This video is almost 8 years old, but it is by far the most clear and simple explanation on how to move photo's and/or catalog I've been able to find. Thank you so much! This has been super helpful to me.
Valerie this was great instruction , clear and to the point , I've been messing about for hours and then I watched your tutorial and the penny dropped straight away , brilliant thank you .
Randal scott Canada, if i ever meet you I'll sing you song with my guitar Richard Stone 3 days ago Valerie you are amazing you make i it easy to learn keep
Thank you soo much for this video! It was simple but extremely effective in answering my question on how to move photos. You did great! It was a blessing I found this and answer to prayers.
Excellent clear and concise you made this so easy to understand. Your speech is very articulate you helped me understand how to do something I’ve been wanting to do for ages. God bless you and thank you Grace.
Hi Valerie I am quite new to both photography and Lightroom, but found your tutorial very easy to understand, and very helpful, so i just wanted to say thanks. I will definitely check out the other Lightroom tutorials on your channel. Take care Ian
Thank you for the great information. I was getting frustrated with the other tutorials out there. I am not a computer guy so a clear explanation was really good to finally find. Thanks.
I have been looking at many youtube videos on how to move to external drive from HDD, yours was the best and the most straight forward. I am really not sure if moving the catalog to the external drive is better for me.
Hi James. Thanks for the nice comment. You don't need to move the catalog, you can keep it on your hard drive. It's not necessary to have it on the same drive as your photos.
Hi Valerie. Thank You very much. Your video was very helpful. I especially like how although it appears that you are working on a PC you made it easy also for those of us who use Macintosh computers to understand how to do it. Once again a big Thank You. John
Thanks for your tutorial on moving files. I keep my photo files on a 500g external drive. I want to use a larger external drive with out losing my collections, etc. I would also like to keep what I have on the smaller drive. How is that done?
I am having trouble moving my photos into the fills I want. I am in the right place but it brings up a STOP icon before I can drop them into the folders? Any ideas? I had watched 4 top rated videos but your is a 10!!! you explain everything in away that flows, and the little tip are such a help. Your my new great Lightroom teacher :).
Lisa, are you dragging them by the thumbnail and not the gray border? Be sure to drag the actual thumbnail. How many are you trying to move at one time? Maybe try moving just a few images at a time.
I found your site AFTER I moved some stuff into an external hard drive. I'd like to start over if I move everything out of the external hard drive and put it in the trash I really haven't deleted anything yes ?
Great tutorial. If I understand the process correctly, if you don't at least copy the latest catalog over to you external drive, if your computer fails you will not have access to all the edits you made on your photos, even though you will have all your photos. Is that correct? Thanks. Steve - Australia
Yes, if your computer fails and you have your catalog on your internal drive then you won't have access to your edits unless you've backed it up. You actually don't want a "copy" of your catalog because then you can get confused over which one you should be using. LR will automatically create backups based on settings you specify. Choose Edit > Catalog Settings (Windows) or Lightroom > Catalog Settings (Mac OS). Choose Back Up Catalog and you can change the backup folder location (default is /Picture/ ) and from the dropdown you can choose from different options such as when LR exits, weekly, etc. Of course, you will want to be backing up your entire computer anyway, i.e. in the Cloud, a backup service etc. In fact, if you have all your photos on an external drive be sure you are backing up the external drive too.
Thank you Valerie. I nearly understand the process at last after viewing about 10 youtube videos. That catalog file is so important. When you click Automatically write changes into XMP does that include ALL edits, keyword lists etc? Thanks.
By backing up your catalog regularly - you will be able to restore everything. (Edit > Catalog Settings and choose Back up Catalog.) I have mine set to back up every time I exit LR. Also be sure to back up your backups and your photos, i.e. with a cloud service. XMP sidecar files are useful if you want to open your raw images in Adobe Bridge - then you will see the edits, metadata, keywords etc.
Thank you Valerie! A couple of questions - - is there any way to bypass the LR default to Pictures/C drive and go directly to an external drive? And is there any of your videos that deal with how to keep/store/save a RAW photo after you have done the adjustments to it?
Hi. Yes, you can import photos directly to your external drive. In the Import window, look up in the right-hand corner and by default, you'll see your C:/My Pictures, but there's a down arrow beside it. If you move your cursor over it a window with a list of locations pops up and you can choose your external drive. Re saving your raw files: No need to save again. LR is non-destructive editing (unlike Photoshop where it makes changes to the pixels), It stores all your edits in the Catalog, which by default is on C drive but you can move if you wish. The catalog is data, not pixels. So your raw files are untouched. Leave your original raw/jpegs on your external drive if that's where you have them. There is no need to resave because they've not been physically changed. But be sure to back up all your raw and other original files to a separate location in case of drive failure etc.
@@valeriesphotochannel Your helpful answer came the same day as my question. With channel support that good, I'm going to Subscribe and buy your portrait course. Thanks again.
Hi Valerie, Very helpful video, thanks.. I have a slightly different need. My LR is a total mess and I want to start fresh. Can I transfer all my files to the new external hard drive, then delete the old catalog, and then re-import them into a new LR catalog? I then want to store all current photos plus new ones I take on the external hard drive since it is a 3T drive.
Hi Thom. If you delete your old catalog you will delete all your processing, keywording etc. Is that what you want? If by a mess you mean disorganized, it would be better to reorganize folders/files from within Lightroom and put everything under one umbrella folder such as "My Lightroom Pictures" and then move it to a new external drive and then you have one main file to point Lightroom to. If you really do want to start over and don't care about prior processing, then you could do it as you stated.
Valerie Goettsch Hi Again, thank you for the reply. Yep, I want to start totally fresh with everything. I loaded my original photos way before I knew what I was doing and have done very little pp since then. I've been taking LR and Photoshop CC course so now I'm pretty sure I can do it right. Again thanks for your help.
