Omg I went through a dozen videos about lightroom and was so frustrated. Then I watched yours. I love how you teach. Very clear and to the point. Thank you so much!!!
Spot on, I also went looking everywhere for this exact information and was frustrated to the point of giving up Lightroom all together ... really helpful, thanks!!
Now, this is the most thorough and concise explanation on Lightroom, catalog storage. It also covers the basics of files and folders. After watching countless so called heavy hitters and adobe evangelist, this is by far the very best. I will continue to follow you! Thanks!
This was exactly what I was seeking, clear simple explanation, no super hype or how great are we (we don’t really do that in the UK, so I find it off putting in some tutorials from the Northern Americas). at a reasonable no nonsense pace, one of the better educators on RUclips, great work, I appreciate your hard work for others benefit, thanks for this, Marcus
Clear, concise, and intelligently communicated. I have been "trying" to teach myself Lightroom for about 6 months now. Pick it up, get discouraged, walk away, repeat. Even bought a video course online which I never watched, videos too long and too intricate. I'm so glad I found you, or rather Google found you for me.
I'm currently using the subscription model of Lightroom, which I believe is v13-3. Yet in my Lightroom folder I still have older versions of Lightroom such as version 5 & 6. Can I delete the older versions?
Great video - loved how you succinctly, clearly and comprehensively explained all things catalogues. If not already, could you please do a video to show how can we merge catalogues (if at all), move catalogues, recover back ups, and also what the different types of files associated with the catalogues are (I noticed there are 2-3 different files)? Thanks
As others have said (they are very familiar with LR), I found your videos to be a very concise review of the features of LR. I deeply appreciate your time in producing them and will subscribe to be able to receive more. Having taught for 32 years, I am impressed with your teaching skills. Thanks
Excellent presentation Spencer. I had difficulty understanding the LR Catalogue in relation to my photos but you have just cleared the fog. Thank you. Have enjoyed previous photography videos you have presented and am very impressed with your presentations. Clear, detailed and to the point. Look forward to more LR videos.
Wow, thanks! Glad you found it so useful. It definitely took some setup and practice to get the audio and lighting like this, so I'm happy to hear it works well!
first video i have found that i could follow had lightroom for 8 years and you explain in simple to follow terms thanks will def follow keep up the good work.
Oh, well... Finally I understand the whole catalogue/organisation part of Lightroom. Thank you so much for this video, looking forward to the next one.
@@PhotographyLifeChannel Is there a way, that you can help me with my D.A.M ?? I honestly am begging for help and I can't find anyone who will sit down and help me out with my it
@ALI - What issues are you having? If it’s something general with Lightroom, maybe you’ll find Chapter 2.1 and 2.2 of this video series helpful for organizing your photos and general DAM applications. If it’s more specific than that, let me know some more details and I’ll try to help.
Congratulations, very calm super well explained, great examples. This is a fantastic video for new users,and even old ones. Five stars, a falg and a Red label 😊 and go to a smart collection. Congratulations again,really good
Thank you, Sanjay! I have many videos on Lightroom planned and a lot of time to film them, so I’m hopeful that this will be a pretty complete guide by the end.
Wow. You're like so good at doing tutorials. I've been using Lr for years yet I feel like I just relearned everything from your video. Very beginner friendly as well.
Really helpful, thank you, I had nearly given up with cataloging in Lightroom, now I understand it far more, I’m looking forward to your other videos now 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼
Found this while searching for Lightroom catalog and wow, you are such an amazing teacher. Seriously, so clear and simple to follow. You have a special talent here. May I ask a question? I had to make a new catalog and then "add" my photos to it. But of course, the edits are all gone. New "RAW" images are there without the edits. Can I import the edits? I don't know how. Thank you. I've subscribed.
Sure thing! You can do what you’re interested in. What you need to do is open the old catalog, and highlight all the photos you want to have the edits for. Go to File > Export As Catalog and do not select “export negative files.” After exporting this, go back to your catalog that is missing all the edits. You should be able to do File > Import From Another Catalog and select the file that you just exported from your old catalog. And that will sync the edits! All that said, I question why you created a new catalog in the first place - it’s usually not worth it and not a good idea. It may be best to stick with your previous catalog and clean it up if there’s something wrong with it, rather than starting a new one from scratch.
