Lightroom - Importing questions

[PLM]

Hi Aaron and everyone,


Yesterday evening I sat down to read the TLP blogpost of Aaron about automated organizing in Lightroom .
I don't know about you, but when things can be done in less worktime, I am all for that!

I got to make an automated import from my Camera Uploads dropboxfolder. Everything works smoothly!!! Thank you Aaron, for pointing this out to me!!!

If it's okay, I still have some other questions and I hope you can help me with them:

1. In the blogpost you are talking about 'smart collections': when you use this, does it physically place the photos in one collection, or is it kind of a virtual collection that gathers photos from f.e. different folders for visualisation?

2. Can you set this automated import for several folders or not? When I was doing it for my 'camera uploads' folder, it gave me the feeling you can only do this with one folder. I do not need other folders automated right now, but you never know what the future brings...

3. I do not quite understand how you work to automatically upload the photos from your DSRL card. You write 'I set up camera upload on my PC for when I plug in my DSLR'. Does this mean, when you enter your card, dropbox uploads it to the folder 'Camera Uploads' online and then sends it back to your pc in the same folder? So, when after that, you open up LR, it will take those pictures in as with smartphones etc?
OR did you kind of automated LR to do a predefined import when the DSLR card is entered?

4. Do you convert your RAW photos to DNG or not? I asked the question in the forum, but you haven't answered and I have the feeling you are quite experienced with LR, so I thought I could ask the question here again, if this doesn't bug you. I would like to know you're point of view in it.
This is my original question.

5. I saw you are using Carousel from Dropbox, I just looked at it and was wondering what you are using it for exactly? And when you use it, does it pull away your photos from the camera uploads folder? Or is it just all about a visualisation of your photos?


I know several of you are also experienced with Lightroom, so I would be glad to hear from your experiences too.
Or if anyone has questions, please send them over. Perhaps we can all learn from each other.

Isn't this great??? That's why I love TLP soooo much!!! So much diversity and experience, we can only keep growing by being here!!!

Thank you all!!!

 

[lorryfach]

1. In the blogpost you are talking about 'smart collections': when you use this, does it physically place the photos in one collection, or is it kind of a virtual collection that gathers photos from f.e. different folders for visualisation?

Neither regular Collections nor Smart Collections physically move the files. The only place you physically move files is when you are looking at the folders. Smart Collections are basically searches. It shows you what fits the criteria, but it does not change anything.

 

[SirScrapalot]

I am so glad you liked the post! It's one of my favorites that I wrote, and a tip that has saved my life in PL. Here are some answers.

1. What Lorry said. They aren't moved, just put together so you can see them.

2. My understanding is that you can only set up automatic upload from one photo. That's why I have set it up for all of my pictures to go into the one folder.

3. Setting up automatic upload is something you can do through Dropbox. It is a setting that basically says, "when I insert this card/camera, have Dropbox automatically pull the photos into this folder." Often, we you plug a card/camera in, you get the dialog box asking what you want to do with it. Dropbox was a selection for me, so I picked it and set it up that way. You can set it up through Dropbox directly, though, I believe. So the workflow is like this: I plug in my camera, Dropbox uploads the pictures to my Camera Uploads folder. The next time I open up Lightroom, LR pulls the photos from my Camera Uploads folder, just like with my smart phone.

4. I'm so sorry I missed that post! It's been hard to keep up with all of the MOC posts lately! I do not convert my files. I work with them in RAW and then export them to photoshop when I am doing my layout.

5. I use Carousel to pull photos from my phone into my camera uploads folder. When I know I have pictures to upload, I open Carousel and it does it automatically.

I think these are the answers you are looking for, and I would be more than happy to answer any other questions you (or anyone else) may have about my LR workflow and how I set it up.

p.s. I am getting ready to leave for work, so I won't be back on until tonight, but I will get to them then!!

 

[PLM]

Hi Aaron, thanks for the update, I relaly appreciated it!
Have been busy these days and slightly ill. And I am also someone who has to let things sink in, think about it, look at it and rethink it.
I love the auto import thing, but the one thing I miss about it, is that I would have to mix my phone pictures and DSLR pictures in one folder.
When I import the photos from phone and tablet right now, I have set LR to place the keywords smartphone and tablet. If I mix with my camera, I won't have that anymore. But perhaps there is another way in LR to find the photos taken by this or that device? I need to look into it.
What I also miss about the auto import, is this: I have set it up to rename the files in Date - Filename. When it's auto-importing it's doing the things I have specified, but it's not placing the photo's in day by day folder like I have set up for my DSLR card.

Another question: so you import your photos and then you have to look at them and see if they are keepers or not. What is your workflow for that?
Right now, I have set up a folder where the photos I need to check go into by day. And I would check them whem I do my PL album, it seems to me things could go hand in hand. Right now I am a bit behind and the ones I have checked, I have sprayed them green and removed the bad ones. When I see the folder is completely green, I will remove the day folder to the definite photos folder.

