Lightroom Newbee needs help

<p>I am evaluating LIghtroom for personal use (I am not a pro, but I take lots of pictures). How do you longterm Lightroom users deal with capacity limitations? Do you seperate your catalog from your pictures and keep it in a different folder or even on a different drive?(In his book Kelby claims this will lead to chaos, but I am not sure why)?<br>

 

I typically fill up a 1TB drive per year with just my RAW files and another 1TB for my Master and Print Files from those RAWs. I then archive them at year's end and start all over again. I want my catalog to be much more long lived - I want to be able to go back ten years from now and search for pictures I took today and point me to the appropriate files.</p>

<p>Just this year I started using a new catalog just for 2009. My older catalog has some 50,000+ images in it. I keep the catalog database on a drive separate from the actual images. I keep an active backup on a large external USB drive. The utility I use watches the folders that have catalog and image files and makes copies.<br>

1TB a year sounds like a lot. That will definitely drop off when you use Lightroom. All image edits are non destructive. I have my one original RAW file and the 4 or 5 tweaks be it black and white, sepia, cropped, etc. only exist in the Lightroom catalog. So whatever image you have 5 copies of will suddenly become one physical file on your hard drive and just adjustments that live in sidecar files (which I still don't fully understand yet) or in the Lightroom catalog. I export the version(s) I want in JPG. Post it then delete the JPG (not immediately but eventually once I've posted it to the web sites I subscribe to).<br>

A warning about keeping images on hard drives that are not in use. According to the guys on This Week in Photography it's not good to keep hard drives on the shelf and not power them up every few months.<br>

Hope this helps.</p>

<p> </p>

<p>Christopher, thank you for the response. Your setup mirrors what I was thinking as well - keep the catalog separate from the actual images ( contrary to what Kelby is promoting in his book)! If that is the case, why would a 50,000 LR catalog be a limitation? How big (in GB) is your "old" catalog?</p>

<p>The more I read the more I seem to get confused - my brain is twisted like a bretzel right now:-)</p>

<p>I'm sorry I didn't answer your initial question. I haven't reached any limitations or had any performance issues yet. I changed catalogs because I wanted to keep my more professional looking work separate from family photos and such. I'm sure I could have put tons more photos in my old catalog.<br>

I don't know Kelby and maybe I should read what he has to say. I separated where I keep my data because I didn't want a ton of I/O on one drive affecting performance when my PC has multiple drives. If I had chosen the default, the catalog, thumbnails and images would be on the same drive; not to mention the operating system. So I have the thumbnails and catalogs on one drive (with the OS unfortunately) and the images on another. Then my backup app looks at both drives for changes related to Lightroom and copies them to a USB attached drive.<br>

Ideally I would like to have the catalog and thumbnails on a drive other than the drive where the OS resides and still keep my images separate. And have them all on separate disk controllers within the PC as well. But enough of that.<br /> I think my old catalog is between 500 - 650 MB.<br>

I'm sorry. What part was confusing?</p>

<p>LOL, you were not confusing - you're the first person that makes sense to me. I have been reading a couple of books to get my head around Digital Assett Manegement (DAM). There's a very good book by Peter Krogh called "DAM" and it talks about how you should organize your photographs from initial download to archiving. Then I read Scott Kelby's book and his recommendations just didn't jive with my thinking. My flow will be very similar to yours, except I'll have one catalog on one drive, my RAWs on another drive and all my Master files and Work in Progress on a third. I'll back up all three every day - just like you.</p>

<p>Thank you Christopher for taking the time to answer my questions - I think I know where I need to go with this now.</p>

<p>OK now I'm confused. :-)<br>

With Lightroom I don't see a need for master files and works in progress. Since all alterations are non destructive, the fact that you can create virtual copies and Lightroom will keep track of every change to each image which you can, in an instant step back to at any time, I just don't see a need for keeping separate master and works in progress.<br>

Maybe this will clear things up.<br>

This photo...<br>

<a title="Remix by SemperNovus, on Flickr" href=" src="http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1440/729950680_60e718fd2c.jpg" alt="Remix" width="334" height="500" /></a></p>

<p>and this photo...<br>

<a title="Remix B&W by SemperNovus, on Flickr" href=" src="http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1324/729102355_57b306a3b9.jpg" alt="Remix B&W" width="334" height="500" /></a></p>

<p>Exist on my hard drive as the original file and that's it. There isn't a black and white copy or a retouched goldish copy of the image. All of those changes only exist in the Lightroom database. I have maybe 6 to 8 different versions of this image in Lightroom but only 1 file exists on the hard drive and it has remained untouched since the day I shot it in the original RAW format.<br>

My setup is like this.<br>

C: - Lightroom catalogs and thumbnails<br>

W: - Original image files<br>

That's it. All the works in progress exist only within Lightroom, well at least until I export them to JPEG files for sharing but other than that, that's it.</p>

<p>What happens to files you need to edit in CS4 or any other editing software outside of Lightroom? I agree, as long as you can do all the edits in the Develop module of LR, there is no need to create a "Working File" folder. I am sure I can reduce the numbers of PS edited files with LR, but there will still be instances where I need the multi layer approach through CS4. That's what I meant with Master files.</p>

<p>PS: Great Picture - I like the B&W version better - it is VERY powerful!</p>

<blockquote>

<p>"What happens to files you need to edit in CS4 or any other editing software outside of Lightroom?"</p>

</blockquote>

<p>They get sent back to LR by the editing prog, or I drag and drop them back into LR if the editing prog doesn't have auto-reimport capability. Then I stack the (externally) edited image together with the LR RAW file in the grid view (to keep things neat and easy to find), with the RAW on the bottom. <br>

