This is Janine from Pangolin. Thank you for joining my Lightroom course for wildlife photographers.
Today I want to speak to you about the underlying structure of Lightroom. It's hierarchy. I know we are
all super keen on getting started with our editing, getting our images imported, and looking at them...
However, if you do not understand the underlying structure of Lightroom, you will not be able to
use its organizational skills to the best of your advantage. So, let's get started and dive straight into Lightroom.
Welcome to Lightroom guys. This is my Adobe Lightroom Classic and I have my private
catalogue open. Generally Lightroom is set up in a way that on the left hand side, you have all the
organizational structure. In the middle, you always see the images, and on the right hand side is what
you can implement in those images...depending on which chapter, library, develop, map you have open.
Today we're going to focus on our underlying structure within our library...and we're going
to have a look at the three split hierarchy of Lightroom. Lightroom usually goes chronologically.
It's very intuitive. So, we're gonna start with the first structure, which is our catalogue.
Our catalogue is the overall umbrella structure of our entire filing system. You will see that all my
images in my catalogue are just over 30,000 images. That is of the past five years...and it doesn't
matter where these images sit. If you have them sitting on different hard drives. On your computer.
If they're maybe on some back-up disk of yours. All images are registered within your catalogue.
Your catalogue is also the key to read all the changes that you make to your images, and implement them in your photograph.
Whether that means your keywording, your editing, you are organizing them through flags...
all these little changes are read by and implemented by your catalogue.
What is your catalogue exactly? You will see
it sits within your folder structure, whether that is your finder on a Mac, or whether
that is your folder structure on a Windows computer, it doesn't matter...and I have got my
catalogue saved straight on my computer. Under my pictures, and you will see Janine Photography...
the CAT file here. That is my catalogue. An incredibly important file, without which you will not be able
to read and operate the photographs that you have imported into Lightroom. Because it is such an
important file, I suggest you do regular back-ups. You can do that the old-fashioned way
by simply copying and pasting this file onto a different hard drive, where you can keep it safe...
however, Lightroom also does automatic back-ups. You'll see I have an automatic back-up folder set
up here. My latest backup was on the 28th of April, and to make sure you always keep the newest, latest
updates, I suggest you back-up your catalogue on a regular basis...depending on how often you shoot.
If you go into your Lightroom Classic tab, and you go down in your drop down menu
under catalogue settings, you have the option under the general tab to choose how often you would
like your Lightroom catalogue to be backed-up. I currently have it set to once a week, so when I
close down my Lightroom, you will see that it automatically asks me whether I want to quit...
and afterwards whether I would like to back this catalogue up.
Now that we have a rough understanding of our catalogue,
i want to go further down in the hierarchy and speak about our folder structure.
Our folder structure is basically where our photographs are located, and it's the most
intuitive of all of them, because it's very similar to how we would file images on our computer.
So, this folder structure replicates a folder structure that is actually set-up either on your
computer, or on an external hard drive. I would generally suggest that you keep your images
on your external hard drive if you work on a laptop, because images are large. Laptop space
is restricted, and you really don't want to jam up your laptop with an enormous amount of data...
because it slows it down incredibly. If you have a set desktop, and you have a large enough hard
drive space, you can have this folder structure mirrored in your desktop. So, my folder structure
is set under my jk photos, which is my external hard drive...
and is set up chronologically. You will see that I have my year 2020. I have my month, and underneath my month,
i have every single day. So, this folder structure is mirrored in my document system
on my computer. You can see I have my year, my month, my day...and in here I have all my images, where they
actually physically sit...and not just that, I also have little .xmp files. Those .xmp files are
the files that hold all the changes, so my changes are not written directly into my original CR2 file,
they are written in a separate text file, that will only be implemented once you merge these two,
and export the image again. So, to sum it up, our folder structure is where our images live...
and you never want to touch an image through your actual folder structure, or finder on your computer.
Whenever you change, rename, delete, or edit any of the files that sit on your computer, or your
hard drive directly, lightroom will not be able to follow the link anymore...and not find the
image. What you then see is those nasty little question marks sitting next to your folder,
saying that they cannot find them. What you can do is find the missing folder and try and re-link
the folder to the images, to wherever you have them shifted. Much easier, however, you can shift,
rename and do whatever you need to do straight in your fold structure in Lightroom. I can right click.
