p.1 #1 · Would I be Better off Using Lightroom 3 (or 4)?
Hello,
I am looking for advice on a better workflow solution for my digital photographs. I have two areas of need. The first is to clean up and organize my current library of photos. The second is to have a more efficient way of processing new photos.
I composed this question offline. As I was about to post it I saw dm2010's post called "Lightroom standalone". That is a great thread with some very useful information. I would still appreciate input into my specific situation. Here is some background information.
Current Library
I have over 25,000 digital photos that were taken since 1999. All of these are organized in folders, first by year, then month, and if needed by date. I can very easily put my finger on the photos I took in August 2006, for instance. Most of these photos, however, still have their generic names (like IMG_0101.jpg) and have never been rated. Unless I know the date of an event, it is much more time consuming to find my photos from my 5 trips to Hawaii. All of these photos are stored on a networked drive on a Windows 2003 SBS server.
Processing New Photos
Sports photography is my passion. Little League is going to start soon. When it does, I will attend 2 games a week and will shoot 100-250 photos each game. I need an easier way to find and clean up "the keepers" from each game.
In terms of software, today I use Photoshop CS3, Bridge, and PhotoMechanic (mostly for efficient cropping). I have started to use Bridge and PhotoMechanic to do bulk file renames, so images have a more logical name. I have barely scratched the surface of renaming my library.
I should also point out that ever since I upgraded to a Canon 7D I started to shoot some of my images in RAW. I have not switched to RAW exclusively because it is so much more time consuming dealing with the RAW files in my current workflow.
Last year I bought a new PC that is running Windows 7 Professional 64-bit. This PC is an Acer Aspire X3400, with a 2.90 GHz AMD Athlon II X4 635, NVIDIA GeForce 9200 display adapter, and an Acer 24 inch LED monitor (S243HL). I was hoping that this new PC with its extended RAM would make it easier to work with RAW files. I was planning on upgrading to Photoshop CS5, but now I wonder if my money would be better spent in a different direction. I have read some good things about Lightroom 3 and it seems that it may be the answer to my problem. I also read that for many Lightroom 3 runs much slower than Lightroom 2. Here are my questions:
1. Do you think LR3 would be a better workflow solution for me? Would LR3 eliminate my need for PhotoMechanic?
2. If you like the idea of LR3, by any chance could I use it with my Photoshop CS3 whenever I needed more refined editing? Or will LR3 only work with CS5?
3. Does my PCs current configuration need tweaking to run LR3 efficiently? Specifically, would LR3 perform much better with a better graphics card?
4. If you think I need a better graphics card, which do you recommend I buy? I would like to keep the cost of a new card to $125 or less, if possible. Also note that the card needs to be PCI Express® x 16 with a short slot.
5. Should I wait for Lightroom 4 to be released? Do you know if I buy LR3 now will Adobe give me a free update to LR4 when it shipps?
6. Any other comments or suggestions?
Thanks for reading such a L-O-N-G post. I really appreciate any help.
p.1 #2 · Would I be Better off Using Lightroom 3 (or 4)?
I think I can answer some of your questions since I've been using LR2 and LR3 for a few years now.
1. Hard to answer this for you. Luckily, you can download and try LR3 (and LR4 beta now I think) for free for 30 days. Despite the good advice you are sure to get here, this is probably the best way to decide.
2. I'm pretty sure you can still use CS3 since lightroom can be set up to use most image editing software. You just have to basically set up a link in lightroom to the image editing software's .exe file. I have my LR3 set up to use Gimp.
3. Graphics card doesnt seem to make much difference. LR is mostly processor dependent on editing tasks and HD dependent on library/ image loading tasks. I have an overcloced intel core 2 duo that is 5 years old, 3gb ram, 240GB SSD, and a 5 year old Geforce 8800 GTS 320gb video card and LR3 runs pretty good for me. In fact, it might run a little better than LR2.
4. I don't think so.
5. Try them both. I don't think they will give you a free upgrade though. Just the $99 upgrade price vs. $300ish for the full version.
6. I like how lightroom handles organizing my files. I'm like you and like to organize by dates and leave the file names as they are. One nice thing is that LR does when it imports photos is let you keep up this same file storage scheme but it also makes it easy to tag photos with metadata that makes it easy to search for photos later rather than trying to remember when you took X picture.
Give LR3 or 4 a try. I bet you'll like it, almost everyone does.
p.1 #3 · Would I be Better off Using Lightroom 3 (or 4)?
