I've been using Bridge and CS2/CS3 for quite a while now, but I'm going to give Lightroom a try in order to have a little more organizational power. Before I jump in and make a few irreversible setup choices, I have a few questions.

I shoot quite a lot of photos, mostly because I do a lot of sports and school events which can end up with a lot of shots. When other folks who have a lot of photos set up Lightroom, do you put everything in one database catalog (or whatever Lightroom calls it) or so you use more than one catalog? If more than one, how easy is it to switch catalogs?

I could imagine putting all team sports and school event photos in one catalog and all family photos in another because I don't really need to search across both at once, but I'd only do that if there's some performance/practical benefit to doing so.

Are there any practical (e.g. performance) limits on how many photos you want to have a given Lightroom catalog.

When traveling, I typically put my shots on a laptop and do some post processing on them while on the trip. Then, when I get home, I move them over to my main desktop computer. In Bridge, that's just a simple file copy (NEFs and XMP files) which is nice and simple and preserves all my ratings, keywords, metadata and image adjustments. How do you accomplish a similar transfer in Lightroom?

When I'm shooting something like a soccer season, I typically keep all the images as RAW files until the very end of the season. Then, once I've finished keywording, organizing, selecting and adjusting the images I do one final export to JPEG of just the ones I'm going to share in order to put up on the web. When you do this export to JPEG in Lightroom, do you put these JPEGs in a separate file structure that is outside of Lightroom? Or do you let Lightroom index and catalog the generated JPEGs too?

And, lastly, I have been using Downloader Pro as my downloader from my card reader. I've got it nicely configured to auto-create directory names with time/date stamps in them and prompt me for a job description that goes in the directory name. It's been working fine for me for several years. How is the downloader that's built into Lightroom? Is it worth using? Are there advantages to using it over an external downloader?

Thanks for any advice you can offer...

Originally Posted by jfriend I've been using Bridge and CS2/CS3 for quite a while now, but I'm going to give Lightroom a try in order to have a little more organizational power. Before I jump in and make a few irreversible setup choices, I have a few questions. I shoot quite a lot of photos, mostly because I do a lot of sports and school events which can end up with a lot of shots. When other folks who have a lot of photos set up Lightroom, do you put everything in one database catalog (or whatever Lightroom calls it) or so you use more than one catalog? If more than one, how easy is it to switch catalogs? I could imagine putting all team sports and school event photos in one catalog and all family photos in another because I don't really need to search across both at once, but I'd only do that if there's some performance/practical benefit to doing so. Are there any practical (e.g. performance) limits on how many photos you want to have a given Lightroom catalog. When traveling, I typically put my shots on a laptop and do some post processing on them while on the trip. Then, when I get home, I move them over to my main desktop computer. In Bridge, that's just a simple file copy (NEFs and XMP files) which is nice and simple and preserves all my ratings, keywords, metadata and image adjustments. How do you accomplish a similar transfer in Lightroom? When I'm shooting something like a soccer season, I typically keep all the images as RAW files until the very end of the season. Then, once I've finished keywording, organizing, selecting and adjusting the images I do one final export to JPEG of just the ones I'm going to share in order to put up on the web. When you do this export to JPEG in Lightroom, do you put these JPEGs in a separate file structure that is outside of Lightroom? Or do you let Lightroom index and catalog the generated JPEGs too? And, lastly, I have been using Downloader Pro as my downloader from my card reader. I've got it nicely configured to auto-create directory names with time/date stamps in them and prompt me for a job description that goes in the directory name. It's been working fine for me for several years. How is the downloader that's built into Lightroom? Is it worth using? Are there advantages to using it over an external downloader? Thanks for any advice you can offer...

jfriend

Until last week I had avoided Lightroom for numerous reasons, the most obvious being that I had no idea how to drive it. Last week that changed. I came across a site called lightroomkillertips which offered some great tips on how to use and drive it.

