The first thing to state (and a very obvious one at that) is Backup your Catalog, and then continue to Backup your Catalog as you try some of these ideas out. That will mean exiting Lightroom Classic and NOT skipping Backup. It’s better to be safe than sorry!!!
So what might you wish to do when Importing images into your catalog?
Two things really, first creating a “preset” for the Metadata that you’d like to import with every image which will then be baked into the EXIF data of the image. The second is the Preset itself which records the action that you wish to take on each Import eg where the images will be stored, in what form, renaming them, making a second-copy, profile changes, etc etc.
Let’s look at each in turn.
You want to add to the Metadata added to the image at the time of import, to add keywords, or to add a Copyright notice. This can be done from the Metadata pull-down menu in the right-hand Import panel …
… and here you have a whole range of options that you can choose from with perhaps the most relevant being the Copyright info. and any info about you you want added …
… so my Copyright info, and the only ones I use in the Metadata, and which I update each year before January 1st looks like this …
… and that’s about it. I enter MLT Copyright 20xx in the Metadata field in the right-hand pane and move to the next step – creating an Import Preset. But before we setup the Import Preset, you need to consider where you want to put the images you’re importing. It is up to you to decide how you store your images, but for a number of years now I’ve stored all my images in folders titled by the year – 2025, 2026 etc. I create them on the fastest drive I have which is the internal one – where I also store my main catalog and the key software files also.
So … it is necessary to move older year folders to a slower external disk, preferably an SSD – YOU MUST DO THIS WITHIN LIGHTROOM though, not in your file system – if you do that you will lose the link between the images and the catalog and the alterations you’ve made to your RAW images.
Once this has been done you can click on the Import tab in the Library module; apart from deciding whether you want to …
… you will see at the bottom of the screen the word None …
… unfortunately, this will always be the case; it’s up to you to now create, and then choose the Import Preset you want to use. This has its advantages because you can change the one you want to use by year, by camera, by anything.
So, you set up the parameters from the right-hand pane the way you want the preset to work, eg naming, second copy, location to store images and any other actions to do as you import, and then click on None and …
… Save Current Settings as a New Preset, and you’ll be asked to give it a name, and that’s it. Every time you want to apply these parameters to an Import, that’s what will happen. The files may be renamed (if that’s your wish), they will be copied to a specific folder on your hard disk, etc etc.
Other tasks you may wish to do at year end.
- Search for missing files (these will be photos in the catalog, but not in folders -they’ve probably moved!)
- Searching for duplicates – The Lightroom Queen has an excellent post on this topic which I can’t improve upon and recommends a plugin (which I have used) which in the case of simple duplicates works well.
- For more complicated duplicate problems – perhaps involving whole folders of potential duplicates, its probably far better to use an operating system program such as dupeGuru (MacOS and Windows) or Photosweeper (MacOS) – there are others for Windows that I haven’t tried. I’ve tried both but prefer dupeGuru as it allows you to do a quick sweep by EXIF data, and Content of Pictures specifically.
- One suggestion I have is to separate folders into catalogs and Export as Catalog before doing any scans for duplicates. When you have a folder that you think is clear of duplicates chose Import as Catalog from the Library > File menu, and when this has been achieved, delete the original folder.
- This links to another feature that I really hadn’t appreciated until I read this article. Rather than doing move of files/folders INSIDE Lightroom (which is the accepted wisdom to maintain the integrity of the catalog) – which can take a really long time and which is also potentially dangerous in terms of file corruption, use Find missing folder. You chose the old folder in the Library and then point (by right-clicking) to the new folder you’ve just imported.
Backup
All of the above was a preface to doing the real annual task which is creating an offsite backup which up until this year was copying all the images and the catalogs onto a hard disk that I stored in my son’s house nearby. This was the safe/secure disaster recovery option which meant that all my historic images would be safe.
In doing this work, this year, I realised that I’d probably not been as clever as I could have been, and in copying images and catalog(s) separately, I’d been missing a trick. It became obvious to me (light-bulb moment) that I should Export as Catalog (Catalog + Images) to the Hard Disk. This then led to the realisation (second light-bulb moment) that I was keeping a large number of old catalogs, for previous versions of Lightroom that I would never go back to, because if I stopped my Photographic Plan subscription I would still have access to the Library module. Why would I want to go back to an earlier version!
I was on a roll now and looked at other people’s backup strategy. Yes, I was doing the right thing in having a 3-2-1 approach – three backups, two locations, one offsite, but was I really doing the most efficient and most effective form of backing-up. Perhaps (third light-bulb moment) it might be better to clone my Lightroom folder(s) overnight – so that I could quickly recover in the case of primary internal hard disk loss – instead of relying on rebuilding from Time Machine and iCloud Drive; and perhaps it might be better to look at Cloud storage for the offsite storage.
So last year I made a decision to move in this direction and use Carbon Copy Cloner (MacOS only) for cloning to a local hard disk which runs several different clone operations at different times – the most important one being a whole system copy to an external disk.
