# What do you use before Lightroom?



## dbooksta (Aug 10, 2014)

I get the Lightroom workflow model, but I'm wondering what people use before they get into Lightroom?  I know some photographers religiously keep every shot.  But when I dump my flash cards onto my hard drive the first thing I want to do is some basic organization: for example, I delete photos that have no potential use (e.g., out of focus, exposure tests without subject) and then move things around to folders corresponding to various projects.  I'm too embarrassed to say what I use now for this "preprocessing" step.


----------



## clee01l (Aug 10, 2014)

"What do you use before Lightroom?" My camera.  
Lightroom is a Data Asset Management (DAM) tool. It is designed to replace all of the other DAM tools.  If you are not using LR as your only DAM tool then you are not tapping into LR's strengths. All of your listed pre-processing steps can be done in LR during or after import.


----------



## dbooksta (Aug 10, 2014)

It seems like LR goes out of its way to prevent you from moving or deleting the actual source files on disk, which I understood to mean that if you're trying to do that in LR you're doing something wrong.


----------



## Victoria Bampton (Aug 10, 2014)

Anything you do in the Folders panel is also done on the hard drive... so if you drag photos or folders into a different folder in the Folders panel, it'll also be done to the source files on disk.  It's the best place to do it.


----------



## clee01l (Aug 10, 2014)

dbooksta said:


> It seems like LR goes out of its way to prevent you from moving or deleting the actual source files on disk, which I understood to mean that if you're trying to do that in LR you're doing something wrong.


Actually, LR does not go far enough to prevent you from acting on cataloged files outside of the LR environment. Applicable filesystems functions are available inside the LR environment through the API provided by the OS.  Filesystem functions of Move, Rename and Delete; as well as folder functions of New, Move, Rename and Delete are available in the folder panel.  The File operations are also available in the Catalog panel for the special collections: "All Photographs" and "Previous Import".  File Copy is not an option since as a DAM tool, LR works with one and only one copy of each master image. 
Filesystem functions are not appropriate for collections and publish services and are not available in these panels. 

Lightroom does not store a copy of the master image file. This remains a physical item and is controlled through LR's interface with the filesystem.  LR maintains a path entry in the catalog for each image that is cataloged. The only reference to the physical path to the master image file is the path maintained in the catalog.  This is why it is important to move, rename or delete master image files only with in LRs interface to the filesystem.  If you fail to observe this, then LR loses track of the location of the master image files.


----------



## Replytoken (Aug 11, 2014)

I like to do a bit of culling and file handling before I import my files into Lightroom.  I usually cull images with FastStone, although that process is somewhat dependent on the embedded jpeg in the raw file.  Nikon's NEF files have very usable jpegs, and the ones that reside in my Olympus files are not quite as useful.  My Ricoh has no embedded file, so that is even more difficult for culling.  Those images get handled slightly differently.  After culling, I use ImageIngester Pro3 to rename, back up and convert to DNG.  This is all handled in one action, and I can walk away and come back when everything is ready for importing into LR.  At that point, all LR has to do is import the files in place.  I know this is not a common method for most folks, but I like having IIP handle the three actions at once.

--Ken


----------



## erro (Aug 11, 2014)

LR handles everything for me. I import everything. Then, once inside LR, I cull, reject, delete, rate, keyword and so on.


----------



## MarkNicholas (Aug 11, 2014)

erro said:


> LR handles everything for me. I import everything. Then, once inside LR, I cull, reject, delete, rate, keyword and so on.



Me too. I use LR and nothing else, either before or after.


----------



## Tony Jay (Aug 11, 2014)

I certainly do not see any compelling reason to use any other software prior to downloading images into Lightroom.

Tony Jay


----------



## rhynetc (Aug 11, 2014)

erro said:


> LR handles everything for me. I import everything. Then, once inside LR, I cull, reject, delete, rate, keyword and so on.



Same here; I've found no reason to use other software/tools in these preliminary steps.  I sometimes use the "Edit in..." function to extend LR, but don't need or use anything else for DAM.


----------



## johnbeardy (Aug 11, 2014)

Half the point of Lightroom is to get away from using other programs before or after.


----------



## dbooksta (Aug 11, 2014)

I know....  I'm still struggling to make the conversion and not sure whether it will happen.


