On Wed, Jul 11, 2012 at 9:59 AM, Christine Aguila <[email protected]> wrote: > I greatly appreciate everyone's help here, but things are a mess with this > catalogue. The more I look try to compare the two folder structures on the 2 > main drives, the more messy it seems to be. I think I'll ignore this for a > few days, and try again when I've stopped weeping :-).
Probably a good idea. You sound a bit overwhelmed, it's best not to work through a logical puzzle when you're too emotionally involved. Here's a workflow: First look at the the Lightroom catalog's Folders panel. For every folder in the Folders panel, right- or control-click on it and choose the "Show Parent Folder" if the option presents itself until all the folder trees are visible back to the top of the volume. If all folders ultimately sit under a single parent, that makes things easier. Now take a look at the "Lightroom 2" volume in the Finder (or Windows Navigator if you're running Windows). If you copied the folder tree to your "Lightroom 2" hard drive in the course as it was on "Lightroom 1", the solution is simple: in Lightroom, control-click on that top-level parent and choose the "Update folder location" command, then pilot your way to that same folder on "Lightroom 2", and choose it. Lightroom should now recognize where all the files are. If you didn't copy the folder tree exactly as it was on Lightroom 1 to Lightroom 2, now you have the more onerous task of finding files and folders, matching them up with the same command as above, to a disparately organized file system. It's doable, and for 8000 files in the catalog it won't take that long if you work methodically and calmly, one group of files at a time. You can usually find groups of files by a key filename and capture date, then set the folder location in Lightroom for that file and all neighboring files will then be recognized. It takes some time, but it's worth it not to lose all your metadata annotations (keywords and such) and any processing you've already applied. As an alternative, the fastest and simplest thing to do to get the whole file repository organized into a single tree is to create a new catalog (don't delete the old catalog folder! and create the catalog folder outside of the old one) and do a mass import. Create a "Photos" directory at the top level of the external drive, set the import destination starting point to that directory, set Lr to "Move" the files there, and have it organize the files by capture date on import. It will create a complete subdiirectory tree based on date sequence, rooted at that single folder. If you don't care about metadata annotations and prior processing work (and there are occasions when it isn't important!), the job is done ... go forth, annotate and start editing your images afresh. If you do care about your prior work, the reason to keep the original catalog folder is that once the files are reorganized like this, you can start Lightroom with the old catalog and work through it, hunting up the images by file name and capture date more easily and then set the location in the old catalog properly. In this case, consider the new catalog you used to move the files around into an organized tree to be a temporary, you can discard it. The result of doing this all the way through is that your original files are now in a singly rooted directory tree structure, the catalog has all the appropriate data in it, and from this point on it is easy to maintain. To finish off, drag the entire "Photos" directory to the new volume "Lightroom 3" to back up the directory structure and files. That copies everything to the new hard drive. Do the same thing with the catalog folder. Now you have a complete backup. To KEEP the system backed up, I recommend using external utility software (Lightroom's backup function replicates only the .LRCAT file; you want to backup both the catalog and the photo files from their source locations to the Lightroom 3 backup drive). I use ChronoSync by Econ Technologies (OS X only), but any good file synchronizing software utility should work the same. With ChronoSync, I create two synchronizer documents: one synchronizes the image directory tree from Lightroom 2 to Lightroom 3, the other synchronizes the catalog folder from internal drive to Lightroom 2. I then create a container document, put the two synchronizers in it, and set that to run automatically every night or on demand when I need it to. (You still want to have the Lightroom backup run once a week or so as it includes database verification and cleanup in the process. You should set Lightroom to put these backups on the "Lightroom 2" volume, in a folder separate from the Photos folder.) > I think it's time to rethink my workflow and photo management system, and I > think I need some tutorials on advanced photo management and catalogues > skills. It's to the adobe videos for me, and perhaps a purchase of a book. > > If anyone knows of a good book for Lightroom 4, I'd appreciate the > recommendation. I have the Scott Kelby book for the early Lightroom version > (1 or 2 ), and thought it ok, but I found him a bit wordy. If there's > another book you'd recommend by a different author who gets right to the > point, I'd be very grateful. Of course, I have some bits on this stuff on my articles page: http://www.gdgphoto.com/articles See #s 06, 07, and 08. The "Lightroom Learning Resources" article is old and needs to be updated, but might have some useful info for you. I bought the latest book by Martin Evening recently and it is an exhaustive reference for Lightroom 4: well written and clear. <http://www.amazon.com/Adobe-Photoshop-Lightroom-Book-Photographers/dp/0321819594/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1342029392&sr=8-1&keywords=martin+evening+lightroom+4> For online video tutorials, I find Julianne Kost's set for Lightroom 4 to be the best starting point, and free (funded by Adobe). http://jkost.com/lightroom.html Take a deep breath and relax. ;-) -- Godfrey - godfreydigiorgi.posterous.com Announcing "Ways Together" .. my new photo book! See it on Blurb at http://www.blurb.com/user/GDGPhoto Come to the reception and book-signing: ModernBook Gallery 49 Geary Ave, San Francisco, CA August 2nd, 5:30-7:30 pm -- 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.
