Re-organizing my LR 5 file structure

As I started with LR, I had my desktop as my main LR catalog and another evolved on my laptop.
In both cases, I grew more or less a random file system.
I now want to establish a more structured file system, ultimately combining both catalogs into one external ssd.
Currently my photos are a number of file locations each on both the desktop and the laptop and in too many folders within LR.
One sense I have is to start of with a new file folder structure system already planned. How much of this would be best to establish on my current computers before I migrate LR to the new ssd?
How do I go about implementing this and have LR 'find' all the photos in the new folder structure? And not have a great deal of file searching to hook up 'lost' images into the new file structure.
Thank you for any help and advice.
Cheers
Bob

LR does not find the photos if you move them with finder or explorer since LR does not store the file. It stores its location in the file system - a pointer to the file.
If you have moved files or folders with finder or explorer you need to update its locations in LR - LR will show a ? on the folders and a ! on the photos. For just a bunch, this is fine. For a lot, this is hard work.
Best practice is to move the folders/photos from within LR. You can drag&drop folders / folder structures in the folder panel in LR's library as well as single photos to new locations.
Some more reading: http://www.computer-darkroom.com/lr2_find_folder/find-folder.htm

Similar Messages

Export Masters To Organized File Structure

Hello Everyone,
I'm new to Aperture 3, in the past my photo library and folder structure has been a mish mosh of imports ranging from iPhoto to Picassa. The original photo structure of all my photos is a real mess. Of course, when I download Aperture 3, I jumped right in and imported all my photos (as referenced) then went about organizing them in Aperture.
I have looked around and not found the answer to this, but what I would like to do is take my Aperture Organized file structure and Export all the masters to a different location in the same organized File structure. Basically I want my "New" Master file structure to match my Aperture organized folder/project structure and store the referenced files on a share. Currently they are on my MBP with limited disk space.
I have played around with the export versions, but export Masters is grayed our when I select my entire "Projects and Albums". Any help would be much appreciated. I'm just trying to get better organized with my original Master jpeg folder structure.
Thank you,
Steve

scSaxon1 wrote:
Hello Everyone,
... what I would like to do is take my Aperture Organized file structure and Export all the masters to a different location _in the same organized File structure_ . Basically I want my "New" Master file structure to match my Aperture organized folder/project structure .... {Emphasis added}
(Added) First -- and this is important -- you must understand the difference between exporting an image (which creates a new file) and +relocating your Masters+ which moves your Masters to another drive location and tells Aperture where they are.
What you want to do -- quoted above -- can't be automatically (and thus usefully) done ... and (imho and apparently the Aperture design team's HO as well) there is no need.
Stepping into Aperture's world is bit like stepping off the solid pier onto a boat. You feel afloat. You worry about sinking. The boat won't sink.
Aperture is based on image-management. Until Aperture and like programs matured, photographers relied on +file managers+ and, basically, advanced file browsers.
Leave that behind. +There is no utility in having a one-to-one correspondence between your images and your digital negative files+. You literally can no not do this and use Aperture: Versions are images created on-the-fly, based on text files. They don't perdure as image format files (yes, I have been waiting a long time to use "perdure" in a sentence). Aperture lets the user manage their images (in tremendously plastic ways) and (except for backup) ignore file management completely.
I've touched on this in a few other responses in the forum. I'll try to find links. IME, the only file-management need I have is being able to find a file without Aperture. I keep all my Masters in their own directory (no one's captures but mine). I stick to a good file-naming convention. My computer sorts these tens of thousands of images by date in less than a second. I have never not been able to find a file almost immediately (as long as I know what I'm looking for).
If I don't know what I'm looking for -- I'll never find it using a file browser. That's what I use Aperture for.
I realize my presumption in assuming that your needs parallel mine. If they don't, specify exactly what functionality you are looking to maintain. Aperture may not be able to do it. My hunch, however, is that you are trying to stay moored to the world of file browsing. Push off -- there's good sailing out here.
Some additional thoughts and suggestions are [in this thread|http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=13294441#13294441]. And [here's a thread|http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=13115722&#13115722] with even more.
Message was edited by: Kirby Krieger

Organizing and file structure-

just getting started with LR. Will the program allow me to keep my images in their current location on my HD? If so can I still use LR to organize and create new folders once imported?
Or do I need to organize before importing.
If they are all imported dent that then duplicate a large photo collection and use up lots of disk space?