----------



## GDRoth (Aug 12, 2014)

erro said:


> LR handles everything for me. I import everything. Then, once inside LR, I cull, reject, delete, rate, keyword and so on.



This is also my process...........It took a few attempts, but once I accepted (and understood) the LR structure, I have not looked back


----------



## LouieSherwin (Aug 12, 2014)

dbooksta said:


> I know....  I'm still struggling to make the conversion and not sure whether it will happen.



Hi, 

I can understand the reluctance to moving to a new way of doing things, old and familiar vs. new and unknown. Perhaps if you could speak to what your existing workflow does that you don't think you can do in Lightroom then some of us can give you some possible ways to make the transition easier. 

As John says a big part of using Lightroom is to make it easier to organize and access all your photos. There is a cost and that is learning some new methods and abandoning the old. You are speaking to a group that all have that transition and agree that it was worth the effort. 

So hang out, read, learn and ask more questions.

-louie


----------



## jljones (Aug 12, 2014)

As LR is so good as a catalog tool its killed off Aperture... which imho is a good thing...


----------



## clee01l (Aug 12, 2014)

jljones said:


> As LR is so good as a catalog tool its killed off Aperture... which imho is a good thing...


Actually, I think it was iOS that killed Aperture. About three years ago Apple started focusing on integrating everything so that the experience would be seamless across iOS and OSX.  They started dumbing down Aperture to iPhoto levels and from that point on Aperture was doomed as a product.


----------



## johnbeardy (Aug 12, 2014)

They didn't dumb down Aperture itself, but merged its back end database with iPhoto's. The killers are lack of sales, thanks to Lightroom, and the desire to lock people into a seamless experience.


----------



## Kesswicklimey (Aug 12, 2014)

I use PhotoLinker before importing into Lightroom.  I do this because I find it easier for geo-taging and applying metadata quickly to large numbers of photos.  Of course this could just be me stuck in my ways and finding it difficult to change.

On the DAM front, I feel that Lightroom is good but there is room for improvement, particularly when it comes to filtering as it ignores a number of the IPTC fields that I light to use.


----------



## dbooksta (Aug 13, 2014)

*My obstacles switching to LR so far*



LouieSherwin said:


> I can understand the reluctance to moving to a new way of doing things, old and familiar vs. new and unknown. Perhaps if you could speak to what your existing workflow does that you don't think you can do in Lightroom then some of us can give you some possible ways to make the transition easier.
> 
> As John says a big part of using Lightroom is to make it easier to organize and access all your photos. There is a cost and that is learning some new methods and abandoning the old. You are speaking to a group that all have that transition and agree that it was worth the effort.



I've been doing preprocessing and batch processing in ACDSee, and then using Photoshop for major work on a particular image.

To be fair I haven't even gotten through all the hundreds of pages of "quick starts" and FAQs.  I have a backlog of over 4000 photos to deal with, so if I'm going to make the switch this is a great time, but I also don't know how long I can experiment.  So, again, with the caveat that some of these things may be trivial and I just haven't found the answer (because Adobe loves to hide obvious features in the least obvious places, as least to me), sticking points right now as I go through my process:

Copy files from flash drive to folders.  In file system I drag and drop.  In LR I have to go through an import process, or else sync to the file system.
Batch rename.  Can it be done in LR?
Cull.  Apparently this can only be done one at a time in LR, with a nag "are you sure you want to erase on disk" for every single one.
Batch apply EXIF rotation.  Can it be done in LR?
Now I start going through individual images.  I apply the basic rotation, crop, exposure tools in either LR or ACDSee.  If I want to do something more serious then from LR I can open in Photoshop but I end up with an irritating decision: find a way to apply the LR changes back to the file or else open it as "_filename_-Edit" in Photoshop.  Yay, now the edit stream for every image I Photoshop is split between the LR catalog (inaccessible elsewhere) and extra copies pooped out by Photoshop.
The standard crop animation in all these Adobe products gives me vertigo: Why can't the image just stay still and let me drag my box, instead of resizing the image as I drag crop handles.
Last modification date?  No link to the filesystem.  Maybe if I stick to the LR-and-Photoshop-only-called-from-LR-universe it will work out going forward, but on my existing tens of thousands of imports I don't have access to that metadatum.

