Paige & All - Thank you for you for your replies...I am on Max OSX and so the PC programs wont work, but I'll try the abraxis program.
Paige, You sound committed to yoru ressponse and I too am thoughtful about my workflow and took yoru words to heart adn thought about what is an absolute in what I do and why. I thought I'd put it out there to see what kind fo hit you had adn wher I may be able to lighten my load.
First, I do heavily rely on OS Folders versus allowing Adobes metadata methods define the distinctions within my body of work. Here' a few reasons why and what I have done to solve my own issues
1 - As a professional photographer, I maintain a live database of more than 3 TERRABYTES of original content on my file server. This body of content is FAR TOO LARGE for any single Lightroom database to handle. In fact, at the file level, we are talking about 250,000+ DNG's or NEF raw files and their respective children in TIFF or JPEGS, organized, project by project. By result, I deviate imediatly from a fundamental premise of Adobe's workflow - 1 database. I DO NOT MAINTAIN A SINGLE DATABASE FOR MY IMAGES, BUT RATHER BUILD A BRAND NEW DATABSE FOR EVERY SINGLE PROJECT I SHOOT AND IT LIVES WITHIN THE FOLDER FOR THAT PROJECT ADN IT'S FILES. Reason number ONE for folders
2 - FILE COUNT - In my experience Lightroom chokes when too many files are put into a single database...somewhere between 50,000 and 80,000 brings the application to a useable halt....I operate on a Mac with 8 cores running at 2.5+ GHZ and have 32 GIG of memory....so this machine is not the bottle neck. As such, I have a fodler for every project / shoot. I then create a brand new LR catalog for that shoot and house it within the project folder. Simple as that. Reason number two for not using adobes rankings, colors adn flags for marking.
All of this said, NO DOUBT, I use colors, rankings and flags like crazy while managing my files from a shoot. The 16,000 images I took at Burning man have required everytrick int he book to manage.
HERE'S MY MAIN ISSUE WITH LR AND YOUR POSITION AND RESPONSE
I love Adobe and frankly use most of their software to create and manage my workflow and images. That said, it is NEVER WISE, to rely on a single companies methodologies and thinking to structure your own work. Here is a perfect case where their minds do not align with mine and I cannot achieve what I need....and frankly, their minds do not offer a solution to my issue.
But your know who has figured it out and addressed my problem perfectly...? Apple (and I am sure Microsoft too)...how did they do it? At the basic OS level, when moving files from one folder to another, the OS recognizes duplicate file names and immediately checks date created and bam...it asks the SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT QUESTION that I wish Lightroom would ask: "AN OLDER (OR NEWER) FILE WITH THE SAME NAME ALREADY EXISTS IN THIS LOCATION. WOUDL YOU LIKE TO REPLACE THE FILE WITH THE ONE YOUR MOVING?"
Lightroom has this functionality in the EXPORT dialouge workflow but does not in the simple drag adn drop move features....GOD I WISH IT DID.
ADOBE...if your listening out there....call on me to be more clear if I am not.
Darrin Harris Frisby
10pointproductions.com
jacktors@theskyranch.org
.Though I manage my duplicates using some other tool , well its advanced system optmizer . just try iot once as it comes bundled with other applications as well.
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