On Thu, Apr 2, 2009 at 6:37 PM, Godfrey DiGiorgi <[email protected]> wrote: > On Apr 2, 2009, at 2:49 PM, Larry Colen wrote: > >> Perhaps you can tell me how to handle an issue. My iMac doesn't have >> huge amounts of disk space, and it's not trivial to add a bigger >> drive. > > > - The solution is to buy an external hard drive with lots of space, Larry, > if you don't want to install a larger hard drive. You can get a 1T > standalone drive and plug it into the iMac for about $100 or so these days. > Put the LR catalog and your image files onto it. If your iMac supports a > FW800 interface, be sure to buy one with a FW800 interface as that will net > the fastest disk transfer rate. > > I don't know which iMac you have, but while I wouldn't recommend changing > drives in an iMac to a computer novice it should be a piece of cake for > anyone who knows about hardware. I have opened and swapped drives on all of > the iMacs prior to the very latest ones, just put a 1T into an iMac G5 for a > friend the other day. It took me 10 minutes: a standard SATA 3.5 inch drive. > > I have several external drives with a repository of the image files I don't > access so frequently on them. Saves space on the startup drive, keeps lots > of disk space free for best performance. > > - When you import into LR and want to reorganize files into subdirectories > and such, you can either just move them around from within LR in the Folder > panel or you can move them around using the Finder. When you re-start LR > after doing the latter, files it can't find will be highlighted with a > question mark. Pick one, click on the question mark, and locate the new them > for LR. It will reset the file paths for all files in that folder. > > I import into a folder hierarchy that is named as follows > > ~photo-files/YYYY/in_progress/YYYYMMDD[-tag] where -tag is an optional > mnemonic naming the group of files. > > If there are several sessions in a day, I can do one of two things: > - import each session into its own YYYYMMDD-tag directory under in_progress > > - import the whole batch into a single YYYYMMDD-tag directory under > in_progress and then sort them in LR. In the Grid mode, select each > session's images then use the "Library->New Folder..." command to create a > new subdirectory containing those files under YYYYMMDD-tag with a > descriptive name. The end result of doing this is that clicking on the > YYYYMMDD-tag directory will show all the files in all the sessions, but > opening the disclosure triangle and clicking on each one of the > subdirectories shows the files that are in each individually. EG: > > imported into '20090401-mixed' ... 20 files > selected seven and created subdir 'morning_walk' > selected three and created subdir 'jeannine_portrait' > selected ten and created subdir 'sunset_walk' > > You could also create the subdirs with the same naming pattern > (YYYYMMDD-tag1, ..tag2, ..tag3) and afterwards move them to be peers of the > original YYYYMMDD-tag parent directory, and delete the parent when it no > longer contains anything. > > I also rename all files on import using the naming pattern YYMMDD-tag-fnum > where > YYMMDD -- capture date > tag -- mnemonic custom text I assign at import time > fnum -- is the numeric portion of the original, camera generated filename. > > This means that if I import several days' worth of shooting at once, they'll > all sort easily in the Finder by name in date order. EG: > > Importing four days shooting at one time today, I get > > ~photo-files/YYYY/in_progress/20090402-mixed_work > ~photo-files/YYYY/in_progress/20090402-mixed_work/090330-mixed-1010223.dng > ~photo-files/YYYY/in_progress/20090402-mixed_work/090331-mixed-1010224.dng > ~photo-files/YYYY/in_progress/20090402-mixed_work/090401-mixed-1010225.dng > ~photo-files/YYYY/in_progress/20090402-mixed_work/090402-mixed-2458.dng > ~photo-files/YYYY/in_progress/20090402-mixed_work/090402-mixed-2459.dng > ~photo-files/YYYY/in_progress/20090402-mixed_work/090402-mixed-2460.dng > ~photo-files/YYYY/in_progress/20090402-mixed_work/090402-mixed-1010226.dng > etc > > which shows I used two different cameras/cards (different fnum numbering > schemas) when I look at the contents of the folder after import. > > Basically, I find LR does the job very efficiently and with very few issues. > It keeps me working on the photos, not the file system. > > Godfrey >
Interesting to note that your methods are very similar to what I actually do for digital files in the filesystem, with most of the same steps and organizational methods. You're just doing the fiddly work in LR rather than in Finder (or Explorer or Bridge for me, being Windows based at the moment). The major difference I see is that my images are assigned to folders based on date taken (via Image Ingester) rather than based on import date and I don't tend to separate out by tags, although I will make subdirectories if I'm doing something specific. You actually seem to be doing more work on import than I am, although you get the benefit of being able to see all files imported on one day at a time, where I only get to see all files shot on one day or assigned to a specific project due to my use of folders. I'm not really seeing any outright advantage to either method overall. My methods play better with my other needs (my film workflow) while yours seem to reward heavier use of keywords for later retrieval. Oh, and I agree entirely on the external drive issue, love them and other than the wall wart issue (they multiply) external drives are much easier to deal with than adding internals. Currently running 2.7TB of drive space on a system with a 320GB boot drive with 1140GB of that in external cases. -Adam -- M. Adam Maas http://www.mawz.ca Explorations of the City Around Us. -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
