Lightroom and Workflow

[Aimevous]

Hi,

I've been using Lightroom for my shoots (non professional, non commercial) and I've been constantly troubled by the last step in my workflow.

Lightroom does a good job of importing, cataloging and (not overly complex) non-destructive editing (and in some aspects it actually outperforms PS), and would suffice the needs of most photographers out there.

However, when it comes to archival and storage, it feels like a timebomb to me. Or maybe I'm doing something wrong here.

I am using a 500GB local hard disk and all the work is done on it and the catalog is also stored in it. I'm not too sure how I should backup my work. There are like about 50 folders of about a few thousand images in the catalog right now and when I complete my editing of one of the folders, I'm not sure how I can archive it to my 2TB external drive. I have to archive the photos somehow because my 500GB will fill up pretty quick (and the catalog file will get huge and slow after a while).

Exporting the "done" folder as a catalog and then reimporting it into an "archive" catalog on the 2TB sounds counter intuitive and is extremely slow and excruciating process. Am I missing something here?

As such, I have been exploring the Adobe Bridge + ACR + PS combo. It allows a similar workflow but the last step is much more efficient, in the way that you can simply copy the "done" folder over to the external drive for storage (because the carriage file is in the same folder). However, I am reluctant to switch over to that combo right now because almost all my stuff is in Lightroom and I don't want to confuse myself with 2 different sets of stuff.

I spoke to someone recently and was told that it was possible for LR to work like ACR and have the carriage file stored in the folder so as to allow that kind of portability. However, that person doesn't remember how the setting was configured and I tried googling but to no avail (or maybe my keywords weren't right).

Can anyone shed some light on this or maybe how do you archive your work?

Greatly appreciate any comments or advice.

My sincerest apologies if this has been asked and answered before.

Thanks.

 

[chewraisins]

Hi there,

You could check out THIS VIDEO and also the series of tutorial videos on the site. It should answer most if not all of the questions you have when using LR.

Cheers,
Andrew

 

[Aimevous]

Thanks bro! That link is very very useful! There are so many useful videos there.

Grateful! =)

 

[woojacky]

My workflow is to use a new catalog for every new project just to ensure that the catalog file is small and portable. I realized once the images hit the thousand range, LR would slow down (in my Mac but may not be a general thing). For me even if the path has change due to archival I would be able to re-map it when I open the catalog. Normally my directory structure would be

-> Project Name
==->Project Name folder holding catalog file
==->RAW
==->Export
====->hi-res JPEG (300dpi)
====->low-res JPEG (72dpi)

 

[Aimevous]

My workflow is to use a new catalog for every new project just to ensure that the catalog file is small and portable. I realized once the images hit the thousand range, LR would slow down (in my Mac but may not be a general thing). For me even if the path has change due to archival I would be able to re-map it when I open the catalog. Normally my directory structure would be

-> Project Name
==->Project Name folder holding catalog file
==->RAW
==->Export
====->hi-res JPEG (300dpi)
====->low-res JPEG (72dpi)

Actually that was my experience with LR2. But after watching the video that chewraisins showed, the Adobe person mentioned that LR3.2 and newer doesnt slow down and I can attest to that. I just combined all my catalogs into one massive one with about 50k photos or more and I didn't notice much difference in speed. And I'm on windows, which supposedly should have a slightly (very mildly) poorer performance due to NTFS which I would say is inferior to HFS.

Thanks for sharing your workflow though!

However, maybe you should check out the videos on that link above. I learnt quite a bit on LR from those videos.. (only caught 2 so far though)