How to Organize Pictures in Lightroom 2

This Lightroom guide is for beginner-photographers who are getting started in Lightroom and are looking for a good way to organize their photos and photo catalogs. If you are looking for a generic guide on how to organize pictures without any third party photo software like Lightroom, then please read my “how to organize pictures” guide instead. If you do not currently own a copy of Lightroom, I highly recommend purchasing one from B&H or other resellers.

Lightroom has certainly become a very essential part of a photographer’s workflow. I personally cannot imagine managing my photo catalog without Lightroom and I use it every day for my Photography needs. In fact, 95-98% of my post-processing work is done in Lightroom today and I rarely use Adobe Photoshop for photo editing, which not only simplifies my workflow, but also decreases the amount of time I spend on post-processing. The below process of folder structures and organization within Lightroom is my personal way of storing pictures and working with them for my home and professional use.

1) Where do you store your pictures and how?

The first question is, where and how do you currently store your pictures? I used to store all of my photographs in various subfolders of my hard drive (commonly in “My Pictures” or “My Documents”), but after I got into photography, I decided that it is best to keep all of my photographs in the root folder of my PC’s hard drive that I use solely for storing photos and small family videos. Hard drives are dirt cheap nowadays and you can snatch an external 1-1.5 Terabyte drive for under $100. I highly recommend getting a fault-redundant external drive though (usually two hard drives in RAID 1 Mirror configuration). There are also other fault-tolerant external drive array solutions such as “Drobo” that some photographers rave about, but I personally do not use them, since they are expensive and take too much space. As long as you have a good backup strategy, which I talk about below, you do not have to worry about losing data.

So, I highly recommend dedicating one external storage volume to your photographs for easier management and backup.

2) Folder structure and organization

Now that you have figured out where you will be storing your pictures, it is time to figure out what your folder structure will be. There are many ways to do this and everyone does it differently. I will show you what works for me and will leave it up to you to decide whether you want to adopt it or create your own. Here is my current structure:

In the root of my hard drive, I have one folder called “Photos”, where I store all of my pictures. Inside “Photos”, I create one folder per year. Then inside each year, I store photographs by events. For example, Omar’s birthday in 2008 is stored in “Photos2008Omar’s Birthday”, while our trip to Denver Zoo in 2009 is stored in “Photos2009Denver Zoo”. If you shoot professionally, you might want to have two separate folders under “Photos” – one for your personal pictures and one for your professional work. In that case, simply add another level of folders underneath “Photos” and your structure would look like “PhotosPersonal2008My Event” or “PhotosProfessional2008My Event”.

Go ahead and create the first top level folder “Photos” and if you want to separate your personal and professional work, also create the two folders underneath. Do NOT create any more folders underneath and do NOT move or add any photos yet.

3) Create a new Lightroom catalog

Once you define and create your initial structure, it is now time to create a Lightroom catalog. Start off with a new Lightroom catalog by going to File->New Catalog. For performance reasons, I prefer to store my catalog along with image previews in my primary “C:” drive while storing the pictures on an external dedicated volume, but you might want to keep it all in the same drive for simplicity purpose. If you have under 10,000 pictures, you can store them all in a single catalog without much impact on Lightroom performance. If you have over 10,000 pictures, then I recommend creating one Lightroom catalog per year. Just create one folder in the root folder called “Lightroom” and store all of your catalogs there.

4) Modify Lightroom Preferences

For every new catalog I create, I slightly modify the default settings to fit my needs. Although you can do this later, it is probably best to do it in the beginning, as you might forget to take care of it later. The first thing I make sure is set up right (you only need to do it once) is Lightroom Preferences. Go to Edit->Preferences and under the “General” tab, set similar settings as shown below:

The only thing I changed for myself is the “Default Catalog” option where I set it to “Prompt me when starting Lightroom”. This basically makes Lightroom prompt which catalog I want to load up when I start up Lightroom, which is convenient if you use multiple catalogs. If you only have a single catalog, there is no need to change the default setting.

