Luminous Landscape Forum
Raw & Post Processing, Printing => Adobe Lightroom Q&A => Topic started by: John R Smith on April 05, 2010, 03:09:55 am
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Just a quick question, which will reveal not only the depths of my ignorance but also the wierd way I work -
Is there any way to turn off the cataloguing function in Lightroom? What I would like it to do is just to be able to read the contents of my HD folders and edit and print the images, without having to import them and add them to this catalogue. But it seems to insist on creating the catalogue whatever I do.
John
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Just a quick question, which will reveal not only the depths of my ignorance but also the wierd way I work -
Is there any way to turn off the cataloguing function in Lightroom? What I would like it to do is just to be able to read the contents of my HD folders and edit and print the images, without having to import them and add them to this catalogue. But it seems to insist on creating the catalogue whatever I do.
John
John,
I don't think it is possible...
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No - remember the concept is cataloguing as well as processing your pictures, so the catalogue is fundamental to Lightroom. With your existing catalogue open, import those folders and choose the option Add Photos to Catalog without Moving. You may as well add all your picture folders, so you're controlling all your work with a single tool.
John
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No - remember the concept is cataloguing as well as processing your pictures, so the catalogue is fundamental to Lightroom. With your existing catalogue open, import those folders and choose the option Add Photos to Catalog without Moving. You may as well add all your picture folders, so you're controlling all your work with a single tool.
John
Thanks Francois and John, I thought that it probably was not possible. It is just that I do not want to use LR as a DAM (I have my own system for that which I don't want to change), and I find it very irritating that I have to remember to do all my file management inside LR (deleting, re-naming, etc) otherwise it gets out of sync. Then I have to synchronise the folder to put things right. But even if I do remeber to use LR for file management rather than XP Explorer, LR does not seem to be able to move files from one folder to another, which is something I often do (or perhaps I am missing something).
John
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You can drag files between folders - grid view, select the items, drag on the thumbnails (not the frames). But if you often do this, it's a sign you probably need to make more use of collections and keywords.
Why don't you want to use Lightroom for DAM? What system are you using?
John
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Hi,
I don't think so. The way LR works it just save recipes of how the images are processed and that info is saved in the catalogue.
Best regards
Erik
Just a quick question, which will reveal not only the depths of my ignorance but also the wierd way I work -
Is there any way to turn off the cataloguing function in Lightroom? What I would like it to do is just to be able to read the contents of my HD folders and edit and print the images, without having to import them and add them to this catalogue. But it seems to insist on creating the catalogue whatever I do.
John
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You can drag files between folders - grid view, select the items, drag on the thumbnails (not the frames). But if you often do this, it's a sign you probably need to make more use of collections and keywords.
John
Right, John, I had missed that. At work we used Extensis Portfolio for some time, and that seemd to be able to keep an eye on folders and automatically update its catalogue if there were any changes. I sort of expected LR to do the same.
Why don't you want to use Lightroom for DAM? What system are you using?
Er . . . Well, if I tell you, I am going to lay myself open to ridicule, that's the trouble. It's the Smith System. It works exactly the same as for my film collection. All my digital images are first downloaded into a scratch area where I sort out the keepers from the rubbish. Then the good 'uns are organised into PC folders of twelve images, just the same as 120 film, and given a film number and a neg number for each frame. Off the computer, the images are filed into A4 four-ring binders with a twelve image A4 contact sheet, behind that a handwritten shooting data sheet which lists subject / location / lens / ASA / speed and aperture /date for each frame, and behind that again an A4 pocket with two CD-Rs, one for the RAW files, another for the finished TIFFs. From my eccentric point of view, it means that I can look through the whole of my photographic collection without having to turn on the computer at all, and everything is together in one place, including work from thirty or forty years ago which uses exactly the same system except that there are film negatives rather than CDs.
The stuff I keep live on the PC is just the most recent shots, say four to six "films" back. But once I have archived the finished work to CD-R, I clear off the folders from the PC. Every print I make has the film and neg number pencilled on the back, so I can quickly find it again if I want to reprint it.
Now I know that if one had literally thousands of pictures this would be hopeless. But I will often go out for an afternoon and come back with five shots. I fact, I shoot so few pictures (simply because I don't see many good ones) that I know most of my frames like old friends and I can find 'em very quickly.
Yesterday I spent all afternoon in some of the most beautiful places in Cornwall and came back with 17 frames (which is a lot for me), of which I kept nine. And that would usually be just once a week, weather permitting.
So there we are. What hope is there for me in this digital age
John
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Well, we successfully moved you (forgive me if I've confused the names) on from some of your initial ideas about how to do black and white, so I'm sure you're open to persuasion!
John
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Well, we successfully moved you (forgive me if I've confused the names) on from some of your initial ideas about how to do black and white, so I'm sure you're open to persuasion!
John
Well, that's true John, you did indeed. And you were tremendously helpful (well everyone here was) at pointing me in new and challenging directions.
John
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Of course, as usual the answer to my question occurred to me after I had posted the topic and while I was doing something else entirely (in this case washing the car). Lightroom has to import the files and create a catalogue because that is where it keeps its previews (amongst other things), I think. So if there were no catalogue it would have to re-create the previews from scratch every time you worked on a file. The development settings and snapshots are stored in the XMP files, though, because they transfer to LR3 just fine without any catalogue import.
All this is completely aside from metadata and keywords, of course.
There seems to be something called "watched folders", which might do what I would wish in terms of getting LR to update folders which have changed content, but I can't figure out how to make it work. Martin Evening refers to it, but only as part of a Bridge - Lightroom hookup.
John
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Of course, as usual the answer to my question occurred to me after I had posted the topic and while I was doing something else entirely (in this case washing the car). Lightroom has to import the files and create a catalogue because that is where it keeps its previews (amongst other things), I think. So if there were no catalogue it would have to re-create the previews from scratch every time you worked on a file. The development settings and snapshots are stored in the XMP files, though, because they transfer to LR3 just fine without any catalogue import.
All this is completely aside from metadata and keywords, of course.
There seems to be something called "watched folders", which might do what I would wish in terms of getting LR to update folders which have changed content, but I can't figure out how to make it work. Martin Evening refers to it, but only as part of a Bridge - Lightroom hookup.
John
John,
I'll see your heresy and raise you one.
The way I use LR is very simple and lets me run my own DAM system, completely outside of LR. Whenever I want to work on some files in LR, I import them (of course), and they go into the LR catalog, which I completely ignore (except when I'm in LR).