 

[lorryfach]

When I import the photos from phone and tablet right now, I have set LR to place the keywords smartphone and tablet. If I mix with my camera, I won't have that anymore. But perhaps there is another way in LR to find the photos taken by this or that device? I need to look into it.

It's in the metadata. When you're in the Library module, click on Metadata at the top of the middle column. If you don't see "Camera" as one of the options, click on any of the headers and select "Camera". Below I am clicking on "Lens" but it didn't capture my mouse cursor.

I don't auto-import so I can't help with that.

I use pick (p) and reject (x) to select which photos are keepers or not.

 

[PLM]

I use pick (p) and reject (x) to select which photos are keepers or not.

And you can find those pictures back throught the folter then? I saw you could choose 'rejected', but the P thing not.

 

[SirScrapalot]

Yes, when you auto import, they all go into the same folder. I had worried about that at first, because I too had my folders set up for each date and such, but with them in the smart collections by week, I found that it's not necessary for me to have them in folders by date as well.

As for my workflow, I upload all of my pictures. When I get ready to work on a week, I go into the smart collection and I find the pictures I want to use. I hit B when I am looking at the pictures I want, and it adds them to the quick collection. Then I go into the quick collection and start editing. I don't often delete photos, even bad ones, unless they are totally unusable.

 

[lorryfach]

And you can find those pictures back throught the folter then? I saw you could choose 'rejected', but the P thing not.

I'm not sure what you mean by that. Similar to color labels and keywords, the pick/reject flags are attached to each photo no matter how you get to it. Does that help?

 

[PLM]

Yes it does, Lorry!

Another quick question: is there a way to make Lightroom recognize people automatically?
In Picasa, f.i. when you assigned a face to a name, it scans and adds it temporarly to the folder of that person and then you can accept or not. Just wondering, since I wanted to start 2015 in a clean way: immediate quality checking, tagging and naming... NO wonder my PL hasn't been started yet, lol. But I'm sure it will all be worth it!

 

[PLM]

As for my workflow, I upload all of my pictures. When I get ready to work on a week, I go into the smart collection and I find the pictures I want to use. I hit B when I am looking at the pictures I want, and it adds them to the quick collection. Then I go into the quick collection and start editing. I don't often delete photos, even bad ones, unless they are totally unusable.

Aaron, I had to re-read what you are saying here, and find this a neat way, with the P into a quick selection.
I know, deleting photos is not fun, but I have not that much space and I am an amator: I try out a lot of things and more than half is not good at all. But practice makes someone better, so...

If it's okay, I'll come back here when I hit a question while I am working on things, hope that's okay for you.
And thnkas for sharing your knowledge and experience!

Oh, one thing I am still wondering about: I have not been looking at the editing part at all right now, just for the importing and cataloging. But I have added some keywords while I was doing my quality check: is this immediately applied to the photo or do I need to hit something in LR to effectively write it in the photoinfo?

 

[PLM]

Hmmmm, Aaron, blush blush , where can I find that quick collection after I have hit on B on 2 photos? I wanted to test it, but now I'm stuck!

 

[lorryfach]

No, I don't think it does facial recognition.

Whether changes are immediately saved to the photo's metadata or not is a setting, and I don't remember which is default. Edit / Catalog Settings / Metadata tab / Automatically write changes into XMP

In the left column, the Quick Collection is one of the things in the Catalog area, right under All Photographs.

 

[PLM]

Thanks Lorry, I changed the settings. Would the ones I have allready done have been changed too now?

For the collection, I only have this:

 

[lorryfach]

Click on Catalog, not Collections.

Not sure if it saved previous things or not but you could ctrl-A to select everything and ctrl-S to save just to be sure.

 

[PLM]

Yes, Lorry, you totally made my day!!!

Sorry for the stupid questions and the annoying part, but it's really really appreciated!!!

 

[lorryfach]

Not annoying at all! We've all been there. Learning Lightroom can be hard at first but it's so worth it.

 

[PLM]

Well, I hope so. The bad part now is that I just have selected the photos for my PL project this year and there are some RAW Files in it. I am shooting with my camera in RAW and JOG, so I'll turn back to the jpegs to scrap right now. And once I have the catalog system a bit in my hands, I will start the editing part.
I need to change some habits, because I have been using Picasa up till now and was happy with it. But everyone was sooo positive about the LR library, I had to try it. It has indeed some awesome features!

 

[PLM]

Oh, I just discovered that the metadata I had entered in LR is also available for use in Picasa.
That's really great!!! That way I could tag in LR and when I need a person, I can use them in combination with the facial recognization from Picasa!

 

[SirScrapalot]

Glad I can help, and that Lorry is able to help too!

 

[PLM]

I am mindpicking you, lol!