Out of control photo library...

jmdeegan · 08-05-2009, 12:23 PM

Here's my challenge...tho first, a little on why it got messy

I live in NYC, not a ton of room, so I am a laptop guy at the moment. Trust me, I miss my oodles of desktop space and power. But, because my HDD is 500gb and i am doing real work plus photos and video work on it, I tend to keep that data on external drives...but sometimes, i don't have them handy....

so....now I have a 1TB drive dedicated for Lightroom2, not quite half full....but i know it's got some dupes, and it's managed to collect some Windows and Apple stock image files and whatnot.
i have a brand new 1tb drive which i was intending to use as a "new" clean LR catalog, and then reimage the old drive to serve as the backup...

so the task at hand is, whats the best way, or what are some highly recommended methods of going through the existing catalogs and files and making sure that LR ends up with all legit photos, no dupes? One idea I had was to use Picasa to collect everything, since last i remember, it was pretty good about catching dupes and it's free...and then importing the picasa folder into lightroom. Another was to make use of a Mac program called Tidy Up! to identify and handle duplicates and then go in and import images to lightroom.

I have a Mac, so mac friendly software...

also...if i import an image into LR, theoretically i can delete the file from its original location and not lose it, correct? I end up keeping a copy anyways because of paranoia and good practices, but figured i'd ask

thanks

**Peter Zack** · 08-05-2009, 12:27 PM

Have a look on my blog on this page for the info and link to Dup Detector. It works very well and it's free!

jmdeegan · 08-05-2009, 12:34 PM

thanks...downside is it appears to be windows only?

gonna have to google it. worst case i suppose i could throw the files up in vmware, run it and then do the catalogging on os-x again.

gotta see if tidy up is the same idea. i thought it just did filename, date and size, without pixel checking....

thanks

jsherman999 · 08-05-2009, 12:40 PM

Originally Posted by jmdeegan

Here's my challenge...tho first, a little on why it got messy

I live in NYC, not a ton of room, so I am a laptop guy at the moment. Trust me, I miss my oodles of desktop space and power. But, because my HDD is 500gb and i am doing real work plus photos and video work on it, I tend to keep that data on external drives...but sometimes, i don't have them handy....

so....now I have a 1TB drive dedicated for Lightroom2, not quite half full....but i know it's got some dupes, and it's managed to collect some Windows and Apple stock image files and whatnot.
i have a brand new 1tb drive which i was intending to use as a "new" clean LR catalog, and then reimage the old drive to serve as the backup...

so the task at hand is, whats the best way, or what are some highly recommended methods of going through the existing catalogs and files and making sure that LR ends up with all legit photos, no dupes? One idea I had was to use Picasa to collect everything, since last i remember, it was pretty good about catching dupes and it's free...and then importing the picasa folder into lightroom. Another was to make use of a Mac program called Tidy Up! to identify and handle duplicates and then go in and import images to lightroom.

I have a Mac, so mac friendly software...

also...if i import an image into LR, theoretically i can delete the file from its original location and not lose it, correct? I end up keeping a copy anyways because of paranoia and good practices, but figured i'd ask

thanks

.

If that's OS X, you have a bash shell and perl installed - I'd write up a couple scripts to organize things and weed out duplicates, building you a clean, organized new external HD!

But that's me.

jmdeegan · 08-05-2009, 12:43 PM

sure, give me something else to learn

im giving tidy up another go-round. in terms of true backups....i am really wishing there was more cost effective BD support (burners and media just aren't there yet for me), or someone online offering significant quantities for pennies of cloud storage.

but thats another can of worms

**Marc Sabatella** · 08-05-2009, 12:54 PM

Originally Posted by jmdeegan

I live in NYC, not a ton of room, so I am a laptop guy at the moment. Trust me, I miss my oodles of desktop space and power. But, because my HDD is 500gb and i am doing real work plus photos and video work on it, I tend to keep that data on external drives...but sometimes, i don't have them handy....

A common enough issue. I address it by keeping my originals on external HD's, but generating medium-resolution JPEG "proofs" (1200x1800 - enough for a 4x6 print at 300dpi; more than enough for full screen viewing) of all my "keepers" (defined loosely as "a picture I'd like to have on my laptop" - ends up being maybe 30-40% of what I shoot after deleting the absolute garbage). With a reasonable amount of JPEG compression, typical file sizes are only half a megabyte or so, so I can reasonably expect to have proofs for all my keepers for my entire life on a laptop hard drive.

also...if i import an image into LR, theoretically i can delete the file from its original location and not lose it, correct?