Once I've imported a few raw files to work on, I go into the Develop module and do as many adjustments on them as I want to do in LR. Then I go back into Library and export them as Tiffs into a subdirectory called LRTiffs of whatever directory I was working in. Then I exit LR and usually do further work on them in PS.
The LR purists here will now scream that I have hardened the LightRoom adjustments into the tiffs, which is a Bad Thing. I say: So what? I can always go back into LR and continue working, or even go back to the original raw file and start over.
The advantage of my system for me is that I know just where all my files are, in any processed or unprocessed state, without having to learn a proprietary DAM system. This works well for me, since I always have to go into PS for printing, at least until LR includes soft-proofing. Once LR does have soft-proofing, I will give some serious consideration to learning how to use LR's DAM system. But not until then.
Eric
P.S. When importing to LR I do add a good assortment of keywords so that I will have a fighting chance of finding images if I'm ever forced to use LR's DAM system.
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John,
I'll see your heresy and raise you one.
The way I use LR is very simple and lets me run my own DAM system, completely outside of LR. Whenever I want to work on some files in LR, I import them (of course), and they go into the LR catalog, which I completely ignore (except when I'm in LR).
Once I've imported a few raw files to work on, I go into the Develop module and do as many adjustments on them as I want to do in LR. Then I go back into Library and export them as Tiffs into a subdirectory called LRTiffs of whatever directory I was working in. Then I exit LR and usually do further work on them in PS.
The LR purists here will now scream that I have hardened the LightRoom adjustments into the tiffs, which is a Bad Thing. I say: So what? I can always go back into LR and continue working, or even go back to the original raw file and start over.
The advantage of my system for me is that I know just where all my files are, in any processed or unprocessed state, without having to learn a proprietary DAM system. This works well for me, since I always have to go into PS for printing, at least until LR includes soft-proofing. Once LR does have soft-proofing, I will give some serious consideration to learning how to use LR's DAM system. But not until then.
Eric
P.S. When importing to LR I do add a good assortment of keywords so that I will have a fighting chance of finding images if I'm ever forced to use LR's DAM system.
Eric,
Reading your "heretic" work flow ;-) In choosing for a DAM and workflow it is proprietary which ever concept you choose.
Just a question regarding your workflow and DAM out of curiosity: why not entirely in PS using ACR like you use LR?
In other words, what is so special to you about LR to use it to generate tiff's instead of using ACR within PS?
I am curious to know as i resent having to "steeple chase" through multiple applications (and the OS tools such as explorer in windows) to achieve delivery.
Therefore i concentrate my DAM and workflow entirely within LR, and only when really needed do a round trip into PS or some other pixel based editor. I even try to avoid using my explorer (windows) or Finder (Mac) as much as possible, as i do not want to use two different DAM concept in a mixe fashion.
Don't know if this can be referred to as an "heretic" approach, but it works for me.
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Right Eric. All that sounds perfectly reasonable.
One thing I don't understand though, is this emphasis on soft-proofing around here. It just doesn't seem such a big deal to me, at any rate. The way I work, as I am editing, I just make small (5x4in or A6) workprints as I go along, to check how things are going - of course you can't trust the display, even thogh it is calibrated. When I have finished editing, I make a final workprint and then, if all is well, roll the big one.
John
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Off the computer, the images are filed into A4 four-ring binders with a twelve image A4 contact sheet, behind that a handwritten shooting data sheet which lists subject / location / lens / ASA / speed and aperture /date for each frame, and behind that again an A4 pocket with two CD-Rs, one for the RAW files, another for the finished TIFFs.
Seems perfectly reasonable. I kept my film filing system for digital images for several years before moving to an all-digital cataloging system. Of course, I'm shooting a little more than you are <grin>.
However, it seems to me that you are missing one of the key benefits of digital imaging, and that is redundancy in your archive. If your CD-R fails (all too common, I'm afraid), you've lost your photos forever. Fire, flood, theft -- all will destroy your entire archive. Of course this was true of a film archive, so you are in the same position as before (though I would submit that film is a much more robust long term storage medium than CD-R.)
With digital files you can keep exact duplicates in many places at once. This, to me, is one of the key advantages to digital archiving. If I were in your position, I would keep redundant copies of my digital files (including my film scans) on hard drives in two separate locations. That's what I do at work (for my work photos) and at home (for my personal work.)
--Ken
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However, it seems to me that you are missing one of the key benefits of digital imaging, and that is redundancy in your archive. If your CD-R fails (all too common, I'm afraid), you've lost your photos forever. Fire, flood, theft -- all will destroy your entire archive. Of course this was true of a film archive, so you are in the same position as before (though I would submit that film is a much more robust long term storage medium than CD-R.)
--Ken
Ken
Yes, this has been bothering quite a bit, actually. As you say, if a CD fails, I am stuffed (although there are two copies of each picture, one TIFF and one RAW, on separate CDs). I did a bit of destruction testing on a CD-R (boiling, freezing, exposure to direct sunlight) and it was still readable, so I was hoping for the best, really. The other idea I was thinking of was making more safety copies on SD cards, but I don't know anything about their archival properties either.
John
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Don't rely on one source, John. Add at least one backup hard drive to your system.
Also, with regard to something you said earlier, I also tend to be heretical when it comes to the importance of soft proofing to LR. In my experience, only a vocal minority of LR users know what soft proofing is and routinely use it. The biggest group know what it's for in theory, but at best pay lip service to its value and never bother with it. And there's another very big group that has no idea what it's for, and they should never need to know. While I would like it, I don't think it needs to be a priority.
John
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Eric,
Reading your "heretic" work flow ;-) In choosing for a DAM and workflow it is proprietary which ever concept you choose.
Just a question regarding your workflow and DAM out of curiosity: why not entirely in PS using ACR like you use LR?
In other words, what is so special to you about LR to use it to generate tiff's instead of using ACR within PS?
I am curious to know as i resent having to "steeple chase" through multiple applications (and the OS tools such as explorer in windows) to achieve delivery.
Therefore i concentrate my DAM and workflow entirely within LR, and only when really needed do a round trip into PS or some other pixel based editor. I even try to avoid using my explorer (windows) or Finder (Mac) as much as possible, as i do not want to use two different DAM concept in a mixe fashion.
Don't know if this can be referred to as an "heretic" approach, but it works for me.
Jan,
Most of the reasons I do things the way I do are the results of historical accidents rather than a careful plan.
I started using Lightroom because I got version 1 for free, as an owner of Pixmantic's Raw Shooter. I never really warmed up to LR until I saw Jeff Schewe, Andrew Rodney and John Paul Caponigro using it at the Epson Print Academy in Boston. I then got the LL video and found LR quite nice to use, as far as I currently go with it.
