Help sorting images from wedding and multiple shooters

Did a large upscale wedding multiple cameras, multiple shooters. Backed up cards to external hard drive. 70gb of images froze my computer trying to import LR4. Created smaller folders in Win7 and downloaded. Deleted all but the best 880 images (12gb), processed in LR4 and saved to folder as jpegs. Now I find out Win7 will not custom sort drag & drop. Guess I was thinking of Vista days when I created this work around to get job done.

OK, uploaded to my Smugmug based site and sort there. Everything great, everyone happy. Now I need to burn DVDs for B&G. Zip download from Smugmug does not retain sorted sequence when unzipped in Win7. Goes back to file name sort. Open in LR4 to try capture time sort. EXIF is now edit time not capture time and LR4 is telling me cannot re-sort folder.

Have had an amazing number of technical problems on this project and now my "brain is fried". Is there any way around renaming each image to achieve correct event sequence for burn to DVDs???

Thanks for any help!!!!!!!!!!!!

Did you have the camera clocks syncronized?
If so can you not rename or sort by time taken?

You can export groups of images from LR with the same prefix if they're still in some sort of order in LR. don't suppose you tagged them 'reception', 'ceremony', etc..?

Yes, all cameras sync. After I processed images in LR4 and saved to jpeg, when I look at EXIF I now see edit time not capture time. I could go back to original cards or unprocessed images, but that would take more time than renaming

BrandonSi wrote in post #15308836
You can export groups of images from LR with the same prefix if they're still in some sort of order in LR. don't suppose you tagged them 'reception', 'ceremony', etc..?

didn't tag, original image file name. Smugmug zip has Orig file name plus all their added numbers.

Export folders to where?

It sounds like somewhere in the process the Exif containing the capture time was "tossed out", possibly by SmugMug? I'm not sure what you put the images through that may have done that. But in any case, if that's the case then, well, you'll have to figure out an alternative approach. The only way to "fix" the capture time that is missing would be to go back to a version of the images prior to whatever was done to toss the Exif.

And then, lesson learned? I'd map out your workflow for this type of thing before unloading images from your cameras/cards. Lightroom could make the workflow straightforward, you just have to take a good workflow approach!

pfjbaldwin wrote in post #15308854
didn't tag, original image file name. Smugmug zip has Orig file name plus all their added numbers.

Export folders to where?

Export to your hard drive. I guess what I'm saying only makes sense if the images appear in a somewhat logical flow within LR. If the first 40-50 images are ceremony, you can just select those 40-50 images to export, and either put them in their own folder, or name them ceremony-XYZ.jpg for easy file sorting.

If the images are all over the place in LR...

I recently left SmugMug for Zenfolio, but couldn't you just create new, hidden galleries in SmugMug, and use their 'collect' or whatever they call copy to batch copy images to those new folders.. then download in zip files the new, individual folders? You could then use a variety of strategies to rename them so that they're in the correct order.

I have all the final images on my hard drive now. The fundamental problem is that in Windows 7, images in folders sort alpha-numeric. You can't drag an image to another position in the sequence. It can only be done by renaming the file. I thought there might be another place to put images, drag and drop arrange then burn the DVDs from there.

The sheer size of the images file at 70GB RAW overwhelmed my 10 month old computer and my workflow had to change to deal with it. My flow worked fine until now when I'm trying to burn the images and can't get the sort the way I need it to be.

BrandonSi wrote in post #15309144
Export to your hard drive. I guess what I'm saying only makes sense if the images appear in a somewhat logical flow within LR. If the first 40-50 images are ceremony, you can just select those 40-50 images to export, and either put them in their own folder, or name them ceremony-XYZ.jpg for easy file sorting.

If the images are all over the place in LR...

I recently left SmugMug for Zenfolio, but couldn't you just create new, hidden galleries in SmugMug, and use their 'collect' or whatever they call copy to batch copy images to those new folders.. then download in zip files the new, individual folders? You could then use a variety of strategies to rename them so that they're in the correct order.

LR4 should have no problems at all with 70GB. If it does then you just cull with Fast Picture Viewer or Photo Mechanic the import.

The only reason to process by camera is to make batch processing easier. That's trivial, just use the filters in Bridge or Lightroom.

Suggest you go back to Lightroom, sort them by date created/modified or manually if you have to, then export to jpeg again.

My wedding workflow could be useful to you. Sounds like you're pretty ad hoc at the moment.

Appreciate your suggestions. If I had 16gb RAM on my machine I wouldn't have had the problem in the first place. Backed up all 70gb external and could re-access now. But that would be a time consuming redo in lieu of renaming maybe 100 images. I didn't process by camera, batch processed in LR4 once culled 3600 images. No problem arranging in Smugmug for client to see as you do with your host. Here I am at the end of project and can't burn the deliverable DVDs without renaming the images I want to change sequence because Windows removed the drag & drop capability in Win 7. Just frustrating. I'm satisfied with my workflow, just not my workaround for this event with such a large file size. I could have already completed the resequence in the time I've taken with this thread.

tim wrote in post #15309289
LR4 should have no problems at all with 70GB. If it does then you just cull with Fast Picture Viewer or Photo Mechanic the import.

The only reason to process by camera is to make batch processing easier. That's trivial, just use the filters in Bridge or Lightroom.

Suggest you go back to Lightroom, sort them by date created/modified or manually if you have to, then export to jpeg again.

My wedding workflow could be useful to you. Sounds like you're pretty ad hoc at the moment.

Where I have multiple shooters I make sure that the cameras are synched and it seems like you have done that. I copy all of the originals into one folder. I use Breezebrowser Pro to rename my files as it has some very useful renaming tools. I always assign an ascending numeric + the function name + the original file name. I add the original file name to these in case one of the shooters gives me a card that they forgot the first go round (learned this one the hard way). It is quite easy to rename them back to the original and start over. When I do the export to the gallery for the customer I trim off the original file name so it would look something like 156785_SmithWedding.jp​g. The numeric part of the file name is unique and does not appear on any other image on my system (Breezebrowser remembers the last number used). Once I have done the renaming process (which takes mere minutes) I then import into my library and assign key words and do the ratings.

I use Windows7 and it works fine on folders of the size that you mention. It sounds to me like something else is going on. There are some great threads on here that speak to digital asset management (DAM) and even some books have been written on it as well. I suggest that maybe you should hunt some of them down and you should find some other fine examples of what others are doing. I revised my way of doing this a few times before I arrived at the current system which I have been using for the last 4 years. If you are using a library system such as Lightroom, it shouldn't matter where you put them as long as you update the IPTC info which you can then sort on at any time. That, imo, is the real power of Lightroom, its database.

Lightroom does a good job of renaming with the sequence -- in the Library module select all the images and press F2, choose a naming "template". Then if you set up the templae you can give them a name, and designate a starting sequence#. I typically use a "Custom" template -- you can add things and change the order around and whatnot.

However, if you have in fact had the Capture Time deleted from your Exif, you'll have problems -- you may need to manually select ones you know are in the same "sequence" and do the renaming.

If it was me I'd be sorely tempted to go back to the originals. In fact, in LR it's easy to "batch process" images in a sequence so that edits are applied once you have a "master image"...

I appreciate people taking their time to offer suggestions. At this point I renamed the 100 or so images that needed resequencing. I needed to get the job out the door.

I will go back and figure out what happened to the capture time and on which copies. I still have the original cards as well as the external HD back-up. Everything after the 70gb initial cull was LR4. My usual workflow is straight to LR4, arrow and X to cull, then capture time sort but the initial load on my 8gb ram i5 machine crawled in LR.

Again, thanks for reading and the help offers.