To piggyback the first tip you made about levelling either the horizon line or buildings, another way you can do it is: 1. Go down to the Transform pane in the Edit module 2. Either click on the 'Auto', 'Level' or 'Vertical buttons in that pane (you may need to play around with it)
thank you for the tips - I have a NAS and in it a backup catalogue and main catalogue on drive C so I backup to NAS just incase of any loss on the main catalogue
Great tips! I will use all but I am not sure whether creating backups or saving XMP would be better. 1) When you make a virtual copy and enable XMP, does Lightroom embed data for both versions into the original file metadata? 2) Does Lightroom add XMP metadata to RAW files such as Sony’s .ARW file format, or does it create a companion metadata .xmp file? 3) Lets say my catalog is 190GB. If I enable XMP, will the total of the data added to the original files, using XMP be approximately 190MB? And finally, 4) Do you recommend using DNG or keep images in the camera raw format for archiving? My understanding is that Adobe keeps a .xmp companion file for RAW fils, but embeds the data in a DNG, however DNG seems to have a number of limitations (does not display correctly on my phone, cannot convert Adobe created TIFF to Adobe DNG, etc), but it is way smaller than lossless Sony RAW.
1) I don't think so. If your catalog blows up, you would lose your virtual copies. 2) Companion XMP is created for any format other than DNG. 3) It should be considerable smaller because the catalog stores things like virtual copies, snapshots, history, etc. whereas the XMP only stores current slider positions. 4) I use/convert all of my images to DNG on import and have since the format was released. I love it.
Questions about tip #5, the writing to XMP. 1. What if your files are .dng, and you don't have a sidecar .xmp file? Will it write the changes to the .dng, or will it add a sidecar .xmp file? 2. When does it write the changes to the .xmp? Is it as you are editing, or at the end of a session? Does this add any time while you are actively editing?
1. Changes will be written to the DNG. No extra .xmp will be created. 2. As soon as you make each click it is written down in real time. Great questions 👍
Thanks, Forrest, you are the BEST for this LR organizational stuff that nobody covers well. Quick question: I’ve had some problems renaming virtual copies. Often the original file will change its name as well and then just keep “Copy 1” to delineate the VC. Amy idea if this is a setting somewhere that I have set wrong? Thx again.
Thanks man! Yeah, I think that’s the normal way LR operates. I believe there’s a place in the metadata panel where you can specifically change the name of the specific image “version”.
Cool tips n tricks LR video, thank you! As to the virtual copy not taking any space, I doubt that for it must take some space in the LR catalog DB though to store the extra information for that virtual copy ;-D Just saying!
Hey Forest, great video tutorial. I’ve been kind of terrified of making any changes to my catalogue names or dividing photos into multiple catalogues for fear of messing everything up and losing everything. Do you or RMSP offer an intensive everything you need to know about LR course? Although I consider myself an above average user, there’s just so many little things I don’t know how to do (beyond editing well). Just to be more efficient. I would love to get the info in more than RUclips size chunks...
We have a few short courses on Lightroom. They are on our website. Beyond that, Lightroom is taught extensively in our Summer Intensive and Professional Intensive programs.
If you’ve created a virtual copy from a highly edited original, it has no History. If you have it in a separate catalog and then want to go back to a previous state, is there a way to find the original? Are they linked in some way? Other than supposedly being in the same folder in the Library?
Forest, excellent video, and I have a question for you: in tip #5, you talk about writing data to .xmp if your catalogue gets corrupted. I'm guessing that this presumes you're catalogue is backed up to an external disk. Otherwise--it seems to me--it doesn't really matter if you write your data to .xmp on your primary hard drive because if your catalogue is corrupted on your hard drive it's not going to be accessible at all. Or am I wrong about this? Thanks
You actual catalogue file alone could be damaged or corrupted or deleted on your hard drive, and at least your edits are safe in the .xmp files. If your whole drive is fried, then of course you'll lose everything, which is why you should be backing everything up on a secondary location anyway. But tip #5 is a failsafe against something happening to specifically your catalogue file.
Hey man, so, thanks almost entirely to you, I now have a beautiful LR Classic folder structure and synced collections to match, but I noticed that I still have a couple hundred images counted in the general “Pictures” folder that somehow didn’t make it into my new folder hierarchy. Can you think of a way for me to isolate those images so I can review and (likely) delete them? I’m assuming they’re images I removed without deleting from disk or something like that, back before you’d educated me on how to do all of this stuff properly, but I have no idea how to see the location of and thus access the images that are OUTside of my new folder hierarchy, as I assume they’re stored in that mysterious default place in which LR keeps images by default prior to your setting things up. Sorry for the long message, thanks again for all your help!
Ahhh yes. So, click Import and set the Source to be the Pictures folder on the internal hard drive. Then enable “don’t import suspected duplicates”. That should only import the items that aren’t already in your LR catalog. Be sure to set the import destination to the external hard drive. From there, you should be able to delete the contents of the pictures folder because everything should have been imported to LR and copied to the external HD.