I had once tried a much earlier version of ACR and found it very clunky. My main raw converters have been Capture 1, and then DxO (which I still use some), and now mainly LR. I suppose I could probably do much the same stuff in ACR, but I haven't bothered to try. LR's presets are very powerful, all along the way (I don't even know if ACR has presets. Does it?). I look forward eventually to printing from LR, because the presets will let me save a whole bunch of settings that I have to set each time in PS (but I'm used to that now, so I usually get them set right).
As for my present DAM system, it depends on Windows' file structure and a bunch of very nice utilities that make it very easy for me to find what I'm looking for.
I download everything through Chris Breeze's Downloader Pro, which asks me for a "Job Code" when I run it. This job code is inserted into the filename, which also includes the date and a sequence number. The file is downloaded to a directory for the given date, as a subdirectory of the directory for a given camera, which is a subdirectory of a directory for the current year. So, a photo I shot today with my G10 at the local Edamnds Park ends up in D:\Photos10\G10\2010-04-05\edmands_20100405_0013.cr2.
I use BreezBrowser Pro to select the ones I wish to process and copy them into a subdirectory (of ...\2010-04-05 in my example) called "do". These I then import into LR (or run in DxO if I'm in the mood for it), and play around until I like what I see. Because I am a "soft-proof" junkie (I wasted so much paper on test strips and bad prints in my wet photography days that I prefer to get my image close before I waste any paper on it), these days I do export tiffs to a subdirectory (called LRtiffs for LR2, or LRB3tiffs for LR Beta 3), and than soft-proof and print in PS.
Once LR has soft-proofing, I expect to stay within LR for the entire trip in many photos. For some I will still detour through PS for some modifications that I can't do in LR. At that point I expect that I will start to make use of LR's library more directly. But I still want to keep my raw files where i can find them easily, as I do now. I'll also have to set up multiple automatic backups of the LR library to different hard drives just as I do with my raw files now.
It works for me, and LR's user interface is much smoother than anything in PS, once you get to know it (for which the LL video is absolutely essential, IMHO.)
-Eric
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Don't rely on one source, John. Add at least one backup hard drive to your system.
I agree totally! I have all my photo files on my main internal drive and backed up daily to two external hard drives, one of which gets switched out periodically and stored away from the computer. I seem to add another external drive about every month or two, always a bigger drive at a lower price than the previous one.
-Eric
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Just a quick question, which will reveal not only the depths of my ignorance but also the wierd way I work -
Is there any way to turn off the cataloguing function in Lightroom? What I would like it to do is just to be able to read the contents of my HD folders and edit and print the images, without having to import them and add them to this catalogue. But it seems to insist on creating the catalogue whatever I do.
John
What you want then is a Bridge+ACR workflow - just don't use LR.
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Right Eric. All that sounds perfectly reasonable.
One thing I don't understand though, is this emphasis on soft-proofing around here. It just doesn't seem such a big deal to me, at any rate. The way I work, as I am editing, I just make small (5x4in or A6) workprints as I go along, to check how things are going - of course you can't trust the display, even thogh it is calibrated. When I have finished editing, I make a final workprint and then, if all is well, roll the big one.
John
Well, if you have a properly configured colour management system and understand how to manage the inherent difference between transmitted and reflected light you CAN trust the display. And if you want the best possible matching between display and paper, you absolutely want to soft-proof, because soft-proofing is what helps you make the display show what the print will come out looking like. It ha always been a fundamental weakness of LR not to include softproofing, but it would appear this is technically challenging and something the Adobe team is working to perfect before releasing.
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Well, if you have a properly configured colour management system and understand how to manage the inherent difference between transmitted and reflected light you CAN trust the display. And if you want the best possible matching between display and paper, you absolutely want to soft-proof, because soft-proofing is what helps you make the display show what the print will come out looking like. It ha always been a fundamental weakness of LR not to include softproofing, but it would appear this is technically challenging and something the Adobe team is working to perfect before releasing.
Point taken, Mark but it's really not an issue which I'm bothered about. I rather like making my little prints as I go along. I've been working in LR all afternoon, and I am now a lot more comfortable about doing all my file management from within the application, especially now I've learned how to move a file from one folder to another. So the original reason for this post is now pretty much overtaken by superior knowledge (thanks, chaps).
The one thing which is still really getting right up my nose with LR is the thing I mentioned before - there is no way, in either LR2 or LR3, to export a TIFF as grayscale, only RGB. So I have to export my B/W pictures as RGB, shut down LR, start up PS Elements, open each file, convert it to grayscale, and save it back to disk again, otherwise each one would be three times larger than it needs to be. This is just really stupidly tedious. I would much rather have this fixed than more bells and whistles which I probably wouldn't use much, and it must be a simple fix, surely?
John
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The purist argument would be there's no need to export the TIF if you're not doing anything further to it.
John
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Point taken, Mark but it's really not an issue which I'm bothered about. I rather like making my little prints as I go along. .......................
The one thing which is still really getting right up my nose with LR is the thing I mentioned before - there is no way, in either LR2 or LR3, to export a TIFF as grayscale, only RGB. So I have to export my B/W pictures as RGB, shut down LR, start up PS Elements, open each file, convert it to grayscale, and save it back to disk again, otherwise each one would be three times larger than it needs to be. This is just really stupidly tedious. I would much rather have this fixed than more bells and whistles which I probably wouldn't use much, and it must be a simple fix, surely?
John
Uh, well, each to his/her own in terms of workflow preferences. If making those small prints really floats your boat, by all means; my advice was based on the objective factors of efficiency and effectiveness.
As for exporting in greyscale, why would you want to do that? What purpose is served by greyscale mode other than compressing file size? Your highest quality and most flexible B&W work will be done in RGB mode using the LR "greyscale" settings in the HSL panel, then exporting the image as an RGB TIFF or PSD with the metadata for those B&W settings embedded. Then in PS you have still further control over the final B&W appearance of the image. Yes, the images are larger, but storage is cheap these days.
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I haven't read all the replies, but it sounds like what you really want is Adobe Bridge.
Bridge/ACR lets you do all the editing tasks that LR does, only it doesn't use the catalog/database paradigm. Of course you have to fire up Photoshop for printing, and if you use the slideshow stuff in LR I'm not sure if there's an equivalent for that in Bridge/PS (never felt the need to investigate).
I realize this probably isn't the answer you want if you don't have Photoshop, since it's considerably more expensive than LR. It's a shame LR doesn't have a "disk mode" that disables the cataloging stuff since it's more hassle than it's worth for some of us.
