How to import into required folder (LR3.6)?

It's a good video. Just a pity that it doesn't describe what actually happens on my computer. I'm choosing the method 2 that Ms. Kost refers to and I get the result described in the original post, with the added factor that I also need to take a walk around my house after the import or I am likely to throw my computer out of the Window, with sufficient force that it might have a reasonable chance of causing the same level of inconveneince to who ever signed off the human factors on this import design as it is causing to me.....that's only fair, isn't it?

So what I really need now is for somebody to explain how LR can be forced to do what is logically correct and prevented from doing what it actually does, which is not only illogical, but is contrary to what I am actually asking it to do.

"if the file is already on your computer you don't want to copy it, you simply want to add it to your Lightroom catalog": - can I disaree with somebody who clearly knows more than me, without giving offence?

No offence is intended, but I beg to differ. Yes, the file is already on (one of)my hardisk, but it's definitely not in the folder I want. So a 'Copy' operation is appropriate, to put a copy of the file in the correct place. This operation actually works - at the physical level - but not in the way one would expect at all by reading the LR hepl file or from watching the video you sugested: LR vigorously and defiantly ignores the folder I designate in Option1. Within the logical view presented by LR the imported/copied file appears in its own (non-existent) folder, entirely separate (and at a quiet different hierarchical level in the catalog) from its kindred images.

This is clearly highly confusing. If this is LR working as intended, then somebody needs to have a quiet word with the developer/designer and suggest a course of treatment with a suitably qualified professional.

On the other hand if I am prepared to accept the 'Add' option, the result is even worse: now the file is in the wrong place on my hard disk (making it hard to do back-ups outside of LR), but the image still appears in its own, unique, out of order, non-existent folder in the folders pane in LR.

Shirley, that's not the way it's suppoed to work, is it?

Really ? Then it's time to look for a more mature combined asset/work flow manager. (Which is where I came in in the first place, finding that Cumulus had a nice database approach but no image modification facilities at all and  just never kept up. The Canadian offering just didn't 'feel' right).

I note your comment that I have now received your last attempt. Much appreciated and thanks; sorry to find that this issue looks like it is going to remain unresolved. The more I have played with this issue the more I am inclined to report a defect, along the lines of "LR 3.6 is unable to import single images correctly under certain circumstances". I'll develop this idea more later. For now, to comment on your 2 (final) appends:

- yep, I might be missing something (which is why I made the original post), but I too have no idea what it is. The video you referred me to confirmed that my understanding of the EXPECTED import process was in practice 100% accurate and complete for the critical actions, and about 30% complete for the nice to use work-flow enhancing actions (like use of presets and the 'minimalist' import dialog box). The video also confirmed that, as installed here, LR does NOT operate in the way described by Ms. Kost.

- Yes, I have tried closing LR and moving (using the Linux definition of move - i.e. copy) the file to the desired folder. The result (as previously reported) is that LR is unable to import the image (using the 'Add' option) into the same folder structure as its kindred images. For all practical purposes then the image does not appear in the Grid display in the Library module. That's a bug.

- Further more if I right-click the new folder that is created by this import process and choose 'remove',  I am given the details of the folder location and the number of files in the folder. In both cases this information is in disagreement to that displayed in the Folders pane. Aside from the file location error, it also tells me that folder conatins 1 file. It doesn't; it contains 52 files. (I right click on the supposed 1 files, choose 'show in explorer' and there are all  52 of the 1 files!). That's another bug.

- Why am I trying to import individual images? 'Cos I've only got 1 image to import. I could add others, but that's a bit daft since at this time there is nothing else I want to import into this folder, in this place in the catalog hierarchy. And let me just say why I have an image to import: this folder contains NEFs and JPEGS. The jpeg doesn't look right (thanks, Nikon); I can make a much better version using the Develop module in LR working from the nef. I then save (but have to use export - why, for heaven's sake, why?) the modified nef as a jpeg - which I assume modifies the pixels destructively, according to the orders which are encoded into the newly-created nef .xmp sidecar file. I want a jpeg since the subject of the photo is not a Nikon user and so cannot do anything with a nef image when I send that to her. So now I have, in the desired folder, the original nef, its associated xmp, the orignal jpeg and a modified jpeg with an incremented file name. The obvious thing to do now is to import this new jpeg into the catalog, using the 'Add' option, right? And that's where it all goes wrong. LR is unable to do it.

