Skip to main content

Reorganizing Files and Folders

Lesson 9 from: Lightroom® 4 Fundamentals

Laura Shoe

Reorganizing Files and Folders

Lesson 9 from: Lightroom® 4 Fundamentals

Laura Shoe

buy this class

$00

$00
Sale Ends Soon!

starting under

$13/month*

Unlock this classplus 2200+ more >

Lesson Info

9. Reorganizing Files and Folders

Lessons

Class Trailer

Day 1

1

Pre-Show Banter

07:02
2

9:00 am - Introduction: Why Lightroom®?

13:23
3

The Lightroom Library Catalog

16:42
4

Staying Organized

15:00
5

Backing Up Your Library

11:12
6

Importing Your Photos

34:20
7

Preferences & Settings

28:57
8

Settings Q&A

10:49
9

Reorganizing Files and Folders

33:25
10

Using Views and Labels to Evaluate Photos

45:00
11

Filtering and Stacking Photos

13:37
12

Assigning and Managing Keywords

31:42
13

Keywording Q&A

12:43
14

The Metadata Panel

14:38
15

Searching for Photos

20:54
16

Creating a Collection

15:25

Day 2

17

Day 2 Pre-Show Banter

09:09
18

The Map Module: Assigning Locations

43:33
19

The Develop Module

11:37
20

Fixing Your Photos: Histograms and Cropping

22:02
21

Fixing Your Photos: Spot Removal Tool

33:25
22

11:30 am - Upgrading to Lightroom® 4

12:14
23

11:45 am - Basic Developing in Lightroom® 3 & 4

21:29
24

Basic Developing Part 2

19:43
25

Color Adjustments

23:36
26

Tone Curve Panel

18:59
27

Making Subtle Adjustments

13:22
28

Lens Corrections

10:54
29

Local Adjustments: Partial B&W

13:03
30

Local Adjustments: Portrait Touch Up

26:05
31

Additional Local Adjustments

09:55
32

Graduated Filter

24:24
33

Bonus: Day 3 Preview

01:19

Day 3

34

Day 3 Pre-Show Banter

12:44
35

Bonus: Recap of the Develop Module

08:44
36

Virtual Copies

08:58
37

B&W and Creative Effects

20:50
38

Noise Reduction

12:23
39

Sharpening

18:33
40

Sharpening for Portraits

08:46
41

Syncing Changes to Multiple Photos

17:53
42

Autosync

21:09
43

Creating and Using Presets

15:53
44

11:45 am - Lightroom® and Photoshop

22:49
45

Sharing Your Work

08:42
46

Exporting for Web

16:59
47

Exporting for Print

26:06
48

Workflow Recap

40:50
49

Thanks + Credits

07:02
50

3:00 pm - Lightroom® 4: Publishing

20:52
51

3:30 pm - Lightroom® 4: Video Editing

12:38
52

3:45 pm - Lightroom® 4: Book Module

19:36

Lesson Info

Reorganizing Files and Folders

Now what we're gonna dio is we imported this old photos folder and this was before I decided. Thio, Thio, Teoh organize things. Let me see. I guess they're not too badly organized. But let's go into this old photos folder and do some reorganization and cleanup work. There's some things in here that are kind of a mess. Let's start with our Cap Letters folder so we'll just click on cap letters and we'll see them there. By the way, if you're left panel or you're right, panel in other situations is not wide enough. If I wanted to see this full name, I would simply click on the edge of the panel here when I get this double arrow and dragged to make it wider. Okay, so we're in the cap letters folder, and despite the fact that we're the cap Letters folder, we have some small letters in here. So, yes, these are just silly, silly examples, But think of them. Think of this really as cleaning up your own photo library, getting photos into the right folders, getting folders in the right place, etc...