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I haven't read all the replies, but it sounds like what you really want is Adobe Bridge.
Bridge/ACR lets you do all the editing tasks that LR does, only it doesn't use the catalog/database paradigm. Of course you have to fire up Photoshop for printing, and if you use the slideshow stuff in LR I'm not sure if there's an equivalent for that in Bridge/PS (never felt the need to investigate).
I realize this probably isn't the answer you want if you don't have Photoshop, since it's considerably more expensive than LR. It's a shame LR doesn't have a "disk mode" that disables the cataloging stuff since it's more hassle than it's worth for some of us.
That was my thinking too (see post 19), and I agree with you about the idea of a disk access mode for LR - it would be great for people who don't want the Lightroom Library approach, but do want the other features. I manage it by using the LR Library approach as is, then export the files to my own file structure, which I then manage in Bridge for all those images that will be further worked-up in PS. This combo works fine for me and is very easy to do.
LR and PS are not substitutes and they were never meant to be. There will always be a slew of things one can do with images in PS that simply fall beyond the scope and philosophy of LR. So it really isn't a question of expense, but of basic needs. Whoeever needs no more than LR, well they've saved themselves a few hundred bucks, but if you need more you pay more - "vat else is neu", eh?
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The closest you are likely to get to disc access is the loupe view in LR3 beta's import dialog. Anything more would be an utter waste of development resources.
The catalogue is fundamental to the Lightroom concept and enables a range of other functions which would either be completely impossible, or impossibly slow in a Finder/Explorer substitute such as Bridge.
For instance, the catalogue records where files should be, while Bridge is like Finder/Explorer and merely tells you what happens to be there, right now - which is of little use reconstructing your archive after a drive crashes, or finding pictures which might include those held offline on external drives or CD/DVD/BR. Another example is in complex searches where Bridge would have to churn through however many thousand files you may have - at least those which are online or on the drive you're searching - while with the catalogue you're just running a much-quicker query on the database. Looking purely at image adjustments, the catalogue enables the History log, so you're able to see exactly what you've done to an image and reverse or fine tune your work many reboots into the future. Managing your pictures with a catalogue is a whole lot better than attempting to do so with your file system....
John
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As for exporting in greyscale, why would you want to do that? What purpose is served by greyscale mode other than compressing file size? Your highest quality and most flexible B&W work will be done in RGB mode using the LR "greyscale" settings in the HSL panel, then exporting the image as an RGB TIFF or PSD with the metadata for those B&W settings embedded. Then in PS you have still further control over the final B&W appearance of the image. Yes, the images are larger, but storage is cheap these days.
Well, I have always archived my B/W film scans as 16-bit grayscale TIFFs. And with the digital files from my CFV, I see no reason to do it differently - we are not talking about editing here, but archival storage. I archive the raw files and their XMPs as well, but those are for my own use. The TIFFs are for whomsoever might wish to access my archive in the future, when I have departed this mortal coil. They will not be editing my pictures, they will merely wish to print them. Given this requirement, and the fact that in a year or so I shall be retired and on a greatly reduced income, the cost of storage to me is a very significant factor, especially with 39MP files. It means that instead of buying one terabyte, I will have to purchase three, and pro rata.
John
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That was my thinking too (see post 19), and I agree with you about the idea of a disk access mode for LR - it would be great for people who don't want the Lightroom Library approach, but do want the other features. I manage it by using the LR Library approach as is, then export the files to my own file structure, which I then manage in Bridge for all those images that will be further worked-up in PS. This combo works fine for me and is very easy to do.
LR and PS are not substitutes and they were never meant to be. There will always be a slew of things one can do with images in PS that simply fall beyond the scope and philosophy of LR. So it really isn't a question of expense, but of basic needs. Whoeever needs no more than LR, well they've saved themselves a few hundred bucks, but if you need more you pay more - "vat else is neu", eh?
I believe that the key thing here is to let go of what one is used to, and that is in essence "physical storage" one is so accustomed to (we are used to store things physically: on a shelf in a cupboard in a room in a place). Storing files on a disk in a directory structure is a 1:1 match with the physical storage we are used to.
Catalogs, like LR, are a layer on top of physical storage (a "physical" file has to be in a "physical" place on your harddrive(which is again physical)), that allows you to add logical concepts to the management of your files. For example one can make combinations of images to meet a particular purpose, without the need to alter the physical storage of the image files. Quite identical to a real life library (a public library with many many books), where one would rather go to the cataloging system first to find books matching certain criteria and where they are physically stored (room, cupboard, shelf), than to physically go through the storage of books, and physically read the titles on the backs, etc. In very large libraries one does not even have access to the physical storage anymore, but books/documents are issued upon request via the cataloging system.
In my working life, primarely physical-asset data management related, i once had a meeting with a librarian of a very large technical documents archive of a large petrochemical company. He made a study on how often it is needed to create a physical copy of a file(=document) to create a complete physical dossier(for a particular purpose like applying for a license to operate, environmental, etc) for a given master document (master doument referencing other master documents). It turned out, that on average each master document needed to be copied about 26 times.
For a library (or archive) of any size (this was a case of more than 3 million documents), increasing its physical size 26 times is monstruous and economically not very viable. Not to mention issues regarding the propagation of updates.
With a cataloging system, effectively on a computer that could fit in a locker where one keeps brooms etc, the same goal could be achieved (and was achieved), at much-much lest cost and time, and much less hassle in managing updates and their propagation.
Now coming back to catalogs like LR, obviously will not contain that many physical images. But the possibility any image will eventually be part of many collections (dossiers if you like) is as likely as in the above example(or perhaps more likely). Also: searching a particular image by filtering to bring the total number down to something that is overseeable and results in the right image found in an aceptable time-frame, or do a roundtrip to PS to modify the image while retaining the link to the originating image, or etc(fill in yourself, depending your way of working).
The digital era also added a few more options to create multiple versions or variants of the same originating image, options that in the "physical era" were limited, and if possbile costly, time-consuming, and usually with image quality degradation as a consequence.
So i really believe a catalog is needed, it is a "layer" on top of the physical storage, therefore has to be seen as two inseparable aspects of what in the end provides control over your invaluable set of images, for whatever purpose they are used for.
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The closest you are likely to get to disc access is the loupe view in LR3 beta's import dialog. Anything more would be an utter waste of development resources.
The catalogue is fundamental to the Lightroom concept and enables a range of other functions which would either be completely impossible, or impossibly slow in a Finder/Explorer substitute such as Bridge.
