Hi all,
Just purchased a copy of Lightroom 4 and will be installing it on my laptop.  Just borrowed a copy of Scott Kelby's Lightroom4 from a neighbor but would love to hear from experienced users.
I think I want to install it on external hard drive.  I will need to store pictures on external, for sure.
This LR4 is is to replace my older version of Photoshop Elements 8.

Any tips appreciated.

And you can store the database (which is the center of the program as it stores all your keywords, image changes etc. on your external drive as well. I have LR installed on my C drive, have the database on a separate hard drive that is backed up, and have my images on a 2TB external drive. Works fine for me

Steve

I'll admit my lack of knowledge of PS elements (I use PS), but I think the two approach this very differently. Lightroom is a database system that does not see any images in a folder unless you import them into the database. PS (at least in Bridge which I assume is in Elements) is more of a file manager - you point it at a folder and it immediately reads the files that are present. Move to a different folder and it displays those - it doesn't store anything.

And so, I am almost certain that there are no issues about running both on the same system.

Steve

I also use the year;month;day file names.  In the old PS Elements (five, I think) it was possible to use a hierarchical tagging system (Keywords) which worked well with People;Place;Things;activities/events; and misc.
That played well with my really old files from film days.  But.. the later PSE really screwed that up.  I was left with date only file names, making it, as you say, dependent on memory.

I'll finish the book and have a layout before installing.  Sure hoping this works better than Elements 8.

PS:  Elements is a database/file based system.  I selected it over Photoshop because of that -- and the price -- when moving over from Paint Shop Pro X ...
What a mess.   

PS: your description makes lr4 sound very efficient.  I too think the parallel idea might work.

This site - http://dpbestflow.org/site-navigation - is a fantastic resource for setting up your DAM system. I'd have a look at their suggestions before you commit to any specific hard drive folder structures, especially date-based ones, although many do favour a date-based system.

But one could argue that that raison d'�tre of Lightroom and its ilk is to do away with a set hierarchical folder structure on your hard drives. Instead, use easily managed folders, set up as "bins" or "buckets" and then find your images using keywords and other metadata. Aperture is actually a little bit better at this than Lightroom IMHO but Lightroom smokes Aperture in almost every other important facet of image management (i.e. developing, exporting and printing).

It takes a bit of discipline to enter keywords and relevant IPTC data but since you're just starting out with Lightroom, and these things are easily managed with Import Presets and the ability to keyword at import, I'd give some serious thought as to how you set up your DAM system now.

And making liberal use of Lightroom's "Virtual Copies" gives you a workflow from original through working copy to master and then different versions of that master, all for a few kb of extra storage overhead. And each Virtual Copy can be separately named (so e.g. "Working Copy", "Master Copy" and "Final [stocksite] Copy"), separately treated (e.g. B&W, cropped, upsized), keyworded and captioned making submission to different sites with different requirements a breeze. And the original filename can be stored in the IPTC metadata so the submitted files are easy to revisit and reprocess should the need arise.

So in other words, and again IMHO, Scott Kelby's way isn't the only, or even the best way.

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My naming convention (using date) has been in place for many years.  It would be far to confusing to change now.
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Thanks Warren. Actually naming individual files by date is good practice as it reduces the possibility of you having files with the same filename if your camera runs out of numbers. It eliminates the possibility altogether if you use YYYYMMDDHHMMSS-{something sequential} of course. In other words, that particular system has a purpose.

I'd argue that using a date-based folder system is perhaps OK if you're using a browser (like Bridge) but if you're using a DAM program like Lightroom, other methods of folder structure are more appropriate in that they too have a purpose.

As an example, if you use a folder system just based on size, and keep originals in separate folders to derivatives*, it makes for easy archiving (i.e long term storage, not backup) of your images. Fill your folders of originals to about ~4GB and you can burn each onto a DVD. Or even better, make them ~20GB and burn each folder to a standard Blu-Ray disk.

Give each folder a sequential name like Originals_### or Derivatives_###* and it's easy to keep track of things in Lightroom. They'll end up more or less in date order as you add later files sequentially anyway but it doesn't matter that the 2012-11, 2012-12 and 2013-01 files are all in the same folder because you can find files by date using the LR metadata filter.

Sure you can do a similar thing using a folder structure based on date but it's a faff if you want to archive and you end up with hundreds of folders, some with a few images, others with thousands if you have a busy month. 

All I'm saying is that there are more efficient and more purposeful ways of structuring your image storage once you start using Lightroom. At the end of the day you may not feel it's worth the hassle to change but I think that now, before you start using Lightroom, is the perfect time to rationalise your folders and to consider other, better options.



*If you just use LR, you don't necessarily need to keep your derivatives as you can use your Virtual Copies to reproduce any image you need. If you do any external editing in PSE via round-tripping via LR (i.e. setting up the "Edit in..." option in LR), you'll end up with derivative PSD/TIFF/JPEG files. Oh, and you can make Virtual Copies of these images too if you want.