etera. So I have some photos in this folder that belong in a different folder, so I'm gonna select them and I'm gonna move them. Now I'm gonna show you a very particular way to select photos, and you're gonna think that it's being way Teoh specific and that you can get away with ignoring me. And in most cases you can. But in a few cases, I'm going to say I told you so. Okay. All right. So I want to move this Q. So I want to do something with a queue. The first thing is to select the queue. So what I'm gonna dio is I'm gonna click in the gray border rather than the thumbnail. And I have to be careful that I don't click on some kind of symbol here like this rotation button or those those dots. So I'm just going to click to the side in the gray border to select that photo. Okay, so I click in the border to select. And now to do something with the photo in this case to move the photo, I'm gonna click inside the thumbnail hold and drag down to the small letters folder. And when the small letters folder becomes highlighted, then I know I can let go of the mouse. Now I get this scary dialogue. This could not be on Don. You're moving files on disk. Well, it's true. It can't. We can't go up to edit, undo or control or command Z toe. Undo something. But we can always move it back. Right? So it's not It's not something Teoh sweat over. So I'm gonna say yes. I really didn't mean to move that photo. So now that photo is no longer in cap letters. It's now down in the small letters folder. Now, as I'm using the folders panel to reorganize my photos, anything I do is affecting my hard drive. This is not just the light room simulated world thing. This is really moving things on your hard drive. So we just physically moved that that photo from one folder to another. We're just doing it from within light room. Now it's convenient to do it from within light room. It's also very important to do it from within light room. And those of you that have question marks on folders and photos have paid the price for not doing it within light room. And we'll get to that in a little bit here. Okay, so in the cap letters folder, we still have four mawr small letters. So let's move them all at once. We'll click in the border next to the 1st hold the shift key down click in the border next to the last one to select the whole group. So just click, shift, click. And then we're gonna click inside the thumbnail on one of them to drag to the small letters folder. But before I do it, let me just show you what happens if I ignore part of my own instructions on how to select and do something. Okay, I made this selection successfully, but now I want to move them. What happens if I don't clicking a thumbnail? I click in the border. I broke apart the selection, right. So that didn't help me at all. Now I'm not moving anything. Okay, so let me go. Click, shift click. To do something, you have to click inside the thumbnail. Then you can successfully drag. If you get tired of this dialogue, you can say don't show again. Some people like it because it's like one last escape. If you think you may have been dragging it to the wrong place. Now. Another thing as faras the selecting and movie, even with one photo. If I click, if I click in the border to drag it somewhere else, it will not go. So people say, Well, why can't I move my files in light room? Well, it's just that subtlety to actually move them. You have to click in the film. All right, let's go ahead and go to the small letters folder, just going to a different folder to clean it up as well, and you can see if you scroll down. In this case, there's a whole row of photos, that of capital letters that are in the wrong folder. So I'll click in the border next to the X Hold the shift key down. Click in the border next to the last one to get the whole row, click inside the thumbnail on any one of those and drag the stack up to cap letters. Now this small letters folder, let's say it has it has some photos in here that we don't really need that I wanted to elite. Okay, so let's look at how to delete photos. I'm gonna click on, Let's take the It doesn't really matter which one you take. So select a photo and then hit the delete key on your keyboard. You have choices here. Okay, Remove will remove that photo from the light room catalog, but leave it on your hard drive. Delete from disk will take it out of the light room catalogue and delete it from your hard drive. Now I think for me most the time, and I think most people most of the time the answer is to lead from desk. You know, for me if if I don't see it in light room, it doesn't exist, and it really shouldn't exist. But I know there are exceptions as well, so I'll just go ahead and cancel that. Now let's look at how to rearrange photos within a folder. So I have letters here, so let's see if we can actually spell. Um, let's go ahead. Let's select. What can we spell? Well, I course the V he Okay, let's feel alive. So we're gonna be selecting photos that air not right next to each other so we can't use the click shift click. OK, so let's select the first photo So click in the border next to the L or whatever one you found first and then to select the next one, you're gonna hold the command key down on the Mac or the peat or the control key on the PC. So hold the command key down and I'll click on the next one. I'll keep my finger on the commander of the Control key as I select the other ones were said to be There we go. So click and then command, click on each additional one. Now let's say that by accident. I also selected the M. As long as I keep my figure down on the Commander Control Key, I can click back on the AM to be selected. Now we're going to rearrange these photos within the