by
genevh » Thu Aug 28, 2008 10:14 pm
Now, on to importing your pictures........Importing into LR 101.......Part 1
First, if you are going to have multiple catalogs, you will need to open LR to the catalog you want to work in. See my above post for that info.
To import, you have several options. Remember also, all that you are doing here is expanding LRs database. You are not moving anything at this time unless you tell LR to move or copy your photos. This choice will be given in the import dialog later.
Your initial import is most likely going to be from your HD or EHD. At this point, your pictures need to be where ever you want them. If they are going to be on your internal HD, copy them there before starting. OR, if they are going to be on an EHD accessible by more than one computer, copy the photos there.
Once that is done, hit File -> Import Photos From Disk. This will bring up a window similar to this:
- Importing-1.jpg (55.88 KiB) Viewed 758 times
The C: drive is my internal HD, the E and F drives are my EHDs. Navigate to where you put your pictures. For instance, if you copied all your photos into a folder on your E drive called My Pictures, navigate to that folder. If you're like me, there are multiple folders inside there. Do a CTL-A to select all the folders, then hit the "Import All Photos In Selected Folder" button. If this button isn't available just yet, it means something you selected cannot be imported and you will need to figure that one out and deselect the offending file or folder. In my case, I have a folder that is actually a link in my backup folders and LR did not like that one.
Once you hit the Import button, LR will scan the folder(s) you have selected. This may take a few minutes depending on how many pictures it needs to scan. You will see LR counting them.
Once the scan is done, another window will open called "Import Photos". It is here where you tell LR how to import your pictures. In the File Handling drop down there are 4 options. You can "Add Photos to Catalog Without Moving". This simply adds the photo information to the LR database (catalog file) and leaves the photos wherever they are located on your hard drives. Nothing gets moved or copied if you use this option. The next two options allow you to either copy your photos to a new location, or move them to a new location. You can also copy the files as DNGs, the 4th option. If you choose to move, copy, or import as DNGs, you will be presented with another drop down where you will tell LR where to put the photos. Once you select that folder, you will then be able to make a choice as to how to organize them. There are multiple choices and they are pretty self explanatory.
Below that you can choose which folders you want to import. By default they are all selected, or you can deselect by unclicking the check marks by the folders. You can also highlight individual folders, and in the preview window on the right, deselect those you may not want to import. There are also buttons at the bottom of that window to help you make your choices.
There are a few more choices you will need to make in this dialog window, but hopefully those are pretty much self explanatory. Once you make all your choices, hit the "Import" button and sit back, relax, and breathe.....and maybe enjoy a cup of you favorite refreshing beverage as this will take a few minutes depending on the number of pictures you have to import or move/copy.
You can also do some keywording here if you want to. This is great when you are importing photos from a specific shoot as you can keyword all the photos being imported.
If you were doing this import for the first time on my PC, your Import Photos window would look something like this:
- Importing-2.jpg (92.68 KiB) Viewed 758 times
You guys are learning way too much about me here!!!!
This should take care of importing your photos on your HD or EHDs. You can also import from more than one HD or EHD into the same catalog.
- Importing-3.jpg (26.64 KiB) Viewed 754 times
As you can see here, I have photos imported from both my C and E drives in one catalog. The E drive is an EHD.