Hoping you can help me. I took a Lightroom course a couple of years ago at my local college. My teacher had us put Lightroom on our external hard drives. Now that my drive is almost full and I have recently purchased another drive, how does one put Lightroom on the 2nd hard drive? It just recognizes that Lighroom has been on the 1st drive. *I have no desire to transfer photos from 1st drive to 2nd. I'm starting fresh. I'd truly appreciate any help on this. I can't seem to find any solution to this on the Internet. Thank you!
I have moved many photos to my external drive (in a master folder I created called "Pictures"). That all worked fine following your directions in the video. The problem I am having is when I want to move additional photos at a later date, I can't get the external drive to show up in Lightroom. I am not sure how to get this external HD to show up with all the previously moved photos contained in the master folder. Thanks as always.
+Uptown Photography There could be a number of reasons. Have you tried to import new images using Lightroom's import dialog and the external drive does not show up there either? Be sure you have your external drive plugged in BEFORE you launch Lightroom. Did you move your catalog too, or do you have more than one catalog? It is possible that when you opened Lightroom an old catalog launched. In that case, in Library go to File > Open Recent and if you see more than one catalog, click on the correct catalog to relaunch Lightroom with this catalog. Then you should see drives/folders associated with that catalog. If you're on a Mac, Victoria Bampton has a good answer (there's a quirk with Mac) and you can read the solution here: feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop_family/topics/external-hard-drives-not-displayed-in-my-library-any-longer
+ValeriesPhotoChannel If I click import the external drive and photos contained on it do show up. But, these photos have already been imported and edited months ago on my internal drive, so I am guessing re-importing them is not a good idea and i would guess i would lose all the editing information. The LR catalog itself is on my internal drive and I have a PC w/windows 8.1. Thanks.
+Uptown Photography Right, you don't want to reimport them. But have you tried to import any NEW images, i.e. from an SD card? What I'm wondering is whether the external drive shows up under the File handling of the import dialog. My understanding of your issue is that you can no longer see any of the images you had moved to the external drive at all, correct? Were you able to see the images and the external drive right after you moved them, and just lately the drive no longer shows up? I'm trying to troubleshoot your issue.
+ValeriesPhotoChannel Yes correct. I can no longer see any of the photos that I moved a month ago. They were there and visible when I first moved them. But now all the folders have the "question marks" and are not even listed under my external G drive. There's no designation from LR of a location of these folders at all as to where they are, just that they're missing... I did create a folder w/one photo and imported it into LR and the external drive will show up. But, the missing folders don't show up listed under that G drive...Thanks.
+Uptown Photography Ok, right click on the top folder that has a question mark and select "find missing folder" and this should re-associate them with the catalog.
Another excellent video Valerie. I’m always surprised when I hear photographers don’t backup their photos. I have a question. I’m taking a photo trip this summer. I usually use an iMac for editing, etc. I have a five year old MacBook I’m thinking of taking with me to download daily images to the external drive I use now. I’m thinking all I’d have to do is copy my latest catalog off my iMac and put it on my laptop. Then I’d simply attach my current external drive to my laptop and I should be good to go. Then when I get home, I’d copy the catalog from my laptop back to my iMac, reattach my hard drive then I’d be back to my original setup but with my trip photos available. Does this seem correct to you? Appreciate any help you can provide.
Reid, it might be easier to create a new, "travel" catalog on your old MacBook and import your photos during your trip to that catalog. Then when you get back, open your original, main catalog on your iMac and go to File > Import from Another Catalog. The choose the .LRCAT file on your external drive and click Open. This launches the Import from Catalog dialog box. Then choose Add New Photos to catalog without moving (assuming you plan to keep the actual images on the hard drive).
OK, so I have moved my folders and files (22k+!) to my external using your excellent tutorial. But I have a question. When I put my SD card from my camera into my MAC how do I tell Lightroom to import new photos from my SD card to my external instead of my internal drive?
gfx4www Glad the moving went smoothly. 22k is a lot! :) When you import from your SD you should see your external drive show up under Destinations (on right side panel), it should show all your drives. Since you moved your images using Lightroom, it should already recognize your external drive. Having your catalog on your internal drive is fine. In fact that's how mine is set up.
OK, I am able to see my drives. When I do import my images they do go to my external but do not wind up in my folders designated for years (2013, 2014, 2015). I tried to import new images from my SD card and they wound up on my external in my Pictures folder but they did not go in the yearly folder 2015. They wound up in a new folder with the date in my Pictures folder and not in the subfolder 2015 of my Pictures folder. So I tried it again and instructed LR to place them in my 2015 folder inside my Pictures folder. What it did was make a new folder named 2015 inside my 2015 folder. So I deleted them and the folder but I now have a mess that won't disappear with ghosted folders on the right in the import module. I just want my new images to go in a dated folder in the year they belong.
Did you drill down and select the specific folder you want to import them into, specifically the 2015 folder? Also check under Organize (at the top of the Destination section) - I think with your structure you want them all in 2015, so select Organize Into One Folder and then pick your folder or create a new one. You could also check the box Subfolder and give it a name if you want to put them in a subfolder within 2015. If they went into general My Pictures with the date I think maybe it was set to Organize: by date
Hi Valery, thank you for the tutorial! I have an additional question, more like a follow up. SO moved all my pictures from my portable drive to my desktop drive. and I have no more images (according to Lightroom) in my portable. Yet there are a lot of images that didn't transfer to the desktop drive....How can I bring those images back into view in the portable? What happned to modified version of those in the catalog? Thanks!
