Scott, Fantastic video, thank you for helping creating good habits with LR and organizing our images. I have a question regarding the external drive: which would you recommend…. A WD My Cloud external drive or just a regular non-cloud drive like the one in your video? Thank you in advance for your suggestion.
Wow !!! Lightroom will never be looked upon by me, in the same way again. "We always do it that way" is a poster from one of my work places. I tells me how static people can be. Scott you're a Lightroom Legend.
Where have you been all of my life as a photographer, Scott Kelby???!!!! 🤗This was the most thorough, helpful and easy to understand tutorial on Lightroom organization EVER! And your humor made it all the better. 😁After using Lightroom for 13+ years I feel like I can finally get a handle on my digital library. Thanks a million to YOU and to B&H for making this presentation free for us to watch.
Excellent presentation but I'll still use dates for my folders. I use keywords and collections to organise my photos. If I want to know where my photos of France are, I'll search for France and all my photos taken in that beautiful country will appear because they have that keyword.
Exactly! Standard collections quickly get out of date. I use key words and seldom use collections. But I do have a few smart collections and I do have one standard collection used only to sync with Lr Mobile.
I use the MAP module to add location data to my images. Lightroom then displays all photographs taken in France by filtering on the location data. If you want all pictures in Paris that too is available on the same standard filter. Geo-tagging was completely missing from this discussion. Obviously this is more important for travel or landscape photography (and of no interest to the portrait or studio photographer).
The replicated hard drive in the office or friends house is the dumbest solution to redundancy I've heard. Why not use a local drive and something like Microsoft OneDrive? You can use the local drive for speed and let OneDrive synchronize the cloud copy. It allows you full version control too. The same synchronized folders are available on a laptop ot ipad too. So travel is covered. I really liked the advice on folder, file and catalog organization. The section on Collections and importing changed my whole work flow. THANK YOU!!
I am new to phtography and to Lightroom. I cannot imagine a more helpful hour of instruction, with awesome pdf handouts, than Scott Kirby's class in organizing Lightroom. Thank you Scott and B&H for bringing this to us. My worfflow is no longer a disaster.
Search everything he has presented. He is literally the guru of Adobe products for photographers. And I mean that in all seriousness. There is no one that comes close to him in his explanations.
Why do you bother organizing your photos by category on your HDD, when later in the video you are repeating the same thing in collection sets? And what do you do with architecture photos during travel? Or automotive sports? Or family travel? What happens if your photo priorities change? You then physically move categories into MISC, or you create new category folders? Why not let lightroom organize your photos by date with automatic subfolders month/year? You can the create collection sets based on your categories, and as you explained move photos in more than one collection set, if it belongs to more than one. This way you also have clear, consistent and redundant-free structure on your HDD.
I use a different approach to stars. 5-stars is the lifelong best of all portfolio stuff - what should be printed for the post-mortem show (shouldn't be more than ~40 in the whole catalog). 4-stars is what to choose from for open calls for juried shows submissions. 1-star is a first walk through the new shoot (same as you did P in your video). 1 is not garbage (garbage is X, and will be deleted, no stars could remain on disk, but wasn't selected for anything). 2-stars - the best among initially selected, and marked with 1s first (Selects in yours) - that will be edited and presented to the customer (if they want more, there are more - 1s). 1 and 2 is about one session. 3 elevates it to be considered for selection across different shoots - candidates for the topic/book about a particular subject (when you need more than 10-20 total).
I do something similar. 5 Star - best of the best. 4 Star - best of series. 3 Star - deliverable. I don't use 1 and 2 star. But now that I have 30+ years of photography, I might do something more along the lines of what you have.
@KelbyOne Excellent presentation and food for thought. You say the Picks (and subsequently Selects) are the only images you are going to process and show to others. This I fully understand and agree with. However, why waste disc and catalogue space keeping all the non-keepers? Surely, it’s better to delete all of these. Of course, you can’t do that directly from a collection! “Delete Reject Photos” only allows you to Remove the rejected photo from current Collection. You must go to the folder the image is in then “Delete Reject Photos” gives you the option to delete the rejected master photo from disk, or just remove it from Lightroom. I always choose Delete from Disk. In the example at 37:44 there are 51/146 are Picks meaning that 95 images are never going to be shown to anyone - so delete them. That saves 65% of the space taken up by that shoot. I’d only rename the images after doing that - there’s little or no point having a subject specific numbering scheme with gaps showing where the non-keepers were.
Peter, just posted a similar comment - BIF at 20 fps as an example - I use LR import as a first cull then after a more detailed look and maybe some quick processing (ctrl alt v for similar images) and use LR to mark as rejected (X) then use LR to select and delete from disc. Good point on renaming thanks Mike
Great guidance on Collections vs Folders; but how do you manage the ever-growing pile of "non-picks" and "non-selects"? Surely you're not just letting them live on the hard drive taking up space? Because of that reason, I don't use picks and use "Rejected" instead, and delete the ones I know I'm never going to touch in the first pass. Then I do the rating and keywording for the keepers.
My solution is to select all the non-picks and delete them immediately and permanently. Otherwise I would drown in a mountain of pictures nobody wants.
You can’t delete in collections, but you can tag the unwanted pictures for deletion with “reject”, i.e. the X key. Then you go to the top level folder and do a Ctrl-Backspace and all you’ve tagged as rejects will be deleted (or, removed from LR depending on your choice).
I mark them with the pick and reject flags, removing the rejects from the collection as I go to keep things less cluttered. At the end, I go to the library folder using the right click menu and delete the rejected files from disk (Ctrl-backspace). The same shortcut can also be used in a collection to remove rejected files all at once.
Great talk, and making a joke out of names changing from collection, album, folder etc, but this is important. The words matter because the software devs need to give users clarity over what is a real file in a folder, that can be deleted, edited etc. Versus index data that is used to create subsets of images. The indexes are also file items that themselves can be deleted - clearly you don't want to do that by accident either! So regardless of the software it's vital to understand what you are operating on, and especially deleting.
Brilliant. I was organizing it by years. I will keep it for my folders because it eases managing backups, but I've reorganized my collections by thema. Much better. In fact I'm rediscovering pictures taken years ago. Thanks !
This video is amazing! I've been watching so many "workflow" videos and most of them are terrible or are super specific to their work. This workflow works for everyone and super clear and easy to understand. Thank you!
New to LrC/PS... this was helpful. I do have a question: In the spirit of not using folders, when I go into a collection, pick a photo, develop, edit in PS (save and close in PS), when I return to LrC, the edited file is not in the collection. I can find it stacked with the original in the folders (not in the collection). Synchronizing folder does nothing.... I have to go get the edited file in folders panel to add it to the collection manually. 1. Am I doing something wrong? 2. Is there not an automated way to have the edited file show up in the collection?
