Organizing files

[jdyke]

Hi

Although I don't have a copy of lightroom beta yet (Anxious Windows User)  I am interested to know whether Mac people have had to change their RAW file/folder organisation workflow?

I have changed mine a few times over the years to suit different applications I have used.

My current workflow is to dowload the RAW files to a a newly created folder (date_camera_shoot) use a raw converter to remove the 'duff' shots then process the 'keepers' to TIFFs into a sub folder of the created folder called 'processed'.  (I backup the Raw files and TIFF files to DVD & seperate disk)

I know that there are several different methods of file handling in Lightroom such as linking to your original structure, importing the whole 'shabang' into lightroom or importing them in as seperate DNG files.

My question is which method have most people gone for and what was your reason?

Sorry if this seams like a dumb question but in my experience some applications just seem to suit different ways of organizing your files better than others.

Cheers,

JD

[61Dynamic]

There is no need to change one's organization methods with LR. Just reference the files where they lay when importing and LR will mimic that structure in the Library as you know. This is the method I use. The only exception is that the files made from the raws will be kept in the same directory as the raw files.

The reason I don't just import from LR is that if I do so, LR will not match the file directory on the hard drive to what is shown in Library in the program. It'll place all shoots into the lightroom library directory on your hard drive instead. In addition, if you move an image from one shoot to another, those changes aren't reflected on the drive either (this happens regardless of how files are imported). Since the whole point in an open storage system is to make things easy to find outside of LR, I figure I'd minimize the mess as much as possible. It adds some extra work, but is worth it if I plan on using a different program with any of the files. This is something I hope they fix (I haven't tested B3 on this yet).