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Transitioning from iPhoto to Lightroom

Jul 28, 2012 5:41 AM

Tags: #mac #import #transition #pc #iphoto

Hello!  I'm trying to transition away from iPhoto to Lightroom.  Honestly I've always liked iPhoto.  I've found it very easy to use, and the way it organizes photos into "events" is very helpful.  However, I'll be doing most of my photo work on a PC, so I'm moving over to Lightroom instead.

I have already exported all of my iPhoto library.  Each event has its own folder (named after the event), and all the photos have their meta data.  Everything is copacetic.

My question is a matter of organization of the photos within Lightroom.  In iPhoto, all the events were listed chronologically, and this made it easy to locate what I was looking for.  In Lightroom, however, it seems that the way you navigate photos is through the folder list under "Library," which is listed alphabetically instead of chronologically.  This is kind of a pain in the butt, especially since I currently have 136 separate folders.

So I turn to you for a bit of advice since I am brand new to this program.  Is there another way to organize and browse photos in Lightroom that I don't know about?

 
Replies
  • Currently Being Moderated
    Jul 28, 2012 8:08 AM   in reply to Chris11775

    Yes, you organize via keywords and other metadata. The advantage is that you are no longer limited to a single hierarchy of (in your case) event, or in the case of many people, chronological; that limitation imposed by using folders as your organizing tool. You can of course retain this hierarchy if you already have it, plus you can have unlimited number of other hierarchies (people, location, image content, etc.) and then if you want to find all the photos of Aunt Sophie, or all photos taken in Chicago, regardless of the folder that the photo lives in, Lightroom makes this a very simple search.

     

    If you want to search chronologically, the Filter bar allows you to find all photos taken on a specific date (or dates).

     
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  • Currently Being Moderated
    Jul 29, 2012 12:17 PM   in reply to Chris11775

    Chris11775 wrote:

     

    Oh okay I see now...I can sort through using the Filter option up top.  If I wanted to keep my photos somewhat organized by their respective events, I suppose the best way to do that would be to add an event name to their keywords or labels?  What's the difference between keywords and labels?

    If you were starting from scratch, I would say the event goes in the Keyword field. But since you said your events are now listed alphabetically in the folder panel, I would probably just use folders to find event, I wouldn't really do the work to add a keyword with the event name.

     

    Labels are usually color labels, although you can indeed place text into the field. Since there are more ways to search for keywords, and since keywords are part of external search engines if you upload photos to different places (which may or may not be important to you), I wouldn't bother putting text into the label field except in rare situations. People use color labels for various different purposes, usually to indicate to themselves that the photo has a certain status.

    What about facial recognition data?  If I recall correctly, that should have been exported from iPhoto as well, so how can I see that data in the pictures and search/sort by faces?

    Someone else will have to answer that one, I never used iPhoto, never had facial recognition data

     

    Lightroom was unable to import a number of .mov files from my collection.  Is there a plugin or something that must be installed in order to handle these files?

    Really? What happens when you try to import .move files? My .mov files import without problem

     
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  • Currently Being Moderated
    Jul 29, 2012 1:40 PM   in reply to Chris11775

    This is not my experience, so I don't know. I suggest you start a separate thread about this.

     
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