Category: Ask Tim Grey

Today’s Question: With the passing of Windows 7 (and my computer was old), I bought a new computer, with Windows 10, and yesterday got Lightroom Classic installed and running. I went to attach my external drive where I was hoping to just tell Lightroom to look at the right folder. It did, but it asked me to import the photos. Is there a way to migrate Lightroom from the old computer to new? What should I do now?

Tim’s Quick Answer: To migrate to a new computer with Lightroom Classic you would need to transfer the catalog files from the old computer to the new computer. Without transferring the catalog, much of the information about your photos would be lost.

More Detail: Lightroom Classic makes use of a catalog to manage the information about your photos. While much of the information about your photos can be written to the metadata for the images themselves, that does not include all of the information about your photos. For example, information that can only be saved in the catalog (not the individual photos) includes collections, virtual copies, history in the Develop module, and pick/reject flags.

When migrating to a new computer, as part of the process you would need to transfer your catalog files to the new computer. For example, let’s assume your Lightroom catalog is stored in the Pictures folder on your computer, which is the default location. You could copy the folder that contains your Lightroom catalog and related files to an external hard drive, so you could then transfer that folder to the new computer.

After copying the catalog files to the new computer, you could double-click the catalog file (the file with the “lrcat” filename extension) to launch Lightroom Classic using the new catalog. As long as the photos were in the same location, including being stored on a hard drive with the same drive letter (Windows) or volume label (Macintosh), you would then be able to continue working with your photos in Lightroom Classic just as you did on your old computer.

If for some reason you have lost your Lightroom Classic catalog and don’t have a recent backup to fall back on, it would be possible to import all of your existing photos into a new catalog. However, doing so would cause you to lose information as noted above that can only be stored within the Lightroom catalog rather than in the metadata for the source image files.

Today’s Question: You have addressed some questions that suggest it is better to use the Lightroom app on a smartphone in order to take advantage of raw (DNG) capture. But then aren’t you missing out on some of the special features of the smartphone camera, such as panoramas or Portrait mode on the iPhone?

Tim’s Quick Answer: Correct. While using the Lightroom mobile camera feature to capture raw photos in the Adobe DNG file format, you would be missing out on some of the special features that are available on your smartphone through the use of the built-in camera app.

More Detail: When using a third-party app to replace the built-in camera app on a smartphone, you are missing out on the special features that are only supported through special software features with your smartphone.

For example, the built-in smartphone camera app for both iPhone and Android devices supports panoramic captures. The Lightroom mobile app camera feature so far does not support the capture of panoramic images (other than the option to capture at a somewhat panoramic 16:9 aspect ratio). Therefore, it would not be possible to capture an Adobe DNG raw capture while making use of the panorama feature that is available with the built-in camera app.

Note, however, that with the Lightroom camera feature you will have access to the multiple lenses, if your smartphone is so equipped. That means you could switch between the wide angle, normal, and telephoto lenses on an iPhone 11, for example. It is only the special software features of the smartphone that Lightroom isn’t able to access.

The same holds true for other special features such as the Portrait mode that is available on certain iPhone models. So, in the case of special features you’ll need to decide whether it is more important to make use of those special features and only have a JPEG or HEIC image, or if you want to capture higher quality DNG images but not have the special features available to you.

Today’s Question: I recently had to have my computer wiped for a virus and the operating system reinstalled. When I reloaded Lightroom Classic and imported the photos and catalog from my hard drive, none of my collections transferred. Is there any way to recover those?

Tim’s Quick Answer: Collection information is stored within the Lightroom Classic catalog. Therefore, in a situation like this you would need to be sure to retain a copy of your Lightroom catalog before reformatting the hard drive. Another option would be to recover from a recent backup of your catalog.

More Detail: When you add a photo to a collection in Lightroom Classic, that information is only stored within the Lightroom catalog. With standard metadata such as keywords, it is possible to have metadata saved to the actual source image files (or in an XMP sidecar file in the case of proprietary raw captures). Information about collections, however, doesn’t get stored in standard metadata fields. As a result, if you were to completely lose your Lightroom catalog, you would lose the information about collections (among other details) about your photos.