Thank you for your time! Yeah, I'd prefer to go back to my old catalog after all the edits but I must have done something funky. My iMac updated and then Adobe updated Classic and relaunched without my catalog. When I went back to my old catalog Adobe said it needed to be updated, I clicked "OK" and none of my folders were there. Just a new LR classic. Now it appears the original is no longer usable. Not sure what I did. @@PhotographyLifeChannel
hey, thanks for the tutorial! What do you mean at 7:35 when you mention that we need to commit fully to doing all of our organization of our folders within lightroom? How do we go about that?
Like, if you have a photo in one folder that you want to drag into another, do that in Lightroom rather than outside Lightroom. Same any time you’re creating new folders for your photos, or moving folders from one place to another. Click and drag them within Lightroom’s folder browser, rather than the folder browser on your operating system directly.
Very glad to hear it! I don't have a book on Lightroom, although I wrote a guide so long that it basically qualifies. Here's the link: photographylife.com/how-to-use-lightroom-a-tutorial-for-beginners I *have* written a book about landscape photography, which is going to be released later this year :)
Thanks Spencer..I had the chance to play with Lightroom 3-4months ago, and didn't really get it. Im about to go purchase it now and jump in, but keen to view as much as I can re file/folder set up so I am better armed when I get it. Ive watched many Tube videos, but a lot of them rush it - yours (and one other) go at a good pace and break it down. Thank you so much for explaining what a Catalogue is as I was very confused on it. Looking forward to your next video about importing etc........
Thank you. Is there a way to to have LrC, or another software that you know of, add words from the title of images into the keyword list automatically?
Amazing video thank you so much!!! I have a problem in that I have created several catalogs and I think some are on my one drive and some are not. I want to combine them all, do you have a tutorial on that?
Great vid. Explained everything clearly and concise. I just moved all my pictures from my hard drive to an external harddrive using windows explorer. When i opened up Lightroom, it said the catalog was missing (it's probably on the external drive), so i created a new one....so now i have to teach LIghtroom where all my pictures are. How will i do that? I guess by making a new folder, within lightroom, called "my pictures" and that will be the top folder on my external harddrive with all my pictures in it......
Hi Spencer, thanks for your video. Pretty useful! I have been looking for this answer for a while but do you know whether we can move the catalogue on a NAS? So From home, I can switch between my fix computer and my laptop. Else I agree I could copy it on an external hard drive, but... I agree it is not a big deal to move my small hdd from one computer to the other one.... but it would be so much more convenient having access to a NAS. Hope you can answer me or give me some tips... Cheers, Alex.
Would like to see this procedure on a Windows machine. I have tried to correlate the your information from Apple information...the fog is slightly lifted but still unclear...presentation is super...will try to figure out what Apple and Windows are alike...I have tried and tried to find a source for Windows version of what you have accomplished...You are the closest yet...thank you...
That was a terrific presentation, very comprehensive and quite useful. Having said that...I still can't figure them out. Probably because when I first got LR I didn't think to learn about the catalog structure, only the editing features. As a result, that left column is now harder to decipher than Linear-A. What a mess! Half the picture names are greyed out from having moved pictures to different folders after I edited them, etc. And I'm mystified by other folders and pages that Lightroom has put on my wallpaper in addition to the LR CAT icon. Things labeled "LRCAT-WAL File", a "Helper.LRdata" folder, a "Catalog Helper.lrdata" folder, etc. Do I need to keep these things in place for LR to work? I'm scared to trash them, but they're annoying to look at. Ah well, didn't mean to vent. Your information was excellent and your style of presentation is spot-on. Thank you for it!
I did that also. Learned to edit before learning to organize. I keep my photos on an external SSD and once that drive was full I moved lots of my folders to a backup drive to make room. Now I have the task of letting LR know where those are. I'm lazy, so that's not happened. Now, when I go looking for a photo that's been moved, it is a pain in the ass. Too bad Spenser did not do this video two years ago.
