Re-Organize Lightroom photos. Help please?

When I first started using Lightroom I didn´t care much about file organization, so things got messy: all my files were imported in folders using the "YYYY-MM-DD" naming, but I managed to get it organized inside Lightroom using Collections. No biggie.

Thing is: I´m moving everything to a new computer and I´d like to get things right this time, using the following Structure:

YYYYMMDD_EventName

like

20130516_JulieWedding

so I can more easily find stuff using Finder.

What is the best way to do that? Is there any way to do it without re-creating and re-importing all my files (aka losing adjustments)?

Thank you in advance!

Library module, left side look at the folders. Right click on the folder. There is an option to rename.

You can rename the folders within LR.

flickserve wrote in post #15937642
Library module, left side look at the folders. Right click on the folder. There is an option to rename.

You can rename the folders within LR.

Wow! THANK YOU!
That´s awesome!

flickserve wrote in post #15937642
Library module, left side look at the folders. Right click on the folder. There is an option to rename.

You can rename the folders within LR.

From there you can/should use LR to move folders if you want to just move them (say onto an external drive along with your Catalog folder) but to do a clean copy (including your edit/metadata info) you could File/Export as Catalog (onto an external drive). This will give you the ability to copy your "digital negatives" (Raw files) and also create a new catalog that you can then open in your new computer, with all the metadata intact.

Alex
I had the same problem (disorganization) and needed to do the same thing, namely move everything to a new computer. In my case everything was on an external drive.

I wanted everything on my new computer, so I could use the external drive(s) for backup

I just created folders for each category I wanted, renamed existing as necessary and moved them. Much easier than I thought it would be

Thanks for the input, guys!
It is a shame I let things get to this point. I´m usually very well organized with other stuff and having to re-organize 20K+ photos will teach me a lesson.

This weekend it will be lightroom cleanup weekend!

Dont know if you use keywords, but that will make finding things more easy as well.

I use one folder Alex's Photo library, under that each year, say you began shooting in 2010, and then another for 2011 etc etc. With in those years you can do as you want 20130516_JulieWedding and so forth and so on.

Whats nice about this is, if you need to move, as you do now, all your moving is 1 folder Alex's Photo Library