Therefore, the only way to retain collection information for your photos is to keep your Lightroom catalog safe, including backing up your catalog on a regular basis. If your primary catalog is lost or damaged for any reason, you could recover from a backup copy of the catalog. Obviously you would lose any updates that were added after the time of the last backup, but all older information would be preserved.

If you create a new catalog and import your existing photos to that catalog, you would lose information about collections, as well as the history from the Develop module, virtual copies, pick and reject flags, and other Lightroom-specific features.

So, in this case, if you have a relatively recent backup of your catalog, you could open that and work to update the catalog with information you updated (or photos you imported) since that backup was performed. But if you don’t have a recent backup of your catalog, you won’t be able to recover your collection information, so you would need to recreate collections manually.

Note, by the way, that this type of scenario is exactly why I recommend adding keywords to photos that you add to collections, to identify images that meet the criteria for being in a collection. For example, let’s assume you had a collection that contained photos you were including in a book. You could add a keyword to each of the photos that identifies those photos as being part of the book project. Then, even if you lost your collections due to problem with your Lightroom catalog, you would still be able to identify the applicable images based on the keyword.

Today’s Question: My question is about synchronized photos from iPhones [or other smartphones] in Lightroom Classic. I now have four different iPhones under the “Folders” heading. Three of them are old ones. How can I delete them? Thanks very much for your help.

Tim’s Quick Answer: You can remove smartphones listed under the Folders heading by moving the photos shown under the applicable smartphone heading, and then removing all of the empty folders that remain under that heading.

More Detail: When you capture photos with the mobile version of Lightroom, the images are synchronized automatically to Lightroom Classic (or the cloud-based version of Lightroom). The photos will appear under a heading with the name of your smartphone, just like other photos (within folders) appear under a heading for the hard drive on which the photos are stored. In other words, in this context your smartphone is being listed as though it were an external hard drive, which in some respects it is as far as being a synchronization source.

So, if you want to remove a smartphone from the Folders list, you first need to move photos that appear below the smartphone heading to a different storage location. To do so you can simply navigate among the folders that appear under the heading of the smartphone on question. Select the photos you want to move, and then drag-and-drop those photos to a different folder location shown in the Folders section of the left panel in the Library module.

After you have moved all photos out of the folders below the heading for a smartphone listed in the Folders section, you can remove all of the folders so that the smartphone listing will disappear as well. To remove the empty folders, you can select one or more of the listed folders, right-click, and choose Remove from the popup menu that appears.

Once you have moved all photos to a different storage location and removed all photos from a smartphone listing, the smartphone heading will automatically be removed from the Folders list as well.

Today’s Question: Thanks for the discussion about capturing raw images with Lightroom on a smartphone. Not having practiced a great deal with Lightroom on my iPhone, I find it difficult to locate the place to set the camera for raw capture. Could you give us a tutorial?

Tim’s Quick Answer: You can switch between DNG and JPEG capture with the Lightroom mobile app by tapping the file format option opposite the shutter release button and choosing between “DNG” and “JPG” in the popup that appears.

More Detail: As noted in an earlier Ask Tim Grey eNewsletter, the Lightroom mobile app enables you to capture photos in raw mode (creating Adobe DNG files) or in JPEG mode.

First, you’ll need to tap the camera icon at the bottom-right of the Lightroom mobile interface to switch to the camera. You will then see an indication of the current capture mode opposite the shutter release button. If you are holding your smartphone vertically, that means the capture mode option is at the top-center of the screen. If you are holding the smartphone horizontally the capture mode indication will appear at the left-center or right-center, depending on which way you have oriented the smartphone.

You can tap on the current setting (showing DNG or JPG) to bring up a popup that enables you to switch capture modes. The setting is a “switch” meaning you can tap at the center of the popup to switch between the DNG or JPG option. The display on within the camera feature will update in real time to indicate which mode the camera is currently set to.

Today’s Question: For matters of swapping out one drive for another [with Lightroom Classic] I have in the past cloned the old drive to the new one then duplicated the old drive name to the new, then after all is checked out re-format re-name the old drive. So, is slowly copping small batches from old to new better?

