What version of LightRoom to get for my particular needs?

Although LR uses only a referenced file managements system, it offers the user the ability to use it's preset locations. If you are happy to just use LR to manage the images this will not be a problem, unless you want to have files stored on an external/additional drive, as you will have to tell LR which drive to use. This is not possible using iPhotos, as Apple basically wants total control over where you put things, so you have zero options. This is the cause of many of the complaints about the new import process. In an effort to make it "simple" they have removed choices, and also made it harder to confirm that you have made the correct, for you, selections. If you just want to use dummies mode, and let LR chose for you though all will be well.

Also the difficulty of LR is mainly with its abundant choices. For example I can quite quickly think of five or six different ways that you can end up with a JPEG file being exported from LR. Firstly there is the Export Dialogue, arrived at by hitting the export button in the Library module (there are multiple way of opening this dialogue too). This is often the usual way to export a JPEG or other file type. Then you can use the Print module, and you can use that to print to a JPEG file. Both the Web and Book modules will also get you JPEG files as part of their output, and I think you might also be able to get JPEG's from the Slideshow module. Finally it is also possible to set things up so that using Edit in gives an option that will allow you to render a JPEG and open it in an editing program. It is the same for many other functions, there are lots of different ways of ending up with the same results. The thing to realise is that you don't have to use them all. I have never used the book module, and only looked at the web and slideshow options in passing, but have never used them in anger so to speak.

As others have said though I think you would be much better off trying out Photoshop Elements. It has a similar organisational system, which can be integrated into LR at a later date if you decide to go that way. It also has a version of ACR the RAW processing engine, which has a simplified interface limiting access to some of the more advanced tools. It also includes most of the important to a photographer pixel editing tools from PS. It has some very good modes of operation that will either automate, or hold your hand as you work, although that can all be turned off and you just get on with it. It is a product that specifically aimed at the basic user who has very little understanding of how computers work.

Alan

Tom,
Your post above and a couple similar ones that I remember seeing in the past are what prompted me to suggest above that you try out Photoshop Elements 14 which would give you most of the editing functions of Lightroom while still being closer to what you are already familiar with.

LR is very essentially different. For instance, you ask, "I have no idea what you are talking about with a "path", with regards to a photo being on the hard drive and on LR simultaneously. Can't a photo just be in LR, the way photos are just in iPhoto?" The fact is that no photo is ever "in LR" because LR is nothing more than a very detailed list of your photos, including their locations and the things that need to be done to each photo in order to change it according to the boss' desires (i.e. your desires). In order to get a photo onto that list you have to "import" it and in order to get LR to actually make those changes you have to "export" it - at which time LR creates a whole new photo file which incorporated those changes, so you now have two files. That is very different from conventional programs where changes are either saved when you click "Save" or lost when you close the program. It's called "non-destructive" editing because the original photo file is never changed, but as you can see it is a different approach to photo editing and it does require a certain amount of learning new ways.

Adobe has been trying to make LR easier for newcomers, for instance the latest update simplifies the importing process, nevertheless a certain amount of doing things that you haven't done in the past will be necessary.

DGStinner wrote in post #17736449
You're free to store your images in whatever folder structure you prefer (date, location, all in one folder, etc). The main thing to remember is to only make changes to the image files (locations, names, etc) within Lightroom. If you move the files or rename them outside of Lightroom, Lightroom won't know where they are and you'll have to tell Lightroom where you moved the images to.

Yikes!!!
As an Apple user, I know nothing about "folder structure". I haven't used folders yet. Is that like in the windows-based PC computers, where you have icons that look like file folders, and then you have folders within the folders, and folders within the folders within the folders, etc, etc, etc?

Do I really have to learn all that just to use LightRoom, or is there some more simplistic way?

