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05-18-2009, 04:45 PM   #31
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I sort mine by type of photo.

Nature (main folder) inside that, would be other folders depicting landscapes, seascapes, waterfalls. Each subject has a folder to itself.
Birds (main folder) inside this, are other folders depicting what type of birds.
People (main folder) inside this are other folders for which type of people, like what they are doing, etc.

Without depicting when they were taken. I used to add what type of camera was used with what settings. That got old after awhile, when I had too many to add this info. But I can tell when each one was taken and what camera and lens was used, right off the top of my head. So far my memory for these things has been good.
You get the drift.

05-18-2009, 08:49 PM   #32
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Thinking of organization in terms of putting pictures into "folders" according to one single attribute is a very "film" way of thinking. A physical piece of film (or print) can be in only one place at a time. So you have to choose which folder to put it in, then hope you can find it there later.

Whereas with digital images - including scanned images - a catalog program allows you to assign mutliple keywords or categories to each image. This in turn allows you to search on those keywords to find images regardless of where they are located physically. So if you take a portrait at the beach, you don't have to decide whether it goes in the "portrait" or "seascape" folder - put it wherever you want, but assign it both keywords. Then if you're trying to find portraits shot at the beach, you can find it instantly by searching pictures with both keywords. And so on. A little time spent up from adding the necessary info can pay off *big* time in terms of finding images later. That's the potntial value of a catalog program.
05-18-2009, 09:03 PM   #33
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QuoteOriginally posted by Alfisti Quote
I just set up a file tree like this ....

2009_04
2009_05

Etc etc etc

Then I have another set of folders marked ...

Prints
Web

and withion thos I have the images sorted by year.

Piece of cake frankly.
Yeah, but do you do stock photography? Do you ever have a "now where is that one photo that I took of that particular subject that I don't have labeled because it was among 200 pictures of a different subject I took that day" moment? That's what LR-type cataloging is good for. It's not the best, but it's better than just organization by folder. With a real cataloging system it's easy to find things by keyword, and you can cross-reference different subjects too. Not everybody needs this, but the functionality is there.

Just for clarification, I'm with you in terms of organization. Most of my organization is done by folder (e.g. 2009-05-18_kids_playing), but LR has abilities that go far beyond that if one cares to put in the effort. I'm not crazy about the need to import photos before working on them, but I've come to live with it. Set it to import, go watch some TV or browse the web, and in a few minutes it's ready to go.

Organization isn't why I use Lightroom. I use it because it's easy to make quick edits, and simple to work on large batches of photos at once. There are some really nice features like creating "virtual copies" where you copy files to version out (1 color, 1 b&w, 1 a different crop, etc.) without taking up disk space for all those copies. Also snapshots within a given process, so you can go back 10 steps and see what your photo looked like back then compared to now (before and after comparisons). Pretty sure these are things Photoshop doesn't do for you.
05-18-2009, 09:14 PM   #34
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QuoteOriginally posted by Alfisti Quote
I just set up a file tree like this ....

2009_04
2009_05

Etc etc etc

Then I have another set of folders marked ...

Prints
Web

and withion thos I have the images sorted by year.

Piece of cake frankly.
Sounds sort of what I do with Lightroom, except that it sorts them by date for me. I also maintain a second set of folders for film scans.

Steve

05-18-2009, 09:20 PM   #35
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QuoteOriginally posted by Wheatfield Quote
My understanding is that Lightroom is less useful for files from scanned negs than it is for digital images.
It depends somewhat on the quality of the scan. If the scan is done with dynamic range compression turned off, the histogram is pretty much similar to that from my K10D. The effectiveness of other features such as sharpening is dependent somewhat on grain structure.

Steve
05-18-2009, 09:25 PM   #36
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QuoteOriginally posted by Yohan Pamudji Quote
...Set it to import, go watch some TV or browse the web, and in a few minutes it's ready to go...
Or you can get real frustrated and build up a new computer. Imports go real fast for me know, but it came at a price.

Steve

(Trying to not think too much about money that went for cpu/motherboard/memory that could have gone for glass...)
05-18-2009, 09:29 PM   #37
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QuoteOriginally posted by stevebrot Quote
Or you can get real frustrated and build up a new computer. Imports go real fast for me know, but it came at a price.

Steve

(Trying to not think too much about money that went for cpu/motherboard/memory that could have gone for glass...)
Tell me about it. I could live with the import speed. What killed me was the preview loading times. No, not the preview generating time that happens when you import, but rather the time it took to bring up the already generated preview when you zoom in to 100%. Wow, dog slow on an old Athlon64 X2. I've since upgraded to an Intel Q6600 quad-core, and am content. I'll never be completely happy since I'm a computer tech freak, but working in Lightroom is at least a pleasant experience now.