Any show-stoppers in here?  Any paradigm shifts that I need to complete that will make this all fall into place?  Or are these mostly, "Yeah, that isn't ideal, but it's worth it for all the other cool stuff" issues?


----------



## clee01l (Aug 13, 2014)

dbooksta said:


> I've been doing preprocessing and batch processing in ACDSee, and then using Photoshop for major work on a particular image.
> Copy files from flash drive to folders.  In file system I drag and drop.  In LR I have to go through an import process, or else sync to the file system.


My Import process consists of: Inserting the camera card, choosing an Import preset template and pressing the {Import} button. LR copies the contents of the card to the target destination specified on the Import dialog by the Import Preset.  I let LR create a date named folder scheme because _folders are not important to LR_.  FWIW, I hide my Folder panel in the LR Library module.  My Import presets assign a metadata preset including keywords, A simple Caption and a framework for a Title. It also creates a second copy of the card contents which I keep as insurance until my system backup ahs backed up the master originals. It also applies a Develop Preset that is often sufficient for ~90% of my RAW Nikon images out of my D800/D800E  Although I do not rename, the Import Preset can choose and apply a File Naming template.





> Batch rename.  Can it be done in LR?



If you don't batch rename on import, you can select your images after import and apply a file naming template to the master original copies.  I don't consider the file names of the master original image copies to be significant and I only name the exported derivatives that I keep locally and never the original. 





> Cull.  Apparently this can only be done one at a time in LR, with a nag "are you sure you want to erase on disk" for every single one.



​They can be done in batch. Simply select the images that you want to delete in either the All Photographs special collection or the folder in the Folder panel. You still get the message (it is to protect stupid users from themselves) but you only get it one time foe all of the images that will be deleted.  Just because people do make hasty mistakes, LR has a Reject flag (X) so that you can decide which image to delete and later review them to protect yourself from yourself. I delete image files as a group in three places in my workflow.  First I go through the newly imported images and cull the OOfs etc. by flagging them with a reject flag (X)   As I develop possible "keepers" I reject those that don't work in post process and multiples of the same "good" image. When I complete post processing I the select the rejected images and remove them from the catalog and from the disk.  Next I Publish creating derivatives mostly for web consumption.  No derivative is retained. Others may not get published but otherwise are complete.   At this point I may review the "keepers" to determine if there are others that could be rejected. I mark these with a Reject flag(X) and delete these.  At about three months I move master images from my fastest local drive to a slower EHD (Using LR to drag the folders to a new location in the Folder panel) At that time I revisit my darlings to determine if I am still in love with them after time has given me some perspective.  Those that don't make this last cur get a reject flag and deleted before I move master images file to the EHD.





> Batch apply EXIF rotation.  Can it be done in LR?



There is a Rotate submenu item in the Library {Photo menu} There is also a rotate left  and rotate right icon on the tool bar.  Clicking either of these will rotate _every selected_ image clockwise or anti-clockwise. 





> Now I start going through individual images.  I apply the basic rotation, crop, exposure tools in either LR or ACDSee.  If I want to do something more serious then from LR I can open in Photoshop but I end up with an irritating decision: find a way to apply the LR changes back to the file or else open it as "_filename_-Edit" in Photoshop.  Yay, now the edit stream for every image I Photoshop is split between the LR catalog (inaccessible elsewhere) and extra copies pooped out by Photoshop.



Lightroom has access to External Editors. The default is PS or PSE if you have one of those.  You can add as many external Editors as you like.  When you invoke an external editor LR creates an intermediate TIFF file containing all of your LR adjustments and catalogs it in the LR catalog. LR then invokes the external editor passing the intermediate TIFF file.  In the case where you have matching versions of ACR, LR will pass in the RAW file with LR adjustments to PS and when saved the saved intermediate image is in your LR catalog.   By using the Edit In function, every image is managed by LR in LR and available for Publishing in LR Printing using the LR Print module, or for the Slideshow and Web modules in LR. Remember LR is your DAM tool let it manage all of your DAM images.





> The standard crop animation in all these Adobe products gives me vertigo: Why can't the image just stay still and let me drag my box, instead of resizing the image as I drag crop handles.



It is a paradigm shift from other post processing tools.  But LR is not the only app that behave this way.  The reason that you move the image and not the box is because the crop tool can also crop rotated images  It is better to keep the crop window rectilinear and rotate the underlying image  then to rotate the crop window and keep the image in the original orientation.  I hated this at first too. But after a week or two it was second nature. 





