Lightroom Users: Help please?

Here's what I want to do... I want to import from iPhoto, with a view to ignoring its existence from here on. I've discovered that I can't do that directly, and besides, I also have bazillions of copies of all my photographs... all over my drives... so I am looking to consolidate.

I want to be able to stop Lightroom from importing duplicates. I have several copies of many of the photographs and I really only need and want the originals/one copy in the app. Can do this? I've not yet noticed it as an option but have probably had my eyes closed.

I think I probably want to store them on an ext drive, as well, so opinions about using a USB portable would be welcome. I'm running short of space on my internal drive and am not enamoured of the notion of having a honking great WD or Seagate... a USB portable is more convenient, but how is it working for others?
 
Sue, I have only dabbled in Lightroom, but I'm sure an expert will pop in with the right answer for you. But it's my understanding that Lightroom will identify duplicates (if they are truly duplicates and not different edits......those you'll have to weed out by hand).

I'll be keep an eye on this thread as I really should start using Lightroom to manage my library as well. It just seems so overwhelming.
 
I've never been able to work out that part of Lightroom, my photos are a mess from moving them around different hard drives, it's very annoying actually because I've lost all the post-processing work I did for a significant number of my photos during one of the moves.
 
Sue, I have only dabbled in Lightroom, but I'm sure an expert will pop in with the right answer for you. But it's my understanding that Lightroom will identify duplicates (if they are truly duplicates and not different edits......those you'll have to weed out by hand).

I'll be keep an eye on this thread as I really should start using Lightroom to manage my library as well. It just seems so overwhelming.

Overwhelming is hardly the word, that is an understatement. I've been avoiding doing any weeding for a long time.

RE edits... I dont actually mind so much if they end up in LR, but I do have multiples of originals so if LR does it automagically that would be a blessing, then I can get rid of all the files occupying hundreds of GBs and use my other ext drives more efficiently (I currently have something like 8TB of external space, but am using a fraction of that for genuinely useful photographs and related stuff).

Anyway, given that my recalcitrant vehicle is making it impossible for me to do the photography I love to do, I have decided to make the downtime useful, and do weeding and editing. So, at the end of all this, I might have 3-5k decent usable photographs and 15-20k deleted.

Just doing some folder consolidation at the moment, weeding to begin later today.
 
First, get out of iPhoto. It is a nightmare.

Then simply organize your photo in regular folder on a hard drive. Use Lightroom to view and search for them. Simply up load you images from a card into a transfer folder on your desktop and then put the images in the right place in your system from there.

As far as storage, I would look into two things if you don't have them. You want a Time Machine running on your system. This a mirrow of your system and will have everything if it goes belly up--the software should be in your OSX. Second you need an external hard drive, not one of those you are looking at, a bigger one. Get a RAID array--I found the LaCie 2 Big Quadra the best value. That is were you store your images. One drive is a mirror of the other so you have a backup copy if the drive dies. Then you buy one more drive for your external RAID. Every month you switch out a drive and keep it in your office or other location. If you house burns down or someone steals your computer and drives, you have a copy at least of everything up to the time you swapped the drive.
 
Some questions, numbered for easy response tracking:

1) To be clear -- you have a bunch of photos in iPhoto, and you want to bring them into LR, and drop using iPhoto?
2) Were you storing the photos in the iPhoto database? (vs. referencing photos outside the iPhoto database)?
3) Do you know how to "examine package contents" and is that where you are finding your photos?
4) Do you wish to import your original iPhoto photos, without any adjustments, or do you only want the photos after any adjustments?
5) Just for the record, were your originals RAW or JPEG?
 
As far as storage, I would look into two things if you don't have them. You want a Time Machine running on your system. This a mirrow of your system and will have everything if it goes belly up--the software should be in your OSX.
I actually prefer to clone my drives, and use SuperDuper! and Carbon Copy Cloner for this purpose

Second you need an external hard drive, not one of those you are looking at, a bigger one.
I have 8TB of externals and cannot afford the LaCie... trust me I have considered it.