This video is too long and i dont think some of the advice Scott gives here is the best. Ill just start with the External Hard Drive and the organization of folders. First External hard drives are very slow, not to mention unreliable and not suitable for constant use as if a mechanical drive gets knocked about too long it will fail prematurely. I prefer to have one large catalog and my biggest problem with LR over the years is that it can be slow and a pain when you have lots of content, so the following solution seem to work better. On my computer i have a 2TB M.2 SSD (A drive) - these are not that expensive - they are around 60-70$ at the moment (but chances are you will have to make some decisions as most PC's only has one M2 slot, in which case you will have to use a regular SSD for your OS - luckily my motherboard has 2 M2 slots) which is very fast and very reliable from which Lightroom is run with all the previews, catalogues and important images. I have a secondary drive (B drive) on the computer that is a regular mechanical drive but in the computer. I have another External drive, like Scott is using here (C drive) that isnt part of light room but is used for periodic backing up procedures that is very large (16 TB) - this drive is kept off and stored away from harm at most times and only used to back up (using something like Acronis or Easeus, that stores drive images of everything once a week overnight) When i import a new batch of files they will go in a chronological folder on the SSD. From there photos will be organized and keyworded, rated. Images that does not need the speed and lower rated are moved to the B drive from inside Lightroom (important), so light room still knows its there and knows where it is in my structure. Also personal, private photos, videos are moved on B, as i am unlikely to need the speed. I can view and work on all my content from one catalog. YOU NEVER SHOULD USE FOLDERS TO ORGANIZE content unless it is with a SINGLE DIMENSION hierarchical structure like Time, because folder structures have a SINGLE hierarchy. Scott is using at least three dimensions Location, Photo Category and Time which will mean he will have mixed up folders with the same dates or genres inside different folders. This is why we used Keywording, Collections to organize photos and KEEP the photos physically organized chronologically.
I agree, some of this info is not good, teaching people how to use folders and collections would have been better, than ignoring folders and not explaining them. I do use external drives, I have LR on an SSD and move the images to the external when I'm done with them on my computer. Star ratings are also better for sorting and using a variety of stars.
Sorry Scott, I store my photos in folders by date. LR does it automatically. I use file names, collections and keywords just as you indicated to organize my photos. It works just fine. I can find my photos very quickly.
Thank you Scott for a great talk, I have a few questions please: 1. I only use PS and save the PSD so I can come back and re-edit the layers as PS get more powerful and or my skills improve. How do I bring in the edited picture into my new LRC catalouge using your system and or continue keeping layers for future edits? 2. In your system, If I have Dubai as a travel collection however I have both people as well as landscape in the same shoots. Do I keep them under travel and then use keywords to reflect it is portraits and landscapes in Dubai for ease of reference? 3. Sometimes I like to make B&W edits, in your system how do I have all 3 files, RAW, Colour edits and B&W Edits?
Hi Scott, Dude, its been awhile since we last spoke. I remember when LR first came out and we talked over the phone, LOL, many moons ago.. and after watching this, I just went in and deleted all my collections except for two, and will start over. In addition to that, I shared your post, and advised everyone to watch it. As usual, you re still taking me to school every time i watch one of your podcast or post.
Always struggled with organizing my photos, since I am a Lightroom Noob. This Talk is really good and truly teaches you the best practices. Also loved the dynamic of the whole talk by Scott Kelby, and his humor.
Cool video. I don't like the organization of the files in folders though. I'd rather have it in folders by date. Then if you want, you can easily add a description or tags to each folder. And if you want that organization like he has, you can just do it in lightroom with the collections.
Agreed. To me, collections are just snap shots of key words. And, if a collection is not a smart collection then it will easily get out of date. Smart collections are useful but the only use I find for a standard collections is to synchronize with Lr mobile and only then because Adobe won't let us synchronize smart collections.
To mark photos for deletion choose the rejected flag x rather than P. You can then use the library flag to choose all ‘xed’ files and select and delete either from the catalogue or the drive as well. You can’t delete them from a smart collection though.
@@StephenBridgett agree I use them the same a collection is no good unless it is final, so I suppose you can call the whole,of an imported folder a collection at the start esp if you want to share with someone else to review.
Exactly. If your non-picks are never going to be seen by anyone there’s no point keeping them cluttering up your disc or cloud storage. But you can only delete images from folders. Deleting one from a collection leaves it in the disk.
This is so helpful. I have thousands of photos and this will take forever, but this really makes sense to me. Now I know what I'll be doing for the next few months. Thank you!
I agree what is he suggesting? That you have an external drive with just photos and then you import everything onto your hard drive on your computer in LR? Bizarre. Who does that? He must have very few shoots.
I've purchased Lightroom 2 months ago but was stuck with the initial step to understand how to import and organize the photos so never used thinking it's a big drama. Not any more!! this video is a life savior and a Gem 💎. [Full shoot >> Picks >> Selects] is a game changer. Thank you Scott for such a nicely crafted video. Didn't feel that it's a 1 hour video and your sense of humor is at its best. Loads of Love ❤
My system is a combination of Year/Month/Activity so a little of both, but I like Scott's idea of only categories. My only challenge is my photos go back to 2008 (ish) and earlier with scanned photos. So changing may be difficutlt, but I can see the benefit. My question is if I am using smaller multip SSDs how do you manage a collection that has photos that spans multiple disks?
Great presentation.... and great system for organizing your mess in LR. Only thing (objection) is that there is no option that I know of for "delete from disk" when you are working in collections. You can only "delete from disk" ....after flagging rejects, when you are in FOLDERS....the very thing we are supposed to stay away from. If you downloaded the PDF go to page 22 and you will see how it looks like you can delete pictures from disk when you are working in collections but.....I do not think it's possible.
Hi Scott, Thank you for this mind blowing video extremely useful. After 30 yrs of photography using the date organisation I am starting to follow your approach but I found two main issues that you may have already thought about and resolve: 1 ) The filenames need to be unique. When using your technique, how do you ensure that when you take portraits of the same person at different sessions or circumstances you will not end up choosing the same filename ie the name of that person + a chronological number that may have been used earlier? 2) When choosing folders such as Travel, Landscape, People, Wildlife like you do, how would you consider the photos done in a travel in Namibia , where you have done Wildlife photos, Landscape photos, Portraits of your wife, that you may have done in a single daily session? What name would be the folder holding the Namibia photos ? and the sub-folders and the name of each photos ? So far I can't resolve this issue and until I do I can't take the risk to reorganise my 100 000 photos library
Lot of very useful info but some of Scott's suggestions only really work well for people who limit their work defined "shoots." Scott, for instance, shoots an entire football game, wedding, car race, etc on one card. Many of us, on the other hand, may have 15 landscapes, 3 portraits, 52 wedding photos,and a horse show all on the same card. In cases like that keywording is really the way to go as Scott's method almost literally requires one general subject per card.
Those were just random subjects I used to illustrate my point. I always download my images each day and almost always have half a different sorts of subjects on the card so Scott's keywording techniques simply don't work for me.
Thanks for your video. It is very helpful. About the star-rating I have created another workflow for myself that might be worth considering as well. When first looking at my newly imported pictures, all pictures I consider good get a 1* rating (unlike the 5***** you give). Then I choose the pictures from there I am going to postprocess. They get 2** and I do the postprocessing. The best shots of a shoot get 3*** (usually only a couple of pictures). The 4**** I only give pictures that I consider so good that I think they represent my portfolio in general. And if I grow very fond of a particular picture after a while, I give it a 5***** rating. But I intend to keep the amount of pictures with a 5***** rating under 250 for my complete portfolio. So these are the real representatives of my work.
