A couple of questions about LR5

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mercurius

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I have a couple of questions about using LR5 which I would be grateful for some advice on.

1) I need to sort out my photographs but note that when I have imported into LR5 pictures in folders from one of my other drives, LR5 has not kept the folder name. My drive folders are organised by year and then by subject within year. So when I'm looking for a particular shot in LR, it's a bit of a pain to find them. Is there anyway retrospectively to apply a folder structure?

2) How do you blow up a picture in LR5?

Thanks in advance for any help with this.
 
mercurius said:
I have a couple of questions about using LR5 which I would be grateful for some advice on.

1) I need to sort out my photographs but note that when I have imported into LR5 pictures in folders from one of my other drives, LR5 has not kept the folder name. My drive folders are organised by year and then by subject within year. So when I'm looking for a particular shot in LR, it's a bit of a pain to find them. Is there anyway retrospectively to apply a folder structure?

2) How do you blow up a picture in LR5?

Thanks in advance for any help with this.
Click to expand...
1) When I'm in Library mode I have the "Folders" arrow open and I see all my Folders exactly as they are on my hard drive, organised by name and with an arrow indicating there are further sub-folders.
I have the folders on my hard drive arranged according to whichever camera they are from, followed by sub folders for the year and then further sub folders for the shooting dates.
The thing to remember is that you MUST title, caption and keyword all your images, and you can then search using the "Library Filter" attributes.
You don't need to apply a folder structure in order to search for an image, you search using Library Filter, which allows you to search by text (keywords, title etc) Attributes or Metadata, so the system neither knows nor cares about dates, folders etc., it just searches the image data.

2) I presume you mean enlarge or zoom in?
In Library mode simply double click an image on the grid display and you will see the single frame.
Click again and you will zoom in to a magnification set by the Zoom slider at the bottom of the screen (usually 1:1, but user adjustable).
Obviously, if you are in Develop mode, you see the image full frame and can zoom in exactly the same way.
 
droj said:
https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom/help/import-photos-video-catalog.html for starters ...
Click to expand...

Thanks for the link, droj. This article seems to presupposes that you set the folders up properly before you import. The problem I have is how to sort my 25k+ pics retrospectively :(

Brian G said:
1) When I'm in Library mode I have the "Folders" arrow open and I see all my Folders exactly as they are on my hard drive, organised by name and with an arrow indicating there are further sub-folders.
I have the folders on my hard drive arranged according to whichever camera they are from, followed by sub folders for the year and then further sub folders for the shooting dates.
The thing to remember is that you MUST title, caption and keyword all your images, and you can then search using the "Library Filter" attributes.
You don't need to apply a folder structure in order to search for an image, you search using Library Filter, which allows you to search by text (keywords, title etc) Attributes or Metadata, so the system neither knows nor cares about dates, folders etc., it just searches the image data.

2) I presume you mean enlarge or zoom in?
In Library mode simply double click an image on the grid display and you will see the single frame.
Click again and you will zoom in to a magnification set by the Zoom slider at the bottom of the screen (usually 1:1, but user adjustable).
Obviously, if you are in Develop mode, you see the image full frame and can zoom in exactly the same way.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the advice Brian G.
1) As mentioned in my reply to droj above, I have about 25k+ pics that need putting into folders by year. I am sure they used to be organised properly in LR, but something happened when I moved to LR5 and now it's one big catalogue with no folders, and I have never added metadata. The issue is how to sort retrospectively?
2) Apologies for not explaining clearly. What I mean is how do I crop an image and still enlarge it for print / screen display without it pixellating (accepting that the nature of the crop may not necessarily make it appropriate to print / display at a standard size).

StewartR said:
What do you mean by "blow up" in this context?
Click to expand...

Hi StewartR: what I mean is how do I crop an image and still enlarge it for print / screen display without it pixellating (accepting that the nature of the crop may not necessarily make it appropriate to print / display at a standard size)..
 
Cropping is done in the develop module with the crop tool
resizing can be done on exporting the final image, usually smaller
 
mercurius said:
Thanks for the link, droj. This article seems to presupposes that you set the folders up properly before you import. The problem I have is how to sort my 25k+ pics retrospectively :(



Thanks for the advice Brian G.
1) As mentioned in my reply to droj above, I have about 25k+ pics that need putting into folders by year. I am sure they used to be organised properly in LR, but something happened when I moved to LR5 and now it's one big catalogue with no folders, and I have never added metadata. The issue is how to sort retrospectively?
.
Click to expand...
I don't know how anything has "happened" to your catalog when you changed to LR5 - what version were you updating from?
I migrated from LR4 (+ updates) to LR5 (now on v5.7) and there have been no changes in the appearance or layout of my folders at any point.

I haven't fully read the Adobe help tutorial that droj linked to, but it looks like it contains the information that you need.
I'm also a fan of the Julieanne Kost tutorials on http://www.jkost.com/lightroom.html
There are a couple of tutorials there on importing and organising files that may be of help.
The general rule when using LR for file management is to do all your file organising, moving, renaming etc within Lightroom.
That way LR always knows where your files are and you don't need to re-import them, as you would do if you move them outside of Lightroom (like moving them within Windows.)
 
You can import all to a single, all-inclusive catalogue - and that's fine. You can also set LR to back up that catalogue on closing, which is good practice.

However LR can also recognise your existing folder structure - ie where you imported from - and you can have that folder list open in a side panel and view a folder's-worth of images at a time.

You can also choose where you export images to ....

Personally, I resize my images elsewhere.
 
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droj said:
You can import all to a single, all-inclusive catalogue - and that's fine. You can also set LR to back up that catalogue on closing, which is good practice.

However LR can also recognise your existing folder structure - ie where you imported from - and you can have that folder list open in a side panel and view a folder's-worth of images at a time.

You can also choose where you export images to ....

Personally, I resize my images elsewhere.
Click to expand...

OK, thanks.
I understand from Adobe now that you can only re-sort a single catalogue to the old folder structure manually, there's not automated way of doing that. The only way of retaining the folder structure from which you import is to use the Add instruction when importing, rather than Copy.

What application do you use for re-sizing?
 
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