[NaClH2O]

I have been using photoshop elements for years but I thought I might try the full photoshop/lightroom bundle available on the cloud. I first got the lightroom free trial and was unable to figure out how (even after searching the net) to disable the photo organizer. I have a perfectly good organization system, it works well for me and I have no desire to change it. In PSE it is simple to ignore their organizing system and just use the program to edit my photos. Is there a way to do that in LR?

NaCl(why fix something that ain't broke)H2O

[Murfy]

I don't think so, that is basis of how Lightroom works, it's part of the flow they want you to use. You immediately import where you can add keywords and import actions to do sorting. It will want to import your images into the catalog to work on them.

[NaClH2O]

Lightroom's not for me then. I have no desire whatsoever to use someone else's organizer techniques when mine work perfectly well for me.

[slowpez]

Lightroom's not for me then. I have no desire whatsoever to use someone else's organizer techniques when mine work perfectly well for me.

I don't use the organizer either but I do use LR and Photoshop. I simply import my photos into LR into a folder named the way I want. LR doesn't actually store anything outside of your folders. Plays havoc if you move it to another folder outside of lightroom but I have never found that to be a problem either. I just go in, find the folder and upload it again. After I have the folder in lightroom, I open the the develop module and do what needs to be done. I wouldn't go back to elements now. Not sure what kind of problem your having that just ignoring the organizer wouldn't work.

[jatrax]

Lightroom's not for me then. I have no desire whatsoever to use someone else's organizer techniques when mine work perfectly well for me.

Lightroom is primarily an organizer with some development stuff. It's whole purpose is to organize and retrieve photos. I think that is why people who have used Photoshop a lot don't like it. It is a complete paradigm shift from what they are used to.

That said the Lightroom system is very flexible and you might be able to customize the import to match your system. I already had a system that I thought was perfect for me when I bought Lightroom and had almost exactly the same concern when I started to use it. I had years of images already organized and Lightroom wanted to do it differently. However, I persevered and dug into the import options and found with a little work I could set my import script to match what I was already doing. The only difference was I had used a dash in the folder names which Lightroom would not use. I had to go back and change the dashes in my old folders to periods. That took a little time, but now I just click import and all the images go into the system I was already using.

Now with your system it might not be possible, without seeing it I've no idea. All I'm saying is take a look at the import options before you give up.

Also, even if you system does not work with Lightrooms import, you can still put your images into whatever system you use and then import from the folder structure into Lightroom. Lightroom does not care if you import from the SD card or from a folder on your computer.

May I ask what is it about yours that makes it so superior to LRs? Just curious...

Also curious. First because I'm stumped as what it might be that Lightroom cannot handle and second because I might learn something.

[reeftool]

Lightrooms non destructive nature makes their directory system necessary. That said, there is no reason whatsoever that you can't continue to use your current organizing system. When you import into Lightroom, it creates a normal folder in Windows, usually My Pictures but it can be anywhere you choose. Your edited Raw photo is only view able from within Lightroom so if you go to your photo in its Windows folder, it is only the Raw shot straight out of the camera. I export all my keepers and I usually access them through Windows. I have found it easier that way. All my current imports go into my new 2016 folder and my exports go into subfolders within that folder so my shots are pretty easy to find. Lightroom uses the Windows file structure so it's very likely that you can continue your current method of organizing. I only go into Lightroom when I want to edit my shots. To view my shots, post online or whatever, I just go into My Photos. While Lightroom does have it's defaults, it will put your photos wherever you tell it to. It will even make a backup copy to an external drive when you import.

I'm assuming the Mac version (if you are using one) is similar and uses the Mac's file structure.

[Bruce Clark]

It is not possible to disable Lightroom "Organiser". Lightroom is several modules one of which is the Library. Also there is a Develop Module and several others, Print, Map, Web etc. The whole Lightroom program is built around a catalog. It is vital to understand what this catalog means and what it does.

I suggest everyone look at this video from B+H before even opening up Lightroom.

You Tube

You Tube

LR can handle just about any organisation structure you wish to use but the key is once you import to lightroom all file operations should be performed in lightroom otherwise it's catalog becomes confused, images appear to be lost. One thing Lightroom does NOT do is do a routine backup of your images. It will backup the catalogue but not the images themselves. The assumption is, I guess, that users will back up their hard drives anyway.