folder. So I want us to spell live at the very bottom of the folder. So we're just moving photos in the folder. So we'll click inside any one of the thumbnails now that we have that selection and will drag down. No, to see this black line that appears that says where the photos are going to go so we'll drag all the way down. Try to get this, A scroll down. And when you see the black line at the end, you may need to overlap a little bit in light. Room 3 may need to overlap with that. The last one that's there, and then we'll let go. Okay. Did that work for everybody here in the audience? Okay, there's a certain scenarios where it won't work, and I'll get to that as well. So it may not have worked for some of you at home. But while my I minus will tell you that you have to be in a folder with no sub folders. So if that didn't work for you at home, you're up in some higher level folder like like 2010 are old photos. In this case, you have to be in a folder with those sub folders or a regular collection. Okay, so we have all of the photos down here at the bottom, but I want to re arrange them in a particular order here. Right. So what I'm gonna dio is I'm going to set myself up for failure. Okay? I want you to see what happens. So watch this. I'm gonna take the l right and I'm gonna drag it to be first day light arms broken, my forces Terrible. Right. Well, what's going on here? Anybody see what's going on? It's been a long morning. I understand. Yeah. Fort Mercer still selected. Four of them are selected, right? And I forgot that I had a selection going right. And when I click inside the thumbnail, it's not breaking apart this selection. So I need to consciously think I want to do something to the L. So I'm gonna select the l click in the border. So click in the border and then I can take the l and I can drag it. Okay. And of course, now I could take the I put it in the right place. So by selecting by clicking in the border, you're protecting yourself against doing something with a whole selection of photos, it's automatically breaking apart a selection. Here's another example of where that's really important. Okay, so I have a selection of photos going for whatever reason, Okay, I'm key wording, whatever it may be, and my tension shifts and I decide she's what? This photo here, really, I should delete it. So I click or let's do the A. So I click in the A. I hit the delete key And what am I doing? I'm deleting nine photos, right rather than just one. Let me just show you that again. So I said I wanted to leave the l clicking the l hit the delete key. But it's telling me I'm deleting nine photos and I've heard so many stories where people don't read that. They just say to leave from disk and they realize they've deleted 500 photos instead of just one. So by clicking in the border to select first, you're just automatically breaking apart of selection and saving yourself from potential headaches. All right, so let's so that selecting photos, groups of photos that are not next, each other with click controller command click and also rearranging manually within folders if I open up the filmstrip here and I'm not seeing my toolbar here above the filmstrip that I expect if that happens to you, you can go up to view show toolbar or T for toolbar. Okay, that looks better. So I got this toolbar at the bottom. Now, I also have some canned sort routines here. So, for example, I could click on this. Drop down next to where it says sort here. And I could choose sort by captured time. I can also choose some of the other choices. If I had rated these, I could sort by number of stars that the photos have. And then this a dizzy here is for reversing the sort order. So if I want to sort them by capture time backwards, I just click on the Z Day, but okay, okay. Let me see what was next in this lesson here. Okay, so we've we've moved photos so we can start cleaning up, getting everything into the right into the right folders. Now, let's talk about moving folders. Okay? Now, this small letter shoot, it really was not a 2000 and 10 shoot. It was really a 2000 and eight shoot. So I need to get this small letters folder into 2000 and eight now, actually, now it come to think of it, I have old photos here with its years, and I have image files with its years, so you need to do some serious cleanup. I want to take this and nine folder first and put it into image files. In the end, I need to get rid of this old photos folder. So all we have to dio is quick on 2000 and nine. Hold and drag up until image files become selected and then let go. Now with light room free. Maybe it's just the PC versus Mac difference. I've never actually seen these colors that come up when you're in the right place, but many of you may be experiencing as you move something. If you don't get it in exactly the right place, you may have a circle with a line through it. That means you haven't quite nudged it up for far enough yet. Okay, so now 2009 is an image files. Let's take from old photos and drag that up and put that in image files. And I'm tired of the movie files on disk option. No, I think, actually, I'm gonna keep it checked just for the recording there. Okay, so now I've got all my folders in image files. I've got old photos sitting here empty. Okay. Now, I actually am not sure if it's empty. Light room will not let me delete a folder because it may not be empty, even though it looks like it's empty. There may be photos sitting out in that folder on my hard drive that have never been imported into light room. So that's why if I right click, I don't see a delete option here. I could say removed it would take it out of light room, but that old photos folder would still sit on my hard drive. That