The next tab is “Presets”, where I typically leave everything by default. The only thing that is worth mentioning on this page is the “Location” where you can check or uncheck “Store Presets with Catalog”. Lightroom allows storing your user presets (such as default import settings, file naming convention, copyright information, etc.) either in a general folder that is used for all of your catalogs, or in each of your Lightroom catalogs where you can set different presets depending on the catalog. I personally use one preset for all of my Lightroom catalogs and recommend leaving this option unchecked as seen below.

The next “Import” tab is the important one, because it controls the way your pictures are imported into the catalog. Here is how I have my Import tab set:

I leave the first three options unchecked, although some of you might want to check the first one that says “Show import dialog when a memory card is detected”, which simply tells Lightroom to automatically fire up the import screen when you insert your memory card. Pay attention to the “Import DNG Creation” settings on this page. I set “File Extension” to “DNG”, “Compatibility” to the latest Camera Raw version available, “JPEG Preview” to “Medium Size” and leave “Embed Original Raw File” unchecked. The important settings here are “JPEG Preview” and “Embed Original Raw File” that control the total size of your DNG files (read more about the DNG format here). By default, every RAW image contains a full size JPEG image inside that is stored as a “Preview” (the “Preview” image is what you see on the back of your camera when you take a picture). By setting the “JPEG Preview” option to “Medium Size”, you are telling Lightroom to generate a smaller version of a preview inside DNG files, which will save you up to 15-20% of space per file. While you might think that it is not such a big deal, it does a make a huge difference when you have tens of thousands of pictures. The only penalty is the fact that the image opens slightly slower when you try to open a full version of it in Lightroom later, simply because it has to generate a full size version from the RAW image. The checkbox “Embed Original Raw File” is something I would always recommend to leave unchecked, because if you check it, your DNG files will actually be much larger than the original RAW file, which is not something you want to do.

All other tabs should be left at their default settings.

5) Modify Lightroom Catalog Settings

The next thing we need to modify, is your Lightroom Catalog Settings. You will have to do this once for each of the catalogs that you create. Go to Edit->Catalog Settings to bring up the “Catalog Settings” window. I leave everything to default values in “General” and “File Handling” tabs. The most important tab for me is the “Metadata” tab, where I can specify what data is written into my images by Lightroom:

The first two options “Offer suggestions from recently entered values” and “Include Develop settings in metadata inside JPEG, TIFF, and PSD files” are checked by default and I do not touch them. The last option “Automatically write changes into XMP” is unchecked by default. This is the one I recommend to turn on, because it makes Lightroom write your changes right into the DNG files (or XMP sidecar files that go with your RAW files) as you work on them. Why is it important? Because if your Lightroom catalog was to fail and you lost all of your catalog data, the file would keep all of your changes that you’ve made in Lightroom! It is also very useful if you happen to open that same file in Photoshop or other Adobe applications, because all changes will be immediately visible as you work on the file. Another plus of leaving this option checked, is that Adobe does not provide an upgrade path from one version of Lightroom to another. Therefore, if you were to upgrade from Lightroom 2 to Lightroom 3, you could do so with ease and not worry about re-processing every single image again.

Some photographers say that it creates unnecessary overhead and that you could manually write this metadata to files when needed. But why bother? I leave this option on and I never have to worry about going back and manually updating anything…

6) Import your photos into the Lightroom catalog

Your preferences and catalogs settings have now been modified. Let’s start importing your pictures! Fire up the photo import catalog by going to File->Import Photos from Disk. A new dialog box with a title “Import Photos or Lightroom Catalog” will come up. Browse to the location where you have your photos, then click on the photo folder and click the “Import All Photos in Selected Folder” button on the bottom right corner of the box:

The dialog box with then be replaced by a larger one with some fields on the left side of the screen and image thumbnails on the right hand side:

By default, all settings will be set to “None” and “File Handling” on the top will be set to “Add photos to catalog without moving”.