For instance, the catalogue records where files should be, while Bridge is like Finder/Explorer and merely tells you what happens to be there, right now - which is of little use reconstructing your archive after a drive crashes, or finding pictures which might include those held offline on external drives or CD/DVD/BR. Another example is in complex searches where Bridge would have to churn through however many thousand files you may have - at least those which are online or on the drive you're searching - while with the catalogue you're just running a much-quicker query on the database. Looking purely at image adjustments, the catalogue enables the History log, so you're able to see exactly what you've done to an image and reverse or fine tune your work many reboots into the future. Managing your pictures with a catalogue is a whole lot better than attempting to do so with your file system....
John
I agree with this, except for one consideration. The catalogue does everything you say in the Library module. Once you move to the Develop Module, if you have changed the location of files on your hard drives, you do need to go through a search process in LR to up-date the catalogue to the new locations. So in order to get the added functionality of the Catalogue you describe here, if file locations have been changed, some housekeeping needs to be done. Not that big an issue, but a factor.
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Well, I have always archived my B/W film scans as 16-bit grayscale TIFFs. And with the digital files from my CFV, I see no reason to do it differently - we are not talking about editing here, but archival storage. I archive the raw files and their XMPs as well, but those are for my own use. The TIFFs are for whomsoever might in the future, when I have departed this mortal coil, wish to access my archive. They will not be editing my pictures, they will merely wish to print them. Given this requirement, and the fact that in a year or so I shall be retired and on a greatly reduced income, the cost of storage to me is a very significant factor, especially with 39MP files. It means that instead of buying one terabyte, I will have to purchase three, and pro rata.
John
OK, if the images are B&W from the get-go, sure, unless you are planning to tint them, saving them as greyscale images makes sense. I don't know what a "DFV" is, but if those files start life as colour images, it's as I said above.
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OK, if the images are B&W from the get-go, sure, unless you are planning to tint them, saving them as greyscale images makes sense. I don't know what a "DFV" is, but if those files start life as colour images, it's as I said above.
There is never any real necessity to save B/W files as RGB once the editing process is complete. It is simply redundant information, since we end up with three channels which are all identical. If one wishes to print with split toning or some other tinting effect, then this can be done by simply converting the file back to RGB and applying the toning immediately before and as part of the printing process. As I do all my own printing to an Epson in the ABW mode, anything I send to the printer is treated as a grayscale anyhow, and I do not do split-toning or other colour treatments. And a "CFV" is a bit like a P-45, except it is made by Hasselblad and has some rather nice chrome and faux-leather bits on it.
John
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I agree with this, except for one consideration. The catalogue does everything you say in the Library module. Once you move to the Develop Module, if you have changed the location of files on your hard drives, you do need to go through a search process in LR to up-date the catalogue to the new locations. So in order to get the added functionality of the Catalogue you describe here, if file locations have been changed, some housekeeping needs to be done. Not that big an issue, but a factor.
More of a training issue? Until they really know what they are doing, people just need to know they should stop moving pictures around in Explorer/Finder and making life hard for themselves. Some just need to understand they're wasting effort trying to categorise their work using folders, and see how much more flexible collections and keywords are.
John
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There is never any real necessity to save B/W files as RGB once the editing process is complete. It is simply redundant information, since we end up with three channels, which are all identical. If one wishes to print with split toning or some other tinting effect, then this can be done by simply converting the file to RGB and applying the toning immediately before and as part of the printing process. As I do all my own printing to an Epson in the ABW mode, anything I send to the printer is treated as a grayscale anyhow, and I do not do split-toning or other colour treatments. And a "CFV" is a bit like a P-45, except it is made by Hasselblad and has some rather nice chrome and faux-leather bits on it.
John
Yes in these working conditions that makes sense John.
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More of a training issue? Until they really know what they are doing, people just need to know they should stop moving pictures around in Explorer/Finder and making life hard for themselves. Some just need to understand they're wasting effort trying to categorise their work using folders, and see how much more flexible collections and keywords are.
John
Yes and no. Circumstances arise when you DO need to move stuff around. In the final analysis the images themselves reside on hard drives in folders and those hard-drives and folders have addresses; so if you change the addresses for whatever reason (and it happens to me every so often), you also need to do things in LR so the program can find the actual images when they're needed in the Develop Module, etc. This remains true regardless of all the acknowledged benefits of Collections and Keywording for the organization and search functions which LR facilitates.
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Yes and no. Circumstances arise when you DO need to move stuff around. In the final analysis the images themselves reside on hard drives in folders and those hard-drives and folders have addresses; so if you change the addresses for whatever reason (and it happens to me every so often), you also need to do things in LR so the program can find the actual images when they're needed in the Develop Module, etc. This remains true regardless of all the acknowledged benefits of Collections and Keywording for the organization and search functions which LR facilitates.
Mark has put his finger precisely upon the inherent weakness of most DAM systems, and certainly Lightroom. In essence, for them to function effectively they require you to pre-determine the folder structure and naming conventions for your entire image storage area in advance, and then adhere to it for the lifetime of the catalogue. Otherwise you will have to synchronise things every time you move, re-name, or delete a file or folder outside of LR. I do a lot of large DB stuff here at work, and for our normal databases this is no problem - the storage areas are pre-named and predetermined, but only the Sys Admins ever see them, not the end user.
Maybe I'm just wierd or something, but I find myself continually changing my mind about file and folder names. I'm always tweaking them, as I find better ways of doing things. Here at work we used Extensis Portfolio as a DAM for our aerial photos, and that was much better in that it keeps an eye on your folders and files, and updates its database accordingly.
John
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Mark has put his finger precisely upon the inherent weakness of most DAM systems, and certainly Lightroom. In essence, for them to function effectively they require you to pre-determine the folder structure and naming conventions for your entire image storage area in advance, and then adhere to it for the lifetime of the catalogue. Otherwise you will have to synchronise things every time you move, re-name, or delete a file or folder outside of LR. I do a lot of large DB stuff here at work, and for our normal databases this is no problem - the storage areas are pre-named and predetermined, but only the Sys Admins ever see them, not the end user.
Maybe I'm just wierd or something, but I find myself continually changing my mind about file and folder names. I'm always tweaking them, as I find better ways of doing things. Here at work we used Extensis Portfolio as a DAM for our aerial photos, and that was much better in that it keeps an eye on your folders and files, and updates its database accordingly.
