Hey guys! This is Janine from Pangolin. Thank you for tuning back into my Lightroom course.
If you missed the previous modules, feel free to sign up on our homepage for the full Lightroom course for
wildlife photographers. It's for free! Today I want to tackle how to import images into Lightroom.
Let's get started...
So, normally we would come back from a shoot and we would get something like that...an SD card, or maybe a CF card, CFast card XQD card...whatever card your camera takes,
and we would be stuck with having to download our images.
So, first you definitely need a card reader. A lot of computers have a SD card slot - here on the side.
Some computers only have a USB type-C stick nowadays...and then you need
different adapters, such as that. It now depends... do you work from a desktop? Then you can load them
straight onto your desktop...if you have enough space. But, if you're working from a laptop...
which you usually do when you're on a trip, for instance. Make sure that you have enough external
hard drive space with you. An external hard drive will make sure that your laptop space doesn't get
full too quickly, because once your laptop is full, and jammed up, it refuses to work smoothly...and then
it's also difficult to reverse, because as you're trying to get the files back off your laptop, your
laptop simply works so slowly there is not enough ram left, and it struggles. If you do travel a lot,
and you're bouncing around with your camera gear, and your laptop, maybe think about buying an SSD card.
Sandisk, Toshiba and WD all have fabulous SSD cards...and those just don't break as easily. So, if you
travel a lot, and bounce around a lot, or you're simply a clumsy person, you want
to make sure your images are safe. Make sure to get a hard drive that can take a beating.
So, let's get started. Make sure you have a a card reader..
and make sure you connect your hard drive.
I have taken this little tip from my partner. I have velcro here, on the back, so that my hard drives
don't dangle around (with my laptop) as I carry it around...and you would just connect it. So, this
is my SD card...and you will find the exact same images on our home page (to download) if you want to
try and do it alongside me. This is my hard drive. I get a lot of guests that just take
the images straight off their SD card, and will either copy and paste it onto the hard drive,
or even worse, straight onto their picture folder on their computer. Now that we have
Lightroom, we do not need to take that extra step in order to import our pictures into Lightroom. Rather than
shifting them manually onto our device, we can make Lightroom our tool to import them, and shift them
at the very same time. So, as you connect your memory stick, you would usually have an import
window open in Lightroom - automatically. If that doesn't happen, you can simply
drag and drop your files - either the whole folder, or the files individually - onto your Lightroom icon,
and Lightroom will open this dialogue window for you. Last but not least, if you're in Lightroom
self, you can press file. Use a drop down menu to go to the icon, import photos and videos.
Again, our import dialogue will open...but it will not select the right pictures, yrt.
We now have to select the source. Where do you want the pictures from? It would be straight off
our LR course SD card. So, on the left side you choose from where you want to shift the images...
and on the right side, you choose to where you want to shift the images. In my case,
I always shift them to my external hard drive, which is always called JK photos. I keep the
name identical for all my hard drives, so that it looks like one hierarchy structure in Lightroom...
and then you need to choose the way you want to move the pictures - from A to B.
So, you can do that by copying them, which is usually the safest way. You do not want
to move them, because if something goes wrong in the process of moving the pictures from A to B,
you don't want them to be lost. If they are copied, then they will always still be on the card,
and you can format the card afterwards. You can also copy them as a dng that means you
have a more general raw format, but every camera has their own raw formats that work
just fine. So generally, I would choose copy. You can check out each image individually (in large), however
loading them from the SD card directly usually takes a while. So, just importing them and looking
at them in your library afterwards, is the faster way of reviewing your images. You can check them all.
Uncheck them all. Check them individually, depending on which image you want to have imported.
So, in summary, you can move your images from your SD card straight to the end location, without
having to shift them to your computer first...which saves you quite a lot of time, especially
if your ram is rather low. On a side note, a high amount of ram - 16 gigabyte and more - will help you
tremendously with your workflow of going through your images. If you have downloaded the images from
our homepage, simply choose other source, and choose your files from your download icon,to
import them together with me. After choosing the source, as well as the final destination,
we have a few options of how to handle and import the files that I want to go through with you.
So, what is our file handling? When we import images, we build previews which are little thumbnails,
which you can look at, in case your hard drive isn't connected, or your images are not close by.
The size of your preview will determine how quickly your import process is. Obviously, you
can see the most detail on a one-on-one preview, but it also will take the longest to import.
Secondly, you can build something called smart previews. Smart previews have the ability for
you to edit your files, even if the original file isn't with you. So, if you do not have your external
hard drive close by. You left it at home in your safe. You can still work, and edit on your files.
How does that work? As I have explained in a different module, we never edit and work in
our original files. What we would do, is whenever we create a change, we have a little .XMP file created.
Which is a text file. So, with our smart previews, that .XMP file will be created...and later
on, once your hard drive is connected, it will be allocated to the original file that it belongs to.
