Lightroom

[creampuff]

Have just bought a Retina Mac. Have been using ACDSee on a PC. Looking for some photo management software on the Mac and the contenders are ACDSee for the Mac or Lightroom.

I'd really like to just get ACDSee as I've been using it for 13 years and know everything, but the Mac version just isn't up to the standard of the PC version.

Which brings me to Lightroom.

I still have not figured out how it stores the photos as you seem to need to import into a database. Can I have a traditional PC type directory structure with things organised by country and year folders and use Lightroom? Can I use Lightroom as a file manager to copy and delete photos?

[Simpo Two]

creampuff said:

Can I have a traditional PC type directory structure with things organised by country and year folders and use Lightroom?

I have no idea but to a man after my own heart! Simple is usually best.

[Janesy B]

I put things in folders and then synchronise those folders in Lightroom, you can delete and create 'virtual copies' of images without creating loads of duplicate files. The actual file is never touched, which is nice, but keep a backup of the catalogue as that stores the information for any edits.

[Elliotphotograpy]

Lightroom is great for photo editing and management its made my work so much quicker and you can organise it so each new folder of pictures has a dedicated catalog so you can load up each catalog of edits individually : )

www.elliotphotography.co.uk

[Elliotphotograpy]

Lightroom is great for photo editing and management its made my work so much quicker and you can organise it so each new folder of pictures has a dedicated catalog so you can load up each catalog of edits individually : )

www.elliotphotography.co.uk

[The_Jackal]

You can import your current folder structure into Lightroom's catalog leaving the files where they are. The catalog/database is what allows Lightroom to do all the clever stuff it does.

MAKE SURE you watch a few videos explaining this process properly as it will improve your Lightroom experience tenfold.
Kelby Training. Lightroom Killer Tips and the Adobe learning site have lots of very good videos.

Dont just buy it, press a few buttons and expect it to mindread what you want.

[creampuff]

Simpo Two said:

I have no idea but to a man after my own heart! Simple is usually best.

I like simple!


My workflow with ACDSee is:
- Download everything off SD card into a temporary directory. I am not a professional photographer, so this happens when I feel like it.
- Batch rename files according to what I feel like, usually location, followed by an auto-inserted date based on the EXIF data. So if I took something in London on 3rd Sept at 5.21pm, I will tell it to prefix "London" and then ACDSee will automatically call the file London 2013-09-03 17-21-00.jpg where the date and time is from EXIF.
- Move the files to the permanent storage directory by cutting and pasting. There may be several new directories if I haven't downloaded the SD card for a while and I've been to a few places.

My directory structure then looks like:
My Photos-> Country-> Year

All this, including the cutting and pasting happens from within ACDSee.

Can I do this with Lightroom?

Edited by creampuff on Wednesday 2nd October 15:05

[crmcatee]

Don't forget when you import into Lightroom or Aperture to add metatags which also includes year, location. Makes searching databases much quicker than trying to locate a given folder.

[MartinP]

creampuff said:

Can I do this with Lightroom?

Yes, Lightroom can do all of that (and so much more too).

[creampuff]

OK is there something peculiar about Mac file attributes?

Some photos on my portable (think it is FAT32 formatted) hard drive are greyed out for import using Lightroom but show up ok on ACDSee.

I'm not wedded to ACDSee.... as much as I like it's simplicity the PC version crashes a lot. Just want to make sure there are no clangers in Lightroom.

[Simpo Two]

creampuff said:

OK is there something peculiar about Mac file attributes?

Resource and data forks? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_fork

[Gemm]

I've used ACDSee for years and recently got Lightroom (well, it came free with my Canon camera). Although I do like the LR for its editing options, I do wish that there was a simple 'Save As' or 'Copy & Paste' option. I try to use LR most of the time but still keep on going back to ACDSee for certain things.

[budfox]

Lightroom is awesome. I've used a lot of software over the years and it is without doubt the most well thought-out application I've used.

It does take some getting used to, but equally it's pretty intuitive. I'd offer the following advice:

1 - Use it to manage file management. In other words, if you want to move photos from one folder to another, do it in Lightroom. You need to do this so Lightroom doesn't lose track of where files are. Same goes for renaming, deleting etc...

2 - Collections are really useful. Easy to manage and powerful. Make them one of the first things you learn

3 - Understand that Lightroom is NON DESTRUCTIVE. It doesn't "do" anything to your original images, it just creates a database that remembers adjustments. Therefore you can always go back to original settings. You only create new images with you adjustments by exporting them from Lightroom.

4 - Shoot RAW. Goes without saying for many people. This isn't Lightroom specific, but if your camera can produce RAW files, do so.

Hope that helps.

[creampuff]

budfox said:

1 - Use it to manage file management. In other words, if you want to move photos from one folder to another, do it in Lightroom. You need to do this so Lightroom doesn't lose track of where files are. Same goes for renaming, deleting etc...

Thanks for the advice from everyone so far.

Actually for the reason above, I'm considering sticking with ACDSee. I still like to use the operating system for file management sometimes, and unless I'm mistaken, Lightroom will lose track of the files if I do this. I also sometimes use Nikon Capture NX2 to post-process or batch process images and it looks like I'll have to remember to import them into LR after I do this. I might forget or lose track of the odd photo.

[Craikeybaby]

Lightroom can be used as a file browser, but it is a bit of a waste of such powerful software.

You can do all the renaming/folder structure stuff at import, although to be fair all the pictures I've imported have gone into a folder structure, but I just use the metadata tools in Lightroom to find what I'm looking for.

[ian in lancs]

Hmm, I use picture taken date as the primary folder structure and edit the folder name to add a word or two descriptor. However, with 144,623... files it's getting a bit unwieldy! Talking to a geeky friend he's saying folders are old hat and smart folders are the future. Say you have a picture taken on a certain day of the wife in the lake district. Which folder would you put it in. Date, Wife or Lakes. What if you wanted in all folders. That's where tagging comes in. He was saying put the files in big folder, say 2013, or Q1 etc. but thoroughly tag them and use the smart folder power of LR to create virtual folders; time, wife, lakes, red, trees, etc. The picture appears in all the 'collections', is easy to find and smart folders can be created and deleted endlessly without disturbing the original file locations.

I have semi gone this way with my email account at work (compliance investigations) and it has speeded up file storage and retrieval immensely. They auto store based on who, case and title etc. Once the smart folder is created, consistency implemented I don't need to manually file most things. I'm trying it on LR and it seems to work there too. My problem is my huge back catalogue isn't tagged. If I was starting afresh I definitely would go the techy / geek route! If I can pluck up the courage 2014 might be the changeover!

[ian in lancs]

budfox said:

1 - Use it to manage file management. In other words, if you want to move photos from one folder to another, do it in Lightroom. You need to do this so Lightroom doesn't lose track of where files are. Same goes for renaming, deleting etc...

Folder synchronisation within LR will sort that

[creampuff]

What happens with your organised Lightroom database if in 10 years Adobe goes bankrupt and Lightroom is no longer supported?

[Craikeybaby]

The meta data is still written to the files, it's in a file structure as a back up and even if Adobe goes bankrupt etc the software will still work!