Hey man, no worries on the timing and thanks for getting back to me. I think I wasn’t totally clear though. The new folder hierarchy I built is still within the Pictures folder on my internal drive. It’s just that some images still exist within the Pictures folder that aren’t in my hierarchy. I’m assuming they’re still in the folders LR creates by default but I don’t know how to find those original LR-created folders in order to view or delete them. (I created my hierarchy by copying my collections from LR CC into corresponding folders on my hard drive and those all moved correctly, but there must have been some that I had removed from collections prior to that and thus are still stuck in the original LR import folder structure, wherever that is.) Sorry if that’s still not clear, but thank you for trying as always!
@@karlthefirst8690 Gotcha! Followup question, what would you like to do with those images that are outside of the hierarchy? Do you want to cleanly delete them? Import them into LR? Or maybe move them into a folder that is recognized by LR?
Rocky Mountain School of Photography Ha, good questions, one of the above. I don’t actually know what they are because the only way to see them in LR is to click on Pictures folder and then they’re mixed amidst every photo I have (and I don’t know how to find them within a Finder window). I’m assuming they’re photos I was trying to delete at some point, but ideally I’d take a look at them first.
Old-time computer users (like me) may be habitual users of cmd(Ctrl) S at regular intervals with other programs . I do this in LR too because I don’t want the save metadata option turned on as it (sometimes) slows processing.
Great. I did the thing with the xmp file in preferences and my catalog immedatly got corrupted. seriously? I've been working insanely hard the past week importing images and sorted them all and made thousands of edits. FML!!!!
@@forestchaput I didn't have a backup because it was set on default which is every week. I learned a valuable lesson and set it to back up every time I exit now lol
The back up metadata TIP is gold, nicely done!
Down to earth tips...THANKS for this video!
Glad it was helpful!
To piggyback the first tip you made about levelling either the horizon line or buildings, another way you can do it is:
1. Go down to the Transform pane in the Edit module
2. Either click on the 'Auto', 'Level' or 'Vertical buttons in that pane (you may need to play around with it)
Yep! Great point.
The best and easiet explanation of clipping indicators, and calibration. Thank you.
Thanks!
Really cool and helpful tips
Glad it was helpful!
Thanks a great video I learnt a few ideas from this to use.
Glad it was helpful!
great video - thanks
THANKS Forest, you help keep me on the right track, keep up the awesome videos.
Glad to hear it!
Very nicely presented. Great info. look forward to checking out your other videos now that I found you!
Welcome aboard!
thank you for the tips - I have a NAS and in it a backup catalogue and main catalogue on drive C so I backup to NAS just incase of any loss on the main catalogue
Glad I could help!
Great video and some very useful tips. Thanks
Thanks Mark!
Great tips! I will use all but I am not sure whether creating backups or saving XMP would be better. 1) When you make a virtual copy and enable XMP, does Lightroom embed data for both versions into the original file metadata? 2) Does Lightroom add XMP metadata to RAW files such as Sony’s .ARW file format, or does it create a companion metadata .xmp file? 3) Lets say my catalog is 190GB. If I enable XMP, will the total of the data added to the original files, using XMP be approximately 190MB? And finally, 4) Do you recommend using DNG or keep images in the camera raw format for archiving? My understanding is that Adobe keeps a .xmp companion file for RAW fils, but embeds the data in a DNG, however DNG seems to have a number of limitations (does not display correctly on my phone, cannot convert Adobe created TIFF to Adobe DNG, etc), but it is way smaller than lossless Sony RAW.
1) I don't think so. If your catalog blows up, you would lose your virtual copies. 2) Companion XMP is created for any format other than DNG. 3) It should be considerable smaller because the catalog stores things like virtual copies, snapshots, history, etc. whereas the XMP only stores current slider positions. 4) I use/convert all of my images to DNG on import and have since the format was released. I love it.
Super helpful. Thank you
You’re welcome!
Questions about tip #5, the writing to XMP.
1. What if your files are .dng, and you don't have a sidecar .xmp file? Will it write the changes to the .dng, or will it add a sidecar .xmp file?
2. When does it write the changes to the .xmp? Is it as you are editing, or at the end of a session? Does this add any time while you are actively editing?
1. Changes will be written to the DNG. No extra .xmp will be created.
2. As soon as you make each click it is written down in real time.
Great questions 👍
Thank you! I am soooo glad I found your channel. Your teaching style is organized and so easy to understand.
You’re welcome! Thanks for saying that!
So nice video thank you for share
Great tips, thanks for posting.
Thank you!
Thanks, Forrest, you are the BEST for this LR organizational stuff that nobody covers well. Quick question: I’ve had some problems renaming virtual copies. Often the original file will change its name as well and then just keep “Copy 1” to delineate the VC. Amy idea if this is a setting somewhere that I have set wrong? Thx again.
Thanks man!
Yeah, I think that’s the normal way LR operates. I believe there’s a place in the metadata panel where you can specifically change the name of the specific image “version”.
Those are useful! Thank you I learned things :D
Glad it was helpful!