Tim’s Quick Answer: You can absolutely clone a hard drive and ensure it has the same volume label (Macintosh) or drive letter (Windows) to migrate to a new hard drive for Lightroom Classic. The only reason I don’t generally recommend this approach is that it can lead to confusion and possible errors for users who are not familiar with these options.

More Detail: If you want (or need) to upgrade to a larger hard drive, the key is making sure Lightroom Classic doesn’t lose track of your photos in the process. That requires that the overall folder structure on the new drive matches that on the old drive, and that the hard drive has the same volume label (Macintosh) or drive letter (Windows). In other words, you want to be sure Lightroom Classic can’t tell the difference between the old drive and the new drive.

If you use special software (or even a manual copy operation) to duplicate all folders and photos from the original drive to the new drive with the exact same folder structure, that covers the first requirement. You can then disconnect the old drive and adjust the volume label (Macintosh) or drive letter (Windows) for the new drive to match that of the old drive. Note that you can’t have both drives connected at the same time when performing this step.

Once you have completed the process of preparing the new drive so it is a perfect match compared to the old drive, you can launch Lightroom Classic and continue working normally.

However, as noted above, I really only recommend taking this approach if you’re familiar with the process of cloning one hard drive to another and are comfortable changing the volume label or drive letter for the new hard drive. If you’re not comfortable with this process, I recommend working from directly within Lightroom Classic to help ensure you don’t create any problems within your Lightroom catalog as part of this process.

Today’s Question: You mentioned formatting a media card in the camera. Is it true that formatting a card on your computer could make it so the card is not usable by your camera?

Tim’s Quick Answer: Not exactly. If you use the wrong file system when formatting a media card, the camera might not be able to read from or write to that card. However, if you then format the card in the camera, you’ll be back to being able to use that card again.

More Detail: The issue with formatting a media card using a computer has nothing to do with the fact that you’re using a computer to format the card. Rather, the issue is the risk of using a file system that is not compatible with your camera.

Most digital cameras use the FAT16 or FAT32 file systems. Computers can use other file systems, such as the NTFS file system used by default in Windows 10, or the APFS file system used by MacOS Catalina. A media card formatted with the NTFS or APFS file system will not be supported by any camera that I am aware of.

This does not mean, however, that you couldn’t format the media card using your computer. You would just need to be sure to use a file system supported by your digital camera.

To me it seems a whole lot easier to format your media cards in the camera, rather than on the computer. The card will eventually need to be put back into the camera anyway, and when you format using the camera you’ll know the file system on the card will be supported by the camera.

So it isn’t a problem to format a media card on your computer as long as you use the right file system, but in my mind it is easier to remove any confusion and risk of error by using your camera to format your media cards.

Today’s Question: I have always heard that you can “damage” a memory card by deleting images from it either in your camera or when in a card reader hooked up to your computer. Because of this I never delete images from my cards. I download the images first and then reformat the entire card. Would you please clarify the best procedure to follow and if deleting directly from memory cards is advisable?

Tim’s Quick Answer: You won’t damage a media card by deleting photos from that card, either in the camera or using your computer. The risk of any other problems (such as corrupted images) is also exceedingly small. There is no need to be worried about deleting photos directly from a media card.

More Detail: I’ve been hearing about the recommendation to never delete photos directly from a media card for quite a long time. While there have been some issues with certain cameras creating corrupted images, there is no need to worry about deleting photos directly from a media card. In fact, when I have asked engineers from storage media companies about this issue, they generally roll their eyes and chuckle.

Flash memory does have a limitation in terms of the maximum number of write operations that can be performed before the flash memory fails. This may be one of the reasons there are so many misconceptions about the risks of performing certain tasks with media cards.

However, modern media cards employ rather sophisticated systems to manage the storage and ensure there are no problems with the media or the files stored on that media. For example, most cards will balance out which portions of the card are used, so that you don’t wear out the memory at the “beginning” of the card while the memory at the “end” of the card remains unused.