Chip, you've seen my post in that other thread and so I'll try not to repeat it all here.
You might find it cheaper to buy Lr 3 now and upgrade later to Lr 4 - provided that there are any good deals on Lr 3. Recently Lr 3 was going for about $100 here in Oz, whereas it used to be three or four times that. In effect it was the same price as an upgrade.
I don't / won't trust beta versions with my data unless I have a separate system for experimenting on. I don't have one of those. Therefore I recommend Lr3 at this stage. There may even be significant bugs (i.e. that affect you and your images) in Lr 4.0. version 4.1 is likely to be more reliable.
Lr handles raw files quite differently from Ps in that it keeps the raw file pretty much intact and unaltered and maintains a separate edit list that it applies as required to show you the outcome. It does not produce a separate output file such as a tif or jpg or psd such as Ps would produce. So when you "edit" raw files - even multiple versions - you don't get a bunch of extra files appearing on your system. You can, however, use an external editor such as Ps with Lr. In that case the resulting output from Ps will be imported back into Lr as a new file that is usually held beside the original in a stack in Lr. Normally you would only do this if Ps was able to achieve something worthwhile that Lr could not achieve.
How much RAM does your PC have ? The more the merrier - up to a point - especially if you are running greedy applications like Ps at the same time as Lr. Lr runs quite well on 8GB with normal raw files but I suspect that gigantic panoramas and or big files in Ps would big it down somewhat. One of the big performance issues in Ps is file writing to disk, but Lr does little of that because it is not creating new files with every edit.
Browsing many files in Library module is pretty quick but if you do that in Develop module (which has some work flow advantages) or at 100% magnification then it will be more likely to rebuild previews and for that it may need to reload the original file from the drive or at least reload partly converted info from the ACR cache. That slows things down, but if you are moving from file to file only slowly then it will keep up with you. If it really bogs down then you probably need a striped RAID system or SSD for faster access to storage. You certainly won't want to be using external storage linked via USB 2.0.
You will not need to change your file storage arrangement but nor will you need to keep it unless you work on files outside Lr. the reason is that Lr can readily find files of any shooting date (year, month, day) no matter where they are stored. The info is in the metadata that it keeps track of. That frees you up to rearrange things as you desire.
Keywording will easily let you keep track of your holidays. e.g. keywords "event" may have a subordinate keyword "trips" which may have others "Hawaii 1999" and "Hawaii 2006" and so on. Lr will let you search for "Hawaii" in any keywords, or "1999", or just tap right into the "Hawaii 1999" group (by pressing the arrow beside that keyword).
If your image numbers never got duplicated then you can combine them with the folder number (manually) to rename them in bulk in Lr. If you reset file numbering every time you format your cards then there'll be too much file number duplication and you would need a date too to keep the names unique. It hardly matters if you retain your existing file structure.
be sure to back up everything before you start with Lr so that you can recover from mistakes and other disasters. That means that you'll need to run at least two lots of backups for a while - one for the old work flow and one for the Lr work flow.
p.1 #4 · Would I be Better off Using Lightroom 3 (or 4)?
You've gotten a lot of good advice, I'll amplify on 2.
Yes, you can use CS3. More importantly, I think you'll find you'll be going into PS a lot less than you anticipate. LR has some pretty powerful PP capability. I do almost everything in LR and only go up to PS for images that need extensive tweaking that require a lot of layers.
My workflow is far faster than the days when I had to copy files into folders and then edit in PS.
p.1 #5 · Would I be Better off Using Lightroom 3 (or 4)?
It doesnt sound like you do a lot of post-processing, although you may want to shoot more RAW and create some development presets in LR to speed up the processing in a batch.
LR for organizing over PS
PS over LR if you do pixel-editing, cloning, graphics.
LR exports a TIFF or jpeg. No problem with PS then editing this.
You will love the organizational tools in LR. Go for it.
p.1 #6 · Would I be Better off Using Lightroom 3 (or 4)?
Others have given good advice. I also think LR should work well for you.
Just a comment on folder organization. My top level is "photoalbum" then a sub folder for each decade (I have scanned all my old images), then year. Within the year I have a folder for each shoot which is preficed with the month and day number "01-25 New York City". This keeps them sorted in chronological order but the folder names include the subject matter. As you mentioned, I find the dates of little value in finding things, however it helps me if they are arranged in order during the year. You can tag them in LR but I also like the idea of being able to find things without using LR. Who knows what software we will have in 10 years, so I want to be able to find things without depending on my current applications.
