Suggestions for organizing SLR and phone photos?

[sfmike99]

I've been using LR for about a year to organize, edit and share RAW files from my SLR. This is strictly for my own use - not a photographer. I store all my photos on a NAS, and use the default date organization along with tags to find photos. This has worked fine for me so far.

I have a huge folder of camera photos dating back several years which I would like to import to LR. However they are much lower quality overall, and (not being RAW) edits cannot be undone.

I'm hesitant to import them into the same folder structure as the RAW files - should I just create a "Camera Photos" folder on the NAS and import them all there?

Thanks for any suggestions.

[dj_paige]

In my opinion, the folder structure should be anything you want it to be, that meets your needs. The cell phone cameras ought to have keywords and other metadata assigned to them as well, so you can search for them, just as you can now search for the RAWs by keyword.

I'm hesitant to import them into the same folder structure as the RAW files

I don't understand your hesitation ... I can't see what possible harm can come from putting them in the same folder structure. Lightroom has no problems separating the photos by which camera took them, or by RAW vs JPG. The drawback to having two hierarchies, one for RAWs and one for JPGs, is that at sometime in the future, you are going to accidentally import the photos into the wrong hierarchy and then you will have difficulty finding the photos ... a problem that doesn't exist with one hierarchy and using Lightroom tools to find the photos.

[Bob Somrak]

sfmike99 wrote:

and (not being RAW) edits cannot be undone.

Lightroom treats edits done on TIFF and JPG photos as non-destructive, the same as RAW.   Any file edits in Lightroom can be undone for all the supported formats

[dj_paige]

Good point, Bob Somrak​, I missed that!

[sfmike99]

Helpful info - thanks. I've gone ahead and am importing them into my standard folder structure. I added a keyword "phone" just in case...

[dj_paige]

If I may be so bold, this is unnecessary. Without you performing this adding of the keyword, Lightroom can separate photos by the camera that took the photo, using the Lightroom filter bar.

[sfmike99]

I know.... just slowly allowing myself to trust the database...