IMPORT - Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3: Streamlining Your Digital Photography Process - page 69

2

4. Keep original and derivative i les in the same folder. In general, it's
best to not use separate folders just for dif erent image i le types, such as
one folder for dng, a nother for tif , a third for jpg, etc. It's much easier
to have all your i les from a single shoot in one folder. h e exception to
this would be cases where you're exporting i les for a particular purpose,
such as sending to a client, etc. h is is covered in Chapter 5.

Reworking your existing folders
h e most important aspect of organizing your image library is to get everything
into one place. If you have disorganized i les and folders in dif erent locations,
start by putting them all into one top-level folder. Call it “Photo Library”
or “My Photos”; whatever you like. You can use your User\Pictures folder
temporarily for this, but eventually, I strongly recommend moving your
master photo library of your system disk. Keeping your image library on a
separate disk from your system makes managing and backing up your photo
library easier, and also allows you to make updates to your operating system
and applications without af ecting your images.

Once everything is in one main folder rearrange/rename the subfolders to
i t your new system. Do as much organizing of your i les as you can before
importing them into Lightroom.

Guidelines for folder and i le naming
Even in this age of metadata, where sot ware can perform all kinds of functions
using information embedded inside image i les, the names you give your i les and
folders is still very important.

h e main reason careful naming matters is the frequent need to i nd, open
and save i les using your computer's i le system. Navigating through dialog
boxes, copying i les between media and sending images as email attachments
are commonplace activities. Using well-conceived names will make these tasks
much easier. Name your folders and i les using the following guidelines.

1. Use as few characters as necessary to provide all the pertinent
information about the contents of the i le or folder. Ideally, try to keep
your base i le name short characters, because as you create master and
derivative i les their names will become longer with codes or special
designations. Keep it simple.