Jan 28, 2012 at 02:25 PM
mshi Offline • • • • [X]
p.1 #7 · Would I be Better off Using Lightroom 3 (or 4)?
I currently use LR3/PS5.1 on x64 Win7 platforms, and also play around with LR4 Beta/CS6 Beta. Adobe Bridge/LR3/LR4beta are way too slow for importing and rendering JPEG previews in their libraries for editing purposes. I have to rely on Photo Mechanic for much speedier editing. My workflow starts with Photo Mechanic for editing, and then I import my edited images into LR3 for raw conversions. If further retouching is needed, it can be done in PS but at expenses of much larger file sizes because PS embeds a flattened image for LR backward compatibility requirement.
If you can do one thing to improve your system's performance, that thing is to increase RAM. If you can increase RAM and update CPU at the same time, do both. Graphics card memory is not important as long as you don't use 3D rendering in PS or other 3D CGI programs.
Here is a read on how to improve PS performance and you can draw some wisdoms there for your LR/PS configurations too.
p.1 #8 · Would I be Better off Using Lightroom 3 (or 4)?
Thank you everyone for you GREAT feedback. Based on what everyone is saying, I think LR3 is the way to go for me.
Based on what I read, I now question how well my current set-up will perform. I have a home office that has a 2003 Small Business Server. All of my photo files are stored on that server. I like having the files on the server for a few reasons. First, the server has two hot swappable mirrored 750GB drives. I like the redundancy and protection this affords. Second, the server is in a secure closet and has a massive UPS that protects it from power fluctuations and power outages. Third, the server is set up for daily backups.
Tomorrow I will look up and post specifics about my server's configuration. Most of you say not to store files on a networked drive. I wonder if my doing so, over a Gigabit network, will be the bottleneck...
My new PC has an eSata port. Would I be better off buying a NAS device configured in RAID5 that is connected to my PC via the eSata? I haven't looked at NAS devices for a while and am not sure what I could get for the around $300 or so. I will follow up tomorrow when I have more time. Thanks again!!!!!
p.1 #9 · Would I be Better off Using Lightroom 3 (or 4)?
ChipinSD wrote:
My new PC has an eSata port. Would I be better off buying a NAS device configured in RAID5 that is connected to my PC via the eSata?
If you use MS Office then verify that using an eSATA drive will not upset the activation status. Every time I add or remove an eSATA drive to my MacBook Pro MS Office:Mac 2011 want me to reactivate, which usually fails because it has previously been activated and so I then have to call MS.
Not everyone is affected. Perhaps it varies according to what is on the eSATA drive. In any case I still have the same internal drive and the same computer and so I think MS should fix their activation routine. They seem to be in no hurry to do so.
p.1 #11 · Would I be Better off Using Lightroom 3 (or 4)?
howardm4 wrote:
the Office 2011 activation scheme is flippin' TERRIBLE. It's so stupid.
+1
And it will hit Office 2012 for Windows next. MS like to use Mac users as guinea pigs for this sort of crap but I have read somewhere that even Office 2010 has had some problems with eSATA drives. In effect it treats an eSATA drive as an internal drive - something it does not do with firewire drives or usb drives - so that using an eSATA drive is like reconfiguring your PC. As if it matters what you do so long as you're still using the same PC.
p.1 #12 · Would I be Better off Using Lightroom 3 (or 4)?
Chip, I shoot mostly kid's sports and use a combination of LR3, CS5 and photomechanic. They all have their place but LR3 is the most VITAL piece of software I own. I rarely use CS5 unless I'm doing something that requires layers. I shoot entirely in raw. My work flow (and this may or may not work for you)
1) import into LR. At this point I name the files with a unique name (say... LL Baseball Angels vs Dodgers 01.24.12 xxx.cr2) and input the appropriate keywords.
2) close LR.
3) Fire up PM. I have PM set to mimic the colors and ratings in LR, and auto advance when I rate an image. PM uses the jpg preview embedded in the raw file, and I have sharpness cranked up to 7 on my image settings in the camera (only affects the jpg preview) so I can easily tell if the image is sharp enough for me.
3a) I may or may not do the variable substitution thing to get players names into the file.
4) blast through the days images rating all the files. For me, 2* is good enough for the web site, and anything higher helps me find the image later if it's special. I put a purple label on any images I want to delete.