BigAl007 wrote in post #17736490
Although LR uses only a referenced file managements system, it offers the user the ability to use it's preset locations. If you are happy to just use LR to manage the images this will not be a problem, unless you want to have files stored on an external/additional drive, as you will have to tell LR which drive to use. This is not possible using iPhotos, as Apple basically wants total control over where you put things, so you have zero options. This is the cause of many of the complaints about the new import process. In an effort to make it "simple" they have removed choices, and also made it harder to confirm that you have made the correct, for you, selections. If you just want to use dummies mode, and let LR chose for you though all will be well.

Also the difficulty of LR is mainly with its abundant choices. For example I can quite quickly think of five or six different ways that you can end up with a JPEG file being exported from LR. Firstly there is the Export Dialogue, arrived at by hitting the export button in the Library module (there are multiple way of opening this dialogue too). This is often the usual way to export a JPEG or other file type. Then you can use the Print module, and you can use that to print to a JPEG file. Both the Web and Book modules will also get you JPEG files as part of their output, and I think you might also be able to get JPEG's from the Slideshow module. Finally it is also possible to set things up so that using Edit in gives an option that will allow you to render a JPEG and open it in an editing program. It is the same for many other functions, there are lots of different ways of ending up with the same results. The thing to realise is that you don't have to use them all. I have never used the book module, and only looked at the web and slideshow options in passing, but have never used them in anger so to speak.

As others have said though I think you would be much better off trying out Photoshop Elements. It has a similar organisational system, which can be integrated into LR at a later date if you decide to go that way. It also has a version of ACR the RAW processing engine, which has a simplified interface limiting access to some of the more advanced tools. It also includes most of the important to a photographer pixel editing tools from PS. It has some very good modes of operation that will either automate, or hold your hand as you work, although that can all be turned off and you just get on with it. It is a product that specifically aimed at the basic user who has very little understanding of how computers work.

Alan

tzalman wrote in post #17736503
Tom,
Your post above and a couple similar ones that I remember seeing in the past are what prompted me to suggest above that you try out Photoshop Elements 14 which would give you most of the editing functions of Lightroom while still being closer to what you are already familiar with.

LR is very essentially different. For instance, you ask, "I have no idea what you are talking about with a "path", with regards to a photo being on the hard drive and on LR simultaneously. Can't a photo just be in LR, the way photos are just in iPhoto?" The fact is that no photo is ever "in LR" because LR is nothing more than a very detailed list of your photos, including their locations and the things that need to be done to each photo in order to change it according to the boss' desires (i.e. your desires). In order to get a photo onto that list you have to "import" it and in order to get LR to actually make those changes you have to "export" it - at which time LR creates a whole new photo file which incorporated those changes, so you now have two files. That is very different from conventional programs where changes are either saved when you click "Save" or lost when you close the program. It's called "non-destructive" editing because the original photo file is never changed, but as you can see it is a different approach to photo editing and it does require a certain amount of learning new ways.

Adobe has been trying to make LR easier for newcomers, for instance the latest update simplifies the importing process, nevertheless a certain amount of doing things that you haven't done in the past will be necessary.

Alan and Elie, thanks for your thoughtful responses. Although I must admit, reading what you wrote somewhat "fried my brain", so to speak!

With regards to your recommendations about using Photoshop Elements instead of Lightroom, I have one concern. That concern is that many, many years ago when I had Elements, I don't think it could handle RAW photos. So my understanding has been that Lightroom is what you need to use if you shoot in RAW, and that you can only use Photoshop and PS Elements if you are able to convert the RAW file into some other format prior to bringing into Photoshop. I really don't understand how to change a RAW file into anything else, so I pretty much need to stick to programs that work with the original RAW file (the way iPhoto does).

Has Photoshop or PS Elements changed so that they now work directly with a RAW file, or would I have to learn how to convert RAW files into something else (probably not gonna happen) just to be able to use these programs?

Tom Reichner wrote in post #17736548
Yikes!!!
As an Apple user, I know nothing about "folder structure". I haven't used folders yet. Is that like in the windows-based PC computers, where you have icons that look like file folders, and then you have folders within the folders, and folders within the folders within the folders, etc, etc, etc?