@Dangerspouse - It sounds like you've got a tricky situation with your Lightroom catalog! Here's what I recommend. First, close Lightroom, and delete all the weird ".LRdata" or whatever files. The only one you may want to keep is the one that called "[currentcatalogname] Previews.LRdata" because that's the cache of previews for your photos. (If you delete it too, no worries, you'll just have to wait a moment to regenerate the standard or 1:1 previews you have.) Beyond that, if you're happy with the folder organization *outside* of Lightroom, and it's only the internal organization that's a mess, here's what I recommend. First, go back to your current catalog and highlight every photo that *isn't* broken, missing, or otherwise incorrect. (Also highlight any missing files that you've edited extensively in Lightroom and really like.) Go to File > Export As Catalog. Export all of that as a new catalog file, and put the new catalog in the proper place on your hard drive that you want it to be. Open it instead of the other one next time you launch Lightroom. This will be your new, default catalog, and it shouldn't have any missing folders or other junk. However, it also probably won't capture many of your photos, so now's the time to start importing the rest. Click "Add" at the top of the import dialog so you don't move the files at all, and keep the organization on your hard drive itself. None of these newly imported photos will have any edits applied; if you want a photo's old Lightroom edits in your new catalog, you need to follow that "Export As Catalog" process instead. Only after all that should you start to reorganize your hard drive if you want - and from here on out, do all the folder reorganization within Lightroom itself. Hope this helps you get started! Your situation sounds tough but not unfixable.
@Steve Miller - That sounds about right! Lightroom is very finicky about moving your files outside the software. I'd say it's probably worth syncing those external drive files as soon as possible, just because a handful of missing photos here and there can snowball into a catalog that is impossible to understand a few years later. At least right now you know where those photos are. (And if they're largely grouped together how they used to be, Lightroom can probably locate many of them as a batch to save time.) Good luck!
@@PhotographyLifeChannel Thank you very much for taking the time to write all that out for my benefit - I really appreciate it! I'll get right to this (nothing else to do in lockdown) and hopefully it will become more intuitive over time. Thanks again, really!
i have a weird issue where the edits are being saved in the original folder where the image is in. so if i have 2 pictures in a folder on a ssd that i put all folders in just for light room pictures. i also have a separate ssd for the light room catalog. if i start working on the 2 photos and i edit them with light room and Photoshop and other software it saves every edited photo in the same folder that the original is in. so if i edited a photo 3 times i have the original photo with 3 edited photos of the same original. i thought all this info was saved in the catalog, im so confused .
Thanks for your succinct, well paced, tutorial. I have a question for which I have not been able to find an answer. Forgive me if I'm in the wrong area of need. After spending hours and hours in Lightroom Classic working on photographs, and saving them all, I have a problem. When I want to find a photograph using my computer's directory listing to choose its icon, then select the shot I want. However, both the icon and the image that appears are my photos before all my Lightroom efforts. Is there a simple way to sync/update the directory to include changes made in Lightroom?
No, there’s no way to get edits in Lightroom to show up outside the software other than by exporting the image as a TIFF, JPEG, or so on. That’s because Lightroom isn’t a destructive editing software; it doesn’t bake anything into the original images themselves. If you want to see the edits in your situation, you need to find your photographs using Lightroom’s directory, not your computer’s.
Thank you, Silvia! Next chapter will be up Monday, and then I’ll do some on the post-processing side of Lightroom. Might take a break and do non-Lightroom videos in between though.
Sometimes I get a message showing me greyed out images saying Photo already in the catalogue. Or something like that. Dumb question, but how do I edit images "already in the catalogue?" Thanks....
Hi :) i have a question and maybe you can help me, i would appreciate it very much. What do i do with the edited photos? i am confused about how do i store the raw images vs the edited images. Do i keep the in the same folder or i can do 2 different or what is the best workflow in your opinion? thank you very much!