If we use catalogs, what does it matter if we have the files in date folders? I’m not going to rename my files like it’s 1997 when I have a catalog system with tags and keywords. Instead of Lightroom’s built-in catalog backup, use a backup solution like Arq that makes hourly snapshots of your catalog file. It’s a lot more efficient space-wise since it only saves the difference since the last one instead of the whole file each time, and it’ll let you roll things back if you do something dumb. This saved me hours on my most recent shoot when I let LR re-import files I moved and it wiped the edits I did. Why bother dragging the files off the memory card manually? Just import them directly. It’ll skip duplicates that were still on the card, and get a head start on generating previews while the files are copying.
Thanks Scott. I switched to collections, but when I use "Enhance" or "edit in" I hardly ever then get that version added to the collection. I have to go back to folder, find it, and then add it manually to the collection. This is going to make me have to switch back if I can't figure out how to fix this
Very helpful, thank you. I have one question, when you create a top level collection set (name of the shoot), when and how do they get moved into your main categories that you mentioned at the start of the lesson? I noticed that you can't move a collection set into another collection set. Cheers 👍
Brilliant - thank you Scott. I’m not a pro and maybe won’t use everything here but there are certain events I do for friends, or wildlife using bursts, there is so much I can use to make life easier using LRC and some of the functions/organisational methods you have described. 👍👏
I haven’t even watched this video yet BUT….years ago, vintage LR3…. I suffered a massive problem with the catalogs/organization …retrieving of specific images that it drove me AWAY! Like I still feel the frustration. I still use LR for editing sometimes…but I need to learn the Libraries/organizational side. Hopefully this gets ME organized to USE Lightroom as it’s meant to be: Efficiently as a DATA BASE.
Good stuff. But I can't do the "Organize by Collection" thing. I do happen to have a mind that can remember years and dates of shoots. I'm happily of the "Organize by Folder" school. My folder structure is broken down by Type of Shoot (Assignment, Personal, Portraits, Weddings). Then Year, then date with a description. Hard Drive -Assignments -Portraits -Personal --2023 --2023-06-17 - Galletta Meadows Anza Borrego - Milky Way --2024 --2024-04-07 - Cataviña Desert Baja - Pon-Brooks Comet -Weddings I can easily toggle the year, and at a glance see everything I shot that year to see if the shoot was done that year. Then click into the folder I was looking for. With this system, I never need to do a search. I know everyone works differently, and it's good to educate people on all the options available. But I'd pull my hair out with the system Scott's suggesting.
What is the best way to edit in Photoshop or another external program and save your work from that external program back into collections? I performed an edit on a photo and when I saved it from that program (Photoshop) as a tif it put the tif version back in the original folder and did not add it to the collection the original photo is in.
I really enjoyed the presentation. Just one question. When you go to import your photos from external hard drive do you import to collections or a folder in LRC?
Wow@@ I load my images to a Desk Top Folder then into LR, After processing I load to Smugmug & a external Hard Drive for images processed to save. I save unprocessed RAW images to an External Hard Drive. Then i delete images from Light Room. this is a simply process for an old man in his 80's. Your Video was very interesting imparted a lot of knowledge along with very entertaining. Thank You very very much.
This is probably a very stupid question, but how do I backup the harddrive if I have them in different locations? I'm guessing I'm somehow going via the cloud or my laptop, but you emphasize to NOT have the photos on the laptop. Advise pls.
Fantastic presentation. My LrC catalog got corrupted somehow to the point where even Adobe Support couldn't figure out why or how to repair it after remotely accessing my computer. (They thought it may have had something to do with files being backed up to Microsoft One Drive.) Now, as I rebuild everything, I'm definitely moving away from the date-based system to a descriptive naming convention Love the use of the collections suggested here, especially the three categories for each shoot: Full Shoot, Picks, and Selections. I may add a fourth called "Final Edits." Thanks for this educational video!
@@kennethraysealsphotography3513 Yep. I did have a backup of the catalog on a separate disk and even it failed to get things back to a usable condition. Frustrating? Yes. But it's given me the opportunity to restructure my files/folders BEFORE I import them back into Lightroom.
This was an excellent video. I have been using LR for years, but in an unorganized manner & I finally decided that I would like to organize everything. This video was exactly what I needed. Good to know somethings I was good 😊 & what I need to improve on.
I always use Bridge to import my photos, but I see that you just copy the photos to a folder. Am I wasting disc space by using Bridge? I'm thinking it's not necessary! Comments??
I would also be willing to use Lightroom exclusively, even for the catalogue, and put Photo Mechanic aside, but I cannot do this because I don't know another way to use Photo Mechanic's 'code replacement' function that I need for my sports works.
So if I take a full shoot of say a soccer game, and a lot are blurred, I have these RAW files on my hard drive. They're in "full shoot" then how do I delete them off my hard drive so they no longer exist? I obviously would't want to keep a blurry or misfire shot. .Thanks this is the best organization tutorial for LrC ever.
Thank you Scott! This is the best Lightroom organization video I have seen. It’s very easy to understand and will help me so much with my Lightroom work.
Great presentation. I just had a quick question. Upon your first pass when looking at the original images, would one want to delete any that are junk? (i.e. out of focus or black etc.) Thanks
Awesome video! My organization is a disaster. Quick question though.....what are your thoughts on copying photos from your card and transferring them to an external ssd first(since they are faster than an external hd). Do your editing in LRC using them of the ssd and once all editing is done then transfer them from your ssd to your hd?
Love this and will totally implement it! Only difference is that I will have a NAS, instead of a "physical external drive", so I can access my work from everywhere. This workflow seems to be pretty specific to a desktop setup. What about if you want to use this setup/workflow with multiple computers and your phone and tablet? Say I'm using my Macbook docked 85% of the time, and work on that, but I also travel and bring my Macbook on the go, or maybe just my Galaxy Fold 5 or tablet.. how can I use this workflow? Sure, I can use Lightroom "cloud", but I really want to skip storing my photos in the cloud and use my NAS as file storage. Is it easy to use Aadobes cloud just to sync when you're on the go? Or want to slack on the sofa and edit your photos on your tablet instead of a computer? It would be great to get some additional information on how to use this setup/workflow, but also implement Lightroom "cloud" and your phone/tablet for on-the-go.
Going through this pain at the moment. So I have lots of travel photos, and in amongst them are other categories I might use: 'Architecture', 'Landscape', 'Street'. Do I duplicate?
Great video. One questions though... when you want to relocate the photos on from any drive to another drive (lets say a NAS), what then? Go into the folders section right?
My first question is I’ve tried to make a collection but it only shows the root of my Mac how do I select anything else, I also have a 10TB external drive so the so the only thing i could think is splitting that down to 3 sections and naming one as photos one as backup and leaving the other one blank, have done this correct because I couldn’t see how to add the first drive when I first asked me I was a little confused
Really don't understand why you don't organize in folders by year/month/day/event and use keywords for further detail like cowboy hat or sunset or photoshoot or family or 1954 Buick or whatever. Your system seems to be naming folders and images by keyword. Makes zero sense to me, but if that's what you like ...it's your prerogative.
I’d agree I import all my folders by date and then create smart folders with key words to say capture all the butterflies in a summer. Fine to give folders names but what if in one day you shoot some family, pics and then some wild life and then some aircraft do you do 3 imports to split them by subject? Date is far easier for me to name folders.
@@sh8736 if you shoot three subjects in one day the easiest way is surely to import them into a single folder. If you want to move one or more subsets into another folder (e.g. aircraft) you can do that in Lightroom. That’s quicker and less error prone than multiple imports.
