Luminous Landscape Forum
Raw & Post Processing, Printing => Adobe Lightroom Q&A => Topic started by: malam on October 25, 2013, 05:44:13 pm
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I have just ordered a copy of Lightroom 5. I am upgrading from Lightroom 4. I have noticed for some time that my library is disorganized. I have photos in folders that do not have any relationship with the photos and others just mixed up. I would like to take the upgrade to Lightroom 5 as an opportunity to re-organize my Library. However, I am not sure if I should do the re-organization in Lightroom 4 first and then the upgrade or do the re-org outside of Lightroom and then import into a new Lightroom 5 Library.
What are the benefits and drawbacks of both options ?
Thanks.
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I would reorganise within Lightroom.
You could do it outside Lightroom, and then re-import everything in the new folder structure back into Lightroom, but you'd have to remember to get LR to write all metadata to files for every file, and you'd lose edit history, collections, virtual copies... everything except the edits themselves (but without the history - i.e. the order of edits).
If you do it in Lightroom, I don't think it matters whether you do it before or after upgrading. And you shouldn't lose anything.
Whichever way you choose, my very strong recommendation: back everything up first!
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In lightroom. You will the niet retain all your dev segtings etc AND you have overview.
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Yes, definitely do the re-org within Lightroom.
On the question of whether to do the re-org before you upgrade to Lightroom 5, when you open a Lightroom 4 catalogue in Lightroom 5 it performs an upgrade which involves adding extra searchable data to every record in the catalogue. If you have a lot of images in the catalogue this can take quite a long time. So if your re-org is going to delete a significant number of images it might save time to do that in Lightroom 4 so that Lightroom 5 doesn’t have to spend the time updating the catalogue for images you subsequently delete. If all you're doing is moving images around folders then I can't see any difference in using Lightroom 4 or 5.
Dan
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Do not confuse upgrading from Lr4 to Lr5 with any reorganisation. Upgrade, ensure LR5's working fine, and then consider reorganising (which you should do in LR as discussed). Or do it the other way round. It doesn't matter which comes first, but they are separate steps, not an opportunity to do two things at once.
However, I'd really recommend you don't try to "organise" - in the sense of "categorising" - your pictures by moving pictures into different folders. Put any reorganisation time into adding keywords and other metadata. These are a much more flexible way to categorise your pictures and I wouldn't worry if "you have photos in folders that do not have any relationship with the photos".
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Thanks for all responses. It was very difficult to do the re-organization in LR4. I guess, I did not realize how much of a mess I had. There were folders with photos from other folders and I could not determine how they got there ! I have three drives - drive 1 for photos before 2012, drive 2 for 2012 and drive 3 for 2013 photos. I am not sure how I got photos from 2009 for example mixed up with 2013 photos.
My imported photos are sometimes buried in subfolders two level down ? I have reinstalled Windows 8.. again to resolve some network issues. I installed CS6 and Bridge. I am trying to decide if the loss of my settings, previews and collections is more important that to re-organize and start afresh with LR5. I could use Bridge to setup the drives and folders the way I want them and restore the photos that are mixed up to there respective folders. Before I do anything though, I think I need to understand how Lightroom sets up its Libraries , previews, settings , etc. Any idea about possible online links ? Thanks.