Unsolved Lightroom questions

I've been using Lightroom for a few years now (on 3.5 currently), I've got Martin Evening's The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2 Book, and I still have a few unanswered questions:

1) I can't find a way using the Filter bar to show only JPEG files or only RAW files. What am I missing? Or is this function missing from Lightroom?

2) I don't use Import, I copy files from my SD card to my hard disk using Explorer (or another file manager in Linux). Then later I use the Synchronize folders option. While synchronizing and adding my photos to the catalog, Lightroom creates a collection, on the fly, and then jumps to display that collection afterwards. This is mildly annoying as I don't want to use that collection. I want to stay in the folder that I just synchronized. I've put up with this behaviour for years. Can I change it?

3) I've got some photos in a folder on my hard disk that I want to include in my catalog but when I try to synchronize that folder in Lightroom, it tells me that it won't include these photos as they're already in the catalog. Well, if they are, they're in one of the other hundred-odd folders and I suppose I could search for them but that would be pointless. I want duplicates in whichever folder I choose to put them. I can find a workaround, but why is LR not letting me do this?

4) A lot of the time, when I select a number of photos in the grid and drag them to a different folder, most of them go across, but LR tells me that one of them couldn't be moved. I then drag that photo on its own and it moves. This seems like a bug in 3.5 to me. What do you think?

1) I can't find a way using the Filter bar to show only JPEG files or only RAW files. What am I missing? Or is this function missing from Lightroom?

Invoke the Filter bar. Click on Metadata and when the Filter bar expands, click on any of the current column headings and a context menu will appear. From that menu select, "File type" and the filter will show you the various file types in your library.

I've had #4 happen to me also. I haven't been able to figure out why or what to do to change it.

2. Synchronizing is importing, it is just done without opening the Import page. LR puts the newly imported files into the temporary New Imports collection because most people want to edit those images right away and having them displayed separately from previous imports is more convenient. LR designers really think you should just dump all your files into one huge folder with hundreds of thousands of files, organized only within LR. If there is anybody who actually does that I guess he would be glad to have his latest import segregated. No way to change that except to scroll down to the relevant folder.

3. Open the Import dialog page and uncheck 'Don't Import Duplicates'.

4. Yeh, somewhat buggy. You have to be careful to click in the center of the thumbnail, not on the frame.

I don't know if you can change the default behavior in 2)...maybe check in the Lightroom forum?

As far as 3), well, Lightroom doesn't "do" duplicates, although if you have a "workaround" where it does work with duplicats in the one catalog, I'd be interested in hearing about it.

I use Collections to put references to files in various places and, when I need to work on another version of an image I use Virtual Copies and, in fact, Collections can work with Virtual Copies separately from the original image/file, including in the Develop module.

So, I imagine that this is the approach LR is designed to take, rather than using duplicate files.

Of course you may prefer otherwise...the normal way of addressing that is to go to the Adobe forums/site and put in a Feature Request, and maybe to bring it up in the forum for discussion.

tzalman wrote in post #13505060
2. Synchronizing is importing, it is just done without opening the Import page. LR puts the newly imported files into the temporary New Imports collection because most people want to edit those images right away and having them displayed separately from previous imports is more convenient. LR designers really think you should just dump all your files into one huge folder with hundreds of thousands of files, organized only within LR. If there is anybody who actually does that I guess he would be glad to have his latest import segregated. No way to change that except to scroll down to the relevant folder.

3. Open the Import dialog page and uncheck 'Don't Import Duplicates'.

4. Yeh, somewhat buggy. You have to be careful to click in the center of the thumbnail, not on the frame.

Ah, I'd forgotten that option! I guess I'm just used to not working with duplicates!

Hmm, I know that in theory LR doesn't import dupes although I have never actually tried to do so. So I decided to test it. In Explorer I went to a folder that I imported a couple days ago, copied one file and pasted it on my desktop. Then I opened LR and the Import dialog and selected Desktop. All the junk that I have there was displayed and checked, including the dupe. I unchecked all and rechecked the dupe, confirmed that the top bar was set to 'Add'. It imported with no problem. Changed the top bar to Move and picked a random folder (My Music) and it moved the file with no problem. I pasted the file to the desktop again and set Move to the original folder that I had copied from and it moved the file and gave a new name, appending -2 after the original name. Finally, on the fourth time it refused to import it. So it seems LR's behavior in this case is quite inconsistent.