Yes, you can keep everything where it is currently, you import into Lightroom using the Add option. New folders can also be created on import into Lightroom, or at any time thereafter using Lightroom (not your operating system). Importing takes up very little extra space.
Let me point out that in my opinion, organizing has nothing to do with folder or file structure. NOTHING. The two can be and should be independent. The better way to organize, in my opinion, is to simply leave photos in their existing folders, then add new photos to default named folder (such as capture date), and do the real organizing in Lightroom using Lightroom tools -- keywords, captions and other metadata. Add keywords religiously to your photos, and add captions as appropriate. This gives you a much more flexible and powerful organization than anything you could achieve using files and folders, and gives you much faster and more powerful searches as well. So, please, stop worrying about folders, and start thinking about adding meaningful keywords and captions to your photos.

Reversing iTunes organized file structure

Help!
I just imported my entire music library and had checked "keep iTunes music folders organized" under preferences. In my "my music" folder I had my songs named artist - title (Johnny Cash - Ring of Fire)and now iTunes renamed all the songs by track number and created about 200 different folders. That same song is now under a Johnny Cash folder named "07 Ring of Fire". Is there any possible way to reverse this? Do I need to manually rename all my songs back to their orignal name? Please help!

Hi
Facing a similar problem since i-tunes 5.xx (also with 6.01): The file structure is still the same as before and ok but the library shows all songs, that have been ripped as "wav" files not correct. The only information given is now under "title" eg 01 American Idiot. No Album, no Band is shown anymore. All files ripped as mp3-files are shown properly. Deleting the entire library and re-importing brings no cure. Please help.

File structure and hierarchy in Aperture.

Hi, everyone.
I am trying to import folders with images into Aperture and, much to my surprise, have found that this process is everyting but intuitive and straightforward.
My library (outside of Aperture) is made up of folders each corresponding to a day and location. These folders are labeled using the data and location as part of their name.
As I try to import these folders into Aperture I can't seem to import them into a single folder or project as sub-folders or sub-domains of that project. I have tried to create a project and them import the folders into it but Aperture won't import them into that project and doesn't allow me to drag and drop it either once it has been imported. I also tried to create albums and folders but haven't been successful.
How does this file structure in Aperture work in terms of hierarchy ? It certainly isn't structured the way the Finder is or any other file system I have seen to date. Creating folders, organizing them and bringing any type of data into these folders should be a simple process but in Aperture it doesn't seem to be.
Am I doing something wrong or is Aperture trying to re-invent the wheel ?
Is there any tutorial I can watch or read on how to work with Aperture's file structure and import folders and folders into it ?
Thank you in advance.

Regarding your specific problem I suggest treating each existing dated folder of image files as a single Project in Aperture. In Aperture a Project is a specific time-based concept that may or may not jive with what you previously considered a project. For instance I may have in my mind that shooting all the highest peaks in every state is a "project," but that would be inappropriate as an Aperture Project. Instead each peak might be a Project, but the pix of all the peaks would be pointed to as an Album.
The way I look at it conceptually:
Aperture is a database (DB), and each image file lives in one Project.
Albums are just collections of Pointers that point to individual image files living in one or more Projects. Since they just contain pointers, albums can be created or deleted at will without affecting image files. Very powerful. And Albums of pointers take up almost zero space, so they are fast and do not make the Library size grow.
Keywords can be applied to every image separately or in batches. Keywords are hugely powerful and largely obviate the need for folders. Not that we should never use folders, just that we should use folders only when useful organizationally - - after first determining that using keywords and albums is not a better approach.
As one example imagine the keyword "flowers." Every image of a 100,000 images Library that has some flowers in it has the keyword flowers. Then say we want to put flowers in an ad, or as background for a show of some kind, or to print pix for a party, or even just to look for an image for some other reason. We can find every flower image in a 100k-image database in 2 seconds, and in another few seconds create an Album called "Flowers" that points to all of those individual images.
Similarly all family pix can have a keyword "family" and all work pix can have a key word "work." Each individual pic may have any number of keywords. Such pic characteristics (work, family, flowers, etc.) should not be organized via folders.
So by using keywords and albums we can have instant access to every image everywhere, very cool. And keywords and albums essentially take up no space in the database.
Another approach is to use a folder "Family" for family pix, a folder "Flowers" for flowers pix and another folder "Work" for work pix. IMO such folders usage is a very poor approach to using an images database (probably stemming from old paper or film work practices). Note that one cannot put an image with family in a field of flowers at a work picnic in all three folders; but it is instant with keywords.
HTH
-Allen

I search TB for a word in a message. TB finds email containing word. Where does TB tell me the location of the email in my file structure?

