File managing and backups with Lightroom? How do you do it?

[arhtmac]

@arhtmac
Thanks a lot for your response, you bring up interesting points.

How do you handle multiple versions of one file in that workflow?
For instance, I often have at least two versions of a photo, e. g. one for regular use and one for print (optimized for a specific profile) or a color and a black & white version.

I put a lot of work into books (just finished a ~90 page wedding book), for instance (one reason I didn't even seriously consider Lightroom until version 4). The only way to extract a book is as a pdf (which is in a sense read-only). I use stacks and albums extensively to sort and organize my photos. All these information cannot be captured in the metadata.

If I may ask: why does that worry you? I know that if I bite the bullet and migrate away from Aperture, I'll spend a day to transfer my files and my hierarchy to whatever I'll be using then. But at that point, I presumably will still have a working copy of Aperture and transferring the files is not a problem.

I had to go through this ordeal once before when I switched from iView Media Pro to Aperture. I lost all tags, albums and whatnot. Fortunately, Aperture's database has been rock solid, unlike iViews which corrupted itself after a while.

Hey oreocookie,

Certain parts of my workflow are a little different to the norm I guess. I freelance a lot so once I've done my edits I push all the changes to the DNGs then save to external HDD and pass on the the Photographer who's business I shot the wedding for. This means I don't tend to have B&W, Print and Web versions of most of my pro work. Once I've completed my role, the album design and so on is completed by my employer for that shoot.

I do use virtual copies do these for my personal photos or my own pro work and I tend to export a second DNG/JPG of the finished image when it needs to be printed/sent somewhere.

Because of this I'm not that tied to Lightroom really. Sure I would miss a few things if I did switch programs as some things would be based solely in the database like my keyword sets and any presets I've made but it's fairly mobile still. You raise a good point as far as the books are concerned though. It's not something I've tried in LR4 yet but something I am excited to use for the first time. I will inevitably get sucked further into LR I'm sure!

You ask why being prepared for a switch bothers me and I guess it all stems from endless problems I had with Sonicstage back in the day (any ever use that?!). It took weeks to rebuild databases when that corrupted, almost monthly it seemed! I've since moved to iTunes and have no maladies to report! Since then I've always tried to build in a bit of safety from that work into my actual files.. I know it's an unlikely scenario but it's a case of a habit that has just stuck with me! lol

Seems we both approach LR slightly differently, at least we can agree it does what we each need it to rather well!

@Mr. Noisy.. 2 days to go and it's mine! lol

@steviem Hope it all works out for you, whichever option you go for. What do you do for work which means you can pick up a mac mini? They hiring?! lol

@trs0722 LR will save pictures to the pictures folder by default, yes if you're importing straight from a card although you can tell it to save them elsewhere or save them there yourself first in the OS then just add to the Lightroom catalogue "in place" (without moving them or copying again). Something you might find helpful for backup is the "make a second copy to" option in the import dialogue, this lets you make a backup copy whilst you import of your original images.

You're right that if you wanted to save edited jpgs to DVD you would need to export them from LR first. This is actually quite quick and easy to do, especially if you make a preset with all your options the first time you do it (makes it much faster every other time.).

You can't save directly from LR to DVD, or at least I've not come across this option. I'm not sure if you can make it behave like iPhoto in this regard, I'm not a user of iPhoto, perhaps someone else here can help with that part

 

[Halcyon]

Do you know that Lr can make a 2nd copy of the images as it imports from a card? So 1st copy goes to Lr folder structure and gets catalogued, 2nd copy goes to a destination of your choice - typically a backup HDD.

I have Lightroom 4 and find this most helpful...but I cannot find where in Lightroom to set this up (looked in Preferences, etc...might be missing something really obvious?). Can you explain where/how to set it up?

Thanks,
JC

 

[snberk103]

I have Lightroom 4 and find this most helpful...but I cannot find where in Lightroom to set this up (looked in Preferences, etc...might be missing something really obvious?). Can you explain where/how to set it up?

Thanks,
JC

You set this on Import. It will be in the (generally) top right corner. So... you tell Lr where to import from.... across the top you find the options for "move" or "copy as dng" etc.... to the right of that you start setting the rename options, etc. In that panel is the bit where you can set the 2nd copy. I'm going from memory here... but you can't find it post back and I'll import an image and get a more accurate description....

cheers

 

[Halcyon]

Thanks Sneberk103...found it.

Import > File Handling > Make a second copy To:

JC

 

[digital2go]

My wife and I run a wedding photography business and I just wanted to share our workflow which works best for us so far. We use an iMAC 27inch with 1TB internal HDD. I usually import the images using bridge which is where I like to select my images and sort through the left over images. Than I create a folder called edited and drag the selections there. I import this folder into light room, do my editing, and than export the finals to my external RAID (mirrored) 6TB HDD. I also move the RAW and leftover images to the external RAID drive for archiving. After each wedding we typically have four folders in the external HDD. (1) RAW, (2) edited, (3) leftovers, (4) slide show

[we make a custom slide show for the clients]

We usually don't come back later on to Lightroom to do any last minute editing but if we did we would import only those images from the RAW or leftovers and do whatever the client needed. After we are done with the editing we clear our Lightroom catalog. Why do we do this? We find that using finder in mac and spotlight are sufficient for us whenever we need to search for images from our clients.

I personally use iPhoto for personal image cataloging.