Cool tips n tricks LR video, thank you!
As to the virtual copy not taking any space, I doubt that for it must take some space in the LR catalog DB though to store the extra information for that virtual copy ;-D Just saying!
Thank you so much!!! These are very helpful :)
You're so welcome!
LOVE the tips!!!
Thanks!
Hey Forest, great video tutorial. I’ve been kind of terrified of making any changes to my catalogue names or dividing photos into multiple catalogues for fear of messing everything up and losing everything. Do you or RMSP offer an intensive everything you need to know about LR course? Although I consider myself an above average user, there’s just so many little things I don’t know how to do (beyond editing well). Just to be more efficient. I would love to get the info in more than RUclips size chunks...
We have a few short courses on Lightroom. They are on our website. Beyond that, Lightroom is taught extensively in our Summer Intensive and Professional Intensive programs.
If you’ve created a virtual copy from a highly edited original, it has no History. If you have it in a separate catalog and then want to go back to a previous state, is there a way to find the original? Are they linked in some way? Other than supposedly being in the same folder in the Library?
I don't think so. That's a great point actually. Thanks for bringing it up.
Forest, excellent video, and I have a question for you: in tip #5, you talk about writing data to .xmp if your catalogue gets corrupted. I'm guessing that this presumes you're catalogue is backed up to an external disk. Otherwise--it seems to me--it doesn't really matter if you write your data to .xmp on your primary hard drive because if your catalogue is corrupted on your hard drive it's not going to be accessible at all. Or am I wrong about this? Thanks
You actual catalogue file alone could be damaged or corrupted or deleted on your hard drive, and at least your edits are safe in the .xmp files. If your whole drive is fried, then of course you'll lose everything, which is why you should be backing everything up on a secondary location anyway. But tip #5 is a failsafe against something happening to specifically your catalogue file.
Hey man, so, thanks almost entirely to you, I now have a beautiful LR Classic folder structure and synced collections to match, but I noticed that I still have a couple hundred images counted in the general “Pictures” folder that somehow didn’t make it into my new folder hierarchy. Can you think of a way for me to isolate those images so I can review and (likely) delete them? I’m assuming they’re images I removed without deleting from disk or something like that, back before you’d educated me on how to do all of this stuff properly, but I have no idea how to see the location of and thus access the images that are OUTside of my new folder hierarchy, as I assume they’re stored in that mysterious default place in which LR keeps images by default prior to your setting things up. Sorry for the long message, thanks again for all your help!
Ahhh yes. So, click Import and set the Source to be the Pictures folder on the internal hard drive. Then enable “don’t import suspected duplicates”. That should only import the items that aren’t already in your LR catalog. Be sure to set the import destination to the external hard drive. From there, you should be able to delete the contents of the pictures folder because everything should have been imported to LR and copied to the external HD.
Also, sorry for the delay! I’ve been off of work for the past couple of days!
Hey man, no worries on the timing and thanks for getting back to me. I think I wasn’t totally clear though. The new folder hierarchy I built is still within the Pictures folder on my internal drive. It’s just that some images still exist within the Pictures folder that aren’t in my hierarchy. I’m assuming they’re still in the folders LR creates by default but I don’t know how to find those original LR-created folders in order to view or delete them. (I created my hierarchy by copying my collections from LR CC into corresponding folders on my hard drive and those all moved correctly, but there must have been some that I had removed from collections prior to that and thus are still stuck in the original LR import folder structure, wherever that is.) Sorry if that’s still not clear, but thank you for trying as always!
@@karlthefirst8690 Gotcha! Followup question, what would you like to do with those images that are outside of the hierarchy? Do you want to cleanly delete them? Import them into LR? Or maybe move them into a folder that is recognized by LR?
Rocky Mountain School of Photography Ha, good questions, one of the above. I don’t actually know what they are because the only way to see them in LR is to click on Pictures folder and then they’re mixed amidst every photo I have (and I don’t know how to find them within a Finder window). I’m assuming they’re photos I was trying to delete at some point, but ideally I’d take a look at them first.
On import I copy my RAW files as DNG and I edit DNG files only. Would checking the "write changes into .xmp" still make sense as a catalog backup?
Oh yes!
@@forestchaput Does is write the changes to the .dng, or does it add a sidecar .xmp?
Old-time computer users (like me) may be habitual users of cmd(Ctrl) S at regular intervals with other programs . I do this in LR too because I don’t want the save metadata option turned on as it (sometimes) slows processing.
Good point! I never remember that that’s the right shortcut for save to XMP in Lightroom.
tnx very much
Welcome!
4 people who disliked it doesn’t own Lightroom cc
Great. I did the thing with the xmp file in preferences and my catalog immedatly got corrupted. seriously? I've been working insanely hard the past week importing images and sorted them all and made thousands of edits. FML!!!!
I'm sorry to hear that! Those two things are unrelated. Hopefully you have a good backup!
@@forestchaput I didn't have a backup because it was set on default which is every week. I learned a valuable lesson and set it to back up every time I exit now lol