Thanks for your suggestions
 
Some questions, numbered for easy response tracking:

1) To be clear -- you have a bunch of photos in iPhoto, and you want to bring them into LR, and drop using iPhoto?
2) Were you storing the photos in the iPhoto database? (vs. referencing photos outside the iPhoto database)?
3) Do you know how to "examine package contents" and is that where you are finding your photos?
4) Do you wish to import your original iPhoto photos, without any adjustments, or do you only want the photos after any adjustments?
5) Just for the record, were your originals RAW or JPEG?

1) yes, dropping iPhoto
2) yes, in iPhoto. I used to store outside iPhoto but found it fraught if the drive wasnt available, suddenly (had it on external)
3) & 4) Yes to both, I have already copied out the originals to separate folders. I've never used iPhoto for editing, or for saving edits.
5) RAW and jpg depending on camera and mood. The RAW off my Pentax will be fine, already in DNG format. the others will be imported as DNG where possible.

Still, theres the issue of duplicates
 
There should be 3 folders inside the package: masters, originals and modified. You should be concentrating only on the "masters" I believe.

Another thing, iPhoto **should** roughly organize photos by events. Have you organized the photos into events the way you want to get them out?

There is likely still a lot of manual work involved.
 
There should be 3 folders inside the package: masters, originals and modified. You should be concentrating only on the "masters" I believe.

Another thing, iPhoto **should** roughly organize photos by events. Have you organized the photos into events the way you want to get them out?

There is likely still a lot of manual work involved.

Truly, I'm not worried about getting photographs out of iPhoto. That's the easy part: I've done it lots of times in the past when wanting to reduce the size of my iPhoto library... Its importing to Lightroom without bringing dupes in that is my issue, I'm sorry I seem to have confused everyone by mentioning iphoto and implying that I didnt know how to do it ( I didn't think I had, but there ya go.. we all speak english, but differently). What I thought I had said was that there was no way to import from iPhoto to Lightroom...

Sadly, there does not seem to be a way to import to Lightroom sans dupes automagically, so yes, manual work at that end.
 
Easy.

This will take a fair bit of time although you don't need to be there for most of it.

Once you have your images on your biggest external drive, hook up the new drive. You then open Lightroom and get to the import dialogue. On the left select the big external where your images are. Up the top select either "copy" or "move". On the right in the file handling section select " do not import suspected duplicates". In the section below select where you want your images to end up.

Doing it this way will make Lightroom copy your images (or move if you selected that) to a nice clean folder structure on the new drive. If you tick the do not import duplicates box and sort by capture time (down the bottom of the import area) then you should be able to scroll through and see where Lightroom has found duplicates. You can also unselect any images you don't want to import into LR.

If your images are on more than one drive hold down the command key and select multiple drives but don't try to import more than the fresh drive you have available.

Then hit the import button. Go find something to do for a while.

Note: LR stores RAW+JPEG as one file (but moves both). If you want hem seperately it's in the preferences.

Gordon
 
Gordon

if you use the ..."Source" .... to ... "Destination" ... method/approach in the "Import" Section of LR ....if you copy all the images from your existing LR library onto a new, (fresh and clean), external storage device ...... will the process copy all the files and the lightroom adjustment files, (i.e. the side kick files).

Or can this still only be done by using the "import" and "export" as a catalogue method

What I would like to do is to copy all my images and LR "sidekick" adjustments onto a new external hard disk so that I can start using this disk as my main access device, (rather than the hard disk on my Mac), for the LR app - I can then duplicate this for back up plus I can, (?), move it between my iMac and MacBookPro when moving around, i.e. when we go back to the UK.

I'm at a similar stage to many - in that I have thousands of images on my Hard disk - I think 99% are in Lightroom - but I have really lost control of what is happening in that I never really understood completely how LR works and how to control it - I have moved stuff around, put images in different folders, done this and that , (all in LR I hope/think), but if it all went "belly up" .... well it would not surprise me ..... I'd like to "start again" with a fresh external storage device that contains all my images and LR adjustments, that I can easily duplicate, carry around with me and plug into any computer that has the LR app on it.

