Lightroom on Mac Issue

Hey Guys,

 

I just transitioned from PC to Mac and Lightroom is doing weird stuff on my new Mac. It seems to have forgotten the alphabet and how to count. That is, the menus in some dropdown boxes are all mixed up. Any suggestions on how to fix this? I'll attach a couple of screen shots to show you what I mean. On my PC, everything was in alphabetical and numerical order.

 

Many thanks,

Dave

 

 

Edited October 11, 2017 by Dave410

Mac file conventions are very similar to conventions in a PC, as are the menus in Lightroom. There is some confusion when translating ctl and alt keys to Control, Option and Command. Finder is a bit confusing relative to File Explorer, and searches work differently. You might find a 3rd party program like "Pathfinder" easier to use.

 

How do you transfer image files to your hard drive? How do you import this files into LightRoom? Do you attempt to rename the files using Lightroom?

 

Ordinarily, you use options as listed above to rename files for export. However you can rename the original files using formulas such as these. I sometimes add sequence numbers (the order as appears in Lightroom) to the original file name for delivery to customers.

 

My preferred procedure is to copy files from a memory card to a named directory outside of Lightroom, using Finder. I name a file with a date code plus a brief description (e.g., D171008 Lake Forest Symphony), and keep the original name for raw (occasionally JPEG) files. Using the "reverse Hungarian" date format, directories are displayed in date order. If you let Lightroom import directly from a memory card (or the camera), LR decides where they go and how they are named.

 

I then import these directories into Lightroom. There is no reason to rename individual files. It is more important to know where they are stored, and make them easily to locate and recover. The combination of directory and file name is unique, per good database practice, even if the file names start over (my Nikon D3 has rolled over 9 times = 90,000 images). If you need topical grouping, it's easy to set up named collections in Lightroom, without actually copying files. Except for backups, you do not want multiple copies of the same file on a computer, again observing good database practice.

Thanks, Ed. Further research indicates it's a bug in Lightroom for Mac that appeared with High Sierra.

Thanks, Ed. Further research indicates it's a bug in Lightroom for Mac that appeared with High Sierra.

 

Glad I'm waiting on my main computer :)

 

If you have room on your drive, it might not be a bad idea to install Sierra in a second partition if this bug is a serious hindrance to you.

Not a big deal. Everything works; it just looks kinda goofy. There have been other problems with High Sierra too, though. For example, Apple Mail and Yahoo, but that's fixed now. I assume Lightroom for Mac will get fixed too.

Update: It took awhile, but I discovered a solution. Just create a new preset or template (watermark, copyright, file naming template, whatever) and Lightroom will sort the list correctly when you save it and all is well. You can go back and delete the new one if you like too.

Never mind. Not fixed. I had everything sorted nicely, but the next time I started Lightroom everything was all messed up again. Weird. Must be a bug.

The latest update to Lightroom fixed it. All is well now.