Carlos Rey Hi Carlos, are you seeing any preview images with '?' marks, or are they completely missing with no previews at all? Here are some trouble shooting ideas: 1.) From the Library module, choose Library from the top Menu and then Find Missing Photos. This should prompt Lightroom to scan your catalog and look for any images for which it can't find the image file. It will put all the missing photos in a collection labeled Missing Photographs. Open this collection and select an image and click on the '?' and in the dialog box select the file name and click locate. 2.) Try searching your computer using Explorer/Finder for the missing photos or folders. It is possible that LR moved them into a different directory or folder than expected. If you find them you can move them where they should be and then relink them inside Lightroom by using Find Missing images. 3.) Check the Trash or Recycle Bin to see if they are there. Weird bugs sometimes happen. 4.) You may need to restore from a backup catalog. Hope this helps and good luck! Valerie
so for the catalog we just move it to the new external hard drive using finder?? is there a way within Lr to tell Lightroom the new location of the catalog file ?
I have another hard drive (main) that I use for a complete computer backup. Two others I plan to use for my pictures. My question is, if my laptop crashed would the main backup I use be able to restore the catalog? It seems like it would but again, I am not a computer guy. lol
As long as you have your catalog and images on a backup drive that still works, you can restore. My personal preference is to also have an off-site backup of all my data in event of some disaster, i.e. fire, flood, earthquake etc.
MrShutter80 To start a new catalog, open Lightroom and select File > New Catalog. Specify where you want to store the catalog, give it a name and then click Create. If you just want to delete images from the current catalog, in the Library Module select them and right click your mouse and choose Remove. Or from top menu choose Photo > Remove from Catalog. Either way this will remove them from the Catalog but not your computer. You can select individual images or a folder to remove.
Thank you, I have Macbook pro with 256 SSD hard drive, since I don't store any of my images on the SSD drive, I store all my Photos on external drive, but now my SSD storage almost full it shows it has occupied 80GB of backups and other 80GB of others stuff, I have just 30GB left, how do I move my backups to external drive? If I want to reset to factory settings and free all the unwanted stuff how can I save my LR catalog, folders, backups etc, I am still using LR 5 and I Am thinking of upgrading to LR 6.
Quick question: I am getting ready to back up my raw photos and catalog following your advice to an external drive...I have 20,000 (or more) raw images in my "Master LR Folder" which Lightroom references for the edit data. Is there any problem copying that many images all at once to my external backup drive? I realize it will take a long time, but I do not want to create any problems, etc...Thanks as always.... Philip
Uptown Photography Good for you to have a main, top level Lightroom folder. With that many images you could use your OS to copy everything over, then with your new drive connected, right click on that top level folder and click on Find Missing Folder. Then LR will reconnect with your top level folder and all the folders within it. This will work the same way whether you are moving to an external drive to work from that drive or whether you are using the external drive as a backup only.
Hi Val, I was forced to upgrade to LR 6, due to using the new Raw files images from a newly used Sony 7RII camera. PS/LR 5 can't be updated to the new RAW image files from this camera, so I'm left with switching to LR6 (albeit temporarily-testing now). That said, I was able to follow your tutorial for saving/moving photo's to my SSD drive. However, saving my Catalog was not as easy, based on your tutorial. In Edit, there is NO catalog settings tab, hence, not able to locate my catalog this way. Can you explain what is a catalog anyway, vs. the actual photo's which I saved on my external drive? Can't imagine the catalog would be anywhere near the size of photo's folder, which I transferred. So maybe I don't need to worry as much about that. Just wondering the importance of the catalog vs the actual photo's to be backed up. Thanks!
+Tom Rosencrantz Hi Tom, My apologies, I did not see your question until now. First, click on Edit in the top menu in the Library Module and you will see an option for Catalog settings. (shortcut is Ctrl/Cmd + Alt + , ) Click on that and you will get a popup of the Catalog Settings display. Select the General tab. Here you will see the location of your Catalog. It will be much smaller than your actual image files because it is data only. The catalog is a database that contains information on your photos, from keywords and camera info to all the edits you've made to your images, and where your images are located. Your catalog can remain on your internal hard drive or you can move it to your external drive, your preference. It doesn't have to be on the same drive as your photos. I leave mine on the internal drive. You don't need to "save" you catalog per se. All changes you make as you are working in Lightroom are automatically saved to your catalog without your doing anything. However you should back up your catalog regularly. The is very important, because should your catalog become corrupt you could lose all your edits. In the same catalog settings dialog I mention above, you can choose from a drop down menu how often you want your catalog backed up. I have mine set to every time I close Lightroom.
Feel like I am close but not there. When I click on the "+" to add folder, I can see my seagate drive but it does not give me the option for 'New Folder" only "choose". When I pick "choose" it takes me back to Lightroom and I see the Seagate drive but the only other folder I see is the Macintosh HD and all those folders are grayed out ?? Any ideas what I am doing wrong ?? Any help is appreciated
Yes, but first I suggest you rename the file on the C drive using Explorer/Finder and check everything on the new drive to make sure all is ok, then you can go ahead and delete the old one on the C drive
If I wanted to Backup my LR Catalog and Images to an external drive....would I do it the same way?...As I don't want the catalog and images to be deleted off my internal drive. Thanks. Philip
Hi Philip, backing up is a little different. Your catalog has the file extension .lrcat and by default it is located at c:\Users\your username\My Pictures\Lightroom\Lightroom 5 catalog.lrcat (windows) or on a Mac HD/Users/your username/Pictures/Lightroom/Lightroom 5 Catalog.lrcat You can check the file location and name in Lightroom --Go to Edit Menu or on Mac Lightroom menu and choose Catalog Settings. Under the General tab you will see the name and location of your catalog. Click Show to open the location. Under the same menu you can choose how often Lightroom backs up your catalog and change the location, i.e. the backup can be on your external drive while the original stays on the internal drive. This only backs up your catalog and all the adjustments you made. NOT the images themselves. To back up your photos you can copy them in the exact same file structure to your external drive using Explorer/Finder. But your image collection grows, and it's always good to have another offsite backup. I like to use something like Crashplan or Carbonite that will continually back up everything.
