3 MISTAKES Lightroom Users Make

All too often, I see photographers, who are new to Lightroom, make some critical mistakes when they're initially using it and setting it up. In this tutorial, I explain what those mistakes are and how to remedy them.
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[@AnthonyMorganti]

All too often, I see photographers, who are new to Lightroom, make some critical mistakes when they're initially using it and setting it up. In this tutorial, I explain what those mistakes are and how to remedy them. I'm one of 15 educators taking part in the FREE Lightroom Virtual Summit 2022! Find out more info and signup for free here: bit.ly/3R7oANX Please help support my channel - consider purchasing my Lightroom Presets: www.anthonymorganti.com/ YOU can help me help others learn photography. You can quickly offer your support here where I receive 100% of your kind gift: ko-fi.com/anthonymorganti You can change the default amount to the amount you'd like to donate. ** I am an affiliate for all companies mentioned here, EXCEPT Affinity Photo. Please read my Code of Ethics Statement: onlinephotographytraining.com/code-of-ethics/ Anthony Morganti’s MUST HAVE applications: At least one Non-Destructive RAW Editor Lightroom - bit.ly/2zwQ0nW Luminar - bit.ly/2JUJxKw (Save with the Promo Code AM16) On1 Photo RAW - on1.sjv.io/EaGR2K (Save 20% with Promo Code: AM20) PhotoLab 5: tidd.ly/2HhiN9X At least one FULL Editing App: Photoshop - bit.ly/2zwQ0nW Affinity Photo - affinity.serif.com/en-us/photo/ My MUST-HAVE Plugins: Topaz Gigapixel AI - bit.ly/3cDqa5J Topaz Sharpen AI - bit.ly/3cDqa5J Topaz Denoise AI - bit.ly/3cDqa5J Instead of Topaz Denoise AI: On1 NoNoise AI - on1.sjv.io/EaGR2K (Save 20% with Promo Code: AM20 - May not work on sale product) Nik Silver Efex Pro 3 - tidd.ly/3dc4gYm The Best Sky Images I've Seen Available -- Ocudrone - bit.ly/3vtDpjR *Save 10% with Discount Code: Morganti10 ** Note that the promo codes listed above may not work on sale products. *** I am an affiliate for all companies listed EXCEPT Affinity Photo. Please read my Code of Ethics Statement: onlinephotographytraining.com/code-of-ethics/ Please follow me on Instagram: instagram.com/anthonymorganti/ Thank you!

[@rayzalaf8988]

Every January 1st I create a new catalogue for the next year, works for me.

[@bobmorse5896]

I once started to make separate catalogs, and got away from it; thanks for showing me how to combine the old ones into my main current catalog. I'd never thought about backing up Lightroom to a separate location; I'll start that now. I always enjoy, and learn from, your videos. Thanks so much,

[@8dcphoto]

Best way to organise images in themes in LR using a single catalogue without having the faff of having a different system on your physical folders is to use collections and collection sets. That way I can organise my actual files saybchronologically in the hard drive folder fornyear suborder for month etc. I can then cut that organisation anyway I want in LR with collections.

[@bethpeg]

Thanks Anthony! Always like and appreciate your videos 🙂

[@mattwaller8959]

Moving folders within Lightroom is tricky. It works fine if, like in the video, you're moving it within the same folder tree. But if you want to move it higher up in the folder tree, or to another folder tree entirely, those destinations often don't appear in your folder pane. A trick then is to right-click the top folder in the pane and select "Show Parent Folder." That's a way to get far-flung destinations into your pane so you can move folders to them.

[@tonysargent2302]

This is great, thanks

[@donnyhelvey]

Thank you!!

[@warrenlloyd7532]

Great video Anthony. I'm pretty good at processing in Lightroom but I've never really bothered trying to understand catalogues, folders, back-up etc, and it's caused me a few problems. This explains this stuff really well.

[@minkymott]

I don't have to worry about multiple catalogs. I don't know how to make more than one. So there's that.

[@Rajesh-cg5pz]

😆😆😆🙌🏼

[@davester1432]

Your timing is perfect! I was tryoing to find some images about two hours ago, because Lightroom couldn't find them. But I didn't know the process for finding them and pointing LR to the new location. Thank you for explaining that so clearly! I will save this video as a favorite for future reference.