Do I really have to learn all that just to use LightRoom, or is there some more simplistic way?

As others have suggested, maybe look at Elements instead of Lightroom.

I'm not a Mac user, but I believe that system is easier to use. Just learn what you need to get a job done.

For me, folders are something essential to know about. They are the electronic version of files in a filing cabinet. They are analogous to cabinets, drawers, and folders, and maybe sub-folders, and files inside the folders. But I think some find them difficult, and maybe with a Mac you can avoid them.

Tom Reichner wrote in post #17736548
Yikes!!!
As an Apple user, I know nothing about "folder structure". I haven't used folders yet. Is that like in the windows-based PC computers, where you have icons that look like file folders, and then you have folders within the folders, and folders within the folders within the folders, etc, etc, etc?

Do I really have to learn all that just to use LightRoom, or is there some more simplistic way?

You could just store all your images in the Pictures folder without separating them into subfolders. Personally, I store all mine separated by year.

Archibald wrote in post #17736555
As others have suggested, maybe look at Elements instead of Lightroom.

My only concern with Elements is that Tom will still have to manually copy the files to an appropriate location on his hard drive, then to work on each one, he'll have to navigate through his computer's folder structure to find each file, open it, save it.

Archibald wrote in post #17736555
For me, folders are something essential to know about. They are the electronic version of files in a filing cabinet. They are analogous to cabinets, drawers, and folders, and maybe sub-folders, and files inside the folders. But I think some find them difficult, and maybe with a Mac you can avoid them.

Tom, this is great advice.

Think of your computer as a big filing room, with one or more filing cabinets.
- Each filing cabinet is a hard drive - maybe you just have the one that's built into the computer. Maybe you ALSO have an external drive that you can carry with you or share with a friend - that's a filing cabinet on wheels.
- Each filing cabinet has many drawers - as many as you could possibly need - and within each drawer, you can put as many folders as you need. You can put a bunch of photos into a single folder. You can put a folder inside another folder.
- You can have a drawer labeled "2015 photos" and inside there you have a folder labeled "January" and another folder named "February," and so on.
- Or, you can have one huge drawer labeled "Photos" and inside that drawer, there's a unique folder for every time you went out shooting. (I believe this is how iPhoto does it, it calls each folder a Roll, but this is all done behind the scenes)
- Or, you can label the drawers and folders in whatever makes sense to you.


In addition to the drawers and folders and sub-folders, you have a helpful assistant and a big index system. This is Lightroom's organizational database.
- Each time you come home with a new card full of photos, you can hand them over to your assistant and say "File these in your usual manner." This is Lightroom's default, and honestly I don't remember exactly what the default is.
- OR, you can instruct your assistant to "File these in the Birds drawer, in the Owls folder"
- Or, you can instruct your assistant to "File these in the 2015 drawer, in the February folder, in a sub-folder called Yellowstone Park"

- With a little extra effort, you can also tell your assistant, "On the back of every photo, write 'Owls, Birds, Yellowstone, January, National Parks, Endangered'" - this is Lightroom's keyword system. Your assistant will make note of these keywords in the card index.

- You can also rename the files when they're being put away, I can't think of a good analogy.

- Without any additional instruction, your assistant will make note of lots of other details about the files: Camera body, ISO, focal length, date, time, any copyright info that you've put into your camera's settings, etc.

- The first time you tell your assistant all the details about these photos and how you want them files, you can also tell them "OK, remember everything we're about to do, so I don't have to micromanage you next time." This is Lightroom's import presets. If, once a month you go to Yellowstone to take pictures of owls, you make an Import Preset called "Yellowstone Owls" that includes alllll those details that you just told your assistant. Next month, just plug in that card, choose that preset, click Import, go have a coffee while it does its work.

Now, if you're diligent about this when importing/filing, in the future you can go back and ask your assistant, "Show me every photo that you wrote Owls on the back, taken with a focal length of 200mm or greater." This is Lightroom's filter bar, it's built into the Library. You can tell your assistant, "OK, keep all these matching photos at your fingertips because I'll want to examine them again tomorrow" with a Smart Collection.