While I am still learning its abilities one thing I will say is that its ability to download and categorize your images to your specs is great . I have them in date form, keyworded to my likings, meta info adjusted and load straight from the camera, to the point where I am about to delete the Canon provided software off my computer.

I'd say have a read up, give it a try and you'll love it. I will be spending a lot less time processing images now that Lightroom is my first and one stop shot from camera to computer.

Anyone else with any thoughts? Do you all just put everything in one catalog?

Just lurking John, just lurking. I've made several post re: LR since I got it back in June, but have yet to make the leap. Do a search on Lightroom and you will get some decent posts and their responses. But they are a little limited.

Originally Posted by jfriend I've been using Bridge and CS2/CS3 for quite a while now, but I'm going to give Lightroom a try in order to have a little more organizational power. Before I jump in and make a few irreversible setup choices, I have a few questions.

First, the 'jump' to LR is not irreversable and is completely compatible with Bridge and CS2/CS3...you can even use them interchangably. Ratiings, tags etc in LR are visible by Bridge CS3...I believe CS2 prefers XMP, but that is simply a checkbox in LR (writing to XMP). So use LR, then go back if you dont like it.

Originally Posted by jfriend I shoot quite a lot of photos, mostly because I do a lot of sports and school events which can end up with a lot of shots. When other folks who have a lot of photos set up Lightroom, do you put everything in one database catalog (or whatever Lightroom calls it) or so you use more than one catalog? If more than one, how easy is it to switch catalogs? I could imagine putting all team sports and school event photos in one catalog and all family photos in another because I don't really need to search across both at once, but I'd only do that if there's some performance/practical benefit to doing so. Are there any practical (e.g. performance) limits on how many photos you want to have a given Lightroom catalog.

I believe I have read that LR is not really designed for multiptle catalogs. You can use multiple catalogs, but they are completely independant. It is quite simple to switch to another catalog, I think you can find some tips on Luminous Landscape if I recall correctly. BUT, I have had no trouble keeping everything in a catalog...do note that the PHOTOS are not in the catalog, just the metadata...searching is as fast as any database as far as I can tell. I have about 10,000 photos in the catalog..so not that big.

Originally Posted by jfriend When traveling, I typically put my shots on a laptop and do some post processing on them while on the trip. Then, when I get home, I move them over to my main desktop computer. In Bridge, that's just a simple file copy (NEFs and XMP files) which is nice and simple and preserves all my ratings, keywords, metadata and image adjustments. How do you accomplish a similar transfer in Lightroom?

Same way. The easiest way I do this is to use a tool like Synctoy to copy the images and the XMP to the folder on my home PC. I instruct Lightroom to sync folders and they appear, folders and all. This assumes of course that you have used LR on the laptop and done edits in LR.

Originally Posted by jfriend When I'm shooting something like a soccer season, I typically keep all the images as RAW files until the very end of the season. Then, once I've finished keywording, organizing, selecting and adjusting the images I do one final export to JPEG of just the ones I'm going to share in order to put up on the web. When you do this export to JPEG in Lightroom, do you put these JPEGs in a separate file structure that is outside of Lightroom? Or do you let Lightroom index and catalog the generated JPEGs too?

I let LR index and catalog the JPEGS as well, since LR handles JPEG, RAW and PSD/TIFF with the same ease. Again, the photos are not in the LR database, only the metadata. You can put the files anywhere you like, including on DVDs, and LR will keep track of them. If you try to edit photos not online it will let you know. Personally, I export JPEGs into a subfolder under the main folder, just so I know which are associated with which shoot, when I have backups and archives later. Since these are subfolders under an already cataloged folder, I simply tell LR to sync folders, and it will find and catalog everything in those subfolders. This way if I do lots of edits and exports to JPEG in a session, I just sync up and the end of my session, and LR catches up on all the new folders all in one go.

Originally Posted by jfriend And, lastly, I have been using Downloader Pro as my downloader from my card reader. I've got it nicely configured to auto-create directory names with time/date stamps in them and prompt me for a job description that goes in the directory name. It's been working fine for me for several years. How is the downloader that's built into Lightroom? Is it worth using? Are there advantages to using it over an external downloader? Thanks for any advice you can offer...