5) Fire up LR again, sync the folder and then resort based on file name. Delete the purple images and I go through and do some global edits on the remaining files that are 2* and higher (color balance etc), and then I may or may not crop them.
6) publish.
We're getting close to the LR 4 release date so I would HIGHLY recommend that you either wait until you find LR3 for < $150 or buy LR4 when it comes out. Then upgrade to LR4 when it's available.
p.1 #13 · Would I be Better off Using Lightroom 3 (or 4)?
2. I'm pretty sure you can still use CS3 since lightroom can be set up to use most image editing software. You just have to basically set up a link in lightroom to the image editing software's .exe file. I have my LR3 set up to use Gimp.
Mike,
A belated "thank you" for your advice on this. Based on everyone's input, I am definitely sold on moving towards LR. I am also glad that I can continue to use CS3. It sounds like LR3 will let me do most of the image enhancements that I need. I mainly use CS3 for when I create posters that involve many layers with masking. I here CS5 is much better at masking, but the $300 upgrade pice is a bit steep for me at this time.
Chip
p.1 #14 · Would I be Better off Using Lightroom 3 (or 4)?
I don't / won't trust beta versions with my data unless I have a separate system for experimenting on. I don't have one of those. Therefore I recommend Lr3 at this stage. There may even be significant bugs (i.e. that affect you and your images) in Lr 4.0. version 4.1 is likely to be more reliable.
Alan,
Thank you for all of the great tips! I was starting to get excited about trying LR4 beta, until you reminded me of the inherent risks. These photo files reside on my company's server. It would be a massive headache if LR4 beta did something to them. I think I will wait until 4.1 comes out as you suggest.
I would estimate 85% of my images are in JPEG, not RAW format. Does LR3 treat them the same way in terms of nondestructive edits?
What are your thoughts about having the photos stored on a network drive of an SBS server? The network drive consists of two hot swappable mirrored drives, and it is a gigabit network. Where should I configure LR3 to save its data - on the local drive or the server?
p.1 #15 · Would I be Better off Using Lightroom 3 (or 4)?
mhayes5254 wrote:
Others have given good advice. I also think LR should work well for you.
Just a comment on folder organization. My top level is "photoalbum" then a sub folder for each decade (I have scanned all my old images), then year. Within the year I have a folder for each shoot which is preficed with the month and day number "01-25 New York City". This keeps them sorted in chronological order but the folder names include the subject matter. As you mentioned, I find the dates of little value in finding things, however it helps me if they are arranged in order during the year. You can tag them in LR but I also like the idea of being able to find things without using LR. Who knows what software we will have in 10 years, so I want to be able to find things without depending on my current applications....Show more →
Thank you for the great advice. I really like your organization better!! Mine is tough because I need to drill down so many layers. I think I will do a complete backup of my image library (using something like Robocopy that duplicates all the attributes, then reorganize per your plan. The flatter file folder structure should be great.
Do you recommend I make these changes before installing LR3 and importing the images?
On an aside, you mentioned you scanned all your old photos. I have thousands in various albums. For a couple of special occasions I pulled select photos and scanned them with my entry level Cannon scanner. It was very time consuming. Any suggestions how to do that without spending weeks at it?
p.1 #16 · Would I be Better off Using Lightroom 3 (or 4)?
TrojanHorse wrote:
Chip, I shoot mostly kid's sports and use a combination of LR3, CS5 and photomechanic. They all have their place but LR3 is the most VITAL piece of software I own. I rarely use CS5 unless I'm doing something that requires layers. I shoot entirely in raw. My work flow (and this may or may not work for you)
1) import into LR. At this point I name the files with a unique name (say... LL Baseball Angels vs Dodgers 01.24.12 xxx.cr2) and input the appropriate keywords.
2) close LR.
3) Fire up PM. I have PM set to mimic the colors and ratings in LR, and auto advance when I rate an image. PM uses the jpg preview embedded in the raw file, and I have sharpness cranked up to 7 on my image settings in the camera (only affects the jpg preview) so I can easily tell if the image is sharp enough for me.
3a) I may or may not do the variable substitution thing to get players names into the file.
4) blast through the days images rating all the files. For me, 2* is good enough for the web site, and anything higher helps me find the image later if it's special. I put a purple label on any images I want to delete.
5) Fire up LR again, sync the folder and then resort based on file name. Delete the purple images and I go through and do some global edits on the remaining files that are 2* and higher (color balance etc), and then I may or may not crop them.