So, I like to always build smart previews. Please remember...if you go through the process of deleting
all backups of your Lightroom, you might lose your smart preview. You will not lose your .XMP files, or
your original files, but the option to work in a file that is not physically present...might be gone.
You have the option to tick 'don't import suspected duplicates'. That means, if you have
downloaded a memory card previously, and you put it back into your camera...and you forgot to format
the memory card. The next day you place it in your card reader, in order to download
your images. You can press 'don't import suspect duplicates', and it will only import the new images.
You will see these images have all been added to my catalogue (previously), so they all start greying out.
if they have been imported previously. This only holds if you haven't gone through the images
already, and deleted them again...because obviously, if the images have been deleted, they will be added
back to your catalogue, which is really annoying, because now you have to do double the work.
You can make a second copy straight to a second hard drive, to have a back-up immediately...and you
can also immediately add it to collections. For me, this doesn't work for my workflow, as my
collections usually only hold the best off files, but that i will teach you in a different module.
Our next drop down menu is to do with file renaming. You can rename your files by date.
You can custom name it. You can have any file name you would like. I really
don't mind much about my file name. So I keep it as it is.
Furthermore, you have options to apply certain settings during the import.
So, you can change your color space. Your grain. Your sharpening, etc...as you are importing your images,
so you don't have to do it afterwards. However, I find that wildlife photography is so versatile,
that there is generally not one preset that you can make use of,
to apply to all of the different light conditions and animals you might have photographed.
If there is. Usually it would be a preset that you have created previously...and I will show
you how to create presets - in a different module - to be applied during import afterwards as well.
You can add your metadata. Metadata makes sense if you are concerned that your images are stolen...either
from social media, or during competitions, or any other way. You create a metadata by pressing 'new'.
You can give it a title - Lightroom course for beginners - and usually, you would not have to fill in
all these different options. Your most important is your basic info.
Your IPTC copyright saying that this image is yours, and it may not be used without written
consent. As well as your IPTC creator. This is your most important
metadata information. Which camera it has been shot on. In what settings it has been
shot with, will automatically be imported with the image. You then create your metadata, and you can
choose for it to be imported straight with your image. It will not show on your image, but it
will be embedded in your image, to make sure you can prove that was an image that you have shot.
You can also add keywords to start with. That will save you a tremendous amount of time. We have four
different subjects here. An elephant baby. A pied kingfisher. An adult elephant dusting..and a fish eagle.
So you cannot specifically say which animal you have, but you could say that it was shot in the Chobe,
in Botswana...and that is a wildlife shot. Now to the final drawing card...your destination.
So, I have already chosen that I would like to import these images to my external hard drive.
You might choose a different place for the tutorial purpose. That depends and is up to you.
In my previous module, I have talked about file ordering. So, before you choose a destination,
you need to make sure that you know how you want to organize your files....
because, if you keep the same file structure throughout your entire Lightroom library, it will
be organized...and your images will be more easy to find. If you have 10 different hard drives, in
different folder structures. On this one you have it chronological...and on this one you have topics..
and this one is a trip to Kenya, then it will be very difficult to find your images afterwards.
So, Lightroom gives you the option to organize it by date -automatically - if your timestamp on
your camera is correct. This is a beautiful way of organizing it. You can also keep it in the
original DCIM folder, or you just dump all your images in one folder, which I would not suggest.
So, I usually keep it by date...and then you have a lot of different options on how you want to have
your drop down menus appear. You can have the year, and the specific day, as a twofold drop down menu.
You can have the year, and the month, as a twofold drop down menu. You can have a threefold drop down menu
that displays the year, the month, as well as the day...or you simply have it day by day.
So, it depends on you how you would like to visualize your folder structure...
and I have chosen a three-fold drop down menu. It really depends on what you prefer.
If you do like to keep your images in topics, you can also choose a subfolder
with a topic, such as Chobe 2019...and then you have it chronologically imported afterwards.
But, because I am making use of collections, I feel the need for subfolders in my file structure,
is not necessary...and I personally, only import it by date. Once you're done with that, you're going
to press import...and you will see a little working bar appear up there. That will show the progress.
I have two of them, because one of them copies and imports the photos, and one of them builds
my previews. I will soon have a third one appear, that will build my smart previews.
There we go. 21 out of 24. Once the whole process is complete, I will have Lightroom inform
me about it, and I can press OK. I really hope you got a better idea on how to transfer data
from A to B. You really do not need to move this data through your computer. The only way
you need to move it is through Lightroom. I do not touch my images unless my Lightroom
Classic is open. That is my tool, to work with my images, and to go through my images.
If your images are not on SD cards anymore, but you have a whole existing folder structure on
your hard drive, or on your computer...and you want to know how to get started with Lightroom,
this will be in a different module. Check out the link below
and you'll be able to get started. Completely fresh. With the existing images you have.
Bye, bye!