[@michaeldesselle7589]

Thanks Anthony‼️mistake #1 is the one that has vexed me recently and that I sent a question to you about. Very helpful!

[@ThomasHalways]

To recommend holding one huge catalog is very arbitrary. Backup of such vast amount of data is arduous. In many cases a separate catalog is very useful and a best solution, especially if it is updated infrequently. For example I have catalog Travel, which is changed once or twice a year. Why to constantly drag it with a catalog for my granddaughter soccer, to name one example. So having separate catalogs is definitely NOT a mistake, its a choice. Have it your way, dependent on amount of data and its dynamics.

[@urionandon]

wow this is really helpful

[@bensaunders616]

I back up my images and LR catalogue (as well as document and music files) to two different hard drives (one kept off site) and to the cloud using Backblaze. It may be overkill, but local hard drive storage is fairly cheap these days and Backblaze is only $70 a year. Good insurance as far as I am concerned. Thanks for the reminders concerning file management in LR.

[@juwster]

It’s always best to have an extra backup off site. Not overkill at all just the best insurance on the time and work you’ve spent creating memories with your eyes.

[@camhitchcock8659]

Hi Anthony, thanks so much for this video covering the essentials. I've been using LrC for years and been faithfully backing up the catalog after every use, but to the same location as the catalog!! Thanks for the kick in the pants! BTW, I spent my Jr High School years in Amherst (Snyder). Buffalo is a great town! Retired now and living in the Pennsylvania Pocono's. Keep Smiling!

[@DennisMathias]

Long ago I thought about the backup thing and decided that the safest thing to do so as to not get overwhelmed is to backup everything with an incremental backup. I use BackBlaze which backs up all the time so if I change a file and thus modify the catalog--the new stuff gets updated. Secure in the cloud and when I need (should I need) to restore something I don't have to worry about where the catalog is. BUT I do let lightroom do the backup when I close. Then the back up ferries come in and viola..everything is backed up.

[@Vicvines]

My friend is a portrait pro and she only backs up to 1 external but no cloud service because she says she's never had a failure so she thinks it's a scam. I tried likening it to a seat belt. "I've never had to use a seatbelt so these things are a scam"

[@jayholland3147]

Wished I would have had this information a year ago. Thanks for the video and pointing out what I did wrong.

[@susanmeyer8885]

I only wish I knew this or followed you back in 2008 when I first started using Lightroom. I made mistakes number 1 and 3a & 3b. I lost all kinds of photos. I am much more disciplined now. Thanks for some great advice for people new to Lightroom!

[@rogerfleming1121]

I really liked your comment about placement of the backups. I will follow your advice. I have more than one catalog. My problem is that I have a large number of photos. Exiting Lightroom classic gets very slow when it is self-testing and backing up. So I have two. I have a main catalog with all the old stuff in, and a catalog with all the new stuff (e.g. this year's) in. Every now and then, when I have finished work on the new stuff, I import it into the main catalog. Luckily, the Lightroom classic catalog import and export facilities seem to work well. (Fingers crossed.) And this speeds things up for the stuff I am working on. There is a problem with this, which is that Lightroom (mobile) will only sync with one catalog. Not sure what is going to happen when I switch the catalog being synced, but I am told that all the stuff in the old catalog gets imported into the new one. We will see.

[@rj934]

Very good advice. I fall into the “regret” group about using multiple catalogs. I started out using a catalog for one calendar year and starting a new one in January of the new year. Now, I want to combine them all into a single catalog. Early on I was concerned about the catalog size and possibly slowing down my operations. My catalogs are on my “F” drive, a 1T SSD used for everything Adobe, on my computer. My catalog backups are on my “I” drive, an external 8T drive. My entire computer and external “I” drive automatically backup continually to my cloud BackBlaze account. My photos are on my external “I” drive. I manually back them up to a second external 8T backup drive and then my “I” drive backs up to my cloud service.