ValeriesPhotoChannel I appreciate you reply...I will have to digest all of this and follow your instructions as you have outlined. I really appreciate your input.....It means a lot. Philip
ValeriesPhotoChannel Hello again Valerie, Everything makes sense....My only question is...How do I backup the photos as you mentioned in next sentence...."To back up your photos you can copy them in the exact same file structure to your external drive using Explorer/Finder". How do I do this with the same file structure? Thanks again....Philip
Uptown Photography From Explorer/Finder and go up to the root folder of your images (maybe My Pictures or My Lightroom Photos depending on how you have you main folder set up. Just copy the main folder to your external drive and it will copy everything in it.
Unfortunately I have moved the folders to an external hard drive in the way you suggested here, but during import a few boxes appeared which said unable to move files x/y/z and there was no choice but to click ok. At the end the images are now in a very confused array of folders. the parent folder appears more than once with some sub folders within it but not all photos in each sub folder. please help!
Hi, first about the images that would not move. There are a couple possible reasons. One is that the folder permissions do not allow "write" or there are already images with those file names in the destination folder. It's also possible that there was just a temporary locking issue, i.e. a temporary LR glitch. To check on permissions, right click on the folder and choose Properties. Go to Security and make sure all permissions are set to allow. About the duplicate folders, is it possible that you may have "copied" some images rather than moving them? You used the word import and that's what gets me thinking this could have happened. You may have accidentally imported them again. It's hard to know exactly what's going on without seeing your file structure, but I recommend that you look at each parent folder and subfolders to see which have develop settings applied to them and then you will know which one you want to use vs the duplicates. And from the Library (NOT Explorer/Finder) you can reorganize you folders/images by dragging and dropping. Hope this helps. Valerie
ValeriesPhotoChannel Hi Valerie, thank you very much for your message. I really don't know what the logic was with it all but in the end I have used (an accidental) a copy of the original folder structure on the hard drive and connected this to lightroom, and so avoided the issue. Hopefully next time doing it in the way you suggested will work more smoothly.
spanna I'm glad it worked out! The main thing with Lightroom is to do everything inside Lightroom, and if you simply move the top level folder containing all the subfolders of your images, then everything should be in the same file structure.
harorider879 Did you drag and drop the main parent folder from the old drive to the new one from the LR Folder's panel? Usually moving the parent folder moves everything. What happened to the folders that didn't move? Are they still there in the original location? Did you get an error message? If you have many thousands of photos, you may need you move them in smaller amounts, i.e. a few folders at a time.
But it's not all that terribly different Tim. I have a Mac, followed this tute (allowing for platform differences) and had no trouble in moving my stuff onto another external drive. I guess one major difference is that, to find where your catalogue is you do not go to Edit but rather to Lightroom/Catalogue settings/General Hope this helps
![Felix "Unfair" | [Stray Kids : SKZ-PLAYER]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Oswujxm2Ag0/mqdefault.jpg)
This video is almost 8 years old, but it is by far the most clear and simple explanation on how to move photo's and/or catalog I've been able to find. Thank you so much! This has been super helpful to me.
Thanks for the kind words, Jan. While the Develop Module has changed a lot, especially recently, the LR Catalog still works the same as it always has.
Valerie this was great instruction , clear and to the point , I've been messing about for hours and then I watched your tutorial and the penny dropped straight away , brilliant thank you .
Glad to help, Richard. I know it can be frustrating to figure out in the beginning. :)
Randal scott Canada, if i ever meet you I'll sing you song with my guitar
Richard Stone
3 days ago
Valerie you are amazing you make i it easy to learn keep
I jumped into Lightroom with both feet and am now trying to organize my catalogue--this has been very helpful.
This was so easy to understand. I will be sure to follow Valerie when I need help.
Invaluable, so clear and so easy to follow. BRAVO.
Thank you soo much for this video! It was simple but extremely effective in answering my question on how to move photos. You did great! It was a blessing I found this and answer to prayers.
Excellent clear and concise you made this so easy to understand. Your speech is very articulate you helped me understand how to do something I’ve been wanting to do for ages. God bless you and thank you Grace.
I'm so glad I could help, Grace!
Thanks for making a clear vid on how to move to external drives. Your explanation is the best to understand 'how to'!
I'm happy you found it easy to follow. Thanks.
Wow, crystal clear instruction! I really appreciate your time (and your talent in giving instruction) :)
Hi Valerie
I am quite new to both photography and Lightroom, but found your tutorial very easy to understand, and very helpful, so i just wanted to say thanks. I will definitely check out the other Lightroom tutorials on your channel.
Take care
Ian
Thanks, Ian. Glad you found my channel!
Thank you. I had your video playing as I moved my photos and you were very easy to follow.
Clear, concise and to the point. Wonderful.
+John FitzGerald Thanks for your great feedback! Valerie
Thank you for explaining that in such simple steps.
You're welcome :)
Excellent. Your planning of the video is great. Very professional. Thanks
Great guide, Valerie, simple and thorough. Much appreciated! John, Australia.
Thanks John!
Good clear instructions. Keep up the good work!
Fred Eriksson Thanks. Glad I could help.
Thank you for the great information. I was getting frustrated with the other tutorials out there. I am not a computer guy so a clear explanation was really good to finally find. Thanks.
You're welcome Shayne. I'm glad you found my tutorial easy to understand :)
Thank you! I love what light room can do and I love the fact that there are people like you to help guide us though the process.
I have been looking at many youtube videos on how to move to external drive from HDD, yours was the best and the most straight forward. I am really not sure if moving the catalog to the external drive is better for me.
