Just in case someone on this forum is interested in the answer to this question, here's a response I got from an Adobe evangelist, George Jardine:
Originally posted by: chris1122
Again what I would like to do is:
1) Insert my card
2) Have Lightroom detect that it’s there and then offer me the option of navigating into a pre-existing holding folder.
3) Within this holding folder I would like Lightroom to create a shoot folder with a name of my choosing while also referencing them within Lightroom’s Library and give these files names and numbers.
4) I would also like to be able to add my metadata preset info to the files as they come in.
5) Later, after I’ve sorted, ranked and keyworded these files I would like to be able to export selected images into other folders without losing the ability to find them with keywords through Lightroom’s indexing system.
It could easily be that there’s already a way to do precisely this within Lightroom and I just haven’t discovered it yet. I have beta 3. Given all that Lightroom does it seems like a humble and useful task.
Hi Chris,
Thanks for the detailed description of your desired workflow. We're still looking at designs for Import. It really didn't change much between B1 and B2, and is still due some work. I believe once we get back to Import and hook in better support for offline files and archiving, we'll be able to do exactly what you want. We also did not implement file renaming in the library (post-import) yet, but we'll have that.
Note that you only get Copy files, and Convert to DNG options when importing from a card because Move files and Reference files are not relevant from a mounted camera card.
On your #4, can you elaborate? We do already give you the option to apply a metadata template to your files during import. And on your #5, yes, we will probably have the option to automatically include exports in your library. This has not been implemented yet.
George Jardine
Pro Photography Evangelist
Adobe Systems, Inc.