OK at one time I had four downloaders, with any three popping up when I put a CF card in my reader! I am over that now. I use the LR import function only now. It of course imports into the LR catalog, but also autocreates directory names based on time/date stamps and loads of other folder creation options. I was delighted when in Jan 1 2008 it created an entire new directory for 2008 and dutifully put my Jan 1 shots in a folder underneath, as it should. Also cool is that you can copy photos to the directory of your choice, and also copy to a backup location at the same time, giving you two copies of photos, one of which is cataloged. You can have LR apply all sorts of things: whitebalance, color corrections, personal presets, resizes, etc, and my favorite: filling the copyright and creator IPTC fields. Of course you can use whatever downloader you like and simply have LR import in to the catalog only, not moving the photos, if you prefer to keep your existing solution.

cmason (or anyone else)
To add on a couple questions (hopefully jfriend needs these answered so I'm not hijacking his thread):
1) How does the catalog index the images? If by file name, obviously we can't edit the names outside of LR, correct?
2) Can we add a '2nd Name' (indexed or not)?
3) I know you can go and do edits in PS CS3 and the edits are consumed back into the catalog. But can I go and easily point my catalog/image at a pre-existing PSD file and bring it back in?
4) Is there a LR function or catalog attribute that allows me to add Notes, Comments and/or To-Dos on an image?
Thanks

Originally Posted by jdryan3 cmason (or anyone else) To add on a couple questions (hopefully jfriend needs these answered so I'm not hijacking his thread): 1) How does the catalog index the images? If by file name, obviously we can't edit the names outside of LR, correct? 2) Can we add a '2nd Name' (indexed or not)? 3) I know you can go and do edits in PS CS3 and the edits are consumed back into the catalog. But can I go and easily point my catalog/image at a pre-existing PSD file and bring it back in? 4) Is there a LR function or catalog attribute that allows me to add Notes, Comments and/or To-Dos on an image? Thanks

First off, my experience is that LR prefers operations such as those you list above to occur from LR..it has many of these accomidations...

1) I have no idea how LR indexes, but here is the behavior I see: if I change a photo's file name, LR shows a question mark, saying it can't locate the photo. It asks you to show it where it is, and then reindexes.

As I said before, if you do this from within LR, it works much better. From within LR, you can perform a batch rename on the files, using the same method the LR uses on import. If you do it this way, LR index stays intact.

2) not sure what a '2nd name' would be. the only name there is is the filename, until you add a Title or Caption. If you use Virtual Copies, which are great, it automatically adds a copy name (copy 1,2, etc)

3)not use, i have not imported psd before. When I get back on my home machine with CS2, I wil give it a try and repost my result. Again, LR works best when you launch CS2 from within LR, then the PSD is automatially imported and linked to your photo.

4)Not that I can find, other than all the IPTC fields. But, there are plenty of plugins being created, so one can always hope.

Originally Posted by cmason 3)not use, i have not imported psd before. When I get back on my home machine with CS2, I wil give it a try and repost my result. Again, LR works best when you launch CS2 from within LR, then the PSD is automatially imported and linked to your photo.

Update:

Ok I created a .psd file in CS2, then imported into Lightroom. LR imported without any issue, and the PSD is dutifully shown in LR, ready for me to edit as any other photo, and export as jpg, or even return to CS2 for more edits. This works just fine.

In my opinion, the only good reason to have multiple catalogs is if you want to have a "private" catalog and a "public" one. Say (for whatever reason) you regularly have clients looking over your shoulder while you use Lightroom. You might not want your family (or intimate girlfriend ) photos to ever inadvertently show up in a business situation. You can totally avoid this eventuality by having two catalogs.

Back when I was using PSE4, I had two catalogs for this very reason. IT WAS A PITA. For me it was just too hard to keep track of.

I just use one now in Lightroom.