Hi James. Thanks for the nice comment. You don't need to move the catalog, you can keep it on your hard drive. It's not necessary to have it on the same drive as your photos.
great demonstration. what kind of external hard drive do you recommend?
Thanks Brady. I have several 1TB Seagate drives. I also back up my photos in the cloud.
You are a beautiful soul.. Thanks for taking the time in doing this.
I made a mess with my catalog when I changed computer. Hopefully this will help me get organized again. Thanks for sharing!
Excellent information clearly articulated.
Congratulations on making what appeared to be difficult into an easy understanding task,keep up the good work we need this type tuition. Many Thanks
Hi Valerie. Thank You very much. Your video was very helpful. I especially like how although it appears that you are working on a PC you made it easy also for those of us who use Macintosh computers to understand how to do it. Once again a big Thank You. John
Thanks, John. I try to mention Mac Shortcuts so all users can follow along. Glad my tutorial helped you.
Thank You for making it very clear and easy for me to transfer images to my different drives. Very helpful!
You're welcome!
Wow thanks for the tips. So simple and well-explained
+Kannithi Traitonwong You're welcome!
Sincere thanks for this easy to follow tutorial appreciate this very much
Very helpful and straight forward!! Thank you!!
Wonderful. Thanks so much for making it simple.
+Mandingo Nocturno Glad it helped :)
great video. Answers my questions very succinctly.
Thanks. Glad you found it helpful.
Informative blog. Thank you
You're welcome! New tutorials coming soon.
Thanks for this easy to follow tutorial. Just what I was looking for!
+Garry Macdonald You're welcome:) Valerie
great tutorial, easy to follow, thanks a lot
Thanks, for this information, it really was of great help.
Thanks for your tutorial on moving files. I keep my photo files on a 500g external drive. I want to use a larger external drive with out losing my collections, etc. I would also like to keep what I have on the smaller drive. How is that done?
Thank you! This was real helpful.
Excellent. Thank you
great video and easy to follow.
Thanks! I'm so tired of my C drive always filling up when I'm working on a deadline! This should help.
I am having trouble moving my photos into the fills I want. I am in the right place but it brings up a STOP icon before I can drop them into the folders? Any ideas?
I had watched 4 top rated videos but your is a 10!!! you explain everything in away that flows, and the little tip are such a help. Your my new great Lightroom teacher :).
Lisa, are you dragging them by the thumbnail and not the gray border? Be sure to drag the actual thumbnail. How many are you trying to move at one time? Maybe try moving just a few images at a time.
Thank you so much for this
Thank you so much! This helped me tremendously today.
+Leah Kackley You're welcome:)
Great video! Needed this information...newbie on lr.
+Shirley Rawlings Thanks. You'll love Lightroom and I have lots of videos to help you get started. Valerie
Thanks so much for the tutorial!!!
+Leonnavaf You're welcome. I'm working on some new ones.
I found your site AFTER I moved some stuff into an external hard drive. I'd like to start over if I move everything out of the external hard drive and put it in the trash I really haven't deleted anything yes ?
Glad I found your tutorial.. Thanks :)
You're welcome :)
Thx for helping me to learn lightroom. :-)
Great tutorial. If I understand the process correctly, if you don't at least copy the latest catalog over to you external drive, if your computer fails you will not have access to all the edits you made on your photos, even though you will have all your photos. Is that correct? Thanks. Steve - Australia
Yes, if your computer fails and you have your catalog on your internal drive then you won't have access to your edits unless you've backed it up. You actually don't want a "copy" of your catalog because then you can get confused over which one you should be using. LR will automatically create backups based on settings you specify. Choose Edit > Catalog Settings (Windows) or Lightroom > Catalog Settings (Mac OS). Choose Back Up Catalog and you can change the backup folder location (default is /Picture/ ) and from the dropdown you can choose from different options such as when LR exits, weekly, etc. Of course, you will want to be backing up your entire computer anyway, i.e. in the Cloud, a backup service etc. In fact, if you have all your photos on an external drive be sure you are backing up the external drive too.
Thank you Valerie. I nearly understand the process at last after viewing about 10 youtube videos. That catalog file is so important. When you click Automatically write changes into XMP does that include ALL edits, keyword lists etc? Thanks.
Hi Steve, yes it does include keywording, metadata, editing, etc. The only thing you won't have would be the edit history.
Once again, Valerie - thanks. How do you retain the history, please?
By backing up your catalog regularly - you will be able to restore everything. (Edit > Catalog Settings and choose Back up Catalog.) I have mine set to back up every time I exit LR. Also be sure to back up your backups and your photos, i.e. with a cloud service. XMP sidecar files are useful if you want to open your raw images in Adobe Bridge - then you will see the edits, metadata, keywords etc.
thanks, this was helpful
Thank you Valerie! A couple of questions - - is there any way to bypass the LR default to Pictures/C drive and go directly to an external drive? And is there any of your videos that deal with how to keep/store/save a RAW photo after you have done the adjustments to it?
Hi. Yes, you can import photos directly to your external drive. In the Import window, look up in the right-hand corner and by default, you'll see your C:/My Pictures, but there's a down arrow beside it. If you move your cursor over it a window with a list of locations pops up and you can choose your external drive. Re saving your raw files: No need to save again. LR is non-destructive editing (unlike Photoshop where it makes changes to the pixels), It stores all your edits in the Catalog, which by default is on C drive but you can move if you wish. The catalog is data, not pixels. So your raw files are untouched. Leave your original raw/jpegs on your external drive if that's where you have them. There is no need to resave because they've not been physically changed. But be sure to back up all your raw and other original files to a separate location in case of drive failure etc.