@@peterjohnson1739For sure! I use ONE catalog only. In it there are folders for tethered imports (which will be moved to the date folders), undated images downloaded for inspiration (sorted into folders), resources ...like clip art type stuff etc., and then all the images I ;shoot; are cataloged in this way: YYYY YYYYMM YYYYMMDD Event or Shoot Name 1 (and sub folders in that for example for a wedding: Venu, Bride Prep, Groom Prep, Arrivals, Cerimony, etc., etc. All images are keyworded, so even at the top level of hundreds of thousands of photos, any image can be found in seconds, and it handles any number of tasks in one day. From there Smart Collections and Smart Published Collections are used to assign photos for Fundy Designer, or for media etc., etc. I just find that flow makes life a lot simpler.
If I wasn't confused before, I am now. Did you really mean to say folders when you said collections or collections when you meant folders? Were those folders in LR called Albums or was it collections that are now called albums? Is that folders within collections or folders on your hard disk? Talk about muddying the water.
I have one big catalog and it is painfully slow to save and close. I have started doing individual catalogs but don’t really like that way necessarily as you don’t have access to all photos.
This is brilliant. Thank you so much! I’ve started taking photos as a hobby and I was panicking about LR organization literally last night. Wasn’t even looking for videos about it just yet but then yours popped up on my feed and I’m so thankful for that 😊 To the people saying “don’t follow his advice for this or that”: please share your opinion without discrediting his beautiful video. If it doesn’t work for you, that’s great, stick to what you like and if you really want to share with others the way it works for you, there are ways of doing so without sounding condescending ☺️
Nice and entertaining presentation. There is one thing to keep in mind: Picks and collections to not translate nicely over into the XMP metadata container. So if you ever want to change your DAM program, you are pretty much lost. Well, you have the rudimentary but ambiguous organization based on folders and the 5-star-ratings that are all written into the XMP sidecar files, if you choose to do so. But the picks and the collections are all gone. I am aware that there might be solutions to migrate collections into a new DAM system (even Capture One can do so). But I would not only rely on collections. I am using a controlled vocabulary of nested Keywords along with a strict star rating system (1/2/3). Every star rating has a clear meaning (1 = pick 2 = selects 3 = edited and 4 = portfolio quality). So this way all the informations can be brought over to other programs, if necessary. I am using many Smart Collections though. I am organizing all the shooting pictures within a folder named by date, followed by who/what and where in the folder name. The date is unique and can be automatically generated by any DAM system. Everything alse will be tagged by keywords. But this is just my approach. There is no single right way to do so. We all have to find a solutions, that feels intuitive and is not depending too much on a particular software.
Yes, I was disappointed that this presentation said nothing at all about IPTC standards and how you can tag/organize your photo library in a way that can be converted to other photo organizing programs (other DAMs, as you said). And controlled-vocabulary keywords are a far, far more powerful way to categorize and search images than collections or filenames. All professional photo libraries that I'm aware of use keywords as their central organizing/searching principle.
@@eamonhickey you are absolutely right. With the usage of keywords you are totally open to migrate to other DAM systems at any given time in the future. You can not talk about organizing photos without mentioning IPTC standards and keywords.
... and that said, I can't organize my folders by type of subject. Most of mine intersect because *I'm not a commercial photographer* . Landscape images taken on a family trip? Hmm, yeah. Family doing sports? The folders will stay organized by year, and I'll organize within Lr with Collections.
Just diving into Lightroom for the first time and this is THE BEST intro video online. Direct and to the point with all of the info you need to get started correctly! Thank you soooooo much for this!
Great session, great information. Honestly, it just convinced me to stick to Apple Photos for the time being. The cloud sync and not having to manage the actual location of the files, plus the "Optimize Storage" option makes it so much better at organizing. It's not as powerful in adjustments but it's 80% there.
Great stuff in here, Scott, thanks! What was not addressed was syncing with the LR mobile app. The mobile app does not sync the top level collection names, which is a huge problem for which I haven't been able to find a solution. So in the mobile app collections are called "albums". All the sub-level collections in LR classic are properly synced but the top level collections are not. I know one can create "folders" in the mobile app but while helpful, that doesn't seem to solve the problem, especially in an automated way. Any ideas here? Videos or posts to which I can be pointed? Thanks!
Yes, I have the same dilema after adopting Scott's organization process in LRC. After opening up LRCC on iPhone, all you will see are the , and . Have you found a way to solve this yet?
Great presentation. I have taken abourt 4 weeks to sort ALL my photos as per this approach. I feel in control of my digital library for the first time!!
![[UA] NAVI проти G2 Esports | Blast Premier Fall Final](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/QWlIm4FGESQ/mqdefault.jpg)
ICYMI: Here is Scott's Depth of Field presentation on What Makes a Great Portrait: ua-cam.com/video/mM2rIexPUTk/v-deo.html
Scott, Fantastic video, thank you for helping creating good habits with LR and organizing our images. I have a question regarding the external drive: which would you recommend…. A WD My Cloud external drive or just a regular non-cloud drive like the one in your video? Thank you in advance for your suggestion.
Great video indeed!
My images aren’t going into my collections, I don’t understand why
Wow !!! Lightroom will never be looked upon by me, in the same way again. "We always do it that way" is a poster from one of my work places. I tells me how static people can be. Scott you're a Lightroom Legend.
Glad you learned something new, thanks for watching!
Where have you been all of my life as a photographer, Scott Kelby???!!!! 🤗This was the most thorough, helpful and easy to understand tutorial on Lightroom organization EVER! And your humor made it all the better. 😁After using Lightroom for 13+ years I feel like I can finally get a handle on my digital library. Thanks a million to YOU and to B&H for making this presentation free for us to watch.
Scott is still as funny ever. I have been using LR since It first came out. I guess it's time for me to use Collections
Thanks for this content
Thanks for watching!
Excellent presentation but I'll still use dates for my folders. I use keywords and collections to organise my photos. If I want to know where my photos of France are, I'll search for France and all my photos taken in that beautiful country will appear because they have that keyword.
Exactly! Standard collections quickly get out of date. I use key words and seldom use collections. But I do have a few smart collections and I do have one standard collection used only to sync with Lr Mobile.
Yeah, I laughed at that part. I just have them in folders by year and then date, with everything else done in Lightroom.
I use the MAP module to add location data to my images. Lightroom then displays all photographs taken in France by filtering on the location data. If you want all pictures in Paris that too is available on the same standard filter. Geo-tagging was completely missing from this discussion. Obviously this is more important for travel or landscape photography (and of no interest to the portrait or studio photographer).
Scott- you got anything like this for PS?
Probably the best Lightroom organizational videos I have ever watched. Scoot Kelby makes everything so easy to follow along with. Brilliant.
The replicated hard drive in the office or friends house is the dumbest solution to redundancy I've heard. Why not use a local drive and something like Microsoft OneDrive? You can use the local drive for speed and let OneDrive synchronize the cloud copy. It allows you full version control too. The same synchronized folders are available on a laptop ot ipad too. So travel is covered. I really liked the advice on folder, file and catalog organization. The section on Collections and importing changed my whole work flow. THANK YOU!!