[@meechcreativellc]

I do a catalog per project and save that catalog in the projects folder, that folder as well as the catalog backup are backed up (per smart standards) in duplicate elsewhere. I honestly tried the "one catalog / multiple folders" method, but I do a number of varied projects, and my OCD wouldn't let me mix all of those files...LOL

[@ScarmackProductions]

You can have Lightroom ask you what catalog you want to open each time you open LR. So your example isn't really a downfall, as it's more understanding how LR works and what settings are available. Your example is simply in context of someone not knowing about this feature and making it sound bad because you have to open it, just to open it, when if you applied this setting your "issue" is no longer an "issue".

[@freekvanbuul5100]

Thank you! Backing up weekly since a longtime will probably eat a lot of memory. To my believe LR does not automatically remove older backups. How can I do that manually in a safe way?

[@jenningsford8961]

What I miss most after not backing up my catalogs to another location was that I lost all my keywords (years worth and can't remember all the people in some of them), AND all my photo 'Copies' which had been edited differently from the way the originals were.

[@gharawala]

Hi Mr. Anthony Thanks in advance How to merge old catalogue from old laptop to new catalogue in new laptop

[@blp9724]

When combining catalogues how do u avoid duplicates? Can u clarify the meaning of the prompts when combining catalogues?

[@HartponderJr]

Just moved my Catalog! Thanks

[@gunny2044]

Hey Anthony - I create a new catalog each year and save it to my "Pictures" folder; Lightroom 2020, Lightroom 2021, Lightroom 2022, etc., and I keep all of my images on external HDD's. My catalog backups are saved to my iCloud account. I've never had an issue using this method. Am I doing something wrong or is there a better or preferred method. Thanks!

[@juans5308]

Thanks Anthony, great information. In reference to backups, I back up my catalog to an external HD, what is the process to back it up to a second location, for example Dropbox. Do I just open LR again and change the backup location from HD to DB?

[@mdturnerinoz]

I could swear you've been looking over my shoulder! :0) I used to use one LRCAT and then got in the (terrible) habit of using diff cats for each photography genre; BIG MISTAKE! I know have stuff that should only be in one LRCAT in "many". BIG MISTAKE I am fixing "as we speak". Great video! Being at I.T. guy for 45 yeas I am paranoid about backing up, so no worries there or moving stuff outside of Adobe Lightroom.

[@JohnBerthoty]

So from your vid, I understand you back up your catalog to Dropbox, NOT locally AND Dropbox?

[@joetagg1961]

If I switch my backup from my original location (my hard drive) to my cloud drive (Amazon Photos ) NOW, will all my older backups move to The Amazon Drive, or will they stay put and start a new backup in Amazon ?? Great video by the way, I learned a lot. Thanks..

[@popiemac4579]

I have one catalog as you recommend with my photos stored on an external SSD. My concern is when that drive becomes full. Won’t I need to create another catalog when I need to import new photos to a new SSD?

[@luisantunes3820]

Hi, But the main reason for having multiple catalogs is to not slow Lr? for example I have many Gb in catalog Lr already had difficulty opening and then processing the images then I divided it into several catalogs (by year) and Lr got a lot faster. Am I seeing something wrong? Regarding the backup, I let Lr do it in default place and then copy to another external hard drive.

[@ChrisSummers]

Good points but I believe there are times when individual catalogs make sense so on that point I disagree. For my workflow I have a main catalog for all my day to day photography. That catalog goes back to my first digital images with a Kodak digital camera in 2005 and has over 145,000 images and is the catalog I have open on my desktop 99% of the time. But I also do a lot of work with my genealogy hobby and have around 8000 images related to my family tree, everything from pictures of long dead relatives to jpg files of census records or civil certificates, etc. For me it makes sense to keep those separate, I only need to go to that catalog if I am doing genealogy work. I also have a catalog with only images I have scanned from when I shot with film (I'm 66 and had a commercial photo studio for many years). I also inherited my father's collection of Kodachrome slides as well as many pictures my grandfather took at the turn of the last century in his travels. These are totally unrelated to my day to day photography so it makes sense to keep them separate. Scanning is an occasional rainy day project so I only open the catalog after I have scanned a big batch of images. Currently I have around 2300 scans. As I recall, Ben Whitmore who also teaches photo editing mentioned he kept a separate catalog for boudoir images that sometimes included portraits of nudes. I remember him explaining that if he was showing a client some commercial images he didn't want to accidentally open a folder of nudes. He also kept a separate catalog for smart phone images unrelated to any project he shot on his camera. Lightroom is a well designed data management program but like anything else we do in Lightroom it is important that we do things with a purpose and also with consistency.

