# Suggestions on getting started / organized



## mulderman (Jan 15, 2019)

Hello all, just getting started with Lightroom and found this great resource.

Background info:
- My wife has been a casual photographer with a Nikon D5300 for a few years now and we are just in the process of trying to organize, back up and edit some of her photos. 
- We have the 1TB Lightroom CC - based subscription and a 512GB SSD  (which is now almost full to the brim from photos) to work with primarily.
- We are trying to get a sense of the best strategy for storing and managing the pictures she already has as well as establish a good workflow for the future before things get too disorganized.
- Most of her pictures are currently stored in JPEG and RAW format and reading about the various pros and cons has left me more confused than before.
- I think my tentative plan is to delete all the JPEGs to free up some space and bring all the RAW files into the cloud storage via lightroom CC. From there we will try to catalog / collate the photos within lightroom and purge the photos that are junk (none have been sifted thru yet and there's probably a lot of duplicates that can be deleted).

The questions / areas i'd love some input in regard to are the following:
1. Being just a casual photographer at present, does it make sense to store and work with only the RAW files? (i believe there is a tool to extract the JPEG from the RAW files if we ever need to in the future). She is a bit wary of deleting the JPEGs at the moment. OR, should we forget about RAW until she becomes more serious about photography? I think the fear is that she will want to go back and edit them in the future and won't be able to do it as well if its just JPEGs to go from.
2. Does it make sense to bring ALL the photos into the cloud / Lightroom and then cull them from there or would it make more sense to be selective from the files on the hard drive and only bring in the ones we want (either to back up or edit)? 
3. It seems like having copies on the cloud as well as the hard drive is sufficient but she also likes to hold on to the original memory cards which seems a bit redundant. Thoughts on best backup strategies in this case? - It seems like with Lightroom classic you have to worry more about backing up a lot more things (catalogs, presets, etc) but with the cloud based version it should all save into the cloud. I would just be wise to download the files from the cloud to the hard drive for specific photos that we like that have been edited?

Next step will be getting the Edit Like a Pro eBook and actually get down to using Lightroom to edit finally but getting organized has proved more daunting than we expected.

Many thanks in advance for any input!


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## Replytoken (Jan 17, 2019)

Welcome to the forum!  In brief answer to your questions:


I would recommend keeping the raw files (and the jpegs if the camera was set up to produce a certain look to your jpeg files that you really like).  Raw files will be much easier to edit in the future as nothing is really "baked in" to the files.  That is no the case with jpeg files, and you will have much less ability to successfully post process the image.  You can always extract a basic jpeg file from your raw file if need be, and with a little work, it will not be hard to quickly export a jpeg file to your liking from your raw file. 
I would cull out what you obviously do not want to keep before trying to push photos up to the cloud.  I am not sure of the speed of your internet connection, but why wait around to upload files that you really do not want.
There are lots of thoughts around sound backup strategies, and all of them involve multiple copies in multiple locations (withe the cloud being one location).  My preferences are around multiple backups on multiple drives and a change out of drives every couple of years.  This constant migration of files is a part of the backup strategy for many folks.  I do not yet have my files backed up in the cloud, but I would not recommend this if you are interested in doing so.  I do not see much value in keeping the images on memory the original memory cards as these are not really a long term storage solution.  Eventually these cards will fail, just like any hard drive, hence the migration portion of the backup strategy.
Good luck,

--Ken


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## johnbeardy (Jan 17, 2019)

Accept the past is what it is,  get it all in LR where it's easier to make sense of the mess, and then sort things out when you have a particular need. In other words, get everything under control, then categorize and annotate - don't confuse two important steps. So don't spend time getting rid of old JPEGs, just import everything into LR "as is" and focus on adding keywords and other metadata whenever you go back to make use of images. For example, in general don't go looking for old car images to add the keyword "Vintage cars".  Instead, when you want to find old pictures of vintage car rallies, then take the opportunity to keyword the pictures. So let the current specific need drive how you handle old stuff.  It's a matter of breaking down what seems a big task into specific achievable steps.

But with new stuff, get it right from now on - maybe starting from 1st January. So if you go to a vintage car rally,  keyword it afterwards and add descriptions. This might then prompt you to go back and look at last year's event, and keyword it too. And extend this approach - current needs driving the effort. So for example, it's at this point that you might spot duplicate images from last year's event and can get rid of them - do it this ad hoc way rather than making a general effort to find and eliminate duplicates.

Yes, get it all in LR, and I would question if LRCC is up to the job (Adobe can switch plans). Treat the cloud as a completely separate issue - it's about deciding where files reside, not about sorting out a problem.

John


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## Victoria Bampton (Jan 19, 2019)

Hi mulderman, welcome to the forum!

Having dealt the same kind of backlog myself (a painter never paints his own house...  ), I'd probably get rid of the JPEGs unless you particularly like the in-camera style and then upload the rest. It may take months to sort through all the old ones, so I'd go with John's plan of getting it right from now on and gradually clearing the old stuff (or not!)

As a beginner, I agree that CC is a good choice. Photographers who have been using previous LR versions for years are finding its limitations a downside, but as you're just getting started, the simplicity of it is a benefit IMHO. 

I would look at keeping a local copy of all photos (checkbox in preferences) and use backup software to keep a versioned copy on another external drive as a local backup. The cloud itself is pretty safe, but photographers do make mistakes like accidentally deleting photos they meant to keep, and there isn't yet a trash/restore facility for the cloud. Using backup software that will keep a versioned copy means that you'd still have a backup of the photos, even if you deleted them some time ago.


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## mulderman (Jan 21, 2019)

thank you all for the  input, definitely helping us get oriented!


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