| Joined: | Mon Apr 9th, 2012 |
| Location: | Adelaide, Australia |
| Posts: | 187 |
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OK
You don't have to go by years you could go by subject, Football, Landscapes, Bears, Motorsport, etc. The problem arrises then if you mix subjects on one shoot... But it's up to
When in the Finder (or Windows Explorer) you can keep images wherever you like (even multiple internal, external and network drives if you like) but when it comes to importing photos it's best to organize by event and/or date - nothing else (unless you like life to be complicated)
As Robert says a problem arises when you try and organize by file type, ie. what happens if you have a beautiful landscape photo which includes a racetrack or similar? Do you put the photo into both folders? What happens when you edit one and then later find the unedited version from the other folder and spend time and energy recreating a similar copy.
Mac and PC file systems just don't support photographers needs in this scenario and this is why programs like Lightroom can be so helpful since it is very easy to have a photo in any number of different albums which act very much like folders without the need for duplicates
I would recommend that anyone unfamiliar with managing their photos just 'walk the corridors' to familiarize themselves with what is possible
Try copying a couple of thousand assorted images to an external drive where you don't care if they are lost, corrupted or disorganised
Create a new empty catalog then experiment with importing using 'add'
then delete the catalog and repeat using 'move,
Delete some images using remove then reimport by right clicking on the folder and using 'synchronize'
Select some images and create an album choosing 'selected images' 'with virtual copies'
repeat without selecting virtual copies
Move images from 'library' to an album, repeat with the same images and see how the album doesn't add them twice
Create multiple albums and note how the albums grow and how the library grows (or doesn't)
Delete images from 'library' and see how you are warned and that they disappear from all albums, and note what happens in the finder when you choose 'remove' versus 'delete' (right click an image and choose 'show in finder' so the folder is open and you can check the file count as images are deleted)
Add keywords in grid mode to groups of images then create smart albums that reference those keywords
Note how smart albums automatically grow as these keywords are added to new images
Note functions like 'show in library', 'show in album'
Experiment with renaming folders in the left side column when in grid mode, add parent folders, add new folders - notice how new folders actually appear in the finder immediately and that deleting empty folders makes them disappear from the finder while deleting folders with images (and even other types of file which are not in Lightroom) does not delete the folder
Experiment with roundtripping into photoshop and watch where the images can go
Try exporting both with and without add to library
Once you play this all becomes quite obvious and it's easy to learn because there is no fear of losing any images due to the fact that these are all worthless copies anyway
Lightroom has it's flaws (no ability to sort by image size, no ability to search for 'missing' images, tendency to get bogged down with moots of images on slower drives etc), but it is far more powerful than most seem to believe and I think it is the best choice for those who would struggle to learn the concepts of a full and complete DAM solution
Last edited on Sun Jul 8th, 2012 04:03 by Doug
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