I understand why you’re confused! Lightroom doesn’t work how you think. It’s not like the file manager on your hard drive. In Lightroom, all your photos are basically edited - there’s no separate edited/unedited versions. You can create virtual copies if you want to have different variations of the same photo. But the question that you’re asking is unanswerable because that’s not how Lightroom works. (When you want any of your edits to appear outside of Lightroom, you need to right click > Export. This is something you will only do rarely, like when you’re about to publish the edited image online or send it to a print lab.)
Great video! Did you end up making one about how to handle catalogs across multiple computers? Would you save out separate catalogs on the particular external hard drive the images are on?
I haven’t made one yet. You could try keeping the catalog on the external drive if it’s fast enough (ideally an SSD), or keep separate catalogs and then use “export as catalog” to transfer photos from one computer to another. If you alternate between these two computers frequently, I’d go with the SSD method. Otherwise, the second method is going to give you better performance in Lightroom.
I upgraded to the newer version of Lightroom and it asked me something about catalog and I just said okay but it started brand new catalog and I can't get access to all of my previous photos. Please help thank you
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I wish you could do every tutorial for me for anything ever. Clear, concise, and to the point. Love it! Well done
Omg I went through a dozen videos about lightroom and was so frustrated. Then I watched yours. I love how you teach. Very clear and to the point. Thank you so much!!!
Spot on, I also went looking everywhere for this exact information and was frustrated to the point of giving up Lightroom all together ... really helpful, thanks!!
same here! by far the easiest to understand
Did i ever...almost went crazy
Now, this is the most thorough and concise explanation on Lightroom, catalog storage. It also covers the basics of files and folders. After watching countless so called heavy hitters and adobe evangelist, this is by far the very best. I will continue to follow you!
Thanks!
This was exactly what I was seeking, clear simple explanation, no super hype or how great are we (we don’t really do that in the UK, so I find it off putting in some tutorials from the Northern Americas). at a reasonable no nonsense pace, one of the better educators on RUclips, great work, I appreciate your hard work for others benefit, thanks for this, Marcus
That’s great to hear, thanks for the feedback and glad you found the explanation useful.
The clarity in you tutorials is excellent. You give space for the information to sink in.
Clear, concise, and intelligently communicated. I have been "trying" to teach myself Lightroom for about 6 months now. Pick it up, get discouraged, walk away, repeat. Even bought a video course online which I never watched, videos too long and too intricate. I'm so glad I found you, or rather Google found you for me.
I’m really glad to hear it! Hope you enjoy Lightroom. After the first learning curve, it’s great and pretty intuitive.
First time LR user and this is the very first video I've watch. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
I'm currently using the subscription model of Lightroom, which I believe is v13-3. Yet in my Lightroom folder I still have older versions of Lightroom such as version 5 & 6. Can I delete the older versions?
Nice tutorial ❤
Great video - loved how you succinctly, clearly and comprehensively explained all things catalogues. If not already, could you please do a video to show how can we merge catalogues (if at all), move catalogues, recover back ups, and also what the different types of files associated with the catalogues are (I noticed there are 2-3 different files)? Thanks
This is the best explanation I've seen. There are so many that speed thru their own personal setup. Thank you for this.
Best video on the planet.... Was looking for this for over 3 months I think.
Absolutely the best tutorial on Lightroom that I have seen. Many thanks.
This was amazing. I've watched Linkedin Learning, Adobe tutorials and You Tube stuff and this is the clearest I have heard it explained.
As others have said (they are very familiar with LR), I found your videos to be a very concise review of the features of LR. I deeply appreciate your time in producing them and will subscribe to be able to receive more. Having taught for 32 years, I am impressed with your teaching skills. Thanks
Thank you for the kind feedback! Hearing that from someone who has taught as long as you means a lot.
Even though I've had LR for about two years, these videos are very enlightening. Thanks, Spencer.
Very happy to hear it, Adrian! Hope you enjoy the rest as well.
Excellent presentation Spencer. I had difficulty understanding the LR Catalogue in relation to my photos but you have just cleared the fog. Thank you. Have enjoyed previous photography videos you have presented and am very impressed with your presentations. Clear, detailed and to the point. Look forward to more LR videos.
