# How to use Lightroom, or "Where's the Save Button"



## Mick Seymour (Jan 24, 2008)

The photo file progress through Lightroom is somewhat different to what people have come to accept as the norm but once understood it easily adapts to the way people already work. You no longer need to save (export) your edited files unless you want to do something more with them outside Lightroom after editing. Changes you make are held in the Lightroom database and when viewed on screen within the application, those changes are applied to the view of the original photo. Lightroom does keep copies, called previews, of the original with changes applied so it can show them on screen quickly in certain circumstances but these copies are not directly accessible by the user.

  To use the photos you have edited for printing, you print directly from Lightroom. Once again, changes you have made are applied to a view of the original before being sent to the printer so there is no need to export a copy to print. The same applies if you want to run a slideshow from within the application.

  When you want to use a set of photos outside of Lightroom, say for a web site, to send as JPEG files to a print shop or burn to a CD/DVD for friends and family, you export them to a separate folder and use those copies for the purpose. You do not need to bring the contents of the folder back into Lightroom because it knows where the original photo is and how to apply the changes you have made so it can generate more identical copies for other purposes at any time. You can even make more editing changes and export the photos again for the same or different purposes. Once you have finished with the exported copies, you can delete them.

  Rating, keywords and metadata are also stored in the Lightroom database. As Lightroom knows where the original photo is and what editing changes have been made, you can search by keywords or any of the metadata and find those photos within the application. You can choose to have this data and your editing changes saved with the original photo or just use the database to store it. I just use the database.

  There are many ways of storing your photo files on disk where Lightroom can manage them. Here is how I do it.

  I have a top level folder on my hard disk called "In Progress". Under this I have dated folders YYYYMMDD of photos I have imported with the camera software or direct from the card. I have another top level folder on the hard disk called "Library". Under here I have folders named by year and under each of them I have folders named by subject. I didn't set this up for Lightroom; I was using it before. Lightroom adapts to whatever structure you are currently using, showing it in the Folders pane on the left hand side of the Library module.

  When I have finished Lightroom editing in one of my "In Progress" folders, including deleting rejects from the hard disk, I use the application to move the dated folder and the original photos that are left in it into my "Library" structure. This also moves the folder and photo files on the hard disk so I don't need to use Explorer to do it. The benefit of doing it this way is that Lightroom always knows where the original photos are because it moved them for me. I can always find them and always output them including all my edits whenever I need to.


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## topanga (Jan 24, 2008)

Thanks Mick for sharing your techniques. I did not have general Library or In Progress folders. Instead, I had lots of folders grouped by a previous archiving database. Your process makes better sense and I am now applying it to my files.

Thanks for sharing,
Darr


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