would be fine and often may be the right answer. But let's say I actually I'm really cleaning up here committed now. I want to actually delete that folder. It takes a two step process so you'll right click on the folder and you'll say, Show in Finder or show in Windows Explorer. So you have to go out to Windows Explorer Finder. Take a look in the old photos folder, open it up and make sure that it really is empty. Okay, Onley. When you see that it really is empty, can you then delete it or drag it to the trash? Drag it to the trash Close finder, Windows Explorer, Now light Rome, interestingly enough, is still showing it, but if I click away from it and then I click back on it, it's got this little question mark saying What? I can't see that out there. It's not where I think it's supposed to be, but in this case, I'll talk more about question marks. I'm going to right click and just say Remove to, say, light room. You're not supposed to know where it is. It's not there anymore. So the leading a folders a little bit of ah, you know, a little bit more involved, right? Click showing Explorer. Make sure it's empty. Come back in and remove it. Questions at this point, is this a process of moving boulders around the Same for moving a catalog from one external hard drive to the other? No, no art. And maybe it's sorry moving photos from one explain. Okay, good. I'm glad. I'm glad that that question was brought up cause I was gonna forget to mention that so perfect. So it's the exact same process so I could take this Victoria folder and I can move it down to this external hard drive here just exactly the same. So that's how and notice that light room is showing me both of my drives here. It's fine moving things back and forth. No problem until now. The one little trick that comes in is that if you have an external hard drive that that you that's not yet showing in light room, how do you move photos to it while their various There's a few different ways to do it. But what I suggest is that you put one photo on that external hard drive and import it as soon as light. One sees one photo on it. It shows here, and then you can drag folders down. All right, there is a question from creative paddler. I love to reorder my images before creating slide shows and Web galleries. How do you deal with light rooms restriction and reordering the images in the sub folders for that particular purpose? I would create a collection so we'll talk about collections this afternoon. But there are weighted Teoh Group together Ah group of photos, either from one folder or many folders, but then to be able to rearrange them independently. So it's a perfect application for them about 10 minutes before lunch, so few have a more to keep going. Let me just do a little bit more content. That will just take more question. Great. Great. Okay, so there are a few things I still haven't shown you here. Let's say that this John studio shoot really? Actually, I think I was working on cap letters. I like to force you guys to work with these boring letters a little bit more. Okay, let's say that the cath letter shoot was really not 2009. It was 2000 and eight. Okay, but I don't have a 2000 and eight folder here. So what I'm gonna do is I want that 2008 folder to be within image files. So I'm going to right click on image files and I'm gonna say, create folder inside. I forgot I was zoomed in here, but I'll call this and that. So now I've got a 2008 folder here with no photos in it. Perfect. I can click and drag to take cap letters. Drop it on 2008 move files on disk, and now it's in the right place. Now let me go ahead. And I skipped one little detail in there. Let's say that image files. I also need a so I'll go ahead and go back to create folder inside image files called 2005 said a duck outside. Even the ducks excited about light room. Right. Okay. I forgot to mention this one thing when we created a folder inside of image files. There was this box to include selected photos. Well, there's no thought to the Z going in that folder. I don't want that z in that folder so that I don't want to check include selected folders. So I just wanted to mention that. Okay, the next thing I need to do is this cap letters folders in the right place, but it doesn't have the date on it. So I'm gonna write, clip, click on cap letters, and I'm gonna choose rename and I'll click at the beginning here. And I'll just make up a date in this case and they'll hit enter. And now that's looking good. And I could do the same thing on small letters. I can add a date to that. Let me just make sure that okay, the next thing I want to cover is I've told you to do all of this reorganization within light room. Okay? Because it's easy. You can see your photos, but also because if you do it outside of light room, light room gets very upset. So let's simulate that. Let's piss off light Ramon purpose, and then will we'll figure out how to calm it down. Okay, so let's minimize light room and we don't need to look at my website. Um, there is the doc. All right, let's minimize that. Okay, so we're out on the desktop. Where are photos? Let's go, Let's go to Finder or Windows Explorer and our photos are in the pictures folder, So open up your pictures folder. So if you need to navigate the hard way, it's your users folder and then your name folder and then pictures. And let's go into our Image Files folder and what I want you to dio. What we're doing is we're moving a folder outside of light room, Okay? We just got ambitious about cleaning things up, and we forgot to do it from within light room. So we're excited about it. We take this 2000 and 10 folder and we drag it to her desktop because that's where we want it to be. And let's