I have my emails organized into folders. I seem to have misfiled a message. TB finds the message when I search on a key word, but I don"t know where the message is located in my file structure. I would like to refile it correctly so I need to know its current location. The contents are present in the search returns but I cant see the path.
Thanks
Gary

Please see this discussion for some ideas on the issue:
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/993657

File structure in large applications

Hello,
I have a fairly large application, totaling around ~150,000 lines of code.
Unfortunately, when I first began building this application, my understanding of file structure and various architectural patterns was quite limited, and the code could easily be labeled as "spaghetti code."
Since then, I have begun migrating everything over into an MVC structure, but was not entirely sure how to proceed.
I have one primary file, let's say Application.as that is essentially the main actionscript class, and I am using 'include "com/controller/hello.as"' instead of importing classes because I did not want to clutter up my code by using classes all over the place and having to instantiate them.
Would creating classes instead of having flat actionscript files be a better way to proceed?
How do you structure your large applications?
Are there any resources out there, articles, books, etc., that discuss enterprise level architectural patterns in Flex?
Thanks!

Flex is an Object Oriented environment and so NOT using classes and objects will generally lead to the architectural anti-pattern (read Bad) sometimes refered to as the Big Ball Of Mud (aka spaghetti code).
Just using classes and objects isn't always enough though. If a class is larger than 500 lines of code, it is very probably too big and doing too many things - try and split it up into smaller classes that each do exactly one thing and do it well. If a function is longer than one screen on your display, it is too big and should be broken down into smaller functions.
One good indicator as to whether or not you have a good class is to use a unit testing framework (http://flexunit.org/) and write tests for the class. If it's hard to test it then it's probably still too complicated.
How the classes are organized into packages is a less interesting, though if a package has more than 30 classes then there's a good chance that it's too big and you should try and divide it up.

Difference between file structure; iTunes, XP and Vista

I've noticed if I use iTunes to keep my music file organized that there's a difference between the way it organizes the file structure on XP vs Vista. In Vista it puts a Music folder in the iTunes Media folder whereas on XP it puts all the music directly into the iTunes Media folder.
The reason this is a concern for me is that I'm using an online sync service to sync my music folders between my laptop and my desktop, but with different paths on two different OSes (XP and Vista) this is causing issues.
Does anyone know if Apple is going to keep things consistent or if there's a reason for the differences? In the meantime I'll have to un-sync the folders and find a workaround.

I've noticed if I use iTunes to keep my music file organized that there's a difference between the way it organizes the file structure on XP vs Vista. In Vista it puts a Music folder in the iTunes Media folder whereas on XP it puts all the music directly into the iTunes Media folder.
The reason this is a concern for me is that I'm using an online sync service to sync my music folders between my laptop and my desktop, but with different paths on two different OSes (XP and Vista) this is causing issues.
Does anyone know if Apple is going to keep things consistent or if there's a reason for the differences? In the meantime I'll have to un-sync the folders and find a workaround.

File structure iPhoto

Hello forum,
is there by any chance sombody reading this forum who might be able to tell whether there is even the slightes chance that iPhoto would change its file structure in order to keep my own finder file structure?
iPhoto would be perfect if it would simple scan any folder I tell it too (similar like googles picasa) AND offer the possibility to archive my pictures on DVD/CD ROM, keeping a thumbnail of each archived picture with the information of the new location of the original file (like iView does)
Now I'm actually considering switching to iView, allthough I will miss the red eye reduction of iPhoto....
Any good news out there?
Or anyone sharing my point of view?
Thanks,
Petra

PetraVM:
Welcome to the Apple Discussions. Unfortunately you can't mirror your folder system exactly in iPhoto. Each folder or group of files you import will be placed in a roll. If imported from a folder the roll will have the same title as that folder.
You can, however, create folders in the Source pane to hold other folders and albums like this (folders can contain other folders and/or albums, slideshows, etc. but albums can only contain photos). That can, if desired somewhat mirror you folder system.
If you use iPhoto's alias system you can keep your source files in any folder system you'd like in any location you'd like and have just alias files in the library folder. See Tutorial #2. You'll still be limited to the rolls system of iPhoto but your source files will be in your own folder system.
Regarding redeye removal, have you tried iView's editor. Although requiring more steps it does a very good job. iView's versions control also lets you have multiple edited versions of the same image file. I use both on the same set of source files. iPhoto for books, calendars, etc. and iView for organizing and general image management.
Do you Twango?

How do I maintain the file structure in iphoto 6 the way i want them?