@@valeriesphotochannel Your helpful answer came the same day as my question. With channel support that good, I'm going to Subscribe and buy your portrait course. Thanks again.
@@brumblebuffin11 Thanks :)
Hi Valerie, Very helpful video, thanks.. I have a slightly different need. My LR is a total mess and I want to start fresh. Can I transfer all my files to the new external hard drive, then delete the old catalog, and then re-import them into a new LR catalog? I then want to store all current photos plus new ones I take on the external hard drive since it is a 3T drive.
Hi Thom. If you delete your old catalog you will delete all your processing, keywording etc. Is that what you want? If by a mess you mean disorganized, it would be better to reorganize folders/files from within Lightroom and put everything under one umbrella folder such as "My Lightroom Pictures" and then move it to a new external drive and then you have one main file to point Lightroom to. If you really do want to start over and don't care about prior processing, then you could do it as you stated.
Valerie Goettsch Hi Again, thank you for the reply. Yep, I want to start totally fresh with everything. I loaded my original photos way before I knew what I was doing and have done very little pp since then. I've been taking LR and Photoshop CC course so now I'm pretty sure I can do it right. Again thanks for your help.
Thank you very much!
You're welcome!
Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!
You're welcome!
Thank you for making this :)
You're very welcome :)
Please some of my folder moved automatic in to lr and I miss them from my Desktop how can I get it back to my desktop?
Hoping you can help me. I took a Lightroom course a couple of years ago at my local college. My teacher had us put Lightroom on our external hard drives. Now that my drive is almost full and I have recently purchased another drive, how does one put Lightroom on the 2nd hard drive? It just recognizes that Lighroom has been on the 1st drive. *I have no desire to transfer photos from 1st drive to 2nd. I'm starting fresh. I'd truly appreciate any help on this. I can't seem to find any solution to this on the Internet. Thank you!
I have moved many photos to my external drive (in a master folder I created called "Pictures"). That all worked fine following your directions in the video. The problem I am having is when I want to move additional photos at a later date, I can't get the external drive to show up in Lightroom. I am not sure how to get this external HD to show up with all the previously moved photos contained in the master folder. Thanks as always.
+Uptown Photography There could be a number of reasons. Have you tried to import new images using Lightroom's import dialog and the external drive does not show up there either? Be sure you have your external drive plugged in BEFORE you launch Lightroom.
Did you move your catalog too, or do you have more than one catalog? It is possible that when you opened Lightroom an old catalog launched. In that case, in Library go to File > Open Recent and if you see more than one catalog, click on the correct catalog to relaunch Lightroom with this catalog. Then you should see drives/folders associated with that catalog.
If you're on a Mac, Victoria Bampton has a good answer (there's a quirk with Mac) and you can read the solution here: feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop_family/topics/external-hard-drives-not-displayed-in-my-library-any-longer
+ValeriesPhotoChannel If I click import the external drive and photos contained on it do show up. But, these photos have already been imported and edited months ago on my internal drive, so I am guessing re-importing them is not a good idea and i would guess i would lose all the editing information. The LR catalog itself is on my internal drive and I have a PC w/windows 8.1. Thanks.
+Uptown Photography Right, you don't want to reimport them. But have you tried to import any NEW images, i.e. from an SD card? What I'm wondering is whether the external drive shows up under the File handling of the import dialog. My understanding of your issue is that you can no longer see any of the images you had moved to the external drive at all, correct? Were you able to see the images and the external drive right after you moved them, and just lately the drive no longer shows up? I'm trying to troubleshoot your issue.
+ValeriesPhotoChannel Yes correct. I can no longer see any of the photos that I moved a month ago. They were there and visible when I first moved them. But now all the folders have the "question marks" and are not even listed under my external G drive. There's no designation from LR of a location of these folders at all as to where they are, just that they're missing... I did create a folder w/one photo and imported it into LR and the external drive will show up. But, the missing folders don't show up listed under that G drive...Thanks.
+Uptown Photography Ok, right click on the top folder that has a question mark and select "find missing folder" and this should re-associate them with the catalog.
Another excellent video Valerie. I’m always surprised when I hear photographers don’t backup their photos. I have a question. I’m taking a photo trip this summer. I usually use an iMac for editing, etc. I have a five year old MacBook I’m thinking of taking with me to download daily images to the external drive I use now. I’m thinking all I’d have to do is copy my latest catalog off my iMac and put it on my laptop. Then I’d simply attach my current external drive to my laptop and I should be good to go. Then when I get home, I’d copy the catalog from my laptop back to my iMac, reattach my hard drive then I’d be back to my original setup but with my trip photos available. Does this seem correct to you? Appreciate any help you can provide.
Reid, it might be easier to create a new, "travel" catalog on your old MacBook and import your photos during your trip to that catalog. Then when you get back, open your original, main catalog on your iMac and go to File > Import from Another Catalog. The choose the .LRCAT file on your external drive and click Open. This launches the Import from Catalog dialog box. Then choose Add New Photos to catalog without moving (assuming you plan to keep the actual images on the hard drive).
@@valeriesphotochannel Thanks so much Valerie. I'll give this a test at home before going on my trip. Really appreciate your reply. Thanks again.
OK, so I have moved my folders and files (22k+!) to my external using your excellent tutorial. But I have a question. When I put my SD card from my camera into my MAC how do I tell Lightroom to import new photos from my SD card to my external instead of my internal drive?
I might add that I kept my catalog file on my internal.
gfx4www
Glad the moving went smoothly. 22k is a lot! :) When you import from your SD you should see your external drive show up under Destinations (on right side panel), it should show all your drives. Since you moved your images using Lightroom, it should already recognize your external drive. Having your catalog on your internal drive is fine. In fact that's how mine is set up.