do that for 2000 and 12 as well. So everything looks well organized. Now we're psyched, and now we're gonna go back into light room and work with these photos. So let's do that. Let's go back into light room and guess what? Light room couldn't see us moving folders outside of light room. So if we go out Windows Explorer Finder light room will see that happen. So it's still looking for these folders where they used to be, and it's telling you that it can't find them. So you have question marks on the folders here, and you also will have question marks on all of the individual photos. It doesn't mean that the photos don't exist. It means that light room lost the connection to them. The catalogue and the stacks don't match anymore. So first, that's why I recommend doing it from within light room so you don't have to clean this up. But of course you can clean it up. So all we need to do is tell light room that these folders are now on the desktop and it will say, Okay, I'll look at him. There will be happy So we'll right Click on se find Missing folder Now the bad news is when you say find missing folder. It's not a command toe light room to go find your folder. It allows you to go find your folder for light room. So now we know in this case the 2000 tens on the desktop. So let's go to our dust, help select and say Choose So we're just pointing to where it now is, and it disappeared here from image files in the folders panel. That's great, because it's not there anymore. So it's actually on the desktop apps. I can't zoom, All right, I'll expand the desktop here and you'll see that here's our 2010 folder, So light from knows where it ISS were in great shape. Okay, and we cannot, of course, just click and drag that back to be with an image files toe. Undo our simulated messing things up. One more little detail, and then, if we have any more time, we can take questions. Sometimes you'll move individual photo, but not a folder. So your folder won't have a question mark on it, but an individual photo will have a question mark on it. In that case, you'll see the question mark on the photo. You'll simply click on the question mark and say, Locate missing photo. I don't think it's fine Missing photo, but locate missing photo and you'll through that same process of going out to your hard drive, showing like room where it is selecting it and then light room will update the location for that photo. All right. Questions. Yeah, So in this in the example there were You dragged a whole folder out and then told her where it was. How did like room? No, let's say there was a month between those two things and you had done some development. You changed the photos. Right now it is nothing changed. How does how does, like, you know, like, hey, these things that you dragged out of this folder a month ago are actually used file names or sizes or whatever took two to reattach, right? All the development settings per photo to an entire folder of stuff. The yes, well, it doesn't and you can't, but it protects you against that, so I'm glad you brought that up. So when you have question marks, whether it's photos, individual photos or folders, there's Onley. So much light room work you can do. You can dio library module work. You can add keywords and ratings and flags and rearrange. You could even build slide shows because it will use those J pig previews. But you can't do development work. So if I have a photo with a question mark and I go to the develop module, then it's going to basically tell me that the photo is offline and I won't be able to develop it now that library module work that you're doing. So this is off line, but I can still give it five stars. Give this one a color label that's being stored in the catalogue. So even though light room lost the connection to the stacks, it's still storing it in the catalog. Now, when you do find missing folder or photo, it just reconnects to the stacks. But if you before you lost the connection, you have done a bunch of development work. How does it know to toe to read, to reattach the right development work to the right files in the right folders. Well, the light room catalogue entry still exists. Now, that's what we're still seeing here with all the question marks were seeing the catalogue entry. So it's got all of that work associated with it. And like this one here, Studio session number 10 this photo here, it's gonna when you say find missing folder it's going to reconnect a studio session 10 file and know that that work applies to it. Based on my file, Ming based on the file name and all the metadata for it. Okay, so it does more than just If you have, like, because of you. DSC 0001 I might have 10. It's probably based on that. No different things I think will be based on the file name. Frankly, I'm not sure how thoroughly checks, but remember, this folder is the same folder that just that existed before. I mean, right, But I like what if I pick? What if I hook up the wrong one, right or whatever. I just It is just I'm just interested how it knows, Um, which, Which old work to hook up to the new stuff that I've just added. I believe it's based on file name. I don't know if there's a more thorough check underneath that. More questions. So when your hard drive fills up and you need Teoh, go to the two terabyte drive is Are these the recommended steps to use to move wholesale hole? So your whole collection? It's one of 22 ways. Case this entire pictures holder. I could drag to another external hard drive here that I've gotten to show up by importing a single photo to get a show up here so I can do that from within. Like room. I could say, You know what? I just prefer to do that in Windows Explorer Finder. Maybe it's faster