John
No, you're not wierd - the need to move stuff around happens for various reasons. I'm not sure I would finger this issue as a "weakness" of the LR approach to cataloguing images. The fact that the image previews and search functions can be disembodied from the actual image files themselves allows for very efficient library management and image retrieval. But there is simply that added little thing to remember: after creating the catalogue, if you move stuff, you need to make sure the catalogue knows the new locations. The easiest way to ensure this happens is to do the moving through Lightroom itself. As long as the images have been imported into the LR library, you can then move them to alternative places through LR itself and LR will keep track of the new locations. The search and re-associate manually functions are needed if you make the changes at the system level, not through LR.
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Yes and no. Circumstances arise when you DO need to move stuff around. In the final analysis the images themselves reside on hard drives in folders and those hard-drives and folders have addresses; so if you change the addresses for whatever reason (and it happens to me every so often), you also need to do things in LR so the program can find the actual images when they're needed in the Develop Module, etc. This remains true regardless of all the acknowledged benefits of Collections and Keywording for the organization and search functions which LR facilitates.
Mark,
True that there are occasions where you move image files around using explorer/finder instead of LR.
Setting up folders for an assignment i do that via LR, a folder is then accessible via LR even if there is no image in there that is imported. Good for an admin folder or the folder (i call this the TRASHED folder) where i eventually put my rejected images, by moving them via LR. ( i normally do not delete rejected images).
On the other hand if you need to move an entire volume of image files, f.i. to a new harddrive for given reasons, the explorer (or finder) is the better tool perhaps. For that reason my entire collection of image files is split over volumes (Foto-Volume-1, 2, etc). So i can move such a volume to another disk via explorer (i use Windows XP), and in LR i only have to select the new volume path, and all subfolders are then "found" again by LR. (This can also be used for bringing image files offline, and when the need arises bring them online again).
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Yes, I do likewise when needed.
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No, you're not wierd - the need to move stuff around happens for various reasons. I'm not sure I would finger this issue as a "weakness" of the LR approach to cataloguing images. The fact that the image previews and search functions can be disembodied from the actual image files themselves allows for very efficient library management and image retrieval. But there is simply that added little thing to remember: after creating the catalogue, if you move stuff, you need to make sure the catalogue knows the new locations. The easiest way to ensure this happens is to do the moving through Lightroom itself. As long as the images have been imported into the LR library, you can then move them to alternative places through LR itself and LR will keep track of the new locations. The search and re-associate manually functions are needed if you make the changes at the system level, not through LR.
I don't find this to be a problem at all. You can very easily move things around within the LR library and rename folders as well. I back up to two external media sources once a week and recently migrated to a new computer. I transferred the entire LR folder to the new computer, opened up LR and things were a go from the start (the only issue for me was making sure that the myriad of presets were saved and migrated as well).
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Alan, did you migrate between operating systems (i.e. PC to Mac) or within the same family when you up-graded to a new computer?
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Alan, did you migrate between operating systems (i.e. PC to Mac) or within the same family when you up-graded to a new computer?
Stayed on a PC. I did however do a Vista to Win7 upgrade and had no problems with that either. As I noted the only thing that is a hassle is migrating all the presets as they tend to be in different file locations. the only one that I overlooked was the import preset that I had in the library module.
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Ken
Yes, this has been bothering quite a bit, actually. As you say, if a CD fails, I am stuffed (although there are two copies of each picture, one TIFF and one RAW, on separate CDs). I did a bit of destruction testing on a CD-R (boiling, freezing, exposure to direct sunlight) and it was still readable, so I was hoping for the best, really. The other idea I was thinking of was making more safety copies on SD cards, but I don't know anything about their archival properties either.
John
I would strongly suggest having backups somewhere on some other medium: Hard disks, online, DVD. CDs deteriorate over time, generally in much less time than advertised. At the very least do some regular spot checking on the oldest ones of each make of CD. Some makes of CDs tend to last for a while then start failing quickly, so if you don't notice it early, you have a risk of losing both copies.
I worked in digital archiving for a while, and CD longevity is somewhat of a horror story.
-Lars
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I would strongly suggest having backups somewhere on some other medium: Hard disks, online, DVD. CDs deteriorate over time, generally in much less time than advertised. At the very least do some regular spot checking on the oldest ones of each make of CD. Some makes of CDs tend to last for a while then start failing quickly, so if you don't notice it early, you have a risk of losing both copies.
I worked in digital archiving for a while, and CD longevity is somewhat of a horror story.
-Lars
And compounded on this, I've heard, right or wrong I don't know - that most brands of DVD writeables have greater deterioration risk than do CD writeables. I keep anything important on two external hard drives or one non-system internal and one external. That way, the risk is limited to *simultaneous* failure or theft/damage. Safer yet would be yet a third back-up outside the premiises with an external service.
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And compounded on this, I've heard, right or wrong I don't know - that most brands of DVD writeables have greater deterioration risk than do CD writeables. I keep anything important on two external hard drives or one non-system internal and one external. That way, the risk is limited to *simultaneous* failure or theft/damage. Safer yet would be yet a third back-up outside the premiises with an external service.
Of course you chaps are absolutely correct. In fact I do also back up to an external HD (although I don't trust them too much, either). The idea of the A4 binders organised into "films" with the contacts, shooting data and CDs is an attempt to tackle the problem of how I pass the archive on. A lot of the photographic work I do (although none of it is for profit) has a certain historical value. For example, one of the subjects I have spent many years documenting is Cornish parish churches, both external shots (including tombs and graves) and internal (fonts, arcades, windows and so forth). I also have quite a nice series of non-conformist chapels (I might attach an example here). Now, while none of them are great works of art, once I am gone others might well find them of interest for use as illustrations for books or articles in journals. So I have bequeathed my photographic collection to our Museum here in Truro, where it would join an already very extensive archive of Cornish subjects going back 150 years and comprising many thousands of pictures.
OK, so they might take one look and chuck my lot in the skip around the back, but if they do decide to keep them then I do know a bit about our local curators. They are not IT savvy. My negatives would be no problem, they know how to deal with those, but for the digital files I feel they might just possibly be able to cope with a CD with some TIFFs on. Especially if they are catalogued in the way I have described.
Well, that's the fond hope, anyhow.
John
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John, these are very well-done photographs. I appreciate your control over tonality. If they are intended to have historic value and usefulness, as well they may, all the more reason to get them onto hard drives ASAP and teach those folks how to plug a hard-drive into a USB port and migrate to the images. As you and I know, it's no more difficult than inserting a CD into a tray.
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. . . all the more reason to get them onto hard drives ASAP and teach those folks how to plug a hard-drive into a USB port and migrate to the images. As you and I know, it's no more difficult than inserting a CD into a tray.
