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Moving to Lightroom and have a few questions about support etc

New Here ,
Jun 08, 2017 Jun 08, 2017

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- Does lightroom adobe have personal support over the phone?  I use it a lot for apple. Their senior advisors are amazing?

- How do you back up your photos?  I realize The catalog I can be backed up within lightroom opyiond, however was not sure how to back up so that it is recognizable in the future by your catalog?  Do you have a system for this? I ask because I am considering moving from Mac photos/iphotos to LR for my family photography hobby.  I have 15 year of photos, and want to be more organized. I had a harddrive crash and needed data recovery services recently (COSTLY!). I like LR because it has a nice organizational structure that you create, and can see on your drive, however what if lightroom isn't around in 10 years....are these LR folders readable by other software?

Appreciate any insight as I have not found the answers by listening to several tutorials, or online articles supporting LR.

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LEGEND ,
Jun 08, 2017 Jun 08, 2017

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If you purchase LR CC 2015, you get support from Adobe. If you purchase LR 6, there really is no support from Adobe.

Backing up is conceptually simple. There is a Lightroom option to make backups of your catalog file, which you should turn on, and make sure the backups go to a different physical disk than the original. Your photos must also be backed up, this can be done by your operating system or by a third party program. Since your photos are never stored inside of LR, the photos are always available outside of Lightroom. Your organization and user-provided metadata is available in Lightroom, and most of it can be written to external files which most other photographic software will recognize. Your edits are not usable by non-Adobe software, and so you would have to export the photos as TIF or JPG to see the edits outside of Lightroom and use them in non-Adobe software.

I like LR because it has a nice organizational structure that you create, and can see on your drive

I think this is a mistake, and I think you are heading down the wrong path. You really want to organize by keywords and other metadata, and not by folder structure. This is much more powerful and flexible, and it makes use of Lightroom's strengths, instead of making use of your operating system's weaknesses. Your keywords and many other metadata (captions, titles, GPS locations) can be written to the photo files (or sidecar xmp files) for use outside of LR, and are readable by almost every other photographic software out there.

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New Here ,
Jun 08, 2017 Jun 08, 2017

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Thanks for your response.  So, if my computer dies and I place my backed up catalog on my new computer internal hard drive, will it be able to reference the files on the old external hard drive with all my picture folders that were originally created by the LR catalog?

Alternatively, if my external hard drive dies (the one with my photos on it, and I put the back up on my new photos external hard drive, can the catalog reference this? specifically if my hard drive crashes do I have to rebuild everything I structured in LR?

I do also like LR because you can import your photos from an event, and rename all files in an organized fashion, eg, "Devon's graduation 2017" and it will name them all this with a number as well. Plus it can place it in a folder that you name as well, in addition to the star rating, and tags. However, I like how it does this and if you keep all your folders organized on an external drive, you can also see where these events are in case LR isn't forever. Specifically

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LEGEND ,
Jun 08, 2017 Jun 08, 2017

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Thanks for your response.  So, if my computer dies and I place my backed up catalog on my new computer internal hard drive, will it be able to reference the files on the old external hard drive with all my picture folders that were originally created by the LR catalog?

yes, assuming the external drive has the same letter or name (and even if it doesn't, it's relatively simple to fix that)

Alternatively, if my external hard drive dies (the one with my photos on it, and I put the back up on my new photos external hard drive, can the catalog reference this? specifically if my hard drive crashes do I have to rebuild everything I structured in LR?

Same answer

I do also like LR because you can import your photos from an event, and rename all files in an organized fashion, eg, "Devon's graduation 2017" and it will name them all this with a number as well. Plus it can place it in a folder that you name as well, in addition to the star rating, and tags. However, I like how it does this and if you keep all your folders organized on an external drive, you can also see where these events are in case LR isn't forever. Specifically

Metadata is forever too, if you write it to the photo files or sidecar xmp files. You can set LR to write the metadata automatically, without user intervention. Honestly, I think you are making a mistake using folders to organize, make your folder structure as simple as possible, make the folder names capture date, and do all the organizing by keyword and other metadata. Some day, you are going to want to call up all Devon photos, not just his graduation, and keywords enable this, but folder organization prevents this. Similarly, (assuming you have other children), you might want to call up all graduation photos of all of your children. Keywords makes this simple, but it is not possible using folders.

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New Here ,
Jun 08, 2017 Jun 08, 2017

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Maybe you misunderstand about the folders.  Your photos (after reading the beginning of Kelby's book, and watching videos by Terry White) Looks like people create folders for the photos, with titles like "travel"  "Family"  "work (I take medical photos

)"  Agree about tagging, as super helpful and the pictures title "Cuba 2017- 1" will be helpful too, but yes tagging is key, if I want to search the photos devon was in for example.

Or do you just put all your photos (I have 25K) in one folder called Lightroom photos?

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LEGEND ,
Jun 08, 2017 Jun 08, 2017

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I specifically said you put your photos in folders by capture date. I do not recommend, in fact I suggest you avoid putting all photos into a single folder.

It is my opinion that you avoid like the plague any discussion of organizing by anyone named Kelby. If Terry White is recommending the same things as Kelby, then my opinion is that you avoid his advice as well.

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New Here ,
Jun 08, 2017 Jun 08, 2017

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Then I just would want to clarify.

1) Are you familiar with the book by Kelby and the videos by those two gentleman - just confirming that you are before I make a decision on purchasing the book or watching more videos  by T. White.

2) Do you recommend a book or video to help me get started?  I have seen a number of videos addressing messed up lightroom catalogs. I would like to get off on the right foot from the beginning.

3) Do you think that this is a good application (the CC Lightroom) for a hobbiest,with a nice DSLR who loves taking nice photos of family events (travel, sports, performances) and day to day activities with friends, family and pets?  To help organize, and edit their collections.

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LEGEND ,
Jun 08, 2017 Jun 08, 2017

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maryk49238410  wrote

Then I just would want to clarify.

1) Are you familiar with the book by Kelby and the videos by those two gentleman - just confirming that you are before I make a decision on purchasing the book or watching more videos  by T. White.

2) Do you recommend a book or video to help me get started?  I have seen a number of videos addressing messed up lightroom catalogs. I would like to get off on the right foot from the beginning.

3) Do you think that this is a good application (the CC Lightroom) for a hobbiest,with a nice DSLR who loves taking nice photos of family events (travel, sports, performances) and day to day activities with friends, family and pets?  To help organize, and edit their collections.

1) I have at least two books by Kelby which offer what I consider to be poor and off target advice on organizing. I was so disappointed in the material on organizing in the first  book that I decided to not purchase more from Kelby. The second book I received as a gift, I read it, and it was just as disappointing on the subject of organizing.

2) The DAM Book

3) Yes, I am not a professional photographer, and I use Lightroom to organize my photos. My photos are similar to yours: family events, travel, sports, day to day activities. Since you bring this up, I believe that Kelby's advice regarding organizing might make sense for professional photographers (but I'm still skeptical, I have read many professional photographers who don't do things Kelby's way), but I think it is awful advice for people who are just shooting photos as a part of their daily lives.

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Community Expert ,
Jun 08, 2017 Jun 08, 2017

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Agreeing fully with the advice from Paige.

Also some good articles on folder suggestions at-

https://www.lightroomqueen.com/lightroom/organizing/folders/

https://www.lightroomqueen.com/import-create-dated-folders/

Regards. My System: Lightroom-Classic 13.2 Photoshop 25.5, ACR 16.2, Lightroom 7.2, Lr-iOS 9.0.1, Bridge 14.0.2, Windows-11.

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