> Last modification date?  No link to the filesystem.  Maybe if I stick to the LR-and-Photoshop-only-called-from-LR-universe it will work out going forward, but on my existing tens of thousands of imports I don't have access to that metadatum.



You only confuse yourself (and LR too) if you try to manage images that LR already manages.  You don't need Windows Explorer to manage image files when the same can be done better and more effectively inside of LR. 





> Any show-stoppers in here?  Any paradigm shifts that I need to complete that will make this all fall into place?  Or are these mostly, "Yeah, that isn't ideal, but it's worth it for all the other cool stuff" issues?


Import into LR and ignore the filesystem for image files.  Manage your images using keywords and collections. Keyword everything.  Use the Filter bar and Smart collections to manage the images.  If you find yourself doing a visual scan of images in the folder panel you are not using LR effectively.  If you can think of an image and describe it, you can find it using the filterbar or a Smart Collection  "Give me all of the photos of Aunt Tilly taken with her boyfriend but not her husband in Montreal during Christmas in the last 5 years."   With a create date range and 5 keywords you can find those photos.


----------



## erro (Aug 13, 2014)

dbooksta said:


> Copy files from flash drive to folders.  In file system I drag and drop.  In LR I have to go through an import process, or else sync to the file system.
> Batch rename.  Can it be done in LR?
> Cull.  Apparently this can only be done one at a time in LR, with a nag "are you sure you want to erase on disk" for every single one.
> Batch apply EXIF rotation.  Can it be done in LR?
> Now I start going through individual images.  I apply the basic rotation, crop, exposure tools in either LR or ACDSee.  If I want to do something more serious then from LR I can open in Photoshop but I end up with an irritating decision: find a way to apply the LR changes back to the file or else open it as "_filename_-Edit" in Photoshop.  Yay, now the edit stream for every image I Photoshop is split between the LR catalog (inaccessible elsewhere) and extra copies pooped out by Photoshop.





1. LR's import can automatically create date-based folders based on EXIF/IPTC date for when each photo is taken. So if you come home from a two week vacation where you have shot 1376 photos with three different cameras, you just insert the three memory cards in succession and click "Import". LR will automatically create the necessary date-fodlers and place the corresponding photos in their correcty folders.

2. Yes, of course. Select the photos you want and press F2. You can also create a number of presets that read various metadata and use that as a base for the renaming. Me personally, I import all my photos "as is". Then, once inside LR, I batch rename using a preset that renames then to "YYYYMMDD hhmmss org-seq#"

3. Of course you can batch cull/delete. Just use the standard multi-select using Shift or Ctrl. Personally I use the reject flag and then delete the rejected photos. I often do this in multiple passes. The first pass is a quick look-through where I set the reject flag for the obviously bad ones, and delete them. The second pass is a more detailed look where I reject some of the photos where I have taken multiple similar shots of the same subject. And then maybe a third or forth pass if necessary.

4. If a photo has a rotation flag in EXIF it is automatically read my LR. So normally all photos will be correctly rotated directly on import. If not, you can of course rotate manually. Individual photos or in batch.

5. You can do very much in LR. For me personally, I can't even remember when I was in Photoshop the last time.


----------



## LouieSherwin (Aug 13, 2014)

Cletus,

Please check your formatting your previous post. Seems you missed something and the resulting display is a bit hashed up.

-louie


----------



## clee01l (Aug 13, 2014)

LouieSherwin said:


> Cletus,
> 
> Please check your formatting your previous post. Seems you missed something and the resulting display is a bit hashed up.
> 
> -louie


Better now?  The forum software does not play well with quoted strings and numbered bullets interspersed


----------



## LouieSherwin (Aug 13, 2014)

clee01l said:


> Better now?  The forum software does not play well with quoted strings and numbered bullets interspersed



Yes much better. I also like to make annotated replies as you did but agree that the forum SW is touchy in that regard.


----------



## dbooksta (Aug 13, 2014)

OK, thanks Cletus and erro: I'm going to try using flags ("Reject" and "Reviewed") and keywords, disregard folder structure, and see if I can stay inside LR.