Edit: As reeftool points out there is an option to send second a second copy of files on import to a second hard drive. This can provide a low level backup of your RAW or unedited JPEGS. However, there is no automated or even manual backup for the images them selves. What is called a lightroom backup is a backup of the catalog only. One can Export images to a another disk or partition at will but this in not a backup as such and can't be automated to my knowledge.



Certainly if you do decide to adopt Lightroom, you will have to adopt Lightroom's file management techniques rather than using the computer Operating System.

Good luck

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Last edited by Bruce Clark; 01-09-2016 at 03:25 PM.

[reeftool]

Yes, you have to manually make a backup of your exported shots. I usually do that on a fairly regular basis. But having your originals copied to a second hard drive when you import covers your butt. There are also sync features in LR for those using multiple computers and tablets. I haven't explored using these features yet but I may well be checking them out in the near future. I now have 2 external hard drives full of photos.

Using Lightroom for file management is a pain sometimes but it only applies to the original imported photos in your catalog. Delete a photo that resides in your Lightroom catalog using Windows or another program and it creates problems in Lightroom. But your exports aren't in the catalog so you can handle them as you please. You can also still import photos to your computer without using Lightroom. You can then import individual photos or whole folders into your catalog just by checking those you want to edit in LR. While you can't disable the organizer feature, you can choose to upload your shots like you always have and only use Lightroom for those shots you want to edit in LR. I don't load my phone or P&S shots into LR at all.

[NaClH2O]

OK here's the deal. I never said that my organizing system was better than lightroom's, I just said "it works for me". The deal killer for me would be that I have many thousands of folders that are labeled essentially this: location; date (in the form of 11-11-11) and subject matter. For instance "hood 07-04-15 fireworks" Since according to jatrax lightroom will not accept dashes, I'm not about to go thru and rename all those folders. I'll continue to use PSE and the occasional shot that requires full bore PS. Software exsists for MY benefit, not the other way around.

[jatrax]

OK here's the deal. I never said that my organizing system was better than lightroom's, I just said "it works for me". The deal killer for me would be that I have many thousands of folders that are labeled essentially this: location; date (in the form of 11-11-11) and subject matter. For instance "hood 07-04-15 fireworks" Since according to jatrax lightroom will not accept dashes, I'm not about to go thru and rename all those folders. I'll continue to use PSE and the occasional shot that requires full bore PS. Software exsists for MY benefit, not the other way around.

I think you may have missed part of what we have been saying. Lightroom (AFAIK) will not include a dash in it's renaming scripts. At least it did not when I started so I changed mine to suit. However, there is absolutely no reason you cannot name those folders whatever you want to MANUALLY, just as you probably are doing now. I would have to go back and walk through the import dialog to show you how but if you look under the Destination panel of the import dialog there is a box labeled "into subfolder". Now I've never used it this way but I believe if you select the main folder below, then check "into subfolder" you can type whatever you want into that field and Lightroom will create it for you.

Yep, just tested that and it works correctly. Also, I was in error Lightroom DOES allow and will create dashes in folder names, it was in file names that it only allows periods. But regardless you can still TYPE in anything you want, the restrictions are in the auto renaming script which (since you are adding the location each time) you would never use anyway. My folders are named "2015-01-28" and so on. I can do that with a script because all I'm doing is pulling the date from the files and then renaming them and putting them into folders with the day, month and year. You would use the "into subfolder" method instead.

If you don't want to use Lightroom, that is totally fine, I'm not pushing it on anyone, but I think you will find that you can set it to do just about anything you want in the import dialog if you investigate how to do it. It has amazing flexibility there but it is mostly hidden and I think few people ever dig into the possibilities.

---------- Post added 01-10-16 at 09:16 PM ----------

Software exsists for MY benefit, not the other way around.

Yes it does, but you do have to learn how to use. And the learning curve on Lightroom can be steep. The trick is presets and scripts. Figure out how to do something and then save it as a preset.