Originally Posted by Icebear In my opinion, the only good reason to have multiple catalogs is if you want to have a "private" catalog and a "public" one. Say (for whatever reason) you regularly have clients looking over your shoulder while you use Lightroom. You might not want your family (or intimate girlfriend ) photos to ever inadvertently show up in a business situation. You can totally avoid this eventuality by having two catalogs. Back when I was using PSE4, I had two catalogs for this very reason. IT WAS A PITA. For me it was just too hard to keep track of. I just use one now in Lightroom.

An easy way to avoid this situation (well aside from not having your girlfriend photos in LR), is to use 1) filters, and 2) Collections. It is a simple matter of tagging all client photos with a 'client' tag, then turning on the 'client' filter to ensure that no girlfriend photos show. Likewise, tag all family or private photos with the appropriate keyword. Or, simply use 'collections' to create a client photo collection, again, where no other private photos will be visible.

I "used" to import everything into one catalog during version 1. Upon attempting to update to ver 1.1, it would not convert and left it stranded. I had well over 50,000 pics in that catalog and found out the hard way that 1.0's DB was pretty puny... The newer versions seems to have corrected all that...

However due to all that, I have now taken a different approach and create multiple catalogs, one per each event (usually racing or autoX) and use collections to seperate run groups and sessions. This keeps the db smaller and easier to backup or move around while I am post processing especially if I am remote and working off the laptop. I also can make seperate collections for certain drivers to easily get event cd's created.

The reason I break them down, I can easily have 10,000 - 20,000 for an event depending how many days it lasts.. ...if it is something that doesn't generate tons of pics... like just out doing some wandering around with a camera.. Those generally get imported to the same catalog and just break those into catagories per shooting session.

On any of the catalogs ..I can make other catagories to break them out further, but find that it along with the use of keywords really makes it nice to find what I was after.

It would be nice I guess to have them all in ONE huge database, but I found it easier to have seperate ones since I can also now archieve older ones off my drives to make more room for the next season!!

...my methods may seem wacky... but hey.. it works for me!

Thanks for your feedback. You confirmed what I thought and understood.

Originally Posted by cmason 2) not sure what a '2nd name' would be. the only name there is is the filename, until you add a Title or Caption. If you use Virtual Copies, which are great, it automatically adds a copy name (copy 1,2, etc)

Title or caption would work. I used to rename my files after downloading from IMG_0010.crw to NYC_TimesSquare_01152002 sort of deal. Now I just keep them as is and use keywords, even in the PSD, and jpeg versions. I then batch rename if I upload.

I would like to keep the original name (my indexing question) but at times assign 'title' rather than rely only on keywords.

Originally Posted by jdryan3 Thanks for your feedback. You confirmed what I thought and understood. Title or caption would work. I used to rename my files after downloading from IMG_0010.crw to NYC_TimesSquare_01152002 sort of deal. Now I just keep them as is and use keywords, even in the PSD, and jpeg versions. I then batch rename if I upload. I would like to keep the original name (my indexing question) but at times assign 'title' rather than rely only on keywords.

Got it....fyi there is a 30 day free trial of LR... http://www.adobe.com/go/trylightroom

Originally Posted by cmason Got it....fyi there is a 30 day free trial of LR... http://www.adobe.com/go/trylightroom

Oh, I got it back in June 2007. I upgraded to PS CS3, moved to Mac at the same time, and ordered LR 1.0 as part of the NAPP discount bundle.

It was delivered the day LR 1.1 was released. Donwloaded and Installed LR1.1, played around, but also needed to learn the ACR4.x that had come out with CS3. So I shelved it.

First things first: I use Lightroom to import my images from the card and rename the files and I rely on its automatic renaming and file/folder heirarchy. It doesn't arrange them quite the way I would like it to, but its good enough and it is quicker than the alternatives. Personally the way I do it is I load the images off the card and then kick off an immediate backup to a NAS server. Once the backup is done, I format the card and store it with the rest of my empties.

