Move file or mark for system move file...

Hello,

I finally bought Lightroom. Searching these posts I saw someone commenting about why a person would want to use LR to move a file. Seriously? Because I Want it to be a full on DAM solution. And the first mess I must de-tangle involves some years of very bad habits, both in iphoto and in my own head.



Therefore, there is something that I don't think Lightroom can do yet but I would love to be found wrong. I don't think LR is much help in marking for the system to find later out side of LR, and then moving the files, right, wrong?



I don't care if it marks the file in a way that the system can later find it and move it, or, if LR moves a selected file set already in LR. Either way what I am trying to do is organize correctly and that must mean moving found sets of files to where they belong.



It seems like overkill to purchase iView just for this one task. Qpict is a lot cheaper than iView ($35 vs $199) and can move files around. I was just wondering though why LR cant yet do this? OR, am I wrong? Does anyone but me think this is important? Any others requesting this (LR is missing applescript support on the Mac side as well)



Thanks



David
Move file or mark for system move file...
Just move them within Lightroom. That's the right way anyway because if you move them outside of Lightroom, they will have to be relocated.
Move file or mark for system move file...
Sorry to be less than clear but, how do I do this? ''How'' was the point of my post. How, do I move files around in Lightroom? I can see that I can delete files within LR but, how do I select files and move them to Folder A instead of residing in Folder B?



If there is a move action or a tool for already doing this then I apologize for being dense, but I have not seen this yet.



Thanks.



David

David-



Select a group of images * in folder view*, click and drag from the center of the photo, not the border. The folder it's going to will have a black line around it when it's selected.

levelbest,



If I understand your question, you've got many images in iPhoto that you want to reorganize and import into Lr. Is that the issue?



If so, there are various ways to tackle it. One easy way is to create the new folders as you go.



On your Desktop, make a new folder (Shift-Cmd-N). Name it ''For Lr Import.''



Now open iPhoto. Scroll back to your first image in iPhoto. Let's say it's from the year 2000. Select that first image plus the photos you want to group with it. Maybe they are all shots of Niagara Falls. Export only those photos (full-size) to that Desktop folder you just made: ''For Lr Import.''



Now switch to Lightroom. Go to File: Import Photos (or Shift-Cmd-I). In the window that opens, navigate to Desktop%26gt;For Lr Import. Select all the photos in that folder (click on the the first and then Cmd-A), and click Choose.



That window will close and the Lr Import dialog will open. Your choices here will depend on what kind of files you're working with - jpeg or raw, and what you want to do with them. The options are easy to figure out. This method works faster if you choose a ''move'' option rather than a ''copy'' option because it will move the images out of the desktop folder and into whatever folder you create for them. ''Copy'' leaves them sitting in that Desktop folder, and you've gotta clear 'em out manually before the next export/import -- an extra step each time.



So here's one way to go (in the Lr Import dialog):



Under File Handling, select ''Move Photos to a new location and import.''



Under Move To, navigate to Pictures. Create a new folder. Name it Photos 2000. Inside that folder, create another new folder. Name it Niagara Falls.



Under Organize, select By Date and pick a date format.



Don't miss taking advantage of the backup option. Check the ''Backup To'' box and create a similar hierarchy on a different drive. You could call the top-level folder Photo Originals.



Now you've created a hierarchy you can continue using with each export from iPhoto. Just keep adding folders to Photos 2000 until you exhaust that year. Then create Photos 2001 the same way. All your photos will eventually be organized by year%26gt;topic%26gt;date (or however you set up the hierarchy).



If you are converting raw to dng during import, the process is the same. You can use the backup function to preserve your raw files.



Good luck,



Jack

OK, I was not understanding the folder tree that LR has. So I can grab any selected photos and drag them to a different folder in the folder view? That is great. Thanks. Just what I was looking for.



I guess I Wont have to keep messing with the Qpict or iView demos then, hooray.



And just to be following up clearly, no, these photos are not in iPhoto anymore. I moved everything out of iPhoto several months ago when I knew things had gotten out of control. I Was using Graphic Converter first to try to organize but that was way too slow.



I did decide then to keep folders for each category, Sunrise, Sunset, Water, Sacred, etc. I am thinking this will make backing up easier in the long run and keep my folder structure used by Lightroom, but independent also. iPhoto left me nervous about trusting total file injcstion for a while.



I sent a test print out to a friend using a bureau, and it came out very nicely. It impressed everyone. SO now, I Need to backtrack a bit and sort through all the files that I have multiple copies of. I have multiple copies of so many files, BECSZSUE, I used iPhoto for so long. And because I was very lax with my backup system, I also have a couple of external drives with everything backed up. It's a headache to sort it all out but with the professional photography looming, and lots of pictures already to sell and to display, it is time to take all this DAM stuff seriously.



So hooray again for lightroom. And thanks.



David

Oh oh, I spoke too soon (perhaps). I still need to look at a files size. I need to select only files for example, with the width larger than 1200.



I also need to select only files with a width smaller than 600. It would also be great if I could look at the files date when I find a suspected duplicate and keep the earliest version.



I have not ingested file locations from my two back up disks yet but if I have read the web correctly, LR will keep track of files on eternal drives. (Yes, the docs support this too)



For that matter, I have not ingested all my files I have on this machine yet. I wanted to make sure I wasn't duplicating my efforts with LR first.



FWIW, I was just reading the help docs and I can't see where LR provides for finding a set based on the file size, file width, etc. It is already great for finding flags, colors and keywords. Also dates, camera, lens, and other criterion. So, is this yet another feature I have overlooked?



Anyone? And, thanks.



David

David-



LR doesn't have a search for files of a certain size esp outside of LR itself. Use the Finder's find file for such....

Well that's too bad. I guess it's back to Qpict after all. I think Lightroom is pretty close to an all in one app. Putting in a search by size for culling out old files would be nice IMHO.



Yes, I can use the finder outside LR but, using a good DAM app to organize ones files, as well as ones workflow is kind of the point as I see it.



Oh well.



David

It took me a while to figure out that I could just drag and drop in the folder view. The documentation is poor.



Scott

You could use keyword to tag for file size. It might be more trouble than it's worth but you might consider that as a workaround. In the meantime, put that in as a feature request

Is there a way to request a feature? I have not been very impressed with Adobe overall and their lack of interest in my rpre sales questions when I was in demo mode? I might have gotten my forums confused but usually there are several arguments for this feature or that feature, Then some other users chime in and tell you that really isn't needed in their opinion, etc.



Yes, I could tag them when I find them but finding them is what a good cataloging program can help you to do. Apparently Lightroom is unaware of this feature yet. I Must say that it wasn't too hard to sort it out another way, although I would still appreciate it being in a future version. I did set up a smart folder (saved searches for you Windows types). Then I got even smarter, I switched folder views and sorted by file size. Then it was pretty easy to drag the files under 300 to a smaller version folder and to import the larger file folders into LR.



Probably one too many hoops to jump through without a simple way of searching withing lightroom for file size or better, pixel width. But, I got it done anyway.



But, getting the older versions of the same files from the backed up hard drives will again make me wish I had this feature, I want the oldest version of the same file of course because I want to get the least degraded since we are talking JPGs here.



Thanks



David Groover