- Yes, I'm sure the import process works for you - but that's the 'technical support logical error' that I have observed since I first worked in a tech. support function back in the 1960s: "It works OK here". Well, that's good; you don't have a problem. But I'm not writing about 'there'; I'm wriitng about 'here'.......

- Choosing a named folder in the right hand pane will defintely createe a new folder - a physical folder - on my hard disk and it certainly won't be in the logically correct place in the folder hierarchy, even when I select the drive, folder, sub-folder and sub-sub-folder where I want it created. I referred to that in my original post. LR creates the folder in some other location in a way which I still regard as bizarre and perverse. And that's another bug.

The mystifying thing in all this is that I have had no problem importing images from LR 1.1 up to LR 3.3 - and that's about 9,000 (times 2) images I guess (My Nikon wrapped its image numbering sometime when I was in LR 3.5). It took me a while to realise that LR was importing images into strange places and I put up with it for a while. I currently have about 250 folders of images; for a while I could keep all this my head and know where any particular image was (which says something about LR's organisational effectiveness - or lack thereof; I was doing the organising mentally and then trying to figure out where LR had bizarrely decided to place them). But now, at my age, with loss of faculties, I can no longer do this. I really want LR to do it for me; so far LR is resisting doing what I think - based on information from skilled users like Ms. Kost - it should do.

Well, it seems it won't so I'l look for another product solution.

Post scriptum:

I see that I made a previous post on this topic back in June last year which was unresolved then. I had forgotten about this (sorry, where am I? what did you say your name was?) and at that time suspected the change in import behaviour started with LR 3.4. I see the problem now is exactly how as it was back then.

This is an update for anybody else reading this thread which provides a work-around for the defective functioning of LR import which I have experienced on my computer.

I now find that any/all imports of new images, following either method described by the Adobe LightRooom evangelist, Ms. Kost, fails to place the imported images into the correct position in the catalog folder hierarchy. Instead the imported images are placed in a new folder which is shown at the highest level in the folder pane in the Library module. This folder does not in fact exist on the hard-disk at this hierarchical level. I refer to it as a 'fantasy' folder, reflecting the bizarre way in which LR operates. The correct folder is actually created, but not shown, at the expected location; the folder list in LR is wrong. LR can be made to reflect reality, rather than fantasy, in the following way:

1. Right-click on the highest level folder, in the folder list, which does actually, physically, contain the newly created, but not visible, folder of imported images (find the folder location in Explorer) and select 'synchronize' from the options presented.

2. LR will then proceed to find new images which it can import (including all the really new images which have just been imported!, plus, in my case, hundreds of other images throughout the folder hierarchy which LR seemed to have lost track of).

3. After this second import step is complete the folder list will now show a second copy of the newly created folder, in the correct position in the folder hierarchy, correctly reflecting the physical organisation on the hard-disk.

4. At this point the first, 'fantasy', folder can be eliminated from the catalog by right-click and then 'remove'. LR issues a warning that the images wil be removed from the catalog. This is not correct: the images that are in the 'real' folder are not deleted. At this time there is a 1-to-1 correspondence between what LR shows in its folder organisation and what actually is held on the hard disk.

The evidence is that LR has defects in its asset management such that the folder hierarchy and the images shown within each folder will become progressively out of touch with reality (in my case by about 780+ images altogther) over a period of time. The 'synchronize' capability appears to correct that. Based on this expereince of the last 9 months I now no longer believe I can trust the asset managment functions of LR. I will use additional, non-Adobe software to manage my assets from now on.

2 possible explanations, one of which is that is not me that is doing it wrong: Lightroom has most of the control in this process. And, here, it doesn't work.

What this post confirms to me is that there is something systemically wrong in the design of the relevant part of LR 3.6.

The product is (apparently) designed to meet the needs of serious amateurs and professional photographers. Nothing in the product documentation says, or implies, that you also have to be more skilled in the internals of computer operating systems file management than any other USER of a software application. Logically therefore LR should prevent the need for the average, non-expert-computer-user, to jump through this complicated set of hoops just to achieve that which seems to be intuitively obvious in the first place.

Bridge and Photoshop are proving to be a more robust alternative, so I abandoned LightRoom some months ago, saving myself a large amount of time in the process.