For many purposes, you don't have to remember where you filed everything. If, when you're first bringing home today's new images, you and your assistant make good notes (keywords, folder structure, file renaming, or any combination of the above), you'll be able to find them regardless of where you put them.

I like to have a little more control - I tell my assistant exactly where to put the files each time.

Archibald likes to have a lot more control - he puts away the files himself, then tells his assistant that there are new files.


*** Tom, let's say you want to find a particular picture that you took of a particular deer, you remember you shot it sometime in Spring of 2013. Can you describe how you do that in iPhoto?

Knowing how you do things NOW might help us give you some advice as to whether Lightroom (or Elements or whatever)will have an approximation of that process, that makes sense to you.

Photoshop 7 had the first versions of Adobe Camera Raw plugin that could be added at an additional cost in 2002. The next version PS8/PSCS (2003) had ACR without additional cost. ACR for Elements has been part of PSE since 2006, so nothing new there.

Actually, if you want to share your photos, you always convert them into something else. That's because Raw files are simply not suitable for viewing by "man nor beast"; they are shades of grey, dark and flat. This is a Raw image:

Tom Reichner wrote in post #17736427
....Can anyone else share their learning experiences with LR? Did you just pick it up "automatically", like I did with iPhoto, or did you have to study, concentrate, focus, etc in order to figure out how to use it?

Tom, I bought LR recently (standalone version). I'm computer literate, familiar with MS file storing systems since the days of DOS, and have done some programming, but I find that learning the program and its multitude of keyboard shortcuts and menu quirks is NOT easy.

It does NOT have a user-friendly or intuitive interface, and I would never have been able to get as far as I have with it without using online tutorials on one computer side by side with LR on another. I'm not going to alter decades of my file storage methods just to suit LR, so I just use it for RAW conversions and its amazingly useful editing features and tools.

teekay wrote in post #17736912
Tom, I bought LR recently (standalone version). I'm computer literate, familiar with MS file storing systems since the days of DOS, and have done some programming, but I find that learning the program and its multitude of keyboard shortcuts and menu quirks is NOT easy.

It does NOT have a user-friendly or intuitive interface, and I would never have been able to get as far as I have with it without using online tutorials on one computer side by side with LR on another. I'm not going to alter decades of my file storage methods just to suit LR, so I just use it for RAW conversions and its amazingly useful editing features and tools.

I quite agree with this assessment, except to say that after you are over the learning hump, the program does become intuitive (mostly), and one can work fast.

But it took me maybe 2 years to get to that point. Not 2 years full time, obviously...

Nathan,

I love your post! Thank you so much for the analogies you made......that helps me to understand the whole file thing a lot better.

nathancarter wrote in post #17736762
*** Tom, let's say you want to find a particular picture that you took of a particular deer, you remember you shot it sometime in Spring of 2013. Can you describe how you do that in iPhoto?

Knowing how you do things NOW might help us give you some advice as to whether Lightroom (or Elements or whatever)will have an approximation of that process, that makes sense to you.

First, iPhoto has all of my photos in one huge group! They are not divided into files or anything - when I open iPhoto, it will be in the "default" mode, which is simply a group called "photos", which means all of the photos I ever imported into iPhoto. So what I have before me will be an iPhoto window that is displaying all 60,000 or 70,000 photos. They are arranged chronologically (that is automatically how iPhoto does it). At the top of the window will be the photos with the earliest date, and on the bottom will be the images most recently taken.

Now, if I want to find a particular photo of a deer, I always remember when I took it, as you suggested. So, to find it I can can do one of two things:

1: I can, in iPhoto's "photos" view, simply scroll to the part of the photos that cover the early part of 2013. Then I look for the deer photo. Usually found in about a half minute.
Here is a screen shot showing what my iPhoto looks like in "photos" view (in which all 70,000+ of my photos are shown). Note on the bar at the left of the screen; see where "photos" is highlighted in blue? That shows that I am currently in "Photos" view.