You can move photos to another folder inside Lightroom, but the process is somewhat slow so I reccommend leaving them where they are and organizing them using collections and keywords. If you shoot both professional and personal photos, the downside to putting all your photos in one folder heirarchy is that your pro work and your personal work have to share the same backup and archival scheme. Particularly if I shot a large number of photos for events, I would want to move my professional photos off to an archive much sooner than my personal work. Often event photos lose relevance only a few months after they were taken, but is it nice to keep personal shots around longer than that.

So then, if I were in the position of shooting a large number of event photographs which have a relatively short lifetime of relevance, I would keep a separate catalog for personal and professional work. Each catalog would have a separate top level folder for loading images so I can run separate backup procedures on each. I would also keep to separate pools of CF cards so I never end up with personal and professional images on the same card. That way I don't need to deal with the hassle of evaluating each image to decide which catalog to use when importing the images.

Originally Posted by jdryan3 Title or caption would work. I used to rename my files after downloading from IMG_0010.crw to NYC_TimesSquare_01152002 sort of deal. Now I just keep them as is and use keywords, even in the PSD, and jpeg versions. I then batch rename if I upload. I would like to keep the original name (my indexing question) but at times assign 'title' rather than rely only on keywords.

Maybe this was already mentioned, but, but when outputing processed files you have quite a few options on the names.

You can combo a custom name with the real name, or a custom name 1 2 3... , or the date then filename, filename sequence, or it has a really cool filename template editor where you can get really out there by adding the folder name, metadata along with a meaningful name. Most cool!

..and I am sure I am forgetting something!

Originally Posted by jdryan3 Title or caption would work. I used to rename my files after downloading from IMG_0010.crw to NYC_TimesSquare_01152002 sort of deal. Now I just keep them as is and use keywords, even in the PSD, and jpeg versions. I then batch rename if I upload. I would like to keep the original name (my indexing question) but at times assign 'title' rather than rely only on keywords.

One of the things I do everytime I load images into Lightroom is fill in the location EXIF: country, state, city, and location. Lighroom lets you browse photos by location which I often find is the quickest way to locate a particular image. So in that particular case, I'd find the image using the location tags rather than the title.

Once I started tagging consistantly, I found that adding a secondary title to search on was more work than its worth. I have a set of easy to apply keywords beyond the location tags (people > name, time of day > day/night/sunset etc, style > landscape/portrait/candid etc and a few others). I make sure that my kewording system is easy to apply with out thinking so it gets done. The goal is not to uniquely identify each image but rather to narrow my search down to a set I can quicly scroll through. Add star ratings to that and I can often narrow my search to fit on a single screen which is all I really need to find a shot quickly and painlessly.

Originally Posted by LiquidAir One of the things I do everytime I load images into Lightroom is fill in the location EXIF: country, state, city, and location. Lighroom lets you browse photos by location which I often find is the quickest way to locate a particular image. So in that particular case, I'd find the image using the location tags rather than the title.

Great idea. I use keywords and keyword sets a lot (including locations), Copyright info, creator, etc. but honestly have not used the EXIF location tags.

Originally Posted by LiquidAir Once I started tagging consistantly, I found that adding a secondary title to search on was more work than its worth. I have a set of easy to apply keywords beyond the location tags (people > name, time of day > day/night/sunset etc, style > landscape/portrait/candid etc and a few others). I make sure that my kewording system is easy to apply with out thinking so it gets done. The goal is not to uniquely identify each image but rather to narrow my search down to a set I can quicly scroll through. Add star ratings to that and I can often narrow my search to fit on a single screen which is all I really need to find a shot quickly and painlessly.

Agreed. Not withstanding using the EXIF location stuff, I batch process tons of RAW images, rank & cull, etc. The reason for the '2nd Name/Alias' is for backward traceability - the titles I give to those, oh so few I have printed or posted .
The "Sunset at Monterey" print (or SmugMug gallery image) that really was _MG_4381.CR2 originally.