I can rename them. I can remove them. I can drag and drop files within my 2020 folder, to anywhere else
I would like to sit. That way, Lightroom will automatically know what you have done to the
images, and there is no need to re-link them. Last in our hierarchy structure are our collections.
Our collections, is the virtual space in which you can group or organize your photographs...
Collections would be very similar to the folder structure you might have had previously. You can
have collections to find images for competitions. You can have collections to find images for trips
you do, such as Coba, Galapagos. You can have collections for your Facebook or social media
posts, or you can have collections set-up under wildlife species, in order to find them more easily.
Collections give you all the freedom in the world to group your images, as you want them.
While your images will still be housing in your folder structure, you can
group them into as many collections as you want, because it is only a virtual link to
wherever your images originally sit. So, if i have a look at my Galapagos collection...
I can see my first image here there's a beautiful tortoise, and I want to know where that image is
actually placed. I can right click. Say, go to folder in my library...
it will lead me straight back to February 2017, where I have shot this image of a tortoise.
Another option you have, is to right click on it, and to actually find this in your finder, or
in your folder structure on your computer...or hard drive, but I suggest you only work
on your images through your Lightroom. You do not touch your images anymore on your computer,
on your hard drive through previous methods that you might have used, and therefore you really need
to find your image in your finder structure. What you need to remember about collections, is
that they do not jam up any more space on your hard drives, because it doesn't matter in
how many folders you have these elephants sitting. You can have them in your elephant folder, your
Facebook folder, your Chobe 2019 folder. It is irrelevant. The file only exists once...
and that one time it exists, it sits in your library. The collections are only there to
help you find your images more easily. How do you create another collection? You would press on the
+ sign here, on the top right hand side. You can create a collection. Name it. You can choose whether
you want this particular image already to be part of this collection. You can set it as a target
collection, which means you're currently working in this collection. This is your hit collection...
or you can sync it with your Lightroom. You can set any of these collections as your target collection.
If I would take my Facebook folder as an example, I can right click on it, and set it as a target
collection, creating a little + sign behind it, and therefore I know this is the collection
I am currently targeting, or working with. To extend this a little bit further, we can also create smart
collections. Smart collections work according to a set of rules, so you don't need to populate them
yourself, by drag and dropping files into these folders. You can set-up any sort of rule you want.
That you need to have a rating of your images, that is greater or equal to a certain number of stars...
that you could have a certain label. That you can have a certain text. A certain file name,
or a certain date. Certain meta data, such as a certain shutter speed, or a certain ISO.
All of these things can be used to organize your pictures automatically, so that Lightroom
will file them into specific collections without you having to lift a finger. How handy is that!
To begin with, your Lightroom will automatically set-up a set of smart collections for you. You will have
your video files in one folder. You will have all your recently modified images in one folder.
All your best rated images in one folder, which will give you 1. an idea what you can do with
smart connections very easily and 2. gives you a much easier time to find the most
recent most, and important images, you have worked on. While we've talked about smart collections,
we can go back to our catalogue one more time, and see that we also have a quick
collection in our catalogue. Our quick collection, is a collection we have quick access to. That is
always up there in the catalogue to be found. Our quick collection, is a collection that
we have easy access to. So, if you have specific images you want to find quickly, you don't want to
search through a number of collections, down below here. You can have them in your quick collection,
under your catalogue. To sum it all up for you guys... 1. We have a catalogue.
which is our umbrella structure, sitting over all our images. The catalogue is able to decipher,
and implement, everything we do in our folder structure. 2. Our folder structure is the second
bit of the hierarchy that holds all our images. 3. Thirdly we have our collections, which are there to
fine-tune our organization within our collection. We can create virtual copies, and group our images
in whatever thematic scheme you would like to. That is our overall Lightroom structure. I hope this
module of my Lightroom course gave you a better idea of what Lightroom is capable of. So, now we
need to start thinking...how do we want to organize our pictures? See you again in my next module...