PixelMagic wrote in post #13504960
Invoke the Filter bar. Click on Metadata and when the Filter bar expands, click on any of the current column headings and a context menu will appear. From that menu select, "File type" and the filter will show you the various file types in your library.

I got that context menu and somehow missed seeing 'File type'. Thanks for that.

tzalman wrote in post #13505060
LR puts the newly imported files into the temporary New Imports collection because most people want to edit those images right away and having them displayed separately from previous imports is more convenient.

Sometimes I want to edit those images right away, but since the folder I'm synchronizing has several sub-folders, I don't want to edit the new photos in all of the folders straight away, just the ones in the top-level directory.

tzalman wrote in post #13505060
LR designers really think you should just dump all your files into one huge folder with hundreds of thousands of files, organized only within LR.

At least it's relatively easy to work in sync with system folders in LR. In Elements 10's Organizer (which I refuse to use) you might as well dump everything into one folder. It's so slow using system folders as to be unusable. And I don't want 'albums'. I rarely use collections in LR. I logically sort photos into sub-folders and work with them there.

tzalman wrote in post #13505060
3. Open the Import dialog page and uncheck 'Don't Import Duplicates'.

I didn't think I had that checked. I'll look at it tomorrow. Thanks

tzalman wrote in post #13505060
4. Yeh, somewhat buggy. You have to be careful to click in the center of the thumbnail, not on the frame.

I thought I'd gotten into that habit. I'm not sure that that's what's happening but I'll check again tomorrow when I'm back in Windows.

tonylong wrote in post #13505124
the normal way of addressing that is to go to the Adobe forums/site and put in a Feature Request, and maybe to bring it up in the forum for discussion.

Yes, thanks for the suggestion, though since LR is built to work with collections and I work with folders, I doubt that my request would carry much weight.

tonylong wrote in post #13505130
Ah, I'd forgotten that option! I guess I'm just used to not working with duplicates!

Aha! Reading that gave me the answer I need. I just realised that I have "Don't Import Duplicates" turned OFF for my main catalog, but it must have been ON by default when I created the catalog for my backup photos, where the problem is occurring. Thanks, Tony!

tzalman wrote in post #13505375
So it seems LR's behavior in this case is quite inconsistent.

Which probably makes it consistent with its previous inconsistency...

You know, I dragged my fet for a long time regarding collections in LR. I made them in kind of a haphazard way. But, many of my older photos were in what you could call "collections" in my file system -- old family photos, old friends, etc.

But I decided some time ago to go for a more "structured" file/folder system, creating "year" parent folders in my library external drive then moving folders from shoots that were named with a date-description setup.

And then, this latest project of mine got me serious about going through all those old shoots, getting them into the proper per-year folder, but also getting them into collections that could reflect various things -- family, travel, events, etc, and also making sure they were properly keyworded.

That way, I have several ways of getting to or viewing things. I'm still "folder-oriented", but my collections and keywords are at hand as well. I really wouldn't want to take the "One massive folder, many collections" approach, but I have ended up with plenty of collections and keywords!

tzalman wrote in post #13505060
3. Open the Import dialog page and uncheck 'Don't Import Duplicates'.

I opened the dialog and straight away saw why I didn't find this option earlier. The 'File Handling' section at top-right was collapsed. In fact, the entire dialog looked quite different in LR2, I'm certain of it.

garryknight wrote in post #13504934
3) I've got some photos in a folder on my hard disk that I want to include in my catalog but when I try to synchronize that folder in Lightroom, it tells me that it won't include these photos as they're already in the catalog. Well, if they are, they're in one of the other hundred-odd folders and I suppose I could search for them but that would be pointless. I want duplicates in whichever folder I choose to put them. I can find a workaround, but why is LR not letting me do this?

Sounds like you have quite a mess going on there. I have MANY catalogs that I do different types of shoots with. I have a Miscellaneous catalog that (like yours) usually has a lot of photos in it. But when it becomes too full then I usually clean it out. Maybe try this and you'll be able to add those photos a little easier.

CameraMan wrote in post #13509158
Sounds like you have quite a mess going on there.

I have my main working catalog with new photos in the New folder and processed photos in various folders according to type, e.g. architecture, events, people, street, etc. Every time this grows to about 4 GB I burn it to DVD and move the photos onto my main backup drive. The catalog there doesn't have a New folder, just the various folders according to type.

Not much of a mess