Pixiq

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom may not seem like a complex piece of software but there are some subtleties that will help it run smoother and much more efficiently – a few of those techniques have been covered here on the Pixiq blog here and here. In this post we’ll cover importing images into Lightroom. There are a few different methods and Lightroom offers some very powerful shortcuts that can really save you some time. And we all want to save time don’t we?

I realize that after getting back from a shoot the first thing you want to do is look at your images. I understand. I’m the same way.  The best way to judge an image is on a big color profiled and color accurate monitor. I remember one of the first digital assignments I ever shot – I was physically ill looking at the images on the back of the camera. I was sure that shooting digital was a major mistake and the client was going feel the same way. But I learned my lesson on that assignment. When I got back into the office and downloaded the images – then opened them in Adobe Photoshop (this was pre-Lightroom) I was amazed at how nice they were. In fact they were so good I was sure I couldn’t have gotten the same results with film – especially since the images were shot in really nasty mixed lighting. Hence, don’t judge your images until you can see them on a decent monitor! Lightroom goes a long way to make the download process easy and painless. And that means you can check out your latest batch of images faster than with just about any other software save for maybe Photo Mechanic.

Downloading images is a simple task but when I teach workshops I am often amazed how poorly organized many photographers can be. I suggest creating a file and folder naming technique that allows each image and folder name to be completely unique so as to avoid overwriting files or folders. Using the date goes a long way to creating unique files and folder names, as the date will never be the same. Doing this now will save you a lot of headaches in the future!

I tend to download images the old fashion way – I drag and drop the raw or jpeg files into a folder that I have named with my standard naming convention. Check out this blog post on File and Folder Naming Conventions to read about my naming conventionsThis is the safest method. And one should always go back and compare the number of images on the memory card versus the number of images you just downloaded to make sure none were missed. I’ll cover some other download methods that are faster and more efficient here but not necessarily safer. I say that the old school method is safer because of a few years ago when Apple updated the OSX software Lightroom had some issues downloading images from a memory card to the computer and importing them. Some images were not downloaded or were corrupted when imported into Lightroom. I’m sure this will be fixed soon enough but it is just something to be aware of. Computers are great when they work and not so much fun when they don’t! Hence I recommend that you be safe and manually drag and drop images onto your computer. 

Now, let’s get to how we import images into Lightroom (Version 3.4). In Lightroom you can either click on the Import button in the left hand panel of the Library module or choose File > Import Photos from Disk. If you are on a Mac you can also drag and drop the folder of images you want to import over the Lightroom icon in your dock. Once you’ve selected Import a dialog appears which should look like the screenshot below.

Starting on the left, the drop down menu is where you select which folder of images you would like to import. At the top of the import dialog a flow chart of what is going to happen. By default the software will "Add" your images to the Lightroom catalog without moving them. This references those images wherever they reside and will not copy or move them. There are several three other options here for how you import your images – in general the default is the best option unless you want to convert your images to DNG files. DNG is another raw file format that is universal – but that is a can of worms I don’t really want to open at the moment so we’ll save that topic for later.

In the middle of the import dialog are the images that will be imported into Lightroom. You can click the checkbox above each image if there are a few that you don't want to import. Generally, I would say import everything at this stage and then delete images from within Lightroom. That will help to keep your folders and Lightroom up to date and synced up. 

On the right side of the import dialog are the toggle that allow us to control the type of previews created, the Develop settings, as well as the Metadata and Keywords. The first option is the Render Preview toggle. In my experience Lightroom is much faster if you choose to create the 1:1 previews right off the bat. If you are in a rush to see your images then choose Standard, but otherwise I suggest 1:1 previews. This will extend the time it takes to import your images but it is well worth the wait and makes editing your images a speedy process. If you don’t chose 1:1 and then in the editing process try to zoom into an image to check detail you’ll have to wait for the preview to be rendered and this will happen for every image you zoom into – Lightroom will be constantly building previews while you are trying to work and it slows everything down. So, do yourself a favor, choose 1:1, click Import and go get a cup of coffee or a snack and then come back when all of your images are ready to be edited.  It will make life easier and a little time away from the computer will help with the sanity.

Next, make sure to click the check box next to "Don't import Suspected Duplicates". It will just make your life easier. You can also make a second copy to another hard drive but hopefully you have already done this before you started importing images into Lightroom. 

With the develop setting toggle you can use a saved template to process your images as they are imported – pretty fancy though not so useful unless you shoot in the same studio conditions day in and day out. If you do happen to shoot with the same set up often it is possible to have your images ready to export as soon as they are imported. That is pretty spiffy! Below this we have the Metadata toggle, which is awesome! With the Metadata toggle we can add metadata and it will upon import be put into either an xmp file or the Lightroom catalog depending on how you have your preferences set up. The options available in the metadata dialog (see below) are extensive – and the nice thing is these are editable templates. So if all of your images are of the same topic then you can enter all of your metadata here and upon import you are done with the metadata – very simple and easy. Next, is the keyword box which couldn’t be simpler – just type in the keywords you want with commas to separate them and off you go.

An alternate method to download and import images is available with Lightroom when you are downloading directly from a memory card. With this method, instead of downloading your images to your desktop you let Lightroom download the images to one or two locations, add metadata, keywords and build previews all in one step as the images are imported into Lightroom.  To set this up you’ll need to adjust your preferences so that the “Show import dialog when a memory card is detected” box is checked as in the preferences screenshot below.

Now when you connect a memory card to your computer Lightroom will open (if it isn’t already open) and the import dialog will appear. The Import dialog is a little different with this method because there are a few more options – it will look like the import dialog shown below. File handling is still the same – the images are referenced from where you chose to copy them to – which is the next setting. I normally organize my images into one folder. And below this you can chose to have the images downloaded to a second location which is excellent for backing them up instantly. The images can also be renamed in the import process. The rest of the process is the same and all in all it is a very slick way to download your images. Just be sure to check and make sure everything went where it was supposed to and all of the images are present and accounted for.

I realize workflow is one of those topics that isn’t so exciting. Metadata and the import process isn’t exciting but that it is a critical process and can really help save you a lot of time overall in the digital workflow.

If you are interested in developing a complete workflow of your own using Lightroom and perfecting your color management, I would recommend checking out my Lightroom Workflow e-book Adobe Photoshop Lightroom: A Professional Photographers Workflow. You can purchase that eBook for the low price of 24.95 on my website.

This e-book presents a complete workflow which includes my in-camera settings, how to determining the optimum white balance and exposure, color management, working with Lightroom and Photoshop, creating web galleries, Noise Ninja and much, much more. A sample table of contents is available for download on my website if you want to see exactly what is covered. The e-books is also up to date and covers the latest versions of Lightroom and Photoshop.