Indeed, you are absolutely correct. However, my thought is whether a USB hard-drive which had been kept in a cupboard for fifteen or twenty years (which is the way a museum would likely deal with it) would have any better chance of being readable if you were to pull it out, plug it in and hope for the best in 2030, say. Glad you liked the photos, by the way.
I'm not at all sure if this is an appropriate place to post this, but as we are talking about archiving . . . I took the opportunity here at work yesterday to check through our CDR archive (which is not a primary one but a sort of belt-and-braces security which is stored in a fire-proof safe). We started with this in 1997 (but gave up on it in 2005 when we got corporate securities), so it might be of some interest. The data is a mix of photos, scans, data sets and documents. It's a pretty small sample, too.
Anyhow, here are the results:
Total CDRs checked: 26
The oldest: 1997 (a 13 year old Sony) checked OK
Ten years old or more: 14 (1999-2000). 12 checked OK, two failed (both stationary suppliers own-brand CDRs). The 12 readable CDs were all Verbatim.
Five to Nine years old: 11 (2001-2005). All 11 checked OK, a mix of Verbatim, Sony, and one Maxell.
So from the 26 checked spanning a period from 1997 to 2005 two failed, but both were no-name CDs from a stationary supplier. All the quality branded CDs were readable and a random selection of files was loaded from each one without problem. So the implication of that seems to be that top-branded CDRs are probably good for ten years at least in reasonable storage conditions. Avoid cheap no-name or store's own brands like the plague.
John
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John - very interesting results and to be expected. Good quality CDs do have some staying power. But the question you ask about whether hard drives will be useable in 2030 could be asked in spades about CDs too, not only in respect of deterioration, but also the long-term future availability of CD readers. I'd be yet more cautious about writeable-DVD storage.
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I think cloud storage will be the way to go in the long run, once storage prices get a little lower. Even now I think it's affordable enough for your most important images.
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I think cloud storage will be the way to go in the long run, once storage prices get a little lower. Even now I think it's affordable enough for your most important images.
Perhaps. But upload speeds as well as cost mean it's still some way away for more than a few images. Even then, remember when Digital Railroad collapsed and the problems some people had retrieving their work? Trust a vendor in the cloud?
John
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As of this morning Newegg has 1 Terrabyte internal drves for $80, that's 8cents per gig. You can buy a 1 Terrabte external for about $100.
At those prices my DVD/CD burner is gathering dust and cobwebs.
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I realise the discussion here seems to have moved on to backup solutions rather than your cataloguing system, but if I am understanding things correctly, it seems like it would be trivial to use Lightroom for file management and keep the same system, especially with the low number of images you take.
- Create an 'import' directory on your drive and have Lightroom download all images to this folder when you plug in your card.
- Add a 'catalogue' folder to your folder list in the library.
- Using the [P] or [X] keys on the keyboard, mark images as picks or rejects. Rejects can be deleted or removed from your library by hitting [control] + [backspace] (command + backspace if you are on a Mac)
Note: if you simply remove them from the catalogue, the files will still be in the 'import' folder on your hard drive. - Select 12 images, right click the catalogue folder and create a subfolder. This will move the images from your import folder to its final location. Alternatively, you can simply drag the images to a pre-existing folder.
This does not seem any more complex than what you are already doing, except you are doing everything inside Lightroom which means it can keep track of everything.
This would also allow you to take advantage of things like keywording and collections if you wish, which should let you find specific images inside your catalogue much quicker.
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Indeed, you are absolutely correct. However, my thought is whether a USB hard-drive which had been kept in a cupboard for fifteen or twenty years (which is the way a museum would likely deal with it) would have any better chance of being readable if you were to pull it out, plug it in and hope for the best in 2030, say. Glad you liked the photos, by the way.
I'm not at all sure if this is an appropriate place to post this, but as we are talking about archiving . . . I took the opportunity here at work yesterday to check through our CDR archive (which is not a primary one but a sort of belt-and-braces security which is stored in a fire-proof safe). We started with this in 1997 (but gave up on it in 2005 when we got corporate securities), so it might be of some interest. The data is a mix of photos, scans, data sets and documents. It's a pretty small sample, too.
Anyhow, here are the results:
Total CDRs checked: 26
The oldest: 1997 (a 13 year old Sony) checked OK
Ten years old or more: 14 (1999-2000). 12 checked OK, two failed (both stationary suppliers own-brand CDRs). The 12 readable CDs were all Verbatim.
Five to Nine years old: 11 (2001-2005). All 11 checked OK, a mix of Verbatim, Sony, and one Maxell.
So from the 26 checked spanning a period from 1997 to 2005 two failed, but both were no-name CDs from a stationary supplier. All the quality branded CDs were readable and a random selection of files was loaded from each one without problem. So the implication of that seems to be that top-branded CDRs are probably good for ten years at least in reasonable storage conditions. Avoid cheap no-name or store's own brands like the plague.
John
Thanks for checking. Not too surprising on the no-names, truly. What did you use to check the CDs? Most CD errors won't show up until you actually try to read a file. If I had CDs as backups, I would keep a file with the MD5 sums 1) on the CD itself, and 2) on my main computer, and (if really paranoid) 3) on paper. You're lucky that you have two sets of CDs, so you could, if you wanted to, compare MD5s of them.
Are these 26 all your CDs?
I would say a USB harddrive that has been stashed away would be extremely unlikely to suffer mechanical defects; the only problem that's even remotely likely would be that USB has fallen out of favor. Given its prevalence in all manner of things, that's not a big risk. It would be just as likely that CDs fall out of favor.
A lot of useful information is available at http://www.itl.nist.gov/iad/894.05/docs/CD...ndlingGuide.pdf (http://www.itl.nist.gov/iad/894.05/docs/CDandDVDCareandHandlingGuide.pdf) except what I was looking for: actual recent case studies of longevity of CDs. See also http://www.informationweek.com/story/showA...0263&pgno=1 (http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=15800263&pgno=1)
-Lars
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Lars
Thanks for the useful links. I did not check the CDs terribly carefully, I just read up several files at random from each disk. None of the data is important now, it is all stored elsewhere. We have literally dozens of other CDs all over the office, but I was trying to check the oldest ones I have.
