working for several days to correct the problem, but just seem to keep making it worse.
I renamed the 2013 subfolder and drug it into the 2013 parent.
I renamed the May folder as Maay1 and drug into the 2013 folder and that took care of it, but I can't get the Apr folder fixed. I renamed it Apr1 and drug it into the parent Apr folder and ended up with
I have been trying to move the Apr1 images into the Apr parent folder, but get the message that "there is already a folder named "Apr" and a fail. The two Apr folders seem to contain the same images, so could probably delete the subfolder Apr, but a little afraid to. I have spent a lot of time editing the images, and would have to reimport them as originals from the backup.
I know that I have on occasion gotten stupid and selected "Remove" after marking images as rejected, when I meant to select Delete From Disk. I believe this means I have image files on my hard drive that no longer appear in the Lightroom catalog, but I don't want them at all. I meant to move them to the trash bin, but, like I said, just hit the wrong button for some reason.
Is there any way I can search for images still in my folders on my hard drive (where I save them when imported in Lightroom) that no longer appear in my catalog? I'd like to clean up my hard drive before transfering images to a new computer.
I typically import my photo's from my camera and reorganize the photos by date.
However I just had several thousand old printed photographs scanned.
I have: 1. Imported the photographs into a seperate new catalog2. Labeled all the photographs with keywords 3. Metadata->Edit Capture Time so that the capture time is now the correct date
Now I would like to reorganize the photo's into folders by date the usaual yyyy/yyyy-mm/yyyy-mm-dd by the capture time date.
I have tried to import them into another catalog either by either "Import Photo's and Video" or by "Import from another catalog" either way the new catalog has the folders by date that the photographs were scanned not by the capture time that I changed.
How do I do this change the folders to be by capture date?
My problem is that when I'm importing photos from my folders on the computer to my catalog in Lightroom 4, Lightroom doesn't import all photos from my folders. It imports the first 3-4 photos rom my folder.
How can I EXCLUDE particular folders/files from being included in the Lightroom 5 catalog?
I want to be able to specify paths and/or filename patterns that should NEVER be indexed in the catalog: not that they don't show up under certain circumstances, just that they are NOT THERE (in the catalog) to begin with!!
I also do NOT want to have to respecify these criteria when "synching" the catalog; criteria should be PERMANENT (or at least 'til they're changed in LR preferences).
I just upgraded my external hard drive and named the new drive with the exact same name as the original, lets call this HD-1. My entire LR gallery is on this drive. After doing a complete backup to the new drive I opened LR and all Folders and Collects were in their place as they should be.
The Problem -
When I imputed new photos, a new duplicate hard drive appeared with the exact same name HD-1 and holding the newly imported images (which were placed in a subfolder at time of import)
- So now my Catalog shows two hard drives called HD-1. For sake of this discussion I will label them HD-1a and HD-1b. HD-1a has the original photos and HD-1b has the newly imported photos.
- I tried draging the new subfolder of photos for HD-1b to HD-1a but I get a message that the folder already exists, even though it doesn't show in the HD-1a folder structure.
- I created a new sub-folder in HD-1a and was able to drag the photos into it. I then deleted the empty folder on HD-1b. As soon as this was done the duplicate hard drive, HD-1b disapeared.
- I thought this solved the problem but as I was working on images by opening them from LR into Photoshop, the HD-1b drive reappered in my catalog with the PS created files in them.
- So it looks like LR will put any newly created or improted photo file into HD-1b. I can't seem to find a way around this. For some reason LR doesn't want to write new files into HD-1a even though it recognizes it and has no problem reading the existing files.
I just purcgased an iMac (and installed LR3) after running LR3 on a MacBook for several months. Is there a straightforward way to copy all of my content (folders, collections and catalog) from the laptop to the desktop? I'm essentially trying to duplicate what's in my laptop LR3 on my desktop LR3.
I have about 900 raw files on an external drive. I edited those files using my master catalog using a laptop while still travelling. When I got home, I copied the master catalog from the external drive to the desk top, then opened the master catalog on my desktop. I can see the edited images on the external drive. So far so good.
I want to copy (add) the edited images to my desk top. I tried to export the images as a new catalog and then import it into the desire location on my desktop drive. However, LR5 does not allow that. I get this message: "There is nothing new in the catalog you have selected. All of the catalog's photos are up to date in this catalog." Yes, but the edited images are not on my desktop.....
I also tried to Import from the external drive and then Copy the files to the desktop, but then I lose all of the work done in the develop module and the keywords.
I watched Kost's LR 3 video on merging catalogs, but she dodges the question of how to deal with this issue since the "merge" is within the same catalog.I'm using LR5 with Windows 7.
If I create a file in Photoshop without coming from Lightroom or duplicate a file in Photoshop that I opened from Lightroom, is there a way to save the new file from Photoshop to the desired directory on my local hard drive and simultaneously have it added to my Lightroom catalog? Or do I need to save the file then import the file into the catalog? I'm working with CS6.
I've downloaded the Lightroom 4.4 disk image twice (to the default download folder) but neither will open on my Snow Leopard Mac. I get a message that it is "not recognized".