OK, I am able to see my drives. When I do import my images they do go to my external but do not wind up in my folders designated for years (2013, 2014, 2015). I tried to import new images from my SD card and they wound up on my external in my Pictures folder but they did not go in the yearly folder 2015. They wound up in a new folder with the date in my Pictures folder and not in the subfolder 2015 of my Pictures folder. So I tried it again and instructed LR to place them in my 2015 folder inside my Pictures folder. What it did was make a new folder named 2015 inside my 2015 folder. So I deleted them and the folder but I now have a mess that won't disappear with ghosted folders on the right in the import module. I just want my new images to go in a dated folder in the year they belong.
Did you drill down and select the specific folder you want to import them into, specifically the 2015 folder? Also check under Organize (at the top of the Destination section) - I think with your structure you want them all in 2015, so select Organize Into One Folder and then pick your folder or create a new one. You could also check the box Subfolder and give it a name if you want to put them in a subfolder within 2015. If they went into general My Pictures with the date I think maybe it was set to Organize: by date
Hi Valery, thank you for the tutorial! I have an additional question, more like a follow up. SO moved all my pictures from my portable drive to my desktop drive. and I have no more images (according to Lightroom) in my portable. Yet there are a lot of images that didn't transfer to the desktop drive....How can I bring those images back into view in the portable? What happned to modified version of those in the catalog?
Thanks!
Carlos Rey Hi Carlos, are you seeing any preview images with '?' marks, or are they completely missing with no previews at all? Here are some trouble shooting ideas:
1.) From the Library module, choose Library from the top Menu and then Find Missing Photos. This should prompt Lightroom to scan your catalog and look for any images for which it can't find the image file. It will put all the missing photos in a collection labeled Missing Photographs. Open this collection and select an image and click on the '?' and in the dialog box select the file name and click locate.
2.) Try searching your computer using Explorer/Finder for the missing photos or folders. It is possible that LR moved them into a different directory or folder than expected. If you find them you can move them where they should be and then relink them inside Lightroom by using Find Missing images.
3.) Check the Trash or Recycle Bin to see if they are there. Weird bugs sometimes happen.
4.) You may need to restore from a backup catalog.
Hope this helps and good luck! Valerie
Thank you. I'll try that when I get home.. The pictures are physically still in my portable drive, but the do not show in my catalog in LR.
Thanks for your help.
Gary
+gary e Glad I could help:)
so for the catalog we just move it to the new external hard drive using finder?? is there a way within Lr to tell Lightroom the new location of the catalog file ?
I have another hard drive (main) that I use for a complete computer backup. Two others I plan to use for my pictures. My question is, if my laptop crashed would the main backup I use be able to restore the catalog? It seems like it would but again, I am not a computer guy. lol
As long as you have your catalog and images on a backup drive that still works, you can restore. My personal preference is to also have an off-site backup of all my data in event of some disaster, i.e. fire, flood, earthquake etc.
Hey Im new to Light Room what I would like to know is how do I delete images, catalogs basically everything and Start fresh in LIghtRoom 5
MrShutter80 To start a new catalog, open Lightroom and select File > New Catalog. Specify where you want to store the catalog, give it a name and then click Create. If you just want to delete images from the current catalog, in the Library Module select them and right click your mouse and choose Remove. Or from top menu choose Photo > Remove from Catalog. Either way this will remove them from the Catalog but not your computer. You can select individual images or a folder to remove.
thanks, it was what i needed. but i think u should change the blue background, it is not so good to see :)
Thank you,
I have Macbook pro with 256 SSD hard drive, since I don't store any of my images on the SSD drive, I store all my Photos on external drive, but now my SSD storage almost full it shows it has occupied 80GB of backups and other 80GB of others stuff, I have just 30GB left, how do I move my backups to external drive? If I want to reset to factory settings and free all the unwanted stuff how can I save my LR catalog, folders, backups etc, I am still using LR 5 and I Am thinking of upgrading to LR 6.
Quick question: I am getting ready to back up my raw photos and catalog following your advice to an external drive...I have 20,000 (or more) raw images in my "Master LR Folder" which Lightroom references for the edit data. Is there any problem copying that many images all at once to my external backup drive? I realize it will take a long time, but I do not want to create any problems, etc...Thanks as always....
Philip
Uptown Photography Good for you to have a main, top level Lightroom folder. With that many images you could use your OS to copy everything over, then with your new drive connected, right click on that top level folder and click on Find Missing Folder. Then LR will reconnect with your top level folder and all the folders within it. This will work the same way whether you are moving to an external drive to work from that drive or whether you are using the external drive as a backup only.
Hi Val, I was forced to upgrade to LR 6, due to using the new Raw files images from a newly used Sony 7RII camera. PS/LR 5 can't be updated to the new RAW image files from this camera, so I'm left with switching to LR6 (albeit temporarily-testing now). That said, I was able to follow your tutorial for saving/moving photo's to my SSD drive. However, saving my Catalog was not as easy, based on your tutorial. In Edit, there is NO catalog settings tab, hence, not able to locate my catalog this way. Can you explain what is a catalog anyway, vs. the actual photo's which I saved on my external drive? Can't imagine the catalog would be anywhere near the size of photo's folder, which I transferred. So maybe I don't need to worry as much about that. Just wondering the importance of the catalog vs the actual photo's to be backed up. Thanks!
