Author: Tim Grey

Today’s Question: If you wanted to move from a date-based folder structure to a location-based structure, would you do that major revision of folder structure from within Lightroom Classic? Is there another practical option?

Tim’s Quick Answer: Yes, you absolutely should perform that work within Lightroom Classic, not outside of your catalog. This will ensure that the changes are reflected both on your hard drive and within Lightroom.

More Detail: As I’ve said many times, one of the most critical things to keep in mind when using Lightroom Classic as the foundation of your workflow for managing photos, it is critical that all tasks related to your photos be initiated within Lightroom. That includes making changes to your folder structure.

If you want to rename or consolidate folders containing the photos you are managing in Lightroom Classic, you can simply make those changes within Lightroom. For example, if you want to rename a folder, you can right-click on the folder within the Folders list in the left panel of the Library module and choose “Rename” from the popup menu. In the dialog that appears you can then enter a new name and click the Save button.

If you want to consolidate photos from multiple folders into a single folder, you can first rename (if necessary) the primary folder, and then select the photos you want to move and drag-and-drop them to the destination folder. If this process results in one or more empty folders, you can right-click on the empty folder and choose “Remove” from the popup menu.

The key is to keep in mind that the basic folder and file management features are available within Lightroom, so that you can rename folders, move photos, and remove empty folders, in order to refine your overall folder structure. Most importantly, be sure this work is performed within Lightroom Classic, not through your operating system or other software.

And, of course, if you have a bit of a mess on your hands in Lightroom Classic, my popular “Cleaning Up Your Mess in Lightroom” course can help. Note, by the way, that Chapter 3, Lesson 7 in this course demonstrates a process for cleaning up date-based folders, which is the topic of today’s question. You can get more info (with a discount included automatically) by using this link to get started.

https://timgrey.me/mess29

Today’s Question: Will future (post-Lightroom) versions of other software recognize and honor the metadata in sidecar (XMP) files for photos that were optimized in the Lightroom Classic Develop module or in Adobe Bridge?

Tim’s Quick Answer: Metadata that is included as part of an existing metadata standard can be preserved and recognized by other software beyond Lightroom Classic. However, most of the adjustment settings would likely be lost in this type of scenario.

More Detail: Many of the metadata fields you might update in Lightroom Classic represent fields from established metadata standards. This includes such things as keywords, star ratings, and other common metadata values.

Other metadata values you can update in Lightroom Classic represent what are essentially Lightroom-specific features. That includes things such as collections, pick and reject flags, and the adjustments you apply within the Develop module.

For the most part, Lightroom-specific metadata values are not saved to your source image files when you choose to save metadata to the actual image file on your hard drive. However, interestingly enough, the adjustments you apply in the Develop module are saved to the files in this case. So, for example, the XMP sidecar file associated with a proprietary raw capture can contain the settings for the adjustments you applied in the Develop module for each photo.

However, some applications are able to extract certain adjustment settings from the metadata based on the Develop module in Lightroom Classic. For example, if you are using a version of Exposure X from Exposure Software, you can migrate some of your Lightroom Develop adjustments (along with other metadata) using their Lightroom to Exposure Migration Tool. You can learn more about this particular option on the Exposure Software website here:

https://support.exposure.software/hc/en-us/articles/214115047

In general, you should assume that only standard metadata fields will be preserved outside of the context of a Lightroom-based workflow. Even then, that metadata will only be preserved with your source images if you have saved metadata to your photos. This is one of the reasons I recommend turning on the “Automatically write changes into XMP” checkbox on the Metadata tab of the Catalog Settings dialog in Lightroom Classic. However, even with this option enabled, it is important to keep in mind that not all metadata will be preserved. In addition, the metadata from the Develop module would likely not be available to other applications beyond Lightroom, Adobe Bridge, and Adobe Camera Raw (via Photoshop).

Today’s Question: Do you organize at all based on how your images are used? For example, printed or uploaded to Flickr or delivered to a client or included in a webinar? If so, how? Keywords? Collections?

Tim’s Quick Answer: When I feel it is appropriate based on my specific needs, I do organize photos based on how they are put to use. I use special keywords for this purpose, which I refer to as “fake keywords”.

More Detail: Today’s question is somewhat related to the question I addressed in yesterday’s Ask Tim Grey eNewsletter. When it comes to keeping track of special attributes for photos, such as how they are used, I make use of special keywords for this purpose. I refer to these as “fake keywords” because they are keywords used in a way that is different from the more typical approach of identifying subjects within the photo.