or more convenient, so you could take your pictures folder and or Image Falls folder and just drag it outside of light room, recognizing that you're going to get that question mark. But then back here in light room, right click, find missing folder and say, Hey, that folders now on the new external hard drive. So this is one advantage, though, of having a master folder and then in your folders and date folders rather than just having a whole stack of shoot folders, because then you would have to reconnect each one of those individually. But because you could just reconnect in this case, the highest level folder, and it will find all of the sub folders. It's much quicker to do that. What if after all those steps, you still can't find your photo? Does that mean it's just completely off the hard drive and gone? Yeah. What? What I would do is let's just take this photo here. Um, I click on the question Mark and I say locate and I really don't know what it is, but I'm noting that the file name is studio session 13 and maybe even the captured eight. I would come out and I would use finder or Windows Explorers search function toe. Look for it. So in this case, out and find her, I type in studio session. Um, it's even telling me 0 13 So I shouldn't take time to take this foot, Make sure I'm searching my entire computer. So I make sure I'm using that search functionality correctly. And if it's not there, then in that case, it really has been deleted So the next thing to do here in light room is to right, click on it and say, remove or say, delete photo. Actually, just Sorry. Just here it is. Say delete photo or hit the delete key and remove. Yep. Thank you. Thanks. Go. Nor if you are going, Teoh. So now we're enlightened. We want to get everything from, like we've ever taken into one catalogue. So we have a light room for catalogue we're starting with and some of ours, we might have, like, a light room three last year. We haven't updated it yet or something like that. Is there anything that look out for when you're taking this? You know, your master catalog, like from four. Wherever you gonna name it? Andan taking catalogues that were, like based and importing them all in there. You're getting everything on this huge drive, putting it all together with the unique works with kind of importing a lot from three based catalogue into your life for now and you're hierarchy and setting everything up. Generally, the process should go very smoothly. And as you upgrade toe light room four light room four should detect your light room three catalogue and ask you if you want to upgrade it and just automatically give you a copy. That's a light room for version. Should you upgrade that catalogue before, say, importing it into this master catalogue? Do that step first and then important as a like For what? Well, I'm going to continue with generally and then I'm going to say, but sex. But generally, yes, I would just I would just let it happen. I wouldn't create a new blank light room four catalog and then import the light room three version into it only because there's no need to. That's what the light room, the the install process of the launch process just automatically does it for you. So, um, and generally it works really well, Okay, but there is a bug in light from four point out and this particular bug that I'm that I'm thinking about only effects a subset of users. But when with this subset of users, when you upgrade the catalogue, some information is lost. Now these users are users that used the tone curve, the point curve hidden behind the tone curve panel in the develop module. If you have no idea what what I just said. Then you know this doesn't affect you, right? Okay, But if you use that there have been situations where as the upgrade happens, that tone curve work is reset. Okay, So if that's one of you, I would hold off on upgrading your catalog until the next version comes out, which looks like it may be this week. So it's, you know, it's it's coming quickly, and I don't even know for sure that that bug is fixed in this release. But I know that certainly one of major concern, but aside from that situation, I would just let it happen automatically. Now, let's say you are one of those users. So you are waiting. So you've got a new master catalogue, maybe with just some new shoots and light room four. But then you do want to go back and it import your light from three catalogue in. You know what that point you can you could do a file import from another catalogue to go get that light room three version and have it update it

Class Materials

bonus material with purchase

Lightroom Day 1 Slides.pdf

bonus material with enrollment

Favorite-Lightroom-Shortcuts.pdf

Ratings and Reviews

Miguel Lecuyer
 

Great workshop! New to Lightroom and found it very helpful. Saved me a couple hundred dollars and time by not taking an evening LR class. Creative Live workshops match my learning style perfectly. Laura is awesome! My only complaint is maybe Laura can use a PC next time which is what she seems more comfortable using. Her shortcut mix-ups on a Mac were making me a bit dizzy :)

a Creativelive Student
 

I cannot express enough how impressed I was with Laura and this class. I learned more in the 3 days of this workshop than I did in all 6 weeks of a class I took online that cost three times as much. I left not only impressed by the class but MOST importantly - refreshed and energized to put my new knowledge to use! Thank you for that!!!

a Creativelive Student
 

Excellent workshop bar none. I learned more about Lightroom than I did from any other tutorial/workshp that I previously encountered. Thanks Laura!

Student Work

RELATED ARTICLES

RELATED ARTICLES