+Tom Rosencrantz Hi Tom, My apologies, I did not see your question until now. First, click on Edit in the top menu in the Library Module and you will see an option for Catalog settings. (shortcut is Ctrl/Cmd + Alt + , ) Click on that and you will get a popup of the Catalog Settings display. Select the General tab. Here you will see the location of your Catalog. It will be much smaller than your actual image files because it is data only. The catalog is a database that contains information on your photos, from keywords and camera info to all the edits you've made to your images, and where your images are located. Your catalog can remain on your internal hard drive or you can move it to your external drive, your preference. It doesn't have to be on the same drive as your photos. I leave mine on the internal drive. You don't need to "save" you catalog per se. All changes you make as you are working in Lightroom are automatically saved to your catalog without your doing anything. However you should back up your catalog regularly. The is very important, because should your catalog become corrupt you could lose all your edits. In the same catalog settings dialog I mention above, you can choose from a drop down menu how often you want your catalog backed up. I have mine set to every time I close Lightroom.
I can't find the plus on this, I bought it today and have no clue ! Would appreciate it if someone shows or tells me steps on this :(
Feel like I am close but not there. When I click on the "+" to add folder, I can see my seagate drive but it does not give me the option for 'New Folder" only "choose". When I pick "choose" it takes me back to Lightroom and I see the Seagate drive but the only other folder I see is the Macintosh HD and all those folders are grayed out ?? Any ideas what I am doing wrong ??
Any help is appreciated
Thanks so much
Valerie, so I dragged into the D drive (my dual drive) but the LR catalog is still showing in the C. Do I delete it?
Yes, but first I suggest you rename the file on the C drive using Explorer/Finder and check everything on the new drive to make sure all is ok, then you can go ahead and delete the old one on the C drive
very good
Does this mean that if I get a new MacBook, I will be able to see the same edits that I had on my previous laptop?
dean hilario You sure will.
If I wanted to Backup my LR Catalog and Images to an external drive....would I do it the same way?...As I don't want the catalog and images to be deleted off my internal drive. Thanks. Philip
Hi Philip, backing up is a little different. Your catalog has the file extension .lrcat and by default it is located at c:\Users\your username\My Pictures\Lightroom\Lightroom 5 catalog.lrcat (windows) or on a Mac HD/Users/your username/Pictures/Lightroom/Lightroom 5 Catalog.lrcat
You can check the file location and name in Lightroom --Go to Edit Menu or on Mac Lightroom menu and choose Catalog Settings. Under the General tab you will see the name and location of your catalog. Click Show to open the location. Under the same menu you can choose how often Lightroom backs up your catalog and change the location, i.e. the backup can be on your external drive while the original stays on the internal drive. This only backs up your catalog and all the adjustments you made. NOT the images themselves. To back up your photos you can copy them in the exact same file structure to your external drive using Explorer/Finder. But your image collection grows, and it's always good to have another offsite backup. I like to use something like Crashplan or Carbonite that will continually back up everything.
ValeriesPhotoChannel
I appreciate you reply...I will have to digest all of this and follow your instructions as you have outlined. I really appreciate your input.....It means a lot. Philip
ValeriesPhotoChannel
Hello again Valerie, Everything makes sense....My only question is...How do I backup the photos as you mentioned in next sentence...."To back up your photos you can copy them in the exact same file structure to your external drive using Explorer/Finder". How do I do this with the same file structure? Thanks again....Philip
Uptown Photography
From Explorer/Finder and go up to the root folder of your images (maybe My Pictures or My Lightroom Photos depending on how you have you main folder set up. Just copy the main folder to your external drive and it will copy everything in it.
ValeriesPhotoChannel
Thank you...great!....Philip
Unfortunately I have moved the folders to an external hard drive in the way you suggested here, but during import a few boxes appeared which said unable to move files x/y/z and there was no choice but to click ok. At the end the images are now in a very confused array of folders. the parent folder appears more than once with some sub folders within it but not all photos in each sub folder. please help!
Hi, first about the images that would not move. There are a couple possible reasons. One is that the folder permissions do not allow "write" or there are already images with those file names in the destination folder. It's also possible that there was just a temporary locking issue, i.e. a temporary LR glitch. To check on permissions, right click on the folder and choose Properties. Go to Security and make sure all permissions are set to allow.
About the duplicate folders, is it possible that you may have "copied" some images rather than moving them? You used the word import and that's what gets me thinking this could have happened. You may have accidentally imported them again. It's hard to know exactly what's going on without seeing your file structure, but I recommend that you look at each parent folder and subfolders to see which have develop settings applied to them and then you will know which one you want to use vs the duplicates. And from the Library (NOT Explorer/Finder) you can reorganize you folders/images by dragging and dropping. Hope this helps. Valerie
ValeriesPhotoChannel
Hi Valerie, thank you very much for your message. I really don't know what the logic was with it all but in the end I have used (an accidental) a copy of the original folder structure on the hard drive and connected this to lightroom, and so avoided the issue. Hopefully next time doing it in the way you suggested will work more smoothly.
spanna
I'm glad it worked out! The main thing with Lightroom is to do everything inside Lightroom, and if you simply move the top level folder containing all the subfolders of your images, then everything should be in the same file structure.
Glad to help. You can find all of my tutorials here and I'm constantly adding new ones. valeriegoettsch.com/lightroom-tutorials/
Very good :)
Thanks :)
Simplified way of moving photo files and catalogs in LR
When i try to drag and drop the folders, nothing happens. Help! it moved one or two folders, but thats it.
harorider879 Did you drag and drop the main parent folder from the old drive to the new one from the LR Folder's panel? Usually moving the parent folder moves everything. What happened to the folders that didn't move? Are they still there in the original location? Did you get an error message? If you have many thousands of photos, you may need you move them in smaller amounts, i.e. a few folders at a time.
👍👍👍
Please label this video as for Windows. It does not work the same way on Mac.
But it's not all that terribly different Tim. I have a Mac, followed this tute (allowing for platform differences) and had no trouble in moving my stuff onto another external drive. I guess one major difference is that, to find where your catalogue is you do not go to Edit but rather to Lightroom/Catalogue settings/General
Hope this helps
Thank You !! Thank You !!! Great tutorial that helped a lot !!!