I wanted to add...

The real driving force that got me to use LR a few years ago was a need for a way to quickly screen a day's shots, mostly of birds. I needed a program that would quickly let me zoom in so I could check for critical focus on the eye, and back out again for overall framing and pose. I was taking hundreds of bird pics a day and needed a way to efficiently discard the duds and near-dupes and keep the better ones.

Today I shoot a lot of macro too. Similar problems exist in macro as in bird photography. It can be hard to get critical focus and satisfactory overall composition. The critters are in constant motion. So, one shoots way more pics with the intention to cull later.

I find LR is excellent for doing this kind of previewing and marking duds for deletion.

Of course if your subjects and/or needs are different, then these capabilities might not be important for you.

Tom Reichner wrote in post #17737279
Nathan,

I love your post! Thank you so much for the analogies you made......that helps me to understand the whole file thing a lot better.

First, iPhoto has all of my photos in one huge group! They are not divided into files or anything - when I open iPhoto, it will be in the "default" mode, which is simply a group called "photos", which means all of the photos I ever imported into iPhoto. So what I have before me will be an iPhoto window that is displaying all 60,000 or 70,000 photos. They are arranged chronologically (that is automatically how iPhoto does it). At the top of the window will be the photos with the earliest date, and on the bottom will be the images most recently taken.

Now, if I want to find a particular photo of a deer, I always remember when I took it, as you suggested. So, to find it I can can do one of two things:

1: I can, in iPhoto's "photos" view, simply scroll to the part of the photos that cover the early part of 2013. Then I look for the deer photo. Usually found in about a half minute.
Here is a screen shot showing what my iPhoto looks like in "photos" view (in which all 70,000+ of my photos are shown). Note on the bar at the left of the screen; see where "photos" is highlighted in blue? That shows that I am currently in "Photos" view.

Hosted photo: posted by Tom Reichner in
./showthread.php?p=177​37279&i=i233340151
forum: RAW, Post Processing & Printing

2: I can go to the album I created that is called "2013 bests". In this album will be all of the 2013 photos that were worth editing. I just look for the particular photo and find it within a few seconds. I have created an album for the best photos of each calendar year, and each album has roughly 1,500 images (give or take a few hundred).
Here is a screenshot showing what the album view is like.

Hosted photo: posted by Tom Reichner in
./showthread.php?p=177​37279&i=i98916499
forum: RAW, Post Processing & Printing

Notice on the left side of the screen that the album "2013 bests" is highlighted in blue. That shows that I am just viewing the photos that I put into this album. Notice that the thumbnails are larger in the album view. That is simply because I used the thumbnail sie slider (at the bottom right corner) to adjust the size of the thumbnails. I will typically have the thumbnails relative large when viewing albums with just a couple thousand photos, but I will keep the thumbnail size small when in Photos view, where I need to scroll down thru 60,000 or 70,000 photos to find the one I want.

What I like about the "album" structure in iPhoto is that nothing is inside of anything else. All of the albums I create are right there on iPhoto, displayed at all times. There is no chance of burying something inside of something else because I am not able to put anything inside of other things - EVERYTHING is right there on the screen at all times......which I absolutely love! I would think that LR is able to be set up this way, no?

All Photos is also one of LR's options, and it allows you to have them sorted by quite a few criteria, By Capture time, old to new is the default, but you can have Added time, Edit time, Edit count, (star) Rating, Label colour, Filename, File extension, File type (RAW, JPEG etc), Aspect ratio, or even User order. Not that you HAVE to use any of those additional options. LR's version of Albums are collections, these can be simple collections to which you manually add images of your choice. LR also offers smart collections, which are effectively saved searches of the whole catalogue. You can search, or have a smart collection based on pretty much all of the shooting information stored in the EXIF data, as well as by any keywords you add, the notes on the back of the picture analogy that was used by Nathan.