Actually, I am really surprised and not a little perplexed that while colleagues here on this forum agonise at great length over the archival properties of their prints, hardly anyone seems terribly concerned over the longevity of their primary data. It seems to be a general assumption that they will migrate the data as required from media to media and platform to platform, which is all very fine as long as one is alive and compos mentis enough to do it. But a very common situation is that the photographer becomes old and infirm, he or she goes into a care home, and the surviving relatives have no interest in that old pile of negatives in the corner which gathers dust until the house is eventually cleared some years later. Now in the case of negatives, there is the chance that someone will look through them and realise what they are, give them to a museum or other interested body and they will still be printable. But if instead of negatives it is an old dust-covered PC in the corner, the likelihood is that it will simply go in a skip, because nobody will see the value of it, or bother to turn it on.
Here in Cornwall neither our county museum nor the record office will accept digital media for deposition into their archives. And until the IT industry comes up with a truly archival media which can be stored on a shelf for at least 50 years and be guaranteed readable that will probably remain the case.
John
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Here in Cornwall neither our county museum nor the record office will accept digital media for deposition into their archives. And until the IT industry comes up with a truly archival media which can be stored on a shelf for at least 50 years and be guaranteed readable that will probably remain the case.
John
Well, they have their heads in the sand (any sand out there?) and you can tell them I said so - no seriously, the IT industry is unlikely to guarantee whether anything it comes up with can be stored and retrieved after five decades, but you can bet your bottom dollar anything worth archiving will be on digital media, so if these museums will just have to get with it and adapt - the world isn't revolving around those kind of bureaucrats.
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And until the IT industry comes up with a truly archival media which can be stored on a shelf for at least 50 years and be guaranteed readable that will probably remain the case.
That's really the wrong way to look at it since you can always make multiple perfect copies.
You just need different policies and procedures ... ie treating digital data like a "thing" to be put on a shelf is just silly and misses the point.
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Hmm. Well it's not really that the Museum, at any rate, has its head in the sand. The sad fact is that they are always short of cash, chronically short-staffed, and have very little IT expertise. If you give them a book, they can catalogue it, put it on a shelf in the stacks of the Courtenay Library, and the job is done. What are they supposed to do with your 1.5 TB hard drive? How is a member of the public going to look at it?
John
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Hmm. Well it's not really that the Museum, at any rate, has its head in the sand. The sad fact is that they are always short of cash, chronically short-staffed, and have very little IT expertise. If you give them a book, they can catalogue it, put it on a shelf in the stacks of the Courtenay Library, and the job is done. What are they supposed to do with your 1.5 TB hard drive? How is a member of the public going to look at it?
John
A general question about how one brings institutions into the 21st century. Of course it does take budget and other resources, but at some point they and their supporters will need to come to terms with modernization or they will be increasingly left behind. That of course doesn't solve your immediate problem.
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Perhaps. But upload speeds as well as cost mean it's still some way away for more than a few images.
For entire catalogs/libraries I agree. But give it a few years and that will likely change. Even now, I think cloud storage is feasible for a smaller portfolio of your most important, finished work.
Even then, remember when Digital Railroad collapsed and the problems some people had retrieving their work? Trust a vendor in the cloud?
I don't know anything about Digital Railroad, but redundancy and location transparency are inherent principles of true cloud storage. I'm not saying I would want my _only_ copy of a file stored in a single vendor's cloud; multiple backups on different media types still make sense for important data. Having said that, I would certainly trust Amazon's or MS's cloud to be more reliable than a hard drive or optical media stored in my closet (or even in an off-site closet).
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Something which looks quite interesting would be the SSD drives, using flash memory. They have no moving parts, need no power supply, and if written to just once for archival purposes theoretically should be just what we need. However, I can find no information regarding their temporal lifespan. Does anyone have information or experience with SSD?
John
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Something which looks quite interesting would be the SSD drives, using flash memory. They have no moving parts, need no power supply, and if written to just once for archival purposes theoretically should be just what we need. However, I can find no information regarding their temporal lifespan. Does anyone have information or experience with SSD?
John
John,
check www.macperformanceguide.com from Lloyd Chambers, although focused on Mac, it should give you an inroad into SSD's.
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Thanks for the link, JR, the Mercury drives look very interesting. Tremendous MTBF spec. I will contact them to see how they would view the drive's archival prospects - in other words, if we write 400GB of data to this drive, then put it away in a cupboard, how long will the data be readable for? It is expensive as a storage medium, of course, but as I have said before (in effect) what value do we place on our work?
John
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More of a training issue? Until they really know what they are doing, people just need to know they should stop moving pictures around in Explorer/Finder and making life hard for themselves. Some just need to understand they're wasting effort trying to categorise their work using folders, and see how much more flexible collections and keywords are.
You still need really well organised folders - though not if organised by category as that way is fraught with problems.
My images are normally all organised by date-label folders and LR then looks at that organised structure and if I want to add keywords or place images into collections I can do that as well. Best of both worlds. I also though that was what you did John. This means any programme on any computer runing any OS can find, use locate my images. I don't reckon on LR being around in 30/40/50 years time so I organise files so they make sense to any software or human. I also use Br in conjunction with LR as for some things it is way better than LR, just like LR is way better at other things.
Ironically, LR can be very useful for organising your images by dated folders as it happens. I used it once to sort out the random mess that iPhoto thinks is a good way of organising your images. Done partly I think to make it very hard for one to move to other non-Apple software.
The main problem with LR is that is is useless for basic housekeeping tasks, even moving folders of images is painfully slow. Not to mention you can only move one folder at a time and LR does not recognize all file types, that a photographer may want to organize [though finally Video is acknowledged]. I use an OS file manager to do a lot of my file management, though not Explorer or the truly execrable Finder, as they are much better than LR at that sort of task [Pathfinder on Mac and the genius Directory Opus on the PC]. Often quicker to use one of them to file manage and get LR to relocate where things are when finished.
Catalogues can and do corrupt so anything that is kept soley in catalogues, I avoid. Even with backing up, you can still come upstuck. Speaking from painful experience here. I do not use Virtual copies for that reason and do not rely on LR collections too much either. I prefer Snapshots to VCs as not only are they separate from the catalogue being stored in XMP/in file, but are more useful anyway if say you use smart objects.
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Catalogues can and do corrupt so anything that is kept soley in catalogues, I avoid. Even with backing up, you can still come upstuck. Speaking from painful experience here. I do not use Virtual copies for that reason and do not rely on LR collections too much either. I prefer Snapshots to VCs as not only are they separate from the catalogue being stored in XMP/in file, but are more useful anyway if say you use smart objects.
I read more about corrupting catalogues, can you elaborate more on your experience?
Have you worked out the possible cause of corruption?
Perhaps we should open a new thread to captupre cases of corruption, possible causes and preventive measures to reduce the risk.