Thanks for saying so, Dora! Glad you’ve found the videos useful so far, and hopefully now the Lightroom catalog will be a bit more intuitive to use.
Excellent presentation. I agree with many other commenters; you clearly have a future in the industry. P.S. your video lighting and sound are perfect!
Wow, thanks! Glad you found it so useful. It definitely took some setup and practice to get the audio and lighting like this, so I'm happy to hear it works well!
first video i have found that i could follow had lightroom for 8 years and you explain in simple to follow terms thanks will def follow keep up the good work.
Thank you so much for your explanation. The best tutorial so far, concise, clear, and easy to follow.
You are an excellent teacher, natural skills . Bravo!
Your explanation of catalog is superb and simple.
Thank you!
Oh, well... Finally I understand the whole catalogue/organisation part of Lightroom. Thank you so much for this video, looking forward to the next one.
Very happy to hear it, thanks, Silvia!
awesome explanation dear. Wonderful. your way of teaching is professional tutor.
I really appreciate you publishing great quality contents like this.
this is so helpful and you explained the concept so well. thank you!
Thank you for your complete and comprehensive training. Very good!
I'm glad you found it useful, thanks, Rozenn!
seriously AWESOME explanation!! I've never understood the catalog until this video ... PLEASE make a tutorial regular on LR !!
Really appreciate the feedback! And I’m happy to hear that you know understand Lightroom catalogs much better.
@@PhotographyLifeChannel Is there a way, that you can help me with my D.A.M ?? I honestly am begging for help and I can't find anyone who will sit down and help me out with my it
@ALI - What issues are you having? If it’s something general with Lightroom, maybe you’ll find Chapter 2.1 and 2.2 of this video series helpful for organizing your photos and general DAM applications. If it’s more specific than that, let me know some more details and I’ll try to help.
Congratulations, very calm super well explained, great examples. This is a fantastic video for new users,and even old ones.
Five stars, a falg and a Red label 😊 and go to a smart collection.
Congratulations again,really good
Excellent explanation! Concise, complete, and easy to understand. Five stars!!
This was was so helpful as I try to finally manage my different LR catalogs--thank you! 👍
Really excited to try this feature out! Amazing work !
I'm sure you'll find it useful!
Great video, Spencer! Clarified a couple of points I was unclear about. Thanks.
Glad to hear it!
I find lightroom so frustrating but with the help of your video I understand it better! thank you so much
Well done explaining LR!!
Hi! This was so helpful! I was wondering if you ever made that video about using the same catalog across multiple hardrives?
What a fabulous teacher!
Nice vid! Well explained and no fluff. Thanks!
GREAT VIDEO with easy to understand information..thanks!
Great going..hope to see this grow into a full fledged Lightroom tutorial series.. 👍
Thank you, Sanjay! I have many videos on Lightroom planned and a lot of time to film them, so I’m hopeful that this will be a pretty complete guide by the end.
very useful and thorough information. very clear and easy to understand. amazing work.
Wow. You're like so good at doing tutorials. I've been using Lr for years yet I feel like I just relearned everything from your video. Very beginner friendly as well.
Excellent, clear presentation. Thank you.
Nice job, clear, easy to follow. Appreciate it!
Thx for the clear and straightforward explanation!
Really helpful, thank you, I had nearly given up with cataloging in Lightroom, now I understand it far more, I’m looking forward to your other videos now 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼
Very well put together. Very detailed!
Loved it! When do you do multiple computers?
Loving this series!
Found this while searching for Lightroom catalog and wow, you are such an amazing teacher. Seriously, so clear and simple to follow. You have a special talent here. May I ask a question? I had to make a new catalog and then "add" my photos to it. But of course, the edits are all gone. New "RAW" images are there without the edits. Can I import the edits? I don't know how. Thank you. I've subscribed.
Sure thing! You can do what you’re interested in. What you need to do is open the old catalog, and highlight all the photos you want to have the edits for. Go to File > Export As Catalog and do not select “export negative files.” After exporting this, go back to your catalog that is missing all the edits. You should be able to do File > Import From Another Catalog and select the file that you just exported from your old catalog. And that will sync the edits!