For example, I enjoy sharing some of my favorite photos through my Instagram feed (and I encourage you to follow my account, with user name “timgreyphoto”!). I prefer to keep track of which photos I have already shared to Instagram, in part to ensure I don’t accidentally share the same photo twice. For this purpose I add the keyword “InstagramShare” to photos I share on Instagram.

If I also wanted to create a collection that included these photos, I would actually create a smart collection rather than a “normal” collection. A smart collection is essentially a saved search result, so in this example I would specify criteria for the smart collection so that photos with the “InstagramShare” keyword would be included in the smart collection automatically.

I don’t happen to identify photos as having been printed, but that is certainly something else you could accomplish with a “fake” keyword. In short, I recommend adding a special keyword to any photo for which you would like to preserve a particular status for. Even better, those “fake” keywords can help preserve information that would be lost if you were to lose your Lightroom catalog. That is because features such as collections, pick and reject flags, and other Lightroom-specific features, are not saved to the metadata for your photos even if you have enabled the option to have metadata saved automatically to your source image files.

Today’s Question: Do you do more of your work from the Folder component rather than the Collection component [in Lightroom Classic]?

Tim’s Quick Answer: Yes, I consider folders to be my primary organizational tool within Lightroom Classic. I reserve the use of collections for special projects, and in fact often use special keywords to effectively take the place of collections.

More Detail: There is no question that collections in Lightroom can be very helpful for organizing photos for a wide variety of ways that go beyond the utility of folders. For example, at a very basic level, a given photo is only stored in a single folder on your hard drive, but can be referenced in any number of collections based on various projects or other organizational needs.

However, it is also important to keep in mind that collections in Lightroom are only managed within your Lightroom catalog, and are not saved to the metadata for your photos. That means that if your Lightroom catalog were to become corrupted or otherwise lost, the collections you are using to manage your photos would also be lost.

Obviously this is a reason to maintain a good workflow for backing up your catalog. But I also prefer to take an approach that helps reduce my dependence upon collections.

Therefore, I tend to use collections for temporarily organizing photos for various projects. Along the way (or at least at the conclusion of the project) I will use a special keyword to identify the photos that would otherwise be included in a collection.

For example, if I created a collection to manage photos I wanted to feature in a book about the Palouse, I might add a keyword such as “BOOK-Palouse” to the photos within that collection. By using this approach, even if I lost my Lightroom catalog (and therefore the collection containing the photos for the book) I would not have actually lost anything. The keyword “BOOK-Palouse” would still be included within my photos (since I enable the option to automatically save metadata to my photos), and therefore I could easily locate and identify the photos that had previously been included in a collection.

So, I tend to use collections somewhat sparingly. And when I do use a collection to manage photos for a particular project, I use special keywords to preserve the details about which collections a given photo is intended to be included in.

Today’s Question: One of my biggest issues is file naming and organizing in such a way that I will be able to recover the actual date of capture in case the actual original shooting date is lost. How do recommend accomplishing this with Lightroom [Classic]?

Tim’s Quick Answer: While it is not likely that you would lose all capture date and time information from the metadata for your photos, you can preserve that information in Lightroom Classic by renaming your photos with a structure that includes the date of capture.

More Detail: There are a wide variety of options available for renaming your photos in Lightroom Classic. One of the more flexible options is to use a template for batch-renaming photos, either during import or later in your workflow.

It can be a good idea to retain the original filename from the camera, especially if there is any chance you have referenced or shared (such as with a client) the original filename. Therefore, in the context of today’s question, I would recommend adding the capture date to the beginning of the filename, while retaining the original filename as part of the overall name.

Lightroom Classic includes a file renaming template that consists of the capture data along with the original filename. So, to get started you could select the photos you want to rename. Then, in the Library module, go to the menu and choose Library > Rename Photos. In the dialog that appears, you can choose “Date – Filename” from the File Naming popup menu. Note that you can also choose “Edit” from this popup if you want to make changes to the file naming template.

After selecting the desired template, you can click the OK button to have the selected photos renamed based on the selected template. Note that the “Date” option in this case relates to the date of capture for each individual photo, which Lightroom will extract from the metadata for each image.

Today’s Question: Do you import [into Lightroom Classic] as DNG? Some photographers recommend saving RAW files in a separate folder on the hard drive and then importing as DNG into Lightroom. I’d like to know your thoughts.

Tim’s Quick Answer: No, I do not convert my raw captures to the Adobe DNG format during import into Lightroom Classic. I prefer to retain the original raw captures, for a variety of reasons.

