LR Folder View ?

Is there a way to access you're computers drives/folders in LR like you can in DPP ? Seems like the only things you can access in LR is the files that you have imported. I really like the full control that you have through DPP; accessing desktop folders, card reader, external hard drive ext. or am I missing it ?

No. LR is catalog based, it's not a file browser. So you'll need to import everything.

Thanks

Ya, yes. Just use the Folder panel in LR's Library module. You can move folders and pictures around to other folders as if you were doing it at the OS level. I prefer to use Collections though.

Razeus wrote in post #9806937
Ya, yes. Just use the Folder panel in LR's Library module. You can move folders and pictures around to other folders as if you were doing it at the OS level. I prefer to use Collections though.

But you still can't access you're card reader or external hard drive from the Library, and you also need to have all of you're photos imported into LR.

Diver-Down wrote in post #9809297
But you still can't access you're card reader or external hard drive from the Library, and you also need to have all of you're photos imported into LR.

I'm not sure what you are wanting to accomplish here, but if you right-click on any file in the filmstrip or any folder in the Folders panel of the Library module and select Show in Explorer (at least in Windows) LR will open an Explorer/browser window with all drives/folders in your system. But, to actually "get" a picture into Lightroom, you have to import it, in which case you open the Import dialog and browse to the folder/photo of interest.

tonylong wrote in post #9809509
if you right-click on any file in the filmstrip or any folder in the Folders panel of the Library module and select Show in Explorer (at least in Windows) LR will open an Explorer/browser window with all drives/folders in your system.

That helps, didn't know you could do that. I'm used to viewing / managing all my pictures through DPP. It's very convenient to have access to everything right there when you open up DPP. I'm trying to learn LR and was just trying to figure out what my options are. The problem I see with viewing the card reader through [Show in Explorer] is that you can't view RAW thumbnails.

DPP, Adobe Bridge, BreezeBrowser, and other popular applications of that type are file browsers. Lightroom is a database which is why you have to import files before the application becomes aware of their location. Because of this fact, you can't browse images on your computer that weren't previously imported into Lightroom.

Diver-Down wrote in post #9810117
That helps, didn't know you could do that. I'm used to viewing / managing all my pictures through DPP. It's very convenient to have access to everything right there when you open up DPP. I'm trying to learn LR and was just trying to figure out what my options are. The problem I see with viewing the card reader through [Show in Explorer] is that you can't view RAW thumbnails.

When you say you want to view the card reader contents, do you mean to load images onto your computer? Lightroom makes that quick to do and automatically imports them, with the ability to set up destination folders and gives you renaming options and the ability to set up Exif data (such as copyright) along with develop presets.

If you have a card in the reader, just click Import. You will be prompted to choose between the card reader and other files and folders. You can also View and Import from your hard drives or external drives using the other option.

But if you are just looking for a browser that will show thumbnails of Raw files, there are some out there (other than DPP) but I don't use any and don't recall specifics that have been mentioned here.

LR will show you thumbnails of RAWs on the card, but the quality is terrible. LR's philosophy is that you should just do a blanket import of everything on the card and then after it's all on your HD do your examination and choosing of what to keep and what to delete. I don't like this approach and do my sorting by using Breezebrowser to see high quality displays of the card files and importing to LR only the keepers. You can do the same (for free) by continuing to use DPP, especially its Quick Check for selecting what you want to download to a specified folder and then opening LR and importing that folder.

tzalman wrote in post #9812845
You can do the same (for free) by continuing to use DPP, especially its Quick Check for selecting what you want to download to a specified folder and then opening LR and importing that folder.

Yea, that's sounds like it might work well for me, and I can still continue to use DPP as my browser.