All that said, I question why you created a new catalog in the first place - it’s usually not worth it and not a good idea. It may be best to stick with your previous catalog and clean it up if there’s something wrong with it, rather than starting a new one from scratch.
Thank you for your time! Yeah, I'd prefer to go back to my old catalog after all the edits but I must have done something funky. My iMac updated and then Adobe updated Classic and relaunched without my catalog. When I went back to my old catalog Adobe said it needed to be updated, I clicked "OK" and none of my folders were there. Just a new LR classic. Now it appears the original is no longer usable. Not sure what I did. @@PhotographyLifeChannel
Very helpful information, thank you 🙏
Great job Spencer. Thanks and keep them coming..
Thank you! More coming soon!
Thank you for clearing that up for me. You explained it perfectly.
Sure thing! Glad it was helpful.
hey, thanks for the tutorial! What do you mean at 7:35 when you mention that we need to commit fully to doing all of our organization of our folders within lightroom? How do we go about that?
Like, if you have a photo in one folder that you want to drag into another, do that in Lightroom rather than outside Lightroom. Same any time you’re creating new folders for your photos, or moving folders from one place to another. Click and drag them within Lightroom’s folder browser, rather than the folder browser on your operating system directly.
Great video, Thank you!! If we create a folder within LR desktop, transfer images into that folder, is that the same thing as "exporting" the images?
Brilliant at last a video that makes it very clear for a beginner. Thank you so much, please write a book if you haven’t already.
Very glad to hear it! I don't have a book on Lightroom, although I wrote a guide so long that it basically qualifies. Here's the link: photographylife.com/how-to-use-lightroom-a-tutorial-for-beginners
I *have* written a book about landscape photography, which is going to be released later this year :)
Thanks Spencer..I had the chance to play with Lightroom 3-4months ago, and didn't really get it. Im about to go purchase it now and jump in, but keen to view as much as I can re file/folder set up so I am better armed when I get it. Ive watched many Tube videos, but a lot of them rush it - yours (and one other) go at a good pace and break it down. Thank you so much for explaining what a Catalogue is as I was very confused on it. Looking forward to your next video about importing etc........
Thank you, Laurie! Glad you found it so useful. I just put up the new video on importing photos and wanted to give you a heads up!
Thank you. Is there a way to to have LrC, or another software that you know of, add words from the title of images into the keyword list automatically?
Good video. I got some very useful information. Thanks.
Great job. Very clear and articulate. Keep up the good work!
Very concise and informative video! High Quality
Glad you liked it!
looking forward to coming presentations!!!
Sweet! Should have some new LR videos out shortly.
You explained all these concepts so well! Thank you, I finally understand some of the things I didn't before!!
Oh good! Glad to hear it.
Amazing video thank you so much!!! I have a problem in that I have created several catalogs and I think some are on my one drive and some are not. I want to combine them all, do you have a tutorial on that?
wowowowo...thank you, so clear and easy to understand!
Great vid. Explained everything clearly and concise. I just moved all my pictures from my hard drive to an external harddrive using windows explorer. When i opened up Lightroom, it said the catalog was missing (it's probably on the external drive), so i created a new one....so now i have to teach LIghtroom where all my pictures are. How will i do that? I guess by making a new folder, within lightroom, called "my pictures" and that will be the top folder on my external harddrive with all my pictures in it......
Thank you so much for this video! Super well done and you explained it very clearly!
Thanks for great video Spencer. You explain so clearly and well .
Much appreciated, David!
Hi ... do you create a new catalog for every new set of photos or keep them all under one catalog ?
Hi Spencer, do I need to create multiple catalogs? Or 1 catalog will be enough? Thanks 🙏🏻
Thank you! This was informative
Super informative and useful! Great tutorial!
Much appreciated, Michael!
Tom Clemons Finally, a clear explanation. Btw, love the mustache. Where did you get them?
You're a great presenter!
