Lightroom 2 Organisation help!

T

tomzo22

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Edit My Images
Yes
Hi there.

Just spent the last few hours organizing my photos in lightroom (as usual my computer as ended up with lots of random "new folders" and other such things, so i thought I'd tidy it all up in lightroom.

First, i added all the photos from my computer, no problem. I then made "Collection Sets" by year, and then in these, I put "Collections", with titles such as " ireland holiday", "christmas" etc.

What i want to do now, is to consolidate my photos, or export them in their current file structure to somewhere on my pc. So for instance the "My pictures" folder, when opened, would show three folders- "2006", "2007", "2008" and then by opening those, e.g "2008" i could then see all the collections for that year, e.g "ireland holiday", "christmas", etc

Any ideas or advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

Tom
 
hmm good question. I have only ever exported one collection at a time, to a specific folder. I can't say I have noticed a way to export multiple collections into appropriate folders automatically. But could well be wrong. If it doesn't do it by default there may well be an export plugin/addon thing that will do it.

Hopefully someone who knows Lightroom more than me can help ;)
 
Thanks Jimmy, I did experiment abit, and tried with a single collection like you said, but what i found that happened was it retained some of the original folder structure, so for instance it'd end up being

2006-My pictures-toms trip

when i it should be 2006-Belgium 2006. As "toms trip" were in the "my pictures folder" where the photos were saved before i sorted them out in lightroom.

I just had a go with 2008 which has more pictures from differnt folders and it shows:

2008-"Desktop" OR "My Pictures" OR "2008 Previews.lrdata". and then if i click on "desktop" or "my pictures" it shows me where the orignal files are stored, not in the sorted format.

Sorry if this isnt very clear, but its quite hard to describe!
 
I don't think you can do what you want directly. LR will let you export images from a collection, but will only put them into one folder. It doesn't recognise the original folder structure when exporting. I can understand why this would be the case as collections are simply mages from different location put together. You can have the same image in different collections.

What I suspect you need to do is put the originals into separate folders, such as 2008, the sub divide these.and not use collections for that function. Now when you export LR won't export them with the original directory structure, it's not designed to work that way, but you will have a better organised filing system.
 
Thanks Chappers, after playing round with it, it looks like the best idea, would be for me to organise the photos into folders in windows, then re-import them all to Lightroom and take it from there?
 
I'd suggest that you re-organsise the folders while you are in Lightroom - you can drag, cut and paste etc easily enough. That way when you then next open up LR it doesn't get into a pickle about missing files (the folders you moved in windows) or ask you whether any files are duplicates. (And I'm not sure what would happen to any edits you had made - LR needs to tie them to the original file. Hence I find it safer once folders are in LR to only move them when in LR).

cheers
Dean
 
Oops, getting carried away - you can't cut and paste folders but you can drag them!
 
Yes I agree reorganise your files from within LR as this lets the Database keep track of them
 
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