I am new to phtography and to Lightroom. I cannot imagine a more helpful hour of instruction, with awesome pdf handouts, than Scott Kirby's class in organizing Lightroom. Thank you Scott and B&H for bringing this to us. My worfflow is no longer a disaster.
I wish this hour was available years ago. Now its hours and hours and hours of work to get my catalogue organized.
Search everything he has presented. He is literally the guru of Adobe products for photographers. And I mean that in all seriousness. There is no one that comes close to him in his explanations.
Why do you bother organizing your photos by category on your HDD, when later in the video you are repeating the same thing in collection sets? And what do you do with architecture photos during travel? Or automotive sports? Or family travel? What happens if your photo priorities change? You then physically move categories into MISC, or you create new category folders? Why not let lightroom organize your photos by date with automatic subfolders month/year? You can the create collection sets based on your categories, and as you explained move photos in more than one collection set, if it belongs to more than one. This way you also have clear, consistent and redundant-free structure on your HDD.
I use a different approach to stars. 5-stars is the lifelong best of all portfolio stuff - what should be printed for the post-mortem show (shouldn't be more than ~40 in the whole catalog). 4-stars is what to choose from for open calls for juried shows submissions. 1-star is a first walk through the new shoot (same as you did P in your video). 1 is not garbage (garbage is X, and will be deleted, no stars could remain on disk, but wasn't selected for anything). 2-stars - the best among initially selected, and marked with 1s first (Selects in yours) - that will be edited and presented to the customer (if they want more, there are more - 1s). 1 and 2 is about one session. 3 elevates it to be considered for selection across different shoots - candidates for the topic/book about a particular subject (when you need more than 10-20 total).
I do something similar. 5 Star - best of the best. 4 Star - best of series. 3 Star - deliverable. I don't use 1 and 2 star.
But now that I have 30+ years of photography, I might do something more along the lines of what you have.
This is probably the most useful photography videos I've seen in the last 5 years
Glad to hear it, thanks for watching!
@KelbyOne Excellent presentation and food for thought. You say the Picks (and subsequently Selects) are the only images you are going to process and show to others. This I fully understand and agree with.
However, why waste disc and catalogue space keeping all the non-keepers? Surely, it’s better to delete all of these. Of course, you can’t do that directly from a collection! “Delete Reject Photos” only allows you to Remove the rejected photo from current Collection. You must go to the folder the image is in then “Delete Reject Photos” gives you the option to delete the rejected master photo from disk, or just remove it from Lightroom. I always choose Delete from Disk.
In the example at 37:44 there are 51/146 are Picks meaning that 95 images are never going to be shown to anyone - so delete them. That saves 65% of the space taken up by that shoot. I’d only rename the images after doing that - there’s little or no point having a subject specific numbering scheme with gaps showing where the non-keepers were.
Peter, just posted a similar comment - BIF at 20 fps as an example - I use LR import as a first cull then after a more detailed look and maybe some quick processing (ctrl alt v for similar images) and use LR to mark as rejected (X) then use LR to select and delete from disc. Good point on renaming thanks Mike
Great guidance on Collections vs Folders; but how do you manage the ever-growing pile of "non-picks" and "non-selects"? Surely you're not just letting them live on the hard drive taking up space? Because of that reason, I don't use picks and use "Rejected" instead, and delete the ones I know I'm never going to touch in the first pass. Then I do the rating and keywording for the keepers.
My solution is to select all the non-picks and delete them immediately and permanently. Otherwise I would drown in a mountain of pictures nobody wants.
But you can’t do that in collections can you
You can’t delete in collections, but you can tag the unwanted pictures for deletion with “reject”, i.e. the X key. Then you go to the top level folder and do a Ctrl-Backspace and all you’ve tagged as rejects will be deleted (or, removed from LR depending on your choice).
Thanks
I mark them with the pick and reject flags, removing the rejects from the collection as I go to keep things less cluttered. At the end, I go to the library folder using the right click menu and delete the rejected files from disk (Ctrl-backspace). The same shortcut can also be used in a collection to remove rejected files all at once.
Great talk, and making a joke out of names changing from collection, album, folder etc, but this is important.
The words matter because the software devs need to give users clarity over what is a real file in a folder, that can be deleted, edited etc.
Versus index data that is used to create subsets of images.
The indexes are also file items that themselves can be deleted - clearly you don't want to do that by accident either!
So regardless of the software it's vital to understand what you are operating on, and especially deleting.
Brilliant. I was organizing it by years. I will keep it for my folders because it eases managing backups, but I've reorganized my collections by thema. Much better. In fact I'm rediscovering pictures taken years ago. Thanks !
Probably the best lightroom video out there. A must watch.
This video is amazing! I've been watching so many "workflow" videos and most of them are terrible or are super specific to their work. This workflow works for everyone and super clear and easy to understand. Thank you!
Glad it was helpful!
New to LrC/PS... this was helpful. I do have a question: In the spirit of not using folders, when I go into a collection, pick a photo, develop, edit in PS (save and close in PS), when I return to LrC, the edited file is not in the collection. I can find it stacked with the original in the folders (not in the collection). Synchronizing folder does nothing.... I have to go get the edited file in folders panel to add it to the collection manually. 1. Am I doing something wrong? 2. Is there not an automated way to have the edited file show up in the collection?
Fantastic questions and very frustrating issue. I’d like to know the answer to this as well.
Me too, precisely the same question
have the same question, did you find a solution (after 1 Year?)
No
This video is too long and i dont think some of the advice Scott gives here is the best. Ill just start with the External Hard Drive and the organization of folders. First External hard drives are very slow, not to mention unreliable and not suitable for constant use as if a mechanical drive gets knocked about too long it will fail prematurely. I prefer to have one large catalog and my biggest problem with LR over the years is that it can be slow and a pain when you have lots of content, so the following solution seem to work better.
On my computer i have a 2TB M.2 SSD (A drive) - these are not that expensive - they are around 60-70$ at the moment (but chances are you will have to make some decisions as most PC's only has one M2 slot, in which case you will have to use a regular SSD for your OS - luckily my motherboard has 2 M2 slots) which is very fast and very reliable from which Lightroom is run with all the previews, catalogues and important images. I have a secondary drive (B drive) on the computer that is a regular mechanical drive but in the computer. I have another External drive, like Scott is using here (C drive) that isnt part of light room but is used for periodic backing up procedures that is very large (16 TB) - this drive is kept off and stored away from harm at most times and only used to back up (using something like Acronis or Easeus, that stores drive images of everything once a week overnight)
When i import a new batch of files they will go in a chronological folder on the SSD. From there photos will be organized and keyworded, rated. Images that does not need the speed and lower rated are moved to the B drive from inside Lightroom (important), so light room still knows its there and knows where it is in my structure. Also personal, private photos, videos are moved on B, as i am unlikely to need the speed. I can view and work on all my content from one catalog. YOU NEVER SHOULD USE FOLDERS TO ORGANIZE content unless it is with a SINGLE DIMENSION hierarchical structure like Time, because folder structures have a SINGLE hierarchy. Scott is using at least three dimensions Location, Photo Category and Time which will mean he will have mixed up folders with the same dates or genres inside different folders. This is why we used Keywording, Collections to organize photos and KEEP the photos physically organized chronologically.
I agree, some of this info is not good, teaching people how to use folders and collections would have been better, than ignoring folders and not explaining them. I do use external drives, I have LR on an SSD and move the images to the external when I'm done with them on my computer.