For the past few years I have been scanning forty years worth of slides on my windows based PC. I have approximately 9500 scan as this point. Each scan is given a number such as "009500" followed by the names of persons or places shown on the picture. They are generally in chronological order. Obviously the creation of the scan has nothing to do with the date of the actual shooting of the picture. They are in the order that I want them in.
I can import them either from an external hard drive or from cds containing a few hundred scans each.
Is there anyway that I can maintain that kind of file structure in iphoto 6?
Frankly, I am somewhat disappointed by all of this. My kids told me how easy the mac was for photos and I now find that it may well complicate my computer life even more.
Mad Judge

MJ,
Once your files are imported into the library you can view them in many ways. When you import a file, iPhoto uses the filename as the photo title. I think you can achieve what you want by using View > Sort Photos > by Title. This will display all of your scans in the alpha-numeric order of their titles. You could then move the size slider toward the left (to reduce the thumbnail size) and quickly group your photos into Film Rolls. Click on the first photo, shift-click on the last photo, and all photos in between will become selected. Then use File > Create Film Roll to group these photos together into manageable chunks. Each time you create (or select) a film roll you can give it a descriptive title and edit the roll date. When you set the View to Film Rolls, each roll is listed in chronological order by the date of the roll - not the date of the photos within the roll. This is handy, since you can easily set the date for each roll, and it's a much less daunting task than redating your entire library. Photos within one roll will display in chronological order based on the date of the photos. I realize that with your scans these will not be accurate. So you could either change the date in iPhoto (but you said this would be a huge task) or don't worry about it. [You could use Photos > Batch Change to quickly redate the photos in a roll. Even if you don't take the time to set the exact dates, you can assign the group to a date or series of dates. By doing this you can use the calendar tool to filter your library by date. It is just one more way to make iPhoto a powerful organizer. Click on a year, month, or date in the calendar tool, and iPhoto filters your library to show the photos with those dates.] This is where your grouping into film rolls helps make your library organized - if the photos in a roll are from relatively the same time frame, then perhaps the internal order of the roll will be less important. And you can always switch your View back to Sort by Title when you need the photos to display in the exact order you have designated with your filenames. Just don't re-title the photos once they are in your library.
If you divided your library into Film Rolls, then you could create an Album for each roll (by simply dragging the roll to the Source Pane). The advantage there is that with regular Albums, you have the option to sort the photos manually by dragging them around. (View > Sort Photos > Manually) You can switch to another sort order, and iPhoto remembers your manual order when you return to it. You do have the option to reset your manual order if you wish.
iPhoto is very flexible, and with so many views, sorts, and filters you may well find a method that works for you. There is a shift in thinking from the way Windows software works, and if you are used to file browsers then you have to learn to play by the rules of using a database. If you can be patient and work through the learning curve, you may be rewarded. If I can clarify anything for you, please let me know.

File Structure into Document?

I was wondering if anybody might know of a way to export a file structure - and the files included - into a text document, either in Word or Pages, or maybe better yet Excel.
I have a huge list of media files that are subfoldered and organized, and I want to print and archive this list when I backup the files to an external hard drive.
Thanks a lot!

install Textwrangler and drag the folder containing all those files to a blank TextWrangler document. It will do what you want. there are also terminal commands that will do this but that's probably the easiest.

Controlling File structure within iphoto

Aloha,
I am new to the macs and am trying to figure out the filing system with iphoto. I am interested in doing the following with my files in iphoto:
1. Is there a way that I store the images in folders that mimic my organization in iphoto? If not how can I navigate to a particular photo?
2. If I have a folder structure that I want to import to iphoto how do I go about doing that? As I belive iphoto uses 3 main picture storing folders (data, modified and original). Am I to drag my additional files into original? and will it mimick that structure within iphoto?
Thanks
macbook Mac OS X (10.4.7)

