Question for the LightRoom Gurus....

[Raist3d]

or the non gurus that may know the answer

I am investigating if the new LightRoom 2.0 matches my needs. I currently use Aperture, love it but I don't love that Apple is dragging their feet a bit with some support I wish I had now.

What I am trying to find out:

I want to know if you can tell LightRoom to consolidate "in one place" - preferably a folder structure that you can specify some parameters when doing the photo consolidation. So for example you have 50 photos in a local hardisk, and 100 in an external hardisk, if you can tell LightRoom "hey, move your entire catalog of photos (the photos, not the catalog database per se) to this 2nd external hardisk at *this* place, with a folder structure by year" or such thing.

In Aperture this operation is known as "relocate masters." I tried to see so far if there are workarounds, like exporting all your photos to one place, then reimport that back seems to be one- but looks like when you do that it will export all your photos to a single folder- I rather avoid that.

Any of you knows if this is possible to do in LightRoom and how to go about it?

Thanks in advance!

- Raist

[Mr. Pickles]

I don't really think Lightroom has anything to move images from multiple folders to one folder, like take all the 2007 images scattered about and put them on a different drive in a folder called 2007.

But, using Lightroom, it is pretty easy to find all images taken in 2007, or all images taken with a particular camera, or all images with a certain keyword. Once you find them, you can move the whole lot of them.

Be about the easiest way to do it I guess. The options for a "move" would be quite large if you thought about all the things people might want software to do....

[Raist3d]

Originally Posted by Mr. Pickles

I don't really think Lightroom has anything to move images from multiple folders to one folder, like take all the 2007 images scattered about and put them on a different drive in a folder called 2007.

But, using Lightroom, it is pretty easy to find all images taken in 2007, or all images taken with a particular camera, or all images with a certain keyword. Once you find them, you can move the whole lot of them.

Be about the easiest way to do it I guess. The options for a "move" would be quite large if you thought about all the things people might want software to do....

What I want is to be able to move them and place them in a hierarchy of folders. Aperture provides for this with an interface where you can literally build paths/folders/filenames based on revision/date/name/optional string, photo count, etc (it's like 12-20 of them), of how the new hierarchy will be created. This is pretty much all I want and need. I don't need all the options like that, just say creating subfolders by year and month would do.

The issue is so that I can consolidate my library of externally referenced photos in an external hardisk and have a 2nd hardisk for easy backup.

- Raist

[tomrock]

Could you have Aperture move all your images into the folders you want and then import them into LR?

[WayneM]

While I am not a Lightroom guru by any stretch of the imagination I do know that Adobe offers a free 30 day trial of Lightroom 2 on the website. Adobe - Photo Management Software - Photoshop Lightroom The option to download a trial version is at the bottom of the page with the options to purchase.

Wayne

[Raist3d]

Originally Posted by tomrock

Could you have Aperture move all your images into the folders you want and then import them into LR?

The idea if I move is to not use Aperture anymore. I want this capability.

- Raist

[Raist3d]

Originally Posted by WayneM

While I am not a Lightroom guru by any stretch of the imagination I do know that Adobe offers a free 30 day trial of Lightroom 2 on the website. Adobe - Photo Management Software - Photoshop Lightroom The option to download a trial version is at the bottom of the page with the options to purchase.

Wayne

Thanks Wayne. I already downloaded the trial and was checking out.

- Raist

[nasoj21]

I use bridge to move files and lightroom to tag and sort outside of my basic file structure. But you could use lightrooms export function to copy everything to a new folder or drive.

[Raist3d]

Originally Posted by nasoj21

I use bridge to move files and lightroom to tag and sort outside of my basic file structure. But you could use lightrooms export function to copy everything to a new folder or drive.

Thanks Nasoj- this is the workaround I alluded to earlier. The only problem is that it seems like you can only copy everything- all the photos, into a single folder. Is there a way to at least create a folder hiearchy by say month or year or project name (any will pretty much do).

Thanks in advance.

- Raist