Let’s change all of the settings to fit our folder structure and future import needs:

1. Start off with “File Handling” and set it to “Copy photos as Digital Negative (DNG) and add to catalog”. What this will do, is when it sees a RAW file, it will convert it to DNG format (keeping the RAW file in its original location) and copy the converted DNG file to your photo location. If it sees a JPEG or other non-RAW file, it will simply copy it without attempting to convert to DNG.
2. Move down to “Copy to:” field and click the “Choose” button. Now select the root “Photos” folder that you created earlier – this is where all of your photographs will be stored going forward. In my example it is “D:Photos”.
3. Where it says “Organize:”, change the drop-down field to “By Date: 2005/12-17″. What this will do, is it will automatically read the date from each file and place the files into appropriate date folders. This is where I make changes every time I import – I simply double-click this field, then leave the year with a backslash, delete the month and day, then add my Event or Description. As shown above, it ends up being something like “2009Best of 2009″. If I have additional dates below, I go through all of them and do a similar type of input.
4. I always leave the option “Don’t re-import suspected duplicates”, because I do not want to keep any duplicates in my catalog. This option is also nice to keep for the initial import and sorting of your pictures.
5. The “Backup to:” is where you will be keeping a copy of the imported pictures. It is a good idea to leave this option checked and have the system store your import backups elsewhere on a different hard drive, in case your primary drive fails. As you can see from my screenshot, I keep my images in “D:Photos”, while keeping import backups in a different drive “G:Photos_backupImports”. Every once in a while after making sure that I have all of my photos backed up to at least two different external hard drives, I go to this backup folder and manually delete the files.
6. Now here comes the fun part – the “File Naming” template. This is where you set what your file names will be changed to during the picture import process. Again, there are many ways to do this and I’m only showing you my way, which has been working great for me. My format for my files is the following: “YYYYMMDD-Event Name-Sequence Number”. I tried different file naming techniques, but I like this one the most, because it organizes my images by a full date, event name and a sequence number. For example “20090601-Denver Downtown-001.DNG” means that the picture was taken on 1st of June, 2009 in Denver Downtown and it is the first picture of the set. If I went back to the same location two months later and shot more pictures, I would have a different day, same event name and a different sequence number. Files do not get mixed up and if I need to quickly access the pictures of Denver Downtown, I simply select that folder from my “Folders” menu in Lightroom and voila – I have it all.

   So, how can you set up a custom naming convention like this? Gladly, Lightroom gives you lots of options to manage this process. Simply click the “Template:” drop-down field and select “Custom Settings”, after which you will be taken to a new window like the one below. The white text area is the place where you can select or type in different variables that control the way your files will be named. If you look at the lower side of the screen, you will see different variables that you can select and insert by clicking the “Insert” button on the right hand side. There is a myriad of options here and it is easy to get lost, so I suggest you use my template. Highlight the existing text and delete it, then under “Additional” select “Date (YYYYMMDD)”, which should automatically transfer the text “{Date (YYYYMMDD)}” to the text area. Now click with your mouse on the very end of the string and manually type a dash “-”. Next, look at the very bottom of the page and click “Insert” to the right of “Custom Text”, which should insert a string {Custom Text} to the end of the existing string with a dash. Then, type another dash “-” manually and under “Numbering” go to the third drop-down and select “Sequence # (001)”. Now the full string should look like this: “{Date (YYYYMMDD)}-{Custom Text}-{Sequence # (001)}” as shown here:

   

   Let’s now save your changes by clicking the “Preset:” drop-down from the top and selecting “Save Current Settings as New Preset”. Type a descriptive name (I typed my nickname), click “Create” and then “Done” to return to the Import page.

7. You should see the template you just created under “Template:” in the import screen. Next, go to the “Custom Text:” input area and type the name of the event you are importing. The “Start Number:” is the sequence number of the first file. I typically leave it at “1″ when I import a new event and change the number to the total number of existing pictures +1 if I already have an event with the same name.
8. Now it is time to jump to Develop and Metadata settings. In the beginning, you will have nothing under “Develop Settings”, because you have not used Lightroom yet and have not created any custom settings for yourself. Leave this field for now, but definitely revisit it later. Once you get comfortable with Lightroom and start saving your own Presets, you will be able to use them as default “Develop” presets for your imported pictures. I use this all the time and I have different Presets set up for different things. For example, I have one that I named “Landscapes” for landscape photography, then another one called “Portrait” for portraits, etc.
9. The “Metadata” field is another important field that is worth editing. Click the drop-down field and select “New” after which a new “New Metadata Preset” window should open up. There are lots of fields in this page and you do not have to fill out everything. What I typically do is fill out just the “IPTC Copyright” and “IPTC Creator” parts as seen here:

   

   Why do I recommend filling this information out? Because it will be written into every single picture upon import! Your copyright is important and your pictures should always contain your copyright, along with some of your contact information in case somebody needs to get in touch with you.