[@iandobson8846]

Backup your backups, is my moto!

[@kissesincharleston]

Hi Mr. Morganti! GREAT video! I am asking this for a friend (LOL) He swears he hasn't made mistakes 1 & 3 but did make mistake #2. He wants to to merge two catalogs. If he has identically named folders in both catalogs what happens when he merges them? Will I, I mean him, have 2 folders with the same name? [that is ok with him]. Thank you sir!

[@DarkoW1977]

Hello, doesn't a catalog with 30k/40k images get slow at some point?

[@DickHoskins]

But can LR classic cc handle a catalog of, say, over 100,000 photos? I have a substantial desktop win 11 computer and when I busted my photo collection up a few years ago, LR performance was pretty dismal, and having 5 different catalogs resulted in much better performance from LR.

[@captiveimage]

Point 2 raises the question of multiple catalogues, and I find the advice to be completely on point, but the idea of having a different folder for 'portrait' or 'landscape', a folder for 'Rome' and another for 'Paris' as examples. For me, that's completely the wrong thing to do. I have one 'root' folder. I have one called 'Images'. When I import the images the folders are created by date: year/month-day. Thereafter, instead of managing the files into folders, use the Library keywords to manage the images. Setting keywords like 'Rome, landscape, B&W, architecture, tower.....' etc. Now I want to find all my pictures from Rome, I can use the Library search feature and go find all the pictures I've taken in Rome without having to put them in a seperate folder. Better then that, I can find all my black and white, landscape, architecture photo's across the whole catalogue without having to worry about segregation of images into seperate folders. The whole folder thing becomes irrelevant in terms of the content classification vs folder name. Spot on advice on Point 3 too. Backups are critical, be that for a professional or amateur photographer. Having backed up the 'catalogue' in Lightroom backing up the backup and the images is critical. Sticking to the 3-2-1 rule is, I think, optimal. That's having at least three versions of a file, using at least two different media, E.G. Don't have the backup on the same drives as your source, use seperate drives, and at least 1 of these backups should be off-site, E.G. on the cloud as suggested. Great intro vid! Subscribed, oh yes. 👍

[@RollyDSpradling73]

Terrific click photo. Many are very well done though.

[@MrFreakwent]

I do as you outline in this helpful video , but it brings up a possibility for me: Can I just import individual *folders* from an old catalog instead of combining catalogs ? I'll bet there are others who would like to know also.

[@rogerfleming1121]

The only way I have found so far is a little ugly but works. First, export the stuff you want to a new and temporary catalog. The export facility allows you to only export selected photos. So in the case of a single folder, just select all the photos in that folder. (But you could export any other selection too, so the export facility is powerful.) Then go to the target catalog and import everything from the temporary one. Then just delete the temporary catalog.

[@minkymott]

I do have a question though. Whenever I want to go back and edit a picture from a past shoot, Lightroom won't let me. When I open up that folder, in that catalog, all the images are grayed out. Once I finish editing pictures, and then import other pictures and edit those, I can't go back to older pictures and edit them. Why is that?

[@a.j.haverkamp4023]

I create an XMP for every edited photo. Next I remove my photos in Lightroom, because I have way too many photos to have them always available in Lightroom. They are all stored on multiple external hard drives (2 sets of disks to have a backup). I have been using Lightroom since version 2.0 was released way back. The XMP file contains the final edits, not all the different steps you took while editing the photos. This way I don’t have to worry about the catalog. After working in IT for 20 years, I have learned to keep it as simple as possible.

[@rwmcgeesr]

I reject using one catalog for everything. i use a new catalog for each project.

[@balabalan1846]

feel overwhelming now but seriously tNice tutorials is cool. just started. pray i wont givin up in the middle lmao

[@marcrjacobs]

Amazing that these are not obvious to people that are obviously using computers

[@tilerman]

Oh boy do i know about mistake number 1. A whole world of hurt.

[@eastwindfl]

now you tell me.........#$E#$%%

[@Reactivelight]

So wordy...