Thanks, nice to get a review of this topic every so often....
Absolutely, Carl, never hurts to go over Lightroom catalogs again!
so clean and perfect explain , thanks a lot , new subscriber here , bell notification on , hands down and blessings
Let’s gooo! Welcome aboard! Really glad you found this video so useful.
Hi Spencer, thanks for your video. Pretty useful! I have been looking for this answer for a while but do you know whether we can move the catalogue on a NAS? So From home, I can switch between my fix computer and my laptop. Else I agree I could copy it on an external hard drive, but... I agree it is not a big deal to move my small hdd from one computer to the other one.... but it would be so much more convenient having access to a NAS. Hope you can answer me or give me some tips... Cheers, Alex.
A clear explanation, thank you
Would like to see this procedure on a Windows machine. I have tried to correlate the your information from Apple information...the fog is slightly lifted but still unclear...presentation is super...will try to figure out what Apple and Windows are alike...I have tried and tried to find a source for Windows version of what you have accomplished...You are the closest yet...thank you...
Hi, Spancer. Does a LR Catalog contain any presets before it was being backed up?
That was a terrific presentation, very comprehensive and quite useful. Having said that...I still can't figure them out. Probably because when I first got LR I didn't think to learn about the catalog structure, only the editing features. As a result, that left column is now harder to decipher than Linear-A. What a mess! Half the picture names are greyed out from having moved pictures to different folders after I edited them, etc. And I'm mystified by other folders and pages that Lightroom has put on my wallpaper in addition to the LR CAT icon. Things labeled "LRCAT-WAL File", a "Helper.LRdata" folder, a "Catalog Helper.lrdata" folder, etc. Do I need to keep these things in place for LR to work? I'm scared to trash them, but they're annoying to look at. Ah well, didn't mean to vent. Your information was excellent and your style of presentation is spot-on. Thank you for it!
I did that also. Learned to edit before learning to organize. I keep my photos on an external SSD and once that drive was full I moved lots of my folders to a backup drive to make room. Now I have the task of letting LR know where those are. I'm lazy, so that's not happened.
Now, when I go looking for a photo that's been moved, it is a pain in the ass.
Too bad Spenser did not do this video two years ago.
@Dangerspouse - It sounds like you've got a tricky situation with your Lightroom catalog! Here's what I recommend.
First, close Lightroom, and delete all the weird ".LRdata" or whatever files. The only one you may want to keep is the one that called "[currentcatalogname] Previews.LRdata" because that's the cache of previews for your photos. (If you delete it too, no worries, you'll just have to wait a moment to regenerate the standard or 1:1 previews you have.)
Beyond that, if you're happy with the folder organization *outside* of Lightroom, and it's only the internal organization that's a mess, here's what I recommend. First, go back to your current catalog and highlight every photo that *isn't* broken, missing, or otherwise incorrect. (Also highlight any missing files that you've edited extensively in Lightroom and really like.) Go to File > Export As Catalog. Export all of that as a new catalog file, and put the new catalog in the proper place on your hard drive that you want it to be. Open it instead of the other one next time you launch Lightroom. This will be your new, default catalog, and it shouldn't have any missing folders or other junk.
However, it also probably won't capture many of your photos, so now's the time to start importing the rest. Click "Add" at the top of the import dialog so you don't move the files at all, and keep the organization on your hard drive itself. None of these newly imported photos will have any edits applied; if you want a photo's old Lightroom edits in your new catalog, you need to follow that "Export As Catalog" process instead.
Only after all that should you start to reorganize your hard drive if you want - and from here on out, do all the folder reorganization within Lightroom itself.
Hope this helps you get started! Your situation sounds tough but not unfixable.
@Steve Miller - That sounds about right! Lightroom is very finicky about moving your files outside the software. I'd say it's probably worth syncing those external drive files as soon as possible, just because a handful of missing photos here and there can snowball into a catalog that is impossible to understand a few years later. At least right now you know where those photos are. (And if they're largely grouped together how they used to be, Lightroom can probably locate many of them as a batch to save time.) Good luck!