05-18-2009, 10:02 PM   #38
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QuoteOriginally posted by Yohan Pamudji Quote
Tell me about it. I could live with the import speed. What killed me was the preview loading times. No, not the preview generating time that happens when you import, but rather the time it took to bring up the already generated preview when you zoom in to 100%. Wow, dog slow on an old Athlon64 X2. I've since upgraded to an Intel Q6600 quad-core, and am content. I'll never be completely happy since I'm a computer tech freak, but working in Lightroom is at least a pleasant experience now.
Intel Q9400 here...on an Asus P5QC MB...zoom...zoom...

Home-built to MY standards!

My apologies to the other thread readers. Lightroom users will understand to a certain extent. The time to import can take quite awhile, but on a slower computer, the time to display 1:1 images can be quite slow. Ditto on the rendering for export for RAW images. So buy a bigger boat, need a bigger truck to tow it with...

Steve
05-19-2009, 05:05 AM   #39
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IMHO import times are OK it's the preview times when you click on an image that is tough. The 6mp 100D images were OK but the 20D 14mp images had a 2 secod lag. I have a laptop with 3GB RAM, 2 GHtz Intel Dual Core and it's juuuust fast enough.
05-19-2009, 06:38 AM   #40
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QuoteOriginally posted by Alfisti Quote
IMHO import times are OK it's the preview times when you click on an image that is tough. The 6mp 100D images were OK but the 20D 14mp images had a 2 secod lag. I have a laptop with 3GB RAM, 2 GHtz Intel Dual Core and it's juuuust fast enough.
For your next upgrade get a quad core. Lightroom does a good job of utilizing all 4 on my machine (CPU usage spikes to high 80s to low 90s at times when previewing), and preview times have decreased significantly since I went from dual to quad. It also uses all 4 cores when importing and exporting, so definitely go more slower cores over less but faster cores if you have to choose.
05-19-2009, 06:57 AM   #41
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QuoteOriginally posted by Yohan Pamudji Quote
For your next upgrade get a quad core. Lightroom does a good job of utilizing all 4 on my machine (CPU usage spikes to high 80s to low 90s at times when previewing), and preview times have decreased significantly since I went from dual to quad. It also uses all 4 cores when importing and exporting, so definitely go more slower cores over less but faster cores if you have to choose.
i just got this machine! It's my work laptop so i cannot be too fussy and it seems to perform better than the specs suggest it will (it's a Lenovo machine with decent quality parts) and I am Ok with the performance right now.

I could never go back to a fixed PC, I love the laptop and docking syatem, it's magnificent.
05-19-2009, 07:19 AM   #42
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Well, I'm running my self built dual core, with Windows 7 RC 64bit and 4gbs of memory. The program didn't seem that slow in the little time I used it. But without doing digital, I'll probably stick with PS, until the time I buy a digital.
05-20-2009, 09:09 AM   #43
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QuoteOriginally posted by Alfisti Quote
Yeah i still have NFI why we need to import but it takes a few seconds and it's done, i am used to it now. As for editing, the curves tool is outstanding and the selective colour adjustments really do work well. I barely use CS3 anywhere once I learnt to harness LR, my bet is you've not figured out LR yet and that's understandable because it's ... honestly .. it's a nightmare to 'get to know'.
You have to import because LR needs to have an entry in the database for each file. If the file isn't listed in the database, LR can't do anything with the file. All the editing and tags are stored in the database so that when you export the file, the edits and tagging are merged with the source file to produce the output file.
05-20-2009, 10:15 AM   #44
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QuoteOriginally posted by alohadave Quote
You have to import because LR needs to have an entry in the database for each file. If the file isn't listed in the database, LR can't do anything with the file. All the editing and tags are stored in the database so that when you export the file, the edits and tagging are merged with the source file to produce the output file.
Which, in turn, is why the editing is non destructive. I'll take the import over destructive editing and the need to keep physical copies of images on my computer.
05-20-2009, 10:25 AM   #45
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QuoteOriginally posted by Alfisti Quote
I have a laptop with 3GB RAM, 2 GHtz Intel Dual Core
btw (offtopic) you can make it 4GB and use software like SuperSpeed's RamDisk Plus which can use above 3GB RAM under WinXP for a RAM disk

Microsoft Certified RamDisk Solutions

I run WinXP 32 bit on Lenovo R61 w/ 4GB RAM and use RAM disk for SilkyPix cache for example
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