How to update folder content?

Question

How do you get LR to recognize new files that are in the library's folders? For example if I open a raw file from LR, LR creates a PSD edit file, which I then edit in PS. There are now two files in the LR library folder, the original raw file that I imported and the new PSD edit file. While in PS, I decide that I need to also save a screen res jpeg version to email to an art director, so I resize and save the jpeg to the same folder. This file does not appear in the folder when viewing the folder in the LR library. I try right clicking on the folder and selecting check for missing folders and photos, but this does not make the file appear.
How do I get LR to automatically recognize new image files that have been added to the folder in its library? I haven't found anything in the preferences or menus that would appear to enable this capability. Surely I don't have to go through the re-import process just to get LR to see new files in the folder.

Answer 1

>"Then once the export is accomplished, LR does not automatically recognize that you have added a new file to the current folder. "
Think of LR as a black box that stores "master" images. "Export"ing means you want to produce a new file and send it *outside* the black box for some external purpose - email, printing, web, whatever. If, for some reason, you want to edit a master file in some way within LR and keep that version in the black box, then you should be creating a virtual copy (don't export it and then try to import it back into LR). Later, when you want to actually *do* something with that copy, then you export it - again for emailing, printing, etc. But that virtual copy is retained inside the black box. You can even use a stack to keep all the versions of a master image together.
The other objective for getting a file out of LR is to edit it in an external application like PS. For that, use the "edit in PS" or "edit in other application". This performs an export, but brings the edited image back into LR as a new master. And you can have it stacked with the original master.
However, what if you create some third image in PS from the one sent from LR? This gets us to the crux of the matter (what you ask in your original post). We can't simply assume that any file derived from PS is to be made part of LR. That's up to the user. However, it may be that case that it is the intent of the user to "reimport". So how do we do this?
The LR team apparently has decided that the user must import the new image. You are suggesting that another approach is for the user to simply store the new image in the same folder as the LR source and have it automatically imported, like a watched folder. That seems like a good approach. If this approach were taken, then Adobe would have to fix the situation where only one file of a given name (w/o extension) in a folder can be in the library.
I know iViewMedia Pro provides any number of watched folders, so it can be done. I wonder, given that the Adobe engineers switched from the "shoot" concept to folders between Beta 4 and version 1, they didn't have time to add a rich set of features regarding the use of folders. We can hope that they will improve the features as time goes on.
- Pierre