More Detail: I have certainly heard many photographers recommend converting proprietary raw captures to the Adobe DNG format, but I do not generally recommend this approach.

Part of the reason I prefer to retain the original raw capture format is that I prefer to preserve the original capture just as it came out of the camera. In some cases, for example, there are proprietary details included with the raw capture that you would not be able to take advantage of if you converted the capture to the Adobe DNG format.

As I’ve mentioned in previous editions of the Ask Tim Grey eNewsletter, I also prefer to have my metadata updates stored separate from the original capture. When you save metadata to the source image in Lightroom Classic, that metadata is stored in a different location depending on whether you’re working with a proprietary raw capture or an Adobe DNG file.

For proprietary raw captures, metadata updates will be stored in an XMP “sidecar” file saved alongside the raw capture. For DNG images, that metadata updates will be saved directly within the DNG file. While saving metadata directly in the source image can certainly be convenient, it can also cause incremental backups of your photos to take more time.

To be fair, the Adobe DNG file format employs lossless compression that will cause no loss of pixel detail for your photos, and that can help reduce file size by around 20%. In theory, the fact that there is open documentation for the Adobe DNG file format means there is less reason to worry about a lack of future support for DNG images compared to proprietary raw captures. In reality, I don’t consider this a legitimate concern, especially considering that most raw-processing software applications today employed reverse-engineering to provide support for proprietary formats.

So, on balance, I prefer to retain my original raw captures. And as long as I’m going to do that, I don’t see a reason to save those raw captures in one place, and then convert to Adobe DNG for purposes of a Lightroom-based workflow.

Today’s Question: How hard/easy would it be to move my photos from my laptop hard drive to a larger external hard drive using Lightroom Classic?

Tim’s Quick Answer: It is very easy to move photos from an internal drive to an external drive, as long as you perform that work within Lightroom Classic rather than using other software or your computer’s operating system.

More Detail: Moving photos (or folders containing photos) is quite easy within Lightroom Classic. When it comes to migrating to a new hard drive, you will need to create a new folder on the destination drive from within Lightroom, so that the drive itself is available in Lightroom.

With the new hard drive connected you will first want to create a “master” folder on that drive to be used for photo storage. To get started, click on the “plus” (+) button to the right of the Folders heading on the left panel in the Library module, and choose “Add Folder” (not “Add Subfolder”) from the popup menu.

In the dialog that appears, navigate to the hard drive that you want to move photos to (the external hard drive in this example). Then click the New Folder button at the bottom-left of the dialog. Type a name (such as “Photos”) for the new folder, and click the Create button. Then click the Choose button. The new folder will be created on the hard drive you selected, and that folder will be visible under a heading for the hard drive in the Folders list of the left panel.

The folder you just created can then be used as a destination folder for moving photos from the internal hard drive to the external hard drive. You could, for example, select all folders on the external hard drive by clicking on the first folder on the list and then holding the Shift key and clicking on the last folder. You can then drag-and-drop the selected folders to the new folder you created on the destination hard drive. Note that you will need to confirm that you want to actually move the folders and photos on the hard drive in a dialog that will be presented by Lightroom.

I recommend, however, that you move folders in relatively small batches. This is because I have found that sometimes things go wrong when moving a large number of folders, which can create some confusion within Lightroom. So I generally select small groups of folders at a time, and drag and drop them to the desired destination folder. I also recommend, by the way, that you flatten any folders that include subfolders, helping to streamline the process of selecting and moving multiple folders at a time.

You can see the process of migrating to a new hard drive in detail in Chapter 7, Lesson 3, of my “Cleaning Up Your Mess in Lightroom” video course. For a 25% discount on this course, use this link to get started (and to learn more about the course):

https://timgrey.me/mess29

Today’s Question: Have you ever seen this [error message about the map being unable to load in the Map module in Lightroom Classic] before? I went to the Java settings and everything seems up to date.

Tim’s Quick Answer: The error message in question relates to the lack of availability of the map display in the Map module for versions of Lightroom before Lightroom Classic 8. You will need to sing up for a Creative Cloud subscription plan (https://timgrey.me/ccplans) if you want to regain access to the map display in the Map module.

More Detail: Starting late last year (November 2018) Adobe disabled the map display in the Map module for older versions of Lightroom Classic. That includes Lightroom 4 and 5, as well as Lightroom Classic CC 6 and 7. You need to be running Lightroom Classic 8 or later to be able to view the map display in the Map module.

For photographers who prefer to continue using an older version of Lightroom Classic (such as to avoid paying a monthly subscription fee), there is a workaround that will enable you to view the location for photos in the context of a map display.