On a related note I have images going back years with my older naming convention I would like to convert & catalog, and re-establish the link to the source image. I presently aggregate those in folders where I have the source, an unflattened PSD, flattened and sharpened PSD, and the jpeg output. The browser mentality. And in this case I'm talking hundreds, not tens of thousands.

As part of the converison/transition, how did most of you handle your old XMP sidecar files? I store mine in the same folder as the RAW file. Once I Import the RAW and XMP data in LR, did you backup, delete or what the 'old' XMP data?

I suppose you could just leave it there, but it seems better to separate it from the RAW file if you are truly going to let LR handle those duties. Plus it seems so, so, well, sloppy and disorganized - all those artifacts of the past laying around!

Originally Posted by jfriend I've been using Bridge and CS2/CS3 for quite a while now, but I'm going to give Lightroom a try in order to have a little more organizational power. Before I jump in and make a few irreversible setup choices, I have a few questions.

I've been using LR on PCs since Beta 4. I'll take a crack at your questions...

Originally Posted by jfriend I shoot quite a lot of photos, mostly because I do a lot of sports and school events which can end up with a lot of shots. When other folks who have a lot of photos set up Lightroom, do you put everything in one database catalog (or whatever Lightroom calls it) or so you use more than one catalog? If more than one, how easy is it to switch catalogs?

I have everything in one catalog. Switching catalogs is pretty easy; you just tell LR to open up a different catalog. LR's catalogs are single .lrcat files. I think the database backend is SQLite, but I'm not certain.

Originally Posted by jfriend I could imagine putting all team sports and school event photos in one catalog and all family photos in another because I don't really need to search across both at once, but I'd only do that if there's some performance/practical benefit to doing so. Are there any practical (e.g. performance) limits on how many photos you want to have a given Lightroom catalog.

If you're running on slightly outdated hardware, catalog size will impede performance. My desktop is a 2.4GHz P4 with 1GB RAM, and it's a little pokey with LR. My laptop, however, is a C2D with 2GB RAM, and LR flies. I use LR on both machines, and I haven't seen a performance hit on the better hardware.

Originally Posted by jfriend When traveling, I typically put my shots on a laptop and do some post processing on them while on the trip. Then, when I get home, I move them over to my main desktop computer. In Bridge, that's just a simple file copy (NEFs and XMP files) which is nice and simple and preserves all my ratings, keywords, metadata and image adjustments. How do you accomplish a similar transfer in Lightroom?

I do this all the time. You can export a folder or folder hierarchy as a catalog. Lightroom then builds a new catalog (complete with your parametric edits and metadata) and copies out the file structure of the RAW files. Copy this to your desktop and then import the catalog into your master catalog. (I find this is easiest by placing my "new" folder structure into its proper location in the master folder structure and then "importing in place" - you'll see what I mean the first time you import a catalog.)

Originally Posted by jfriend When I'm shooting something like a soccer season, I typically keep all the images as RAW files until the very end of the season. Then, once I've finished keywording, organizing, selecting and adjusting the images I do one final export to JPEG of just the ones I'm going to share in order to put up on the web. When you do this export to JPEG in Lightroom, do you put these JPEGs in a separate file structure that is outside of Lightroom? Or do you let Lightroom index and catalog the generated JPEGs too?

I create my JPGs for SmugMug and then delete them from my machine. For me, the beauty of Lightroom is that I never have to carry around JPGs again. JPGs become sort of like a print - generated only for consumption.

Originally Posted by jfriend And, lastly, I have been using Downloader Pro as my downloader from my card reader. I've got it nicely configured to auto-create directory names with time/date stamps in them and prompt me for a job description that goes in the directory name. It's been working fine for me for several years. How is the downloader that's built into Lightroom? Is it worth using? Are there advantages to using it over an external downloader?

You can set quite a few options in the LR import dialog, but it might not be as flexible as your current workflow. I have an import folder where I dump all my incoming images, subdivided into date-specific folders. Once I've processed the images, I move the folders into the main part of the catalog.

Originally Posted by jfriend Thanks for any advice you can offer...

Good luck!