I also keep backup copies of unaltered original RAW files <em>and</em> a copy of the LR catalog, one copy on the computer's hard drive, and another copy on an external drive. I back up that external drive to a different external drive weekly, and keep the backup external drive in an off-site location. </p>

<p>This might help: <a href="http://learn.adobe.com/wiki/display/LR/About+editing+in+Photoshop+or+other+applications+-+Basics">http://learn.adobe.com/wiki/display/LR/About+editing+in+Photoshop+or+other+applications+-+Basics</a></p>

<p>Video tutorial here: <a href="http://www.adobe.com/designcenter/lightroom/articles/lir1am_integrate.html">http://www.adobe.com/designcenter/lightroom/articles/lir1am_integrate.html</a></p>

<p>I have my Lightroom setup similar to how you are discussing. I have the OS/Programs on one drive, the Lightroom Catalogs and CS4 Scratch on a second drive (Actually a pair of drives in RAID 0 and partitioned), and the image storage on a third 1TB drive. I keep long term backups of the LR catalogs and the images themselves off site on an external USB drive and keep short term backups by mirroring the photos and catalogs onto both the RAID 0 array and the 1TB drive.</p>

<p>The LR Catalog files are really not that big - they take up very little space. I have about 20k images comprising roughly 200GB of image data in my full library. The LR Catalogs and associated preview files take up about 12GB of hard drive space.</p>

<p>When I want to do work on an image in Photoshop I will launch the RAW file w/ LR edits into Photoshop directly from Lightroom (Right click image, choose edit in CS4), then when I am done I simply hit Save in CS4 and that dumps a layered TIF into the same folder on the hard drive as the original RAW file, and links the new image to the original image in LR as part of a stack. LR keeps track of everything and the layered image gets filed away in the proper place on the hard drive.</p>

<p>One thing that's nice is that after I do heavy editing in CS4 I can send the image back to LR then continue to do light tweaks on the layered file in LR (crop, vignette, B&W version, as well as export different versions for different purposes). Since all the LR edits are tracked in the LR database file, it doesn't mess with my original layered TIFF. The whole workflow allows you to do non-destructive RAW edits in LR, build a layered file in CS4 than you can revisit at a later date, then do more non-destuctive edits in LR on top of that layered file.</p>

<p> </p>

<p>D.B. thanks for the links!<br>

What exactly do you all use Photoshop for when it comes to editing. I almost never use Photoshop and do all of my editing strictly in Lightroom. I know nothing about adjustment layers but this thread has prompted me to go experiment.</p>

<p>Thanks everybody - very, very helpfull discussion. Christopher, I use CS4 when I need to apply masks, clone things out, etc.</p>

<p>This new approach of just saving the PSD file (or TIFF) back into the original's folder is very different from what I have been doing so far, but I like the convinience of this approach.</p>

<p>I clone things out in Lightroom. I'll have to look into applying "masks". Thanks!</p>

<p>I do things pretty much the way Christopher does it....although I haven't found the need to have seperate catalogues quite yet....but it probably is going to happen at the beginning of 2010 (one reason I'm reading this post by the way)</p>

<p>The one thing I'd like to do now is what Sheldon refers to (and Chris also mentioned). And that is to get my catalogue off of the drive where the programs reside. Right now I have all programs on my C drive, my scratch pad on my E drive, and the actual image files on externals. Unfortunately LRs catalogue/thumbnails are on my C drive and I'd like to keep them on my E drive. Problem is, I can't find the stupid menu for doing this. I have LR 2.2 and PS CS3 if that makes a difference.</p>

<p>Thomas, I think you can move a lightroom catalog, incl. the previews using the "Export Catalog" feature under: File->Export as Catalog. There you can specify the location for the EXport (make sure the "Export negative files" is un-checked, or it will export your actual pictures as well. After this go to -> File->New Catalog and create a new Catalog on the drive you want to move the old catalog to. LR will restart and now you need to do File->Import Catalog. Find your exported file and import it.</p><p>That should do it.</p>

<p>Thanks Juergen....well, it's no wonder I couldn't find it....it's not "directly" there now, is it?</p>

<p>The only reason I knew thi, is because I am reading Kelby's book on LR right now and I am experimenting with all the different settings and features in LR to get my head around it. I am getting closer to a preliminary workflow - thanks to no small part to the answers I got here. I used to think very "folder" oriented but that really has to change with LR. I need to think in terms of collections, attributes, labels, etc. to really make sense of LR.</p>

<p>If you're going to move the catalog, be sure to select all photos and then, in Library, under the Metadata tab, choose Save Metadata To File.</p>

<p>I'd like to know who, of the contributors to this discussion, are using DNG and who are using xmp sidecars... t (I am a DNG guy, but I am also saving all my camera raw files, off line)</p>

<p>I am using DNG (files are smaller and all Metadata is saved to the DNG directly)but I also store all RAWs on a seperate drive, in other words, the files I work on are DNG, the files I back-up during the initial download are CR2 (Canon RAW).</p>

<p>Completely unrelated to this discussion - does anyone know why stacks in collections don't work? I had planned to stack my panos and my HDRs, but then I realized that in collections that functionality does not exist , which makes no sense to me.</p>

<p>Hello everyone. I just registered for this course, and I was thinking since everyone needs to download or buy lightroom for this course, I can assist you if you have not yet purchased the software, please contact me via email rather then wasting your money, and i know how hard it is with todays economy.ill see if i can help you out.<br>

thanx</p>

<p>email at <a href="mailto:moostico@yahoo.com">moostico@yahoo.com</a></p>