   Once you fill out the copyright fields, save it as a new preset and give it a similar name like you did earlier and click “Done”.

10. You are back to the “Import Photos” page now again. The next field is “Keywords”, where you can type some keywords and tag your photographs. I use this field all the time and try to provide descriptive names to appropriately label the photographs. I like to put the year, along with the full name of the event in this field. For example, “2010, Best of 2009″ means that the pictures will be associated with “2009″ and “Best of 2009″ separately. If I were to perform a search by a keyword, I could find these pictures in “2009″ or in “Best of 2009″ – they would be listed in both.
    The keywords are comma-separated and you can use as many spaces and other characters as you want. I recommend keeping the keywords as short as you can though.
11. Leave the last “Initial Previews:” option at “Minimal”, which will make Lightroom render a minimal preview of the image you are importing.

Phew, you are done with the import settings now! Don’t worry, you do not have to do this again as all of the information is stored on your PC for all future imports!

Here is how my final screen looks like before I import the images:

Make sure yours also looks similar and then click the “Import” button on the right hand side of the page to start importing your images. The import window will go away and you will start seeing the images popping up in your Lightroom catalog.

7) Post-import check

Now that you know how to import your images with custom templates, go ahead and import all of your pictures into Lightroom and make sure that everything gets transitioned correctly. Do not forget to change the folder names along with “Custom Text” and “Keywords” fields upon each new import in the “Import Photos” screen going forward. Otherwise, you will end up with a bunch of unwanted folders and incorrect file names and keywords. If you accidentally imported your pictures with wrong settings, it is not a problem. Just select the imported pictures, then change the keywords under “Keywording” section in the “Library” module, then rename the folder to the correct event name and press “F2″ or go to “Library”->”Rename Photo” to mass rename your pictures. If your pictures go out of sequence for whatever reason (for example your sequence numbers are repeated, but with a different name), then simply select all pictures and batch-rename them all by pressing “F2″ on your keyboard. Give it a new sequence number and it will start renaming them based on the age of the image or your selection criteria.

8) Perform full backup

By now, you have done a lot of work to re-organize your photographs and you have completed importing all of your pictures into Lightroom. It is definitely a good time to perform a full backup of both your Lightroom catalog and your pictures. Many people assume that the backup functionality in Lightroom backs up their photographs too. That’s a very wrong assumption! Lightroom does NOT backup your photos – it only backs up your Lightroom catalog, which is useless without your images. You can afford losing a Lightroom database, but you cannot afford losing your pictures. Therefore, you should always backup your photographs first, then worry about Lightroom.

Here is how to perform a full backup:

1. Close out of Lightroom.
2. Get your external backup drive ready, plug it into your computer and turn it on.
3. Go to the root folder where you are keeping your photos. In my computer it is “D:Photos”. Select all yearly folders and drag and drop them into the backup drive’s “Photos_backup” folder or something similar, which should start the backup process.
4. Wait until all pictures are backed up. Make sure that you do not have any errors and the copy process is completed 100% successfully.
5. Now backup your Lightroom catalog. Locate the Lightroom catalog file in your hard drive (which should have an extension “lrcat”) and also copy it to the external drive.

The above process could be easily automated by special backup programs such as “Norton Ghost” or with some built-in tools within your operating system. I highly recommend to set up an automated job that backs up your computer as often as possible. I also recommend backing up your data to at least two different locations every time.

I hope this basic guide will help you to keep your pictures organized in Lightroom. Please let me know if you have any questions in the comments section below.