Of course, while there is no need to worry about deleting photos directly from a media card, there are reasons you might want to avoid doing so. First, if you’re reviewing and deleting photos on your camera, you might not be paying attention to what is happening beyond the camera, and you might miss a good photo opportunity. Second, I think it is better to review your photos on a larger computer monitor rather than on a small LCD display on the back of the camera. But fear of damaging a card does not need to be a consideration.

Having said all that, it is a good idea to format the media card in your camera after you are finished downloading the photos to your computer (and backing up those photos). This is simply to refresh the file allocation table (the “table of contents” on the card), which can help reduce the risk of any corruption creeping in over time. In addition, formatting is generally quite a bit faster than deleting all images on the card.

Today’s Question: Why do you not use a cloud-based synchronization software such as Dropbox? Every file is backed up to the Cloud and synchronized on all your devices. It even stores old versions of files. It’s so easy and I have been doing this for years with absolutely no problems whatsoever.

Tim’s Quick Answer: I don’t store my photos using Dropbox or other cloud-based services in part because my photo library is rather large, and in part because I travel extensively and often do not have access to a high-speed Internet connection.

More Detail: I actually do make use of various cloud-based storage options for a variety of purposes. I synchronize photos from Lightroom Classic to the Adobe Creative Cloud so I can easily share those photos on my smartphone or other device. I share files with various service providers using Dropbox. I store documents using Google Drive, and keep writing projects synchronized using Microsoft OneDrive. So I am certainly not averse to using cloud-based storage.

However, when it comes to photos I prefer to use local storage, backed up to at least two additional hard drives for each of my primary hard drives.

In some ways I am the perfect candidate to keep all of my photos stored in the cloud, since I am often traveling nine months or more out of the year. Cloud-based storage would help ensure all of my photos and other files are available to me no matter where I happen to be, as long as I have an Internet connection. But that’s the biggest challenge for me personally.

I very often find myself in situations where I don’t have a reliable connection to the Internet, which sometimes means no connection at all. In other cases I may be able to get online, but the connection is far too slow for reliable synchronization of photos, videos, and other large files.

If I never traveled or otherwise always had access to a high-speed reliable Internet connection, I would be more inclined to keep more of my data stored in the cloud. Of course, I would also then need to overcome my tendency to want to directly control as many aspects of my workflow as possible, including managing my storage. But there are most certainly many cases where cloud-based storage provides an excellent solution, and I am happy to make use of such a synchronization solution when it is appropriate to my needs.

Today’s Question: Somewhere along the way I started to use the Adobe Landscape profile while editing in Lightroom [Classic]. However, when I sent these to a lab for printing they would come back somewhat muted in color. Do I need to revert to using the Adobe Standard profile to get a true rendering of what I am sending the printer versus what I want as a finished product?

Tim’s Quick Answer: No, you don’t need to switch to a different profile for optimizing in the Develop module. However, you may want to review which profile you’re using when exporting your photos, and also make sure you have calibrated your monitor display.

More Detail: The profiles you can select within the Develop module merely serve as options for a baseline interpretation of the color within an image. They are designed to provide options similar to the various settings available as presets within the camera, since those presets in the camera only apply to JPEG rather than raw captures.

In other words, you can use any of the profiles in the Develop module you’re happy with, and then continue fine-tuning the image based on your preferences. You can then export the image so it can be printed by a third-party provider.

When exporting for print, as a general rule I recommend using the Adobe RGB option for the Color Space setting in the Export dialog. However, it is a very good idea to check with your printer to confirm which profile is best. In many cases you’ll find that the sRGB profile is better for ensuring accurate output with a number of print providers, based on the workflow and hardware they’re using.

It is also important to keep in mind that not every printer, ink, and paper combination can reproduce every tone and color you’re able to see on your monitor display. Calibrating your monitor display will help ensure you’re seeing an accurate preview of your image. In addition, it is a good idea to use the Soft Proofing feature in the Develop module of Lightroom Classic to preview the image based on the final output profile from your print provider. This will enable you to get a much better sense of what the final print will look like, and possibly make changes based on limitations of that output.

You can learn more about color management with my “Color Management for Photographers” video course, available in the GreyLearning library here:

https://www.greylearning.com/courses/color