[BrianR]

You don't have to conform to any sort of organization with Lightroom, however it does need to maintain a catalogue of all the photos you want available in it. You can organize your photos anyway you like via folders in your operating system, then "Add photos to catalogue without moving them" to Lightroom, and you can then browse using your directory structure from within Lightroom. Once in Lightroom's catalogue, you can also move them to different folders as you would in your OS, so if you want you can keep your same system but use Lightroom's interface to do your sorting. You cannot disable this interface, but it doesn't need to interfere with your own methods.

Any edits you do to you photos in Lightroom are only visible in Lightroom, or in the files you export out of Lightroom, so this might be an organizational pain for you. Or not, you may end up preferring Lightroom's interface for browsing folders, and you may greatly appreciate its other searching tools.

[boriscleto]

If you don't want to use Lightroom, that is totally fine, I'm not pushing it on anyone, but I think you will find that you can set it to do just about anything you want in the import dialog if you investigate how to do it. It has amazing flexibility there but it is mostly hidden and I think few people ever dig into the possibilities.

The Import dialog has so much flexibility it is almost indecipherable to ordinary users. So much so that Adobe tried to change it to a newbie friendly dialog. This caused a revolt in the user community and Adobe restored the old dialog in the next update...

[Class A]

You don't have to conform to any sort of organization with Lightroom, however it does need to maintain a catalogue of all the photos you want available in it.

+1

There is quite a bit of misinformation in this thread but BrianR's post is spot on.

There is no reason why you cannot keep exactly the folder structure you have and you don't even have to use LR's import dialogue because you could just add images manually to your existing structure and then "synchronise" LR's catalogue to reflect the changes (and thus achieve an "import" of any new images).

Having said that, LR always uses a catalogue with abysmal inefficiency -- the file will grow to insane sizes because of the atrocious redundancy recorded and the inefficient format used. Compressing the file would be easy but until LR 5 I know Adobe did not do it. They may still not compress the catalogue file, I simply cannot comment as I stopped following the LR development as soon as I realised that Adobe cares more about product integration (tablet, cloud, etc) and dumbed down, non-optional "auto"-functionality than about giving one a serious RAW converter.

Unless you maintain several catalogues, you will be putting all your eggs in one basket. Catalogues can develop problems and if you have only one, "fun" with this is almost guaranteed because even when you backup regularly (say "good bye" to a lot of hard drive storage unless you compress manually, e.g. with WinZip) then you are not guaranteed to find out about a problem straight away and would have to unroll quite a bit to find an uncorrupted backup.

I've had catalogues with problems that slowed LR down. It would have been a nightmare, if that had affected all my photos (I maintain several catalogues).

Also, if you change the file structure outside LR (and that could just be a change in drive letter for an external disk), you'll have to tell LR to where things went, otherwise it will not be in sync with your structure anymore.

Perhaps try Capture One 9 as an alternative organiser with a really nice RAW converter that may save you many trips to PSE. CO9 can work using catalogues, but it also supports a catalogue-free approach it refers to as "session-based". It pretty much works like Adobe's Bridge with this approach.

You can call external editors like PSE from CO9 and while I haven't fully evaluated CO9 myself yet, I like a lot what I'm seeing.

[jatrax]

even when you backup regularly (say "good bye" to a lot of hard drive storage unless you compress manually, e.g. with WinZip)

LR backups are now saved as compressed folders. I think this might have started with version 6 but I'm not sure.

[Oakland Rob]

I would recommend that you don't use Lr.

Yes, it will not rename, move, reorganize, or in any other way do anything with your existing structure, which is pretty simple, just a tree of directories, right? You can import several ways into Lr, and one way is to "add" in that Lr only references that existing folder, and doesn't move or copy it.

But you won't gain much of anything that you are likely to use. You probably don't use searching, metadata much, ratings, etc, and those are the sorts of things one needs Lr for, and if you're getting by without them don't bother.

And opening and editing in Lr one by one will probably be more confusing that not, since Lr is NOT primarily an editor. If you want that, get Photoshop or any of the other alternatives, or just keep using PSE that way.

Lr is a parametric image editor; it works non destructively and that isn't something that is apparently necessary for your work, so just keep it simple and continue to use PSE, which is quite a nice program. You'll save some money too.