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13. Moving Folders within Adobe Photoshop Lightroom
2 years ago
In this video tutorial, I am going to show you how to move your photos from one hard drive to another without upsetting Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. I’m going to make Lightroom do all of the “heavy lifting" and as a bonus, I’m also going to show you a little trick on how to create new folders from within Lightroom, and how to rename your folders.

I tutor a lot of photographers who have caused themselves trouble in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. I see a lot of smart people who have caused themselves a needless hassle by moving photos around their computer without thinking about the effects of their actions on their Lightroom database.

For more on this topic see thelightroomlab.com/2009/09/moving-folders-with-adobe-photoshop-lightroom/

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  • chiafrica 2 years ago
    this is great, thanks david. when you move files as you described in your tutorial, it move it from one place to the other and DOES NOT leave a copy in the old location? in other words, the files you moved were actually 'moved', not just copied to a new location. thanks.
  • David Marx plus 2 years ago
    You are most welcome and thanks again for your patience!
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  • Khürt Williams 2 years ago
    Thanks for making this. This is exactly what I was looking for today. I just started using Lightroom. My existing photo library is on an external drive and I am switching from iPhoto.
  • David Marx plus 2 years ago
    Dear Khurt Williams,

    Glad it helped. I wrote a short article to accompany this video tutorial too. You can read it at thelightroomlab.com/2009/09/moving-folders-with-adobe-photoshop-lightroom/
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  • Khürt Williams 2 years ago
    The article is what led me here. :)
    I have my images/video on a 500GB external drive and my music on another 500GB external drive.
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  • Richard Grossman 2 years ago
    Hi David,
    Great information I've been looking for for a while.
    One question if you don't mind. When I travel I'd like to just travel with my laptop and no external drives. Is there any difficulty with having a LR catalog on both the computer and the external? And if not, since I will be editing on the fly, what would be the best way to transfer photos to the external upon return home while maintaining the LR editing info for the photos.
    Thank you!
  • David Marx plus 2 years ago
    Dear Richard,

    This is where I use the "Import or Export as Catalog" feature. Sometimes when I am going to teach a class it makes more sense to bring just a small sampling of my whole Lightroom library and all of my photos with me.

    Here's what I do:

    1. In my main Lightroom Library I create a Collection.
    2. I add all of the files that I want to take on the road into this collection and then right click on its name.
    3. I export this "travel collection" as a catalog and include the "negative files." Negative files here means the original images be they raw, tif, or jpeg.
    4. When I am out on the road I use this Lightroom Library and if I shoot more images I add them into this Library.
    5. When I get back home I import this library and all of its negative files back into my big catalog. Make sure that you tell Lightroom to move the originals over to your external.
    6. Once everything is safe make a backup of the external and then you can delete the travel catalog and its images from the laptop.

    This video and the two hyperlinks at the very end of the article might help.

    thelightroomlab.com/2009/05/the-mega-important-automatically-write-changes-into-xmp-switch/

    --
    David
  • Richard Grossman 2 years ago
    Thank you, David. Perfect.
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  • Jessica Star 2 years ago
    I followed everything in the tutorial, didnt touch the computer while it was moving files, and in the middle i got "unknown error occurred while moving files" I was moving my whole library from one external to another. Now half the folder which contained many subfolders (i made a folder for each memory card import throughout the year) is on one drive and half on another. :\
  • David Marx plus 2 years ago
    Dear Shooting Stars Pro,

    This sounds like a lot of hassle that you didn't deserve. I see this problem from time to time when a drive gets disconnected for some reason mid-transfer. Before things get any worse I must ask how recently had you backed up all of the photos on the source drive (the one you were moving away from)?

    If you have a recent backup you could just restore everything and try again. If not then we need to be careful that all of the files make it over to the new drive. Building an entirely new Lightroom library would be bad but loosing some of your photos would be worse.
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  • Liz 2 years ago
    Dear David,

    First, thanks for the videos & instruction! I have watched both this video and the external drive one. But, I have a bit of a problem that should be a piece of cake for you ;)

    I started up LR many moons ago and put in a few pics about 80 in to the catalog LR cat. Then I started experimenting, and started another catalog which I named First time. I imported a ton of photos from their home, an external hard drive. Now, I have over 15000 images (huge, might I add) in Lightroom and its slowing me down. But I cannot make sense of which catalog , settings to move to the hard drive as the folders don't contain the settings, etc as your do. additonally, I have backup folders galore!

    I am concerned about moving these and either losing the files or having a LR malfunction!

    Thanks for your help.
    Liz
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  • Steven Elmer 1 year ago
    Thank you so much David, you have no idea how much this has helped my workflow. Your videos are nothing short of lifesaving!
  • David Marx plus 1 year ago
    Dear Steven Elmer,

    Glad I could help!

    David
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