Hope that I have made myself clear

with respect to Sue, the OP, although slightly off topic, I think that my posting helps with the understanding and problems that some may have
 
... On the right in the file handling section select " do not import suspected duplicates". In the section below select where you want your images to end up.....
Gordon

Gordon, I thank you. This is the missing piece of my puzzle.

[edit] Then again... maybe not. Don't import suspected dupes seems to be selected by default. However, I just showed LR another folder that I know has hundreds of dupes, and it did not find any, it had every single photograph checked. That said, however, on the earlier imports, (yes, I failed to wait for an answer) many shots were greyed out, and they were shots that I knew were dupes. I dont know whats different about the second folder. I think I've got it working though, and my 15k+ is now only about 5k (because I also had a deletefest)

with respect to Sue, the OP, although slightly off topic, I think that my posting helps with the understanding and problems that some may have

Its not really OT, Bill, it all helps everyone :)
 
Bill,

You'd use the "export to catalogue" function from within Lightroom. All you'd need to do is ensure that you selected the bottom option which makes a copy of the actual image files as well as the catalogue and previews.

Then go make lunch or have a nice stroll while LR does its thing.

Gordon
 
Gordon, I thank you. This is the missing piece of my puzzle.

[edit] Then again... maybe not. Don't import suspected dupes seems to be selected by default. However, I just showed LR another folder that I know has hundreds of dupes, and it did not find any, it had every single photograph checked. That said, however, on the earlier imports, (yes, I failed to wait for an answer) many shots were greyed out, and they were shots that I knew were dupes. I dont know whats different about the second folder. I think I've got it working though, and my 15k+ is now only about 5k (because I also had a deletefest)



Its not really OT, Bill, it all helps everyone :)

Lightroom uses a few things to determine whether an image is a duplicate and it always errs on the side of caution. (say for if you have two camera bodies - eventually you'll get two different files with the same name) It looks at the file name and time of creation data mainly (but also sees the camera serial number and pixel size). Hence it's not a 100% effective. After you have you new catalogue and images on your new drive you can then select all images in the catalogue and sort by capture time. Then it's simply a matter of scrolling through and marking any extra duplicates by hitting the "x" key. They'll then be greyed out.

When you're done you can then filter for the rejects (that's what the x key does - mark an image as a reject) and delete them all in one go. If you've done the copy from an old location to a new one like I sugested, you can delete them from the disc. If you're paranoid you can keep them and just remove them from the catalogue.

Gordon
 
After all that kerfuffle (though its very useful information) I found that I was still doing 90% of editing in Photoshop anyway, so I have reverted (yes, already!) to using iPhoto to store, and Photoshop to edit, I guess it's what I will keep doing. I moved my iPhoto library to the external drive, and my edits folders, and imported all the shots I had previously deleted/moved/whatever. Also continuing to maintain a backup on another drive. Its all good.
 
Bill,

You'd use the "export to catalogue" function from within Lightroom. All you'd need to do is ensure that you selected the bottom option which makes a copy of the actual image files as well as the catalogue and previews.

Then go make lunch or have a nice stroll while LR does its thing.

Gordon

Thanks Gordon - I'll give it a try when I feel brave as I have almost 20,000 images on my hard disk, (I am going through them to "prune" them, but It just takes so long to decide which to keep and which to delete).
 
After all that kerfuffle (though its very useful information) I found that I was still doing 90% of editing in Photoshop anyway, so I have reverted (yes, already!) to using iPhoto to store, and Photoshop to edit, I guess it's what I will keep doing. I moved my iPhoto library to the external drive, and my edits folders, and imported all the shots I had previously deleted/moved/whatever. Also continuing to maintain a backup on another drive. Its all good.

Get out of iPhoto. It's the work of the devil. If you like the iPhoto way of things try Aperture. But get out of iPhoto. No image program that tries to hide your images in a proprietary database is a healthy thing in the long run.

Gordon
 
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