Star ratings are also better for sorting and using a variety of stars.
Sorry Scott, I store my photos in folders by date. LR does it automatically. I use file names, collections and keywords just as you indicated to organize my photos. It works just fine. I can find my photos very quickly.
Thank you Scott for a great talk, I have a few questions please:
1. I only use PS and save the PSD so I can come back and re-edit the layers as PS get more powerful and or my skills improve. How do I bring in the edited picture into my new LRC catalouge using your system and or continue keeping layers for future edits?
2. In your system, If I have Dubai as a travel collection however I have both people as well as landscape in the same shoots. Do I keep them under travel and then use keywords to reflect it is portraits and landscapes in Dubai for ease of reference?
3. Sometimes I like to make B&W edits, in your system how do I have all 3 files, RAW, Colour edits and B&W Edits?
Hi Scott, Dude, its been awhile since we last spoke. I remember when LR first came out and we talked over the phone, LOL, many moons ago.. and after watching this, I just went in and deleted all my collections except for two, and will start over. In addition to that, I shared your post, and advised everyone to watch it. As usual, you re still taking me to school every time i watch one of your podcast or post.
Always struggled with organizing my photos, since I am a Lightroom Noob. This Talk is really good and truly teaches you the best practices. Also loved the dynamic of the whole talk by Scott Kelby, and his humor.
Scott always brings it.
Cool video. I don't like the organization of the files in folders though. I'd rather have it in folders by date. Then if you want, you can easily add a description or tags to each folder. And if you want that organization like he has, you can just do it in lightroom with the collections.
If you do that with collections, how do you delete photos from a shoot. Say I take 500 photos and Ive got 23 of my foot so they should be deleted??
Agreed. To me, collections are just snap shots of key words. And, if a collection is not a smart collection then it will easily get out of date. Smart collections are useful but the only use I find for a standard collections is to synchronize with Lr mobile and only then because Adobe won't let us synchronize smart collections.
To mark photos for deletion choose the rejected flag x rather than P. You can then use the library flag to choose all ‘xed’ files and select and delete either from the catalogue or the drive as well. You can’t delete them from a smart collection though.
@@StephenBridgett agree I use them the same a collection is no good unless it is final, so I suppose you can call the whole,of an imported folder a collection at the start esp if you want to share with someone else to review.
I feel like 5 mins in Bridge to get rid of those and batch renaming would make doing this in LrC even more efficient. I was asking the same question.
Exactly. If your non-picks are never going to be seen by anyone there’s no point keeping them cluttering up your disc or cloud storage. But you can only delete images from folders. Deleting one from a collection leaves it in the disk.
Thank you for posting this fantastic introductory Lightroom course. I am already seeing the results of an organized photo catalogue!!
This is so helpful. I have thousands of photos and this will take forever, but this really makes sense to me. Now I know what I'll be doing for the next few months. Thank you!
11:00 - how do I store 1 catalog with 8TB of images on my computer ? My SDD drive is only 1 TB ?
I agree what is he suggesting? That you have an external drive with just photos and then you import everything onto your hard drive on your computer in LR? Bizarre. Who does that? He must have very few shoots.
One of the most comprehensive videos I've ever seen about LRC Organization.
Much love to you Scott thank you for sharing your wealth of knowledge. Keep on doing what you’re doing. It’s great thank you
I've purchased Lightroom 2 months ago but was stuck with the initial step to understand how to import and organize the photos so never used thinking it's a big drama. Not any more!! this video is a life savior and a Gem 💎. [Full shoot >> Picks >> Selects] is a game changer. Thank you Scott for such a nicely crafted video. Didn't feel that it's a 1 hour video and your sense of humor is at its best. Loads of Love ❤
this is absolute gold, i'm starting using LRC and this video explained me everything i needed to do it the right way, simply thanks!
My system is a combination of Year/Month/Activity so a little of both, but I like Scott's idea of only categories. My only challenge is my photos go back to 2008 (ish) and earlier with scanned photos. So changing may be difficutlt, but I can see the benefit.
My question is if I am using smaller multip SSDs how do you manage a collection that has photos that spans multiple disks?
Right, b/c I use an insanely fast SSD for short term storage and a much larger but much slower HDD for true storage.
By far the best presentation I have seen or read on organising and managing your photos in LR and generally.
Glad you enjoyed it, thanks for watching!
By far the best LR organization video I've seen. Bar none. Thank you, thank you!
Glad we were here to help, thanks for watching!
Great presentation.... and great system for organizing your mess in LR. Only thing (objection) is that there is no option that I know of for "delete from disk" when you are working in collections. You can only "delete from disk" ....after flagging rejects, when you are in FOLDERS....the very thing we are supposed to stay away from. If you downloaded the PDF go to page 22 and you will see how it looks like you can delete pictures from disk when you are working in collections but.....I do not think it's possible.
Off to a bad start. Can't figure out how to download the "43 page detailed handout". Presentation really good
Hi Scott,
Thank you for this mind blowing video extremely useful. After 30 yrs of photography using the date organisation I am starting to follow your approach but I found two main issues that you may have already thought about and resolve:
1 ) The filenames need to be unique. When using your technique, how do you ensure that when you take portraits of the same person at different sessions or circumstances you will not end up choosing the same filename ie the name of that person + a chronological number that may have been used earlier?
2) When choosing folders such as Travel, Landscape, People, Wildlife like you do, how would you consider the photos done in a travel in Namibia , where you have done Wildlife photos, Landscape photos, Portraits of your wife, that you may have done in a single daily session? What name would be the folder holding the Namibia photos ? and the sub-folders and the name of each photos ?
So far I can't resolve this issue and until I do I can't take the risk to reorganise my 100 000 photos library
Lot of very useful info but some of Scott's suggestions only really work well for people who limit their work defined "shoots." Scott, for instance, shoots an entire football game, wedding, car race, etc on one card. Many of us, on the other hand, may have 15 landscapes, 3 portraits, 52 wedding photos,and a horse show all on the same card. In cases like that keywording is really the way to go as Scott's method almost literally requires one general subject per card.
Did you shoot all of those things on the same day? His process works if you offload your card at the end of the day.
Those were just random subjects I used to illustrate my point. I always download my images each day and almost always have half a different sorts of subjects on the card so Scott's keywording techniques simply don't work for me.
@boatman222345 I guess I don't shoot as much, yet, but Ibdo have multiple subjects on one card. I just haven't sorted it.
Thank you!! I have a new laptop and spent the whole evening organizing collection sets/collections from folders. This was a HUGE help!
Glad this was helpful for you, thanks for watching!
Thanks for your video. It is very helpful. About the star-rating I have created another workflow for myself that might be worth considering as well. When first looking at my newly imported pictures, all pictures I consider good get a 1* rating (unlike the 5***** you give). Then I choose the pictures from there I am going to postprocess. They get 2** and I do the postprocessing. The best shots of a shoot get 3*** (usually only a couple of pictures). The 4**** I only give pictures that I consider so good that I think they represent my portfolio in general. And if I grow very fond of a particular picture after a while, I give it a 5***** rating. But I intend to keep the amount of pictures with a 5***** rating under 250 for my complete portfolio. So these are the real representatives of my work.