nayrsmith
I'll take these one at a time:
Can I do a mix of how the images are stored? aka some that are imported in the file structure that I have them organized in, and others (presumably new images) that are imported directly into iphoto? How would this work
Not comfortably, though you could do it using aliases I guess. You could certainly experiment with a few shots. My worry would be the complexity of the system would leave open the possibility of Human Error.
2. If I use filing outside of iphoto, I have to manually delete files? aka trashing then iphoto will not delete them from the files? What about if I rotate or modify the image in iphoto, does this then become permanent aka I cannot revert to the original?
Yes you would have to manually delete the files. No, you can still Revert To Original.
3. If I do use the filing outside of iphoto is there a way to use automator to delete pictures when I trash them
Not that I know off. I'm no Automator expert, but I looked in the Automator Library and could see nothing. The difficulty would be trying to make an internal app event (empty iPhoto Trash) match to a system event (Move to Trash) without a hook of some form from the Automator Library, Might be worth a post in the Automator Forum.
4. Iam concerned about space; does iphoto create a duplicate file for each image that is modified in iphoto (what constitutes modifcation, just cropping etc, or rotating as well?).
Yes, iPhoto makes an apparent duplicate of each file that is modified, and yes, modification includes any change. If your concerned about space, move the entire library to an external disk.
I am still skeptical about not having any control over how the images are stored, thus my hesitancy about just going with iphotos database storing.
The iPhoto Safety Net: If you go with the default setting in iPhoto your photo are stored - in plain view - at Home/Pictures/iPhoto Library Folder in the Originals folder, where they are organised in Rolls (really just a folder) based on Date. You can go there and visit them anytime. They are just as accessible as in your own file structure.
The iPhoto Library Folder is organised as follows:
There are various files, which are the Library itself and some ancillary files. Then you have three folders
Originals are the photos as they were downloaded from your camera or scanner.
(ii) Modified contains edited pics, shots that you have cropped, rotated or changed in any way.
This allows the Photos -> Revert to Original command
(iii) Data holds the thumbnails the the app needs to show you the photos in the iPhoto Window.
But remember, It is strongly advised that you do not move, change or in anyway alter things in the iPhoto Library Folder as this can cause the application to fail and even lead to data loss.
So essentially, the storage on iPhoto is as plain and secure as your own file system.
Feel free to ask more if you need more.
Regards
TD

Library File Structure Problem

I have 3 partitions setup on my computer, one running OSX, one for WinXP and another FAT32 partition I use to store data which is used by both operating systems. I recently copied my music library to this partition and set iTunes to use this partition (and subsequent sub-folder) as the primary location for my music library. While I am now able to enjoy my music library in OSX and WinXP I encountered a few problems.
1)The file structure for itunes with album art, separate folders for music, film, podcasts etc... did not transfer from it's original location in "My Documents\My Music" to the new location. As a result, whenever I download anything like a podcast or video it gets placed in the music section in iTunes which makes organizing and effectively browsing my library difficult. I am tempted to simply copy the original files to my new partition and then manually reorganize it. However, I'm worried it will have no effect on itunes and new downloads will still get misfiled regardless of file type or worse, I might render the library completely unplayable.
2) While most of my music is accessible to both Windows and OSX, occasionally I go to play a song in OSX and recieve an error message saying that the file cannot be located. If I manually search for the file it has no problem playing it. However, once I switch back to windows I encounter the same problem there. If I don't locate the file in OSX, it plays perfectly in WinXP. I have not switched the location of the file or any other related directories. Presently, a number of my songs remain unplayable in OSX as to not disrupt Window's ability to access all of my music.
Any assistance in ironing out these kinks would be greatly appreciated, thanks.

Anybody have any suggestions?

Creating new file structure/naming -- what to do about existing LR catalog?

I am renaming and reorganizing all of my photo file folders according Peter Krogh's DAM system (The DAM Book) outside of LR. What then do I do about my preexisting LR catalog? How will it know where everything is? Or how do I tell it where everything is? Is there a simple way of having the catalog follow the file structure?

EMRuggiero wrote:
What then do I do about my preexisting LR catalog? How will it know where everything is? Or how do I tell it where everything is? Is there a simple way of having the catalog follow the file structure?
If you change your fine names outside of Lightroom you can essentially forget all about your Lightroom catalog...there is no way you would EVER be able to go through and find all the "missing" files such a rename would cause...If you had saved out all your edits to the original files via .xmp, you could then add the renamed files and folders all over again...
You really need to reconsider your plans...you should either do the folder/file renaming in Lightroom or start over in Lightroom AFTER you've got your folders and file organized...
But in any event, you should consider long and hard before you do anything you are gonna regret...

Relocate Masters, keep existing file structure

Hello,
I've got a ton of photos that are organized by folder (by date and then by name of event). I've pulled them into Aperture as referenced files. I need to relocate those masters, but I want to keep the existing file structure. If I use the "relocate masters" command, Aperture creates its own file structure, which makes it virtually impossible to search the folders by event because it strips my existing file names. How can I relocate the master files while keeping my existing file structure?
Thanks!

Select the previews with the broken links, look under file-manage referenced images.
Dialog will show the disconnected files in upper part of dialog, and a navigation area in the lower part, select one of the disconnected files from the top, find it's mate in the lower. If they are all in the same folder hit reconnect all button and they should all magically reattach.
There's probably some better instructions in the help file.

Re-organizing my LR 5 file structure

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