My main interest is aviation, so when I import my images after an airshow I will add certain keywords as part of the import process, things like the show details, that will be the same for every shot. Then once I have the images in the library I will go through them all and add the aircraft type/manufacturer as a keyword to all of the images. initially this can take some time, although you can select multiple images using shift/click and CTRL (OPT?) click for a series or individual images and add the same keywords to all of them. Also once you have used a keyword it becomes available in a list, so all you have to do is click it to add to additional images. I went to the last UK airshow of the year on Sunday and it took me about two hours to keyword all 2800 odd images, and a couple of times I had to look up aircraft type details using the online UK and US aircraft registration databases and some other sources, which can add a little time. Pretty much all of the types were already on the list though. If the display act is part of a team etc then I will also add those details to the keyword list.

So now I can set up Smart Collections that will allow me to have each manufacturer, or display team or show or location that I shot at. LR also allows collections of collections (although you cannot have both images and collections together in one collection). So I have a collection of collections for each location that I regularly shoot at. Inside that I have a smart collection for each event. This is useful as I can either select the top collection group, and see all the images in the group, or I can open up the collection group in the list, and just select one event. Because I actually photograph a lot of other stuff too, I have top collection groups for each subject area, so I have a Transport collection with Aviation as one of the sub groups. Like iPhotos images can be in more than one collection (album) at one time, which again gives you differing ways you might come to the same image, based on what you are looking for.

Because LR is a referenced system it also shows you the location on disk where the images are stored. This is just like you would see if you were looking for any document using finder. Unless you do nothing other than use iphoto's I cannot see how you could have never used finder to look for and open a document on your computer. With iPhoto's being a fully managed system by default none of you image files exist on the computer independently from the iPhoto database system. This means that if your iPhotos database becomes corrupted you stand to lose ALL of your images, along with the editing information about them. With LR because the image files are stored separately on the disk from the database of information about them, if the database file gets corrupted you only lose the editing and other details that are saved in the database, not the original image files themselves. This does though mean that you need to backup both the database file and the image files independently.

The organiser part of PS Elements also has most of this functionality, although probably a little closer to iPhotos than LR is, and I still think it will be a better match for you, especially if you don't want to have to learn too much new stuff, as the directed modes in Elements will be very helpful to you.

Alan

Tom Reichner wrote in post #17737279
What I like about the "album" structure in iPhoto is that nothing is inside of anything else. All of the albums I create are right there on iPhoto, displayed at all times. There is no chance of burying something inside of something else because I am not able to put anything inside of other things - EVERYTHING is right there on the screen at all times......which I absolutely love! I would think that LR is able to be set up this way, no?

Yes, you can definitely do it that way.

You can also arrange your files in any sort of manner that you find more meaningful, and when you want to see everything all at once, you just click on the "All Photos" group, and you see everything. Even though they're sorted and grouped into all their own respective folders, you can still see them all at once if you choose to do so.

Like Alan said, the Collections feature in Lightroom is just about identical to the Albums feature in iPhoto.

But, there are certainly more tools available; Alan did a good job of describing them above. For instance, I don't use the keywords feature as effectively as some people, but it sounds like Alan is using the keywords to just about their full potential. I instead use a combination of folder structure, file names, and Star ratings to keep my stuff organized.


I don't think I have the self-control to scroll through 60,000 images to find the one I want; even though I know approximately where it is. I would get distracted by some other set and find myself lost down memory lane.

Heh! I haven't chimed in here, because I've been using Lightroom since the "early" days. Once it got "settled down" some time in '07, it became my "go to" app.

The good news is that Lightroom incorporates pretty much all of my needs into one integrated interface, that is, all my Digital Asset Management (DAM) tools with top-of-the-line Raw processing tools and output tools in one integrated suite, and for a very affordable price!

But, as has been said, there is a learning curve! I began reading books on DAM and specifically Lightroom right off the bat (this was back in the "old days" when books were "in"!

One step at a time!!!