If we use catalogs, what does it matter if we have the files in date folders? I’m not going to rename my files like it’s 1997 when I have a catalog system with tags and keywords.
Instead of Lightroom’s built-in catalog backup, use a backup solution like Arq that makes hourly snapshots of your catalog file. It’s a lot more efficient space-wise since it only saves the difference since the last one instead of the whole file each time, and it’ll let you roll things back if you do something dumb. This saved me hours on my most recent shoot when I let LR re-import files I moved and it wiped the edits I did.
Why bother dragging the files off the memory card manually? Just import them directly. It’ll skip duplicates that were still on the card, and get a head start on generating previews while the files are copying.
Thanks Scott. I switched to collections, but when I use "Enhance" or "edit in" I hardly ever then get that version added to the collection. I have to go back to folder, find it, and then add it manually to the collection. This is going to make me have to switch back if I can't figure out how to fix this
Very helpful, thank you. I have one question, when you create a top level collection set (name of the shoot), when and how do they get moved into your main categories that you mentioned at the start of the lesson? I noticed that you can't move a collection set into another collection set. Cheers 👍
Brilliant - thank you Scott. I’m not a pro and maybe won’t use everything here but there are certain events I do for friends, or wildlife using bursts, there is so much I can use to make life easier using LRC and some of the functions/organisational methods you have described. 👍👏
Glad you enjoyed it, thanks for watching!
There is no one like you Scott Kelby! Thanks for making this make sense!!!!
Some good tips. Too much one size fits all. I still use folders as it works for the way I do things.
I haven’t even watched this video yet BUT….years ago, vintage LR3…. I suffered a massive problem with the catalogs/organization …retrieving of specific images that it drove me AWAY! Like I still feel the frustration. I still use LR for editing sometimes…but I need to learn the Libraries/organizational side.
Hopefully this gets ME organized to USE Lightroom as it’s meant to be: Efficiently as a DATA BASE.
Good stuff. But I can't do the "Organize by Collection" thing. I do happen to have a mind that can remember years and dates of shoots.
I'm happily of the "Organize by Folder" school. My folder structure is broken down by Type of Shoot (Assignment, Personal, Portraits, Weddings). Then Year, then date with a description.
Hard Drive
-Assignments
-Portraits
-Personal
--2023
--2023-06-17 - Galletta Meadows Anza Borrego - Milky Way
--2024
--2024-04-07 - Cataviña Desert Baja - Pon-Brooks Comet
-Weddings
I can easily toggle the year, and at a glance see everything I shot that year to see if the shoot was done that year. Then click into the folder I was looking for.
With this system, I never need to do a search.
I know everyone works differently, and it's good to educate people on all the options available. But I'd pull my hair out with the system Scott's suggesting.
What is the best way to edit in Photoshop or another external program and save your work from that external program back into collections? I performed an edit on a photo and when I saved it from that program (Photoshop) as a tif it put the tif version back in the original folder and did not add it to the collection the original photo is in.
Just an FYI - in case you haven't heard yet. "Lightroom" is NOT "Lightroom Classic'!
This video Title states "LIGHTROOM" yet the video is about LrC.
I really enjoyed the presentation. Just one question. When you go to import your photos from external hard drive do you import to collections or a folder in LRC?
Wow@@ I load my images to a Desk Top Folder then into LR, After processing I load to Smugmug & a external Hard Drive for images processed to save. I save unprocessed RAW images to an External Hard Drive. Then i delete images from Light Room. this is a simply process for an old man in his 80's. Your Video was very interesting imparted a lot of knowledge along with very entertaining. Thank You very very much.
This is probably a very stupid question, but how do I backup the harddrive if I have them in different locations? I'm guessing I'm somehow going via the cloud or my laptop, but you emphasize to NOT have the photos on the laptop. Advise pls.
This was incredibly helpful! Now I have a good system for organizing my photos. Thank you!
I like this system but what about family pictures? Everyday pictures of the family. I wouldn't create a new collection each day? What's a better way?
Fantastic presentation. My LrC catalog got corrupted somehow to the point where even Adobe Support couldn't figure out why or how to repair it after remotely accessing my computer. (They thought it may have had something to do with files being backed up to Microsoft One Drive.)
Now, as I rebuild everything, I'm definitely moving away from the date-based system to a descriptive naming convention
Love the use of the collections suggested here, especially the three categories for each shoot: Full Shoot, Picks, and Selections. I may add a fourth called "Final Edits."
Thanks for this educational video!
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That's a good lesson. It's extremely important to back up the catalog as well as the original image files.
@@kennethraysealsphotography3513 Yep. I did have a backup of the catalog on a separate disk and even it failed to get things back to a usable condition.
Frustrating? Yes. But it's given me the opportunity to restructure my files/folders BEFORE I import them back into Lightroom.
Sorry your catalog at corrupted, but glad we put out a video that could help you!
OMGawd! I finally understand this cataloging . Thank you so much Mr Scott Kelby !!!!
This was an excellent video. I have been using LR for years, but in an unorganized manner & I finally decided that I would like to organize everything. This video was exactly what I needed. Good to know somethings I was good 😊 & what I need to improve on.
I always use Bridge to import my photos, but I see that you just copy the photos to a folder. Am I wasting disc space by using Bridge? I'm thinking it's not necessary! Comments??
I would also be willing to use Lightroom exclusively, even for the catalogue, and put Photo Mechanic aside, but I cannot do this because I don't know another way to use Photo Mechanic's 'code replacement' function that I need for my sports works.
So if I take a full shoot of say a soccer game, and a lot are blurred, I have these RAW files on my hard drive. They're in "full shoot" then how do I delete them off my hard drive so they no longer exist? I obviously would't want to keep a blurry or misfire shot. .Thanks this is the best organization tutorial for LrC ever.
Thank you Scott! This is the best Lightroom organization video I have seen. It’s very easy to understand and will help me so much with my Lightroom work.
Great presentation. I just had a quick question. Upon your first pass when looking at the original images, would one want to delete any that are junk? (i.e. out of focus or black etc.) Thanks
How do you store phots that fit under two categories -like Travel and Architecture?
Thank you B&H and Scott Kelby
Awesome video! My organization is a disaster. Quick question though.....what are your thoughts on copying photos from your card and transferring them to an external ssd first(since they are faster than an external hd). Do your editing in LRC using them of the ssd and once all editing is done then transfer them from your ssd to your hd?
Love this and will totally implement it! Only difference is that I will have a NAS, instead of a "physical external drive", so I can access my work from everywhere.
This workflow seems to be pretty specific to a desktop setup. What about if you want to use this setup/workflow with multiple computers and your phone and tablet? Say I'm using my Macbook docked 85% of the time, and work on that, but I also travel and bring my Macbook on the go, or maybe just my Galaxy Fold 5 or tablet.. how can I use this workflow? Sure, I can use Lightroom "cloud", but I really want to skip storing my photos in the cloud and use my NAS as file storage.
Is it easy to use Aadobes cloud just to sync when you're on the go? Or want to slack on the sofa and edit your photos on your tablet instead of a computer? It would be great to get some additional information on how to use this setup/workflow, but also implement Lightroom "cloud" and your phone/tablet for on-the-go.
What is wrong with iPhoto & then edit in PS?…of course backup on external drive.
Going through this pain at the moment. So I have lots of travel photos, and in amongst them are other categories I might use: 'Architecture', 'Landscape', 'Street'. Do I duplicate?
