Baby Steps

The first thing to do in Lightroom is import photos and put them into Collections. I had no trouble importing existing photos from my drive, but importing new photos from a CF card took a couple of tries. I had to adjust my thinking.

Lightroom does the organizing for me. I don't have to work with my file structure. Lightroom creates a file structure just like I would. Importing from a CF card using Lightroom is actually a lot faster and easier than my old method. I do a few clicks, enter a file name, enter a folder name and then sit back and Lightroom does a lot of work.

Since I used to copy photos onto my drive using drag and drop, I never renamed my files. As of 2011, I'm renaming files. It makes no sense not to. My naming convention is Activity-Sequence# And I place the pictures in a year directory, inside a folder with the name DateActivity

Next, I need to learn exactly how to remove my flop photos. If I understand it correctly, Lightroom has at least three levels of 'remove.' I can remove a photo from a collection, which will keep it in Lightroom, but not in that set. Photos can be in more than one collection at the same time. I can remove the photo from the Catalog, which will remove it from Lightroom, and as a result, from any Collections it might also be in. I can remove the photo from my drive, which removes it from Catalog, Collection(s) and Lightroom.

To remove photos, I must do so from inside Lightroom. If I try to remove a photo from the drive without using Lightroom, Lightroom will keep it in the Catalog, and in Collection(s), but Lightroom will tell me that it doesn't know where the actual image file is.