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Asset management in Lightroom...

Michael Seltzer

New member
Hello All,

I read (skimmed through, is more like it) the DAM book by Krogh some time ago, and set up a management system based upon its suggestions. LR, however, seems to have different ideas. LR likes to keep all the derivatives of a file in the same folder. For one thing, stacking doesn't work across folders, so you can't stack versions of the same file unless they are all in the same folder. Virtual copies, of course, show in the same folder with the original, but in addition if you tell LR to edit a file in PS or another external editor, LR creates a separate file in the same folder as the original. Conceptually I don't mid this--there seems to be some logic in keeping all the versions of a given image together--but this means your folders are growing dynamically as you work with images, which makes it difficult to back them up to DVDs, etc. If I manually move my files around to keep all derivative versions in folders seperate from the originals, then I break the stacking groups I find useful.

Has anyone developed a management system that works with LR? Or does anyone know of any good work-arounds?

Thanks,
Michael
 

John_Nevill

New member
Hi Michael,

I read your post and thought about the possibililty of approaching this using collections.

I created a new collection named "Shoot Edits" and dragged the source raw to this new collection.

I edited the source raw (from within the "Shoot Edits" collection) in CS3 which immediately created a new PSD in its original folder.

I then created a new folder named "PSD Edits" on another disk and dragged (moved) the new PSD (from the "Shoot Edits" collection) to the "PSD Edits" folder.

PSDEdits.jpg


The "Shoot Edits" collection retains both the raw and the new PSD, even though they are on separate drives/folders.

ShootEdits.jpg


Unfortunately you can't stack them but it does mean you can build a collection whch retains the relationship between originals and edits (side by side). This will enable you to store and back up PSD separately to the original raws.

I hope this makes sense.
 
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Peter Krogh

New member
Michael,
While you can cobble together a system with Lightroom for management, I'd suggest you wait until a later version becomes available. There are a number of features that are not built yet that will make it a better environment for this work.

As to creating derivatives, I'd suggest that you make an export option set that willdrop the new file in a place of your choosing (I send it to a drop folder in my Working Images>Master Files in Progress area. Once the file has been reworked to my satisfaction, I'll put it into its permanent home.
Peter
 

Michael Seltzer

New member
Hello,

Thank you both for the suggestions. Sorry my response has taken so long--it is the end of the semester, and things get pretty crazy. I will be eagerly awaiting the next version release of LR. In the meantime, I have created a collection (which I call WIP) per John's suggestion, to see how that works for me.
Peter, this may be a bit dim of me, but by "export option set" do you mean creating a preset that will drop the files I select into a specified folder in a specified format (such as create a tiff in a WIP folder)? Good idea. I currently have RAW file folders, and some ORIGINAL folders--initially I was converting my RAWs into DNGs and using the DNGs as my Originals, but recently read something that implied that DNGs may not be giving me all the data that was in the RAW file, so I've stopped converting and work directly with the RAW file. In any case, my ability to manage the RAW/ORIGINAL files seems fine, but I still don't have a handle on effectively managing derivatives.

Thanks for the advice,
Michael
 

Peter Krogh

New member
Michael,
You got it. The "Export Presets" let you determine a number of characteristics of the exported files, including where to put them.

Peter
 
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