How do you know "It seems to have lost the link between the original photo files and those in the (many) collections."

Are you certain you are opening the correct catalogue? You can check this in Catalog Settings which shows the location of the catalogue that's currently open.

Do you see question marks on the folders or are they greyed out? One thing you should no do is re-import or use folder>synchronise to get yourself out of this - they often do more harm than good. You should be able to remap the links.

John

Doesn't the second solution depend on a model release applying to all pictures of that model? Is that true? If so, it does seem more solid . How would you deal with shots where there are two or more models?

The by-photo method obviously causes more work, but isn't it liable to be more accurate / granular ?

John

I'm not sure I totally understand the problem here, but a couple of "Beardsworth rules" for Lightroom:

• Never try to resolve problems by re-importing or by synchronising folders
• Once files are registered in Lightroom, only rename them using Lightroom

It sounds like we should take this step by step. What stage are you at, and have you already tried renaming files somewhere? If you do a Library > Find Missing Photos, how many photos does it tell you are missing? Are there any question marks on any folders?

John

It's not a great effort, Neil. Because of the order in which I work, adding initial metadata to the files before doing the permanent renaming and having the title field in my renaming preset. I wouldn't say I individually assign titles but do it in batches, and often my title is just the general location or overall subject like "flower" - rarely more than 2 or 3 words.

I've never cared for the idea of putting the filename in the title field. Practically speaking, I'd end up with the filename/title appearing in all sorts of places where I don't want it - on my web space or in InDesign layouts. Putting the filename in the title field strikes me as a triumph of pedantry over practicality!

John

Manually, Neil, though I use my FolderSize plug-in to establish hitch folders fit in the buckets.

John

I mean the NEFs and the DNGs, and any derivatives go into the current derivative bucket which can be a mix of all sorts of pictures. The element YYMMDD_0123 will be in every file name and allows me to find all the versions of any file.

John

Essentially now I'm all Lightroom, with everything in one big catalogue (my numbers aren't that big but with the right hardware LR can have hundreds of thousands in a catalogue). I'm using Media Pro as a secondary cataloguing system that also includes files that LR can't/won't register - PDF, Excel, Word etc.

The only reason for having other LR catalogues is when I'm away from home and working on the laptop. As soon as I am back, the small catalogues are imported into the master one and eventually destroyed. Occasionally I'll export catalogues for temporary purposes - again trashing them once the reason for their existence is over. I also maintain a separate catalogue for a charity's picture archive.

Images are imported as NEF. I add metadata in LR and make adjustments up to them until I decide which are the keepers and which not. At that point, I delete the junk, rename the keepers - "YYMMDD_{4 digit seq for day} {IPTC title}.nef" and then create DNGs. I have a bucket system, still, so at this point I burn my DVDs of both sets of files and move the folders over to my archive drives. NEFs are then removed from LR and probably never seen again. Other details
- Automatic writing of XMP is on.
- Lightroom is set to ask on every exit if I want a backup - I try to say yes once a day.
- Any TIFs contain the YYMMDD_1234 element of the original's filename but are stored in their own buckets.
- There might be
- Any panorama, HDR, or time lapse frames are given a green label and stacked - otherwise I don't use stacks
- I still don't use hierarchical keywords

So not much change, just all in Lightroom. Hope that's helpful.

John

A few details, Ian. The $50, sadly probably £50, does get you the full suite and is very likely to include Lightroom as well as these other tablet apps and cloud services. I'd bet on other suite packages being offered, but nothing has been said about that or about the cost of renting individual apps. As now, you are licenced for two computers, but there's no longer the silly limitation by brand - you can have a Mac laptop and PC desktop. Also as now, all the main apps are installed locally, and validation is only once every 30 days.

Even though these terms aren't too horrible, I do agree with you about being left with nothing when you stop renting. Maybe they'll offer a discount on buying the full product? But that's just speculation - and I doubt it would be like our old hire purchase where your rentals go towards the cost of buying. So unless future upgrade prices are hiked to excessive levels, I'm not attracted to renting. I just can't see why I would ever want to (unlike occasionally renting odd lenses or MF gear) but brand new users may find it more seductive.

John

I've been advising people that if they are on CS3 or CS4, it is time to upgrade to CS5. Although the price of upgrading CS5 to CS6 won't be known until CS6 is announced sometime next year, I'm confident that upgrading to CS5 while Adobe are offering a 20% discount and then to CS6 will be better value for money than spending the full amount, and I'm not sure why anyone who already owns Photoshop would want to go down the rental route (though some occasional car users in big cities get rid of their cars and do rely on rental / sharing schemes, so you never know).

As well as the simple cost calculation, also factor in the benefit of new CS4/CS5 features. Photographers who use Lightroom still benefit from CS4/CS5 improvements to Adobe Camera Raw - they can use Edit as Smart Object which provides a more flexible workflow. There's also 64 bit support which gives you faster performance on 64 bit computers with more RAM. Then there are more specific features. Content Aware Fill is wonderful, Content Aware Scaling can be a huge timesaver, and Puppet Warp is grossly misnamed (it's far more useful), and these are just three tools that a Lightroom-using friend is already finding valuable in his pretty-conservative use of Photoshop.

John

Jorge

Did you ever look at my workflow smart collections suggestion? http://www.beardsworth.co.uk/lightroom/workflow-smart-collections/

John

It varies. Some people import as DNG and say goodbye to the RAWs at that point. My preference is to work on the RAWs until that I feel that shoot is "finished" - roughly the point at which I decide I'm not going to delete any more. I then create the DNGs, save metadata back to the RAWs and archive them.

It is easier to apply metadata later if derivatives - TIF and PSD files - are in subfolders with the RAWs/DNGs. I just prefer to separate them into their own buckets and folders in the same way as Peter. Having them in different folders doesn't really matter - at that later point I'll probably find the pictures not by going through the folders but by using a smart collection that might look for images shot in certain locations, or in a certain timeframe, or with xyz in any searchable metadata etc. So being in different folders isn't that much of a pain.

John

Simplicity is the key here. Sometimes you find people with some of their pictures here, some there, and it's only when you're sorting things out that you realise there are 2 or 3 other places where their pictures have been stashed. So you want as few top level folders and as much clarity as you can.

John

No need whatsoever, Mary, and in fact every reason not to do so, as you've found. I never back them up, and Lightroom could rebuild them when it needs to do so.

John

I don't think so. They're handy if you have to transmit files quickly and without time for any corrections, but otherwise are a pain to manage.

John

I don't have experience of this plugin but Jeffrey Friedl is the most knowledgeable creator of Lightroom plug-ins - I'd rely on anything he has created.

John