Larry, The first thing when learning any new subject and wanting to discuss it with other people, is to learn the terms and concepts and use them consistently with the subject matter. If you make stuff up, like "I frob the item in the library menu to include subdirectories, go to raw_photos and" you're just making it difficult for other people to help you. I'm not going to try and guess what 'frob' means to you.
As far as merging catalogues goes, and not wanting to change your existing organisation on the disk/s, I would recommend the following: 1. create a new catalogue 2. using the new catalogue, import your photos from each of the old catalogues in turn (in the Library Module, on the File menu, choose Import >From Catalog). This is similar to Concept Three on p.310 of the Resnick & Spritzer book, which I believe you have. 3. When that's done, delete all of the old catalogues. This does not delete your photos. For the future, 1. RTFM 1b. Read the Resnick & Spritzer book from end to end, thinking all the time about how you can apply their workflow in your situation 2. understand the options on the Import dialog - this will go a long way to giving you a structure you understand 3. learn about keywords and how useful they can be for fast search and retrieval 4. understand what Collections are 5. Learn about Smart Collections 6. create a new folder and always import straight into that, using LR to manage the organisation. Don't move any files around unless you use LR to do the moving. > -----Original Message----- > From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On > Behalf Of Larry Colen > Sent: 15 October 2009 05:42 > To: Pentax-Discuss Mail List > Subject: Re: The collection went away > > On Wed, Oct 14, 2009 at 06:01:43PM -0500, Stan Halpin wrote: > > > > On Oct 14, 2009, at 4:24 PM, Larry Colen wrote: > > > > > However their methodology of file handling seems a bit weird at > > >times. > > > > > Lightroom is built around SQL. Like any database program, the > > organizational structure is designed to facilitate storage and > > retrieval, not necessarily user comprehension. Good news about this > > approach is that it allows very fast processing of search/sort/ > > retrieval requests from among tens of thousands records (images). As > > OK, this sounds promising. > > > others havwe suggested, file it and forget it. Lightroom > can find it, > > you don't need to fret about an organizational structure > that you can > > make sense of. If you have problems with Lightroom, you can try to > > "learn Lightroom" or you can find a general simple discussion of > > database systems and work from there. > > > > Another good thing about Lightroom is that they have nicely layered > > the image processing functions onto the database functions without > > compromising either too badly. > > Let's say that I want to create an ubercatalog, as suggested. > And lets assume that I don't want to lose the work that I've > already done on my 20 or so catalogs of about 570 directories > with about 62,000 photos. > > Godfrey said that I should merge catalogs. But, when I look > in the indexes of my lightroom books, neither said anything > about merging catalogs. > When I look at the menu there is > new catalog > open catalog > and open recent (which seems to be recent catalog) > > There are also a bunch of library functions, which seem to > operate on the catalog, but they may only look at a > particular directory tree at a time. > > The list of directories over on the left very quickly gets > unweildy. However, since I name all of my download > directories with yymmdd_subject i.e. 091014_cormorants_1 > > It'll be very easy for me to set up a structure > > raw_photos > 2007 > 2008 > 2009 > 0901 > 0902 > 0903 > 0904 > ... > 0910 > 091001_ebay_makeup > 091001_product_sample > 091001_product_shoot > 091002_dangoughs > 091003_pdml > 091003_pdml_dinner > 091003_rentparty > 091005_aikido_test > 091007_floor > 091007_probuild > 091009_fnb_gwebster > 091009_gwenplay > 091010_headon > 091010_rentparty > 091013_metaformers > > and if I want all of my best shots, I frob the item in the > library menu to include subdirectories, go to raw_photos and > have it only show the ones rated five stars. > > If I'm willing to set aside all of my work, I could move > everything into the directory tree that I want, open a new > catalog, and tell lightroom to import all 61824 files. > Can I then just "import from catalog" to recover all the work > I've done on those files without duplicating them? > > What if I've moved them from where they were when I made that catalog? > I've seen lightroom recover from files being moved, I've also > seen it get terribly confused. > > > -- > The first step is learning to take great photos, the second > step is learning to throw away ones that are merely good. > Larry Colen [email protected] > http://www.red4est.com/lrc > > > -- > PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List > [email protected] > http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net > to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly > above and follow the directions. -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