To view the location for a photo on a map, first copy the coordinates found in the GPS field in the Metadata section of the right panel in the Map module (or in the EXIF section for the Metadata section on the right panel in the Library module). Then paste that information into the search field for Google Maps in your web browser, which you can access by pointing your web browser here:

https://www.google.com/maps/

A subscription is required if you want to regain full access to the various features that involve the actual map display in the Map module in Lightroom Classic, such as being able to drag photos to the map in order to add GPS coordinates as location information for photos. You can find details about the various Adobe Creative Cloud subscription plans by following this link:

https://timgrey.me/ccplans

Today’s Question: If I start with a photo in Photoshop, how do I get it into Lightroom [Classic]?

Tim’s Quick Answer: If you’re already using Lightroom Classic it is best to start from Lightroom if you want to work with a photo in Photoshop. If, however, you do start with a photo in Photoshop, you’ll need to use one of the import options to get the image into Lightroom, such as by synchronizing the folder the contains the image you created in Photoshop.

More Detail: One of the most important things to understand about Lightroom Classic is that all tasks related to your photos should be initiated in Lightroom, rather than in Photoshop or other software (or the operating system). That said, there are ways you can initiate working with a photo in Photoshop rather than Lightroom.

That said, it is possible to get photos into your Lightroom Classic catalog after creating a photo in Photoshop. You could use the import feature as you would with other photos, but this can create some potential confusion. For example, in this scenario you would likely be importing from a folder that has photos already being managed in your catalog. In addition, you would need to be careful to use the “Add” rather than “Copy” option for importing.

Instead, I recommend using the option to synchronize a folder, assuming you are saving the image in Photoshop in a folder that is already being managed in Lightroom. After saving an image in such a folder from Photoshop, you can return to Lightroom for the synchronization. Then right-click on the applicable folder on the Folders list on the left panel in the Library module. From the popup menu that appears, choose “Synchronize Folder”.

A dialog will appear indicating how many photos have been found in the folder that are not in your Lightroom catalog. There are also options for removing photos from the catalog if they are no longer in the folder, and checking for metadata updates that may have been applied outside of Lightroom. After enabling the desired options, click the Synchronize button to apply the update.

After this synchronization, images that you created outside of Lightroom will be managed within your Lightroom catalog. To me this is the simplest approach to importing photos into Lightroom, provided those images have been saved in a folder that is already being managed by Lightroom. Otherwise you would need to use the import feature, typically with the “Add” (rather than “Copy”) option selected.

To get a better understanding of how Lightroom works (and why it is so important to initiate most tasks within Lightroom, check out my “Understanding Lightroom” course in the GreyLearning library here:

https://www.greylearning.com/courses/understanding-lightroom

Today’s Question: Please comment on Standard vs 1:1 previews at Import [into Lightroom Classic].

Tim’s Quick Answer: You can think of Standard previews in Lightroom Classic as being appropriate for evaluating a photo sized to fill your monitor’s display area. The 1:1 previews are employed when you need to zoom in to evaluate a photo. I think the Standard preview option is best if you don’t tend to zoom in on very many of your photos during review, and 1:1 previews are best if you tend to zoom in on many of your photos to evaluate them.

More Detail: Building previews during the process of importing your photos into Lightroom Classic can help streamline the process of reviewing your photos later. When browsing your photos in the Library module, you need a Standard preview if you will view an image at full-screen or smaller, and you need a 1:1 preview if you will zoom in to review the details of a photo.

If you don’t generate previews during the import process, the previews will instead need to be built on the fly as you browse your photos. In other words, the only real question about the previews is whether you have them all built during the import process or during your image review. By building previews during import, you are having Lightroom do the work of building previews all at once, helping speed up your browsing experience after the import.

I therefore strongly recommend building at least the Standard previews during import, to speed up your browsing experience when reviewing your photos after the import. Whether you should instead build the 1:1 previews depends on your browsing behavior.

If, like me, you tend to view the full photo when evaluating your images, without zooming in on most of your photos, then the Standard preview option is probably adequate. This is my preference, as I typically review all of my photos in either the Loupe view or Full-Screen view, only zooming in on a small number of photos that I want to get a closer look at.

On the other hand, if you tend to zoom in on a relatively large number of photos, you may want to use the 1:1 preview option during import, so that you won’t have to wait for a preview to be generated each time you zoom in on a photo. Keep in mind that the 1:1 previews consume more hard drive space than Standard previews. But if you make somewhat extensive use of the option to zoom in when evaluating your photos, that extra space may be worth consuming on your hard drive.