Importing Order

[Henrik Paul]

I tried to search for a similar topic, but was unable to find anything, so I apologize if this already has been covered.

When importing images, you have the option to back up the imported files to a secondary location. When you do that, Lightroom seems to copy one image to the primary destination, then copy it to the secondary destination and move on to the next image.

I have been unable to find an option that would enable me to change that behavior - I want Lightroom to copy all files to the primary location and then proceed to copy the images from the primary to the secondary location. If Lightroom could do just a raw file-copy to the primary location, and only then start gathering the metadata, it would be all the better. Is there a way to do either of these?

I'm trying to get my images as fast as possible out of my memory card to get it 'operational' again. I currently copy all files with the computer's file manager manually from the memory card to a temporary destination, and when I have more time, I let Lightroom churn the images. It works, but I find it redundant - Lightroom should be the omnipotent workflow software

I'm using LR 1.3.1.

[Nat Coalson]

Henrik -
I agree this functionality would be great but it's not currently possible.

One other problem with LRs file backup on import is that if you convert to DNG on import, it's the original, native camera raw files that get backed up, not the newly-created DNGs.

With this in mind, here's what I do:
1. Convert to DNG on import and NOT backup
2. Immediately after import go into the Library and Save Metadata (this writes all the metadata that was applied during import - keywords, copyright notice, develop presets etc. - into the files)
3. Use a separate sync utility to copy the new files to a second drive. (I use ChronoSync on Mac)

Hopefully in future releases Lightroom's file backup utility will be improved but for now you need to look elsewhere to perform the kind of backups you described.