@@PhotographyLifeChannel Thank you very much for taking the time to write all that out for my benefit - I really appreciate it! I'll get right to this (nothing else to do in lockdown) and hopefully it will become more intuitive over time. Thanks again, really!
Sure thing! Good luck.
Good easy to follow instructions
Glad you liked it!
i have a weird issue where the edits are being saved in the original folder where the image is in. so if i have 2 pictures in a folder on a ssd that i put all folders in just for light room pictures. i also have a separate ssd for the light room catalog. if i start working on the 2 photos and i edit them with light room and Photoshop and other software it saves every edited photo in the same folder that the original is in. so if i edited a photo 3 times i have the original photo with 3 edited photos of the same original. i thought all this info was saved in the catalog, im so confused .
Thank you very much , now I will understand the functionality
That's great, glad to hear you liked it!
Thanks for your succinct, well paced, tutorial. I have a question for which I have not been able to find an answer. Forgive me if I'm in the wrong area of need. After spending hours and hours in Lightroom Classic working on photographs, and saving them all, I have a problem. When I want to find a photograph using my computer's directory listing to choose its icon, then select the shot I want. However, both the icon and the image that appears are my photos before all my Lightroom efforts. Is there a simple way to sync/update the directory to include changes made in Lightroom?
No, there’s no way to get edits in Lightroom to show up outside the software other than by exporting the image as a TIFF, JPEG, or so on. That’s because Lightroom isn’t a destructive editing software; it doesn’t bake anything into the original images themselves. If you want to see the edits in your situation, you need to find your photographs using Lightroom’s directory, not your computer’s.
@@PhotographyLifeChannel Many thanks for your information! I finally understand.
Excellent tutorial - thank you so much.
You’re very welcome! Thanks for the feedback!
Very good! Thanks!
very informative, thank you
Revisiting this video and looking forward to the next video!
Thank you, Silvia! Next chapter will be up Monday, and then I’ll do some on the post-processing side of Lightroom. Might take a break and do non-Lightroom videos in between though.
@@PhotographyLifeChannel Great! Lightroom is really a big unknown for me. I'm learning a lot from your videos.
Sometimes I get a message showing me greyed out images saying Photo already in the catalogue. Or something like that. Dumb question, but how do I edit images "already in the catalogue?" Thanks....
So do you have the one catalog for all trips and sessions or you create every time a new one?
I have one catalog for all my photos. In theory they slow down as they get larger, but I haven’t noticed any speed issues with 75,000 photos in mine.
Hey Spencer, great explanation! Question: can I create more than one catalog?
Absolutely! There’s no limit.
Hi :) i have a question and maybe you can help me, i would appreciate it very much. What do i do with the edited photos? i am confused about how do i store the raw images vs the edited images. Do i keep the in the same folder or i can do 2 different or what is the best workflow in your opinion? thank you very much!
I understand why you’re confused! Lightroom doesn’t work how you think. It’s not like the file manager on your hard drive. In Lightroom, all your photos are basically edited - there’s no separate edited/unedited versions. You can create virtual copies if you want to have different variations of the same photo. But the question that you’re asking is unanswerable because that’s not how Lightroom works. (When you want any of your edits to appear outside of Lightroom, you need to right click > Export. This is something you will only do rarely, like when you’re about to publish the edited image online or send it to a print lab.)
Very informative!
Great video!
Did you end up making one about how to handle catalogs across multiple computers?
Would you save out separate catalogs on the particular external hard drive the images are on?
I haven’t made one yet. You could try keeping the catalog on the external drive if it’s fast enough (ideally an SSD), or keep separate catalogs and then use “export as catalog” to transfer photos from one computer to another. If you alternate between these two computers frequently, I’d go with the SSD method. Otherwise, the second method is going to give you better performance in Lightroom.
It's working thanks my friend
I upgraded to the newer version of Lightroom and it asked me something about catalog and I just said okay but it started brand new catalog and I can't get access to all of my previous photos. Please help thank you
Such a good video
Very informative, a big thanks from me!
Very clear. Thanks
Happy to hear it was clear, thank you!