Awesome Scott. This is exactly what I needed to organize Lightroom. Thank you!
Reallly nice but still doesn't explain differences between externalhard drive and computer hard drive, where's best to edit from and
Great video. One questions though... when you want to relocate the photos on from any drive to another drive (lets say a NAS), what then? Go into the folders section right?
WOW! Great educational video. The best ever. Thank you
My first question is I’ve tried to make a collection but it only shows the root of my Mac how do I select anything else, I also have a 10TB external drive so the so the only thing i could think is splitting that down to 3 sections and naming one as photos one as backup and leaving the other one blank, have done this correct because I couldn’t see how to add the first drive when I first asked me I was a little confused
Really don't understand why you don't organize in folders by year/month/day/event and use keywords for further detail like cowboy hat or sunset or photoshoot or family or 1954 Buick or whatever.
Your system seems to be naming folders and images by keyword. Makes zero sense to me, but if that's what you like ...it's your prerogative.
I’d agree I import all my folders by date and then create smart folders with key words to say capture all the butterflies in a summer. Fine to give folders names but what if in one day you shoot some family, pics and then some wild life and then some aircraft do you do 3 imports to split them by subject? Date is far easier for me to name folders.
@@sh8736 absolutely!
@@sh8736 if you shoot three subjects in one day the easiest way is surely to import them into a single folder. If you want to move one or more subsets into another folder (e.g. aircraft) you can do that in Lightroom. That’s quicker and less error prone than multiple imports.
yeah, I agree
@@peterjohnson1739For sure! I use ONE catalog only. In it there are folders for tethered imports (which will be moved to the date folders), undated images downloaded for inspiration (sorted into folders), resources ...like clip art type stuff etc., and then all the images I ;shoot; are cataloged in this way:
YYYY
YYYYMM
YYYYMMDD
Event or Shoot Name 1 (and sub folders in that for example for a wedding: Venu, Bride Prep, Groom Prep, Arrivals, Cerimony, etc., etc.
All images are keyworded, so even at the top level of hundreds of thousands of photos, any image can be found in seconds, and it handles any number of tasks in one day. From there Smart Collections and Smart Published Collections are used to assign photos for Fundy Designer, or for media etc., etc.
I just find that flow makes life a lot simpler.
Back blaze is at nine dollars a month now at least it is for me. But I still love it.
All this multiple saving of thousands of images (that are probably rarely viewed) is a disaster for the environment.
If I wasn't confused before, I am now. Did you really mean to say folders when you said collections or collections when you meant folders? Were those folders in LR called Albums or was it collections that are now called albums?
Is that folders within collections or folders on your hard disk? Talk about muddying the water.
It doesn’t run the same on my MacBook Air M2. What am I doing wrong?? I would love to have it all in one catalog.
I have one big catalog and it is painfully slow to save and close. I have started doing individual catalogs but don’t really like that way necessarily as you don’t have access to all photos.
Just what one needs to keep things in order. Wish i had seen this earlier.
Thanks much
I wish I had the discipline to do exactly that. I think I'll watch this one again.
Hi Scott . Why wouldnt u just buy a big mirror drive instead of 2 drives please
I noticed that your External Hard Drive was SSD. I heard that these are faster. Is that what you recommend?
Scott you have no idea how grateful I am for this video thank you !!!!
Incredible, Scott. Thank you so much.
This is brilliant. Thank you so much! I’ve started taking photos as a hobby and I was panicking about LR organization literally last night. Wasn’t even looking for videos about it just yet but then yours popped up on my feed and I’m so thankful for that 😊
To the people saying “don’t follow his advice for this or that”: please share your opinion without discrediting his beautiful video. If it doesn’t work for you, that’s great, stick to what you like and if you really want to share with others the way it works for you, there are ways of doing so without sounding condescending ☺️
Excellent video Scott, no more adding by date for me
Glad Scott's presentation was helpful for you!
Nice and entertaining presentation. There is one thing to keep in mind: Picks and collections to not translate nicely over into the XMP metadata container. So if you ever want to change your DAM program, you are pretty much lost. Well, you have the rudimentary but ambiguous organization based on folders and the 5-star-ratings that are all written into the XMP sidecar files, if you choose to do so. But the picks and the collections are all gone.
I am aware that there might be solutions to migrate collections into a new DAM system (even Capture One can do so). But I would not only rely on collections.
I am using a controlled vocabulary of nested Keywords along with a strict star rating system (1/2/3). Every star rating has a clear meaning (1 = pick 2 = selects 3 = edited and 4 = portfolio quality). So this way all the informations can be brought over to other programs, if necessary.
I am using many Smart Collections though.
I am organizing all the shooting pictures within a folder named by date, followed by who/what and where in the folder name. The date is unique and can be automatically generated by any DAM system. Everything alse will be tagged by keywords.
But this is just my approach. There is no single right way to do so. We all have to find a solutions, that feels intuitive and is not depending too much on a particular software.
Yes, I was disappointed that this presentation said nothing at all about IPTC standards and how you can tag/organize your photo library in a way that can be converted to other photo organizing programs (other DAMs, as you said). And controlled-vocabulary keywords are a far, far more powerful way to categorize and search images than collections or filenames. All professional photo libraries that I'm aware of use keywords as their central organizing/searching principle.
@@eamonhickey you are absolutely right. With the usage of keywords you are totally open to migrate to other DAM systems at any given time in the future. You can not talk about organizing photos without mentioning IPTC standards and keywords.
When I saw the example of the folders organized by date, I died a little inside. Great presentation!
... and that said, I can't organize my folders by type of subject. Most of mine intersect because *I'm not a commercial photographer* . Landscape images taken on a family trip? Hmm, yeah. Family doing sports?
The folders will stay organized by year, and I'll organize within Lr with Collections.
Just diving into Lightroom for the first time and this is THE BEST intro video online. Direct and to the point with all of the info you need to get started correctly! Thank you soooooo much for this!
Great session, great information. Honestly, it just convinced me to stick to Apple Photos for the time being. The cloud sync and not having to manage the actual location of the files, plus the "Optimize Storage" option makes it so much better at organizing. It's not as powerful in adjustments but it's 80% there.
Agreed…LR seems more complicated than need be…edit in PS beyond iPhoto.
he s a good teacher. even my mum could understand
Great stuff in here, Scott, thanks! What was not addressed was syncing with the LR mobile app. The mobile app does not sync the top level collection names, which is a huge problem for which I haven't been able to find a solution. So in the mobile app collections are called "albums". All the sub-level collections in LR classic are properly synced but the top level collections are not. I know one can create "folders" in the mobile app but while helpful, that doesn't seem to solve the problem, especially in an automated way. Any ideas here? Videos or posts to which I can be pointed? Thanks!
Yes, I have the same dilema after adopting Scott's organization process in LRC. After opening up LRCC on iPhone, all you will see are the , and . Have you found a way to solve this yet?
Perfect timing! I'm literally spending my day doing this. Thank you!!
Great presentation. I have taken abourt 4 weeks to sort ALL my photos as per this approach. I feel in control of my digital library for the first time!!
Yes, we love to hear that! Glad it was helpful for you.
Perfect presentation, knowledgable, concise and above all fun. Thank you Scott!
Glad it was helpful for you, thanks for watching!