----------



## dbooksta (Aug 10, 2014)

I get the Lightroom workflow model, but I'm wondering what people use before they get into Lightroom?  I know some photographers religiously keep every shot.  But when I dump my flash cards onto my hard drive the first thing I want to do is some basic organization: for example, I delete photos that have no potential use (e.g., out of focus, exposure tests without subject) and then move things around to folders corresponding to various projects.  I'm too embarrassed to say what I use now for this "preprocessing" step.


----------



## Emma (Aug 14, 2014)

Interesting question ... now, nothing. 
Before I had Lightroom - and for a fair bit of time with it, I used Nikon's software for importing. It let me create folders based on date of capture, and, which I found very useful, would automatically mirror the same folder structure on an external drive. 
At the time, I was using a range of tools, mostly destructive, to edit, so I liked having a copy of the file that hadn't been played with. Just in Case. (In addition to the regular backups of the main image directory). 
All went fine, once I got Lightroom, I continued to copy from camera to computer with Nikon software, then just add them to LR in their existing location. 
Then I got a canon powershot, that took CR2 files as well as jpg. To that point, the Nikon software had been perfectly happy with NEF & .jpg - regardless of which camera they'd come from. 
I wasn't unduly surprised that the CR2 files weren't working, so figured I'd best move to LR. The thing that I didn't like was the fact the "backup" is really just temporary, not to a mirrored file / folder structure. If it ever gets that, I'll be 100% happy  
[Sure, I have other backup methods, and Time Machine shouldn't take that long, but I have a Windows machine too, so tend to have most of my files etc., on a drive both can access]

However, I have a related question. 
I know you can move photos round in the folder structure from within LR - can you automate it (almost, I guess, re-adding everything?) The reason I ask is that initally a year / folder_per_day structure worked fine when I didn't take photos most days. Now I do, so a year / month / folder_a_day would be more practical. 
Could I easily get it to automatically re-structure my folder structure? I'm guessing it'll get confused as it won't want to add things it thinks are duplicates ... which is the lot!


----------



## Jim Wilde (Aug 15, 2014)

No, there's no automated way of doing that, and re-importing everything using Copy or Move into a new structure would lose a lot (or all) of your existing LR work, so that would be a bit overkill, yes? It shouldn't take too long to reorganise into a year>month>date structure, you already have the year and date components, the slowest part is creating the month sub-folders (but not that slow, right?)....once that's done the drag and drop part is very quick. But do you need to go all the way back? I've several times changed my mind about what kind of folder structure I want, but I don't always go back to earlier years to change my existing structure (depends how big a change I've made, and how much effort it would be to rework, and how bored and/or anal I get!). I changed to a date-based folder structure in 2008 (year>month only), so everything prior to that is in a "Pre-2008" folder tree, but I then changed to a year>month>date structure in 2011 but left 2008 to 2010 unchanged. And I'm currently mulling going back to year>month, as my shooting level is way down and unlikely to get back up again for a year or two. But any changes I mad or will make were done in the Folders Panel and usually it wasn't that much effort, just a bit boring.

Regarding the "Make Second Copy" option, yes there are quite a few people who would like to see it changed to mirror the structure of the prime copy, and for sure there's a feature request logged at the official Adobe feature/bug request site. If you feel strongly about it, go and add your vote (link to the site at the top of the page). Personally I'm indifferent to that request....yes I use the second copy option, but only as it was intended to be used (i.e. a temporary copy of the memory card contents). Given that I'll typically cull 50% or more from any import, I much prefer to run my backup routine (which creates 3 copies each time) after the cull, not before it. But no worries if you have different needs, so go vote!


----------



## LouieSherwin (Aug 15, 2014)

Hi Emma,

Two things to keep in mind when making a big folder reorganization in Lightroom. 

1) So long as the images stay on the same disk partition the image files themselves are not actually copied. They are just placed into the new folder structure. This means the you can make big changes relatively quickly because only the directory structure is being rewritten. 

2) Even though the underlying image files have not been physically copied or changed, the file system date changes which triggers a new backup of each image file. So the backup after any reorganization will be quite large.

-louie


----------



## Emma (Aug 15, 2014)

Thanks. A good point that i don't need to go that far back, though it is a bit slow to scroll when I can remember which month I'm looking for. 

And, yes, I'll go vote for the 2nd copy feature


----------