Unless I'm mistaken about something, the answer is *NO*, absolutely not! As far as I know, importing into LR shouldn't make a separate copy of your image; it just needs to make the catalog system aware of the image. Unless you explicitly *make* a new copy as part of the import process, simply importing it shouldn't do that for you! My understanding is that if you delete the original, it's gone - all you have left in LR is a catalog entry for a non-existent image!

**Peter Zack** · 08-05-2009, 01:09 PM

Marc is completely correct. The image you "see" in LR is only a thumbnail. If you delete the source file, you've lost the image. try this. Open LR and import a coule of images from one of your hard drives. Once the import is complete, turn the hard drive off. Now try to export the file. it's a no go and you'll get a missing file warning from LR.

netuser · 08-05-2009, 01:34 PM

Originally Posted by Peter Zack

Have a look on my blog on this page for the info and link to Dup Detector. It works very well and it's free!

Great and useful information there.

Thanks for sharing. Just come on handy!

Lowell Goudge · 08-05-2009, 02:25 PM

Originally Posted by jmdeegan

Here's my challenge...tho first, a little on why it got messy

I live in NYC, not a ton of room, so I am a laptop guy at the moment. Trust me, I miss my oodles of desktop space and power. But, because my HDD is 500gb and i am doing real work plus photos and video work on it, I tend to keep that data on external drives...but sometimes, i don't have them handy....

so....now I have a 1TB drive dedicated for Lightroom2, not quite half full....but i know it's got some dupes, and it's managed to collect some Windows and Apple stock image files and whatnot.
i have a brand new 1tb drive which i was intending to use as a "new" clean LR catalog, and then reimage the old drive to serve as the backup...

so the task at hand is, whats the best way, or what are some highly recommended methods of going through the existing catalogs and files and making sure that LR ends up with all legit photos, no dupes? One idea I had was to use Picasa to collect everything, since last i remember, it was pretty good about catching dupes and it's free...and then importing the picasa folder into lightroom. Another was to make use of a Mac program called Tidy Up! to identify and handle duplicates and then go in and import images to lightroom.

I have a Mac, so mac friendly software...

also...if i import an image into LR, theoretically i can delete the file from its original location and not lose it, correct? I end up keeping a copy anyways because of paranoia and good practices, but figured i'd ask

thanks

I'm not sure it is a question of duplicates, but a question of overall orginizational strategy and work flow.

For me, and this can vary between an amature and a pro, I store all shots in folders by year and month. If, within a month, I do a special event, trip, what ever, I have a separate folder for that, and subdivide as necessary, (i.e. for trips I subdivide by location) . This is where I keep ALL origonal files.

If I do any production editing, cropping etc, I save these files under new names, or with the same name but in a different directory. I never modify the origonals.

As a result I have many duplicate file names, for example, If I photographed a specific bird in June of this year, there is a full frame image of the shot in the Jun 09 directory, but a cropped, processed sharpened , or what ever copy in a separate directory Birds\species ....

My scanned film is a little different, as it is referenced by negative number (you know, the little sticker they put on the leader to identify your film in process). My negatives are filed that way, and that is how I keep the origonal scans, but I have also got them sorted by date. I have the scans numbered with the negative nuimber and sequence also, so it is easy to go back to the book and pull a negative if I really want to rescan it (never happened yet)

Once you work out how you want the work organized, then set your files up that way, and just keep to the same method.

jmdeegan · 08-06-2009, 11:07 AM

agreed, my workflow has been all over the map and i've been sloppy about that. that was the other part of my "project"....clean up what exists, so that my new work flow, pictures by month and year in folders etc, would be nicer.

i really really cannot wait to be back in my house, with a desktop and more permanent setup (not even mentioning monitors etc). it's just a nuisance to always lug around portable drives plus the laptop.

Lowell Goudge · 08-06-2009, 08:16 PM

there is no reason you can't start working now with the orginization I described.

I use lap link gold to back up my computers to portible drives.

It can be set to overwrite only modified files so you have always got the latest work version.

One thing to remember, I keep the file names in sequence (using the camera counter) when the camera "rolls over 9999" I use a batch rename feature to add a leading digit, so the file num,bers are always in sequence. this insures no problems with numbering. I also use the batch rename to add unique prefixes for each camera, istD aned K10D for my older cameras, the K7 lets you pick your own numbering prefix to avoid duplicates.