6) publish.
We're getting close to the LR 4 release date so I would HIGHLY recommend that you either wait until you find LR3 for < $150 or buy LR4 when it comes out. Then upgrade to LR4 when it's available....Show more →
Wow, Thank you, thank you, thank you!!! Your workflow sounds perfect for me. Having never used LR, I may have a few implementation questions after I get everything installed and set-up. Would it be OK if sent you a PM? It will likely be a few weeks before I do.
Also, its sounds like you are dealing with many, many GB of data. I am curious about your storage set-up. Where do you store your original files as well as the LR data? Do you use internal drives, external drives, or something else. Thanks again!
P.S. For a few years I have wanted to switch to using RAW exclusively. The main obstacle is that my current workflow with RAW was torture. I can't wait to make the jump!
p.1 #17 · Would I be Better off Using Lightroom 3 (or 4)?
Raw files don't bother me in the least with LR. There is really no functional difference in the way you process RAW, it makes it a lot easier. They do take up quite a bit of space, but really, storage space is so cheap these days it's not worth worrying about. If you have an old slow computer, you may form a different opinion but mine's pretty speedy.
I keep my main library on my system drive and back it up locally. I also subscribe to one of those online backup services just in case my house burns down one of these days. I think I paid $180 for 3 years... pretty cheap really.
You said your image files reside on a server? Unless your server is connected to your workstation with an e-Sata cable, you are sacrificing a ton of data transfer speed. What is the benefit of storing them on that server? Do other people use them? Or is it just storage. If it's just storage, I'd store them on your computer and mirror the drive (or just back them up) for ease of use.
One thing you can do when you set up lightroom is set it to create an XMP "sidecar" file rather than storing the edits in your LR library. The benefits are two fold - you can set photomechanic to also update the XMP file and you can get metadata updates into LR that way (which is what I mean by "sync the folder"). Also, I imagine that if anybody else wanted to open your raw file, they'd be able to take advantage of any edits you did in the XMP file rather than not.
Sure, PM me when you get further down the road. LR has been popping up on sale lately for prices as low as $129 - $150. I haven't seen it in a while, but I'd suggest waiting so you don't pay $299 and then have to immediately upgrade to LR4.
Actually, it's on sale at newegg.come right now for $149 minus a $10 discount. Go for it! Might be cheaper elsewhere though, and you'll pay CA tax if you're in San Diego
p.1 #18 · Would I be Better off Using Lightroom 3 (or 4)?
TrojanHorse wrote:
You said your image files reside on a server? Unless your server is connected to your workstation with an e-Sata cable, you are sacrificing a ton of data transfer speed. What is the benefit of storing them on that server? Do other people use them? Or is it just storage. If it's just storage, I'd store them on your computer and mirror the drive (or just back them up) for ease of use.
TrojanHorse, thanks for the additional information.
I started to store my photos on a server 10 years ago for a few reasons. First, because I felt the drives were more reliable than those on my PC (SCSI drives, etc). Second, I had regular routines in place to backup the server, first to tape then to removable hard disks, always with multiple media being used in rotation with offsite storage. No one else accesses the photos. The server is being used "just for storage".
You are also correct, the PC is not attached to the server using an eSata cable. Rather it is attached using gigabit ethernet (although I sometimes suspect the network is running at 100BaseT, not 1000BaseT).
I replace/upgrade my PC every 2-3 years. My last PC was a relatively high-end Dell that had two mirrored internal drives. I went in a new direction with this new PC, opting for a small "mini desktop" that offered decent performance at a good price. The new Acer blows my Dell away in terms of performance, but it does not offer the option to have internal mirrored drives.
I like your idea to store the photos locally, and then back them up. My new Acer has 580 GB of free space. This would be enough to store all my photos and videos (450GB), but would leave little room for growth. The Acer drive is also not mirrored.
Ideally, I would like to have 1TB - 2TB of storage in an external eSata device that had mirrored drives. I would then get one of those inexpensive USB3 portable drives to back it up. Do you have any recommendations on an external solution that won't cost an arm and a leg?
p.1 #19 · Would I be Better off Using Lightroom 3 (or 4)?
Definitely keep the Lr catalog, Lr preview cache and ACR cache on local storage for maximum speed, even if you do keep the photos elsewhere. The speed is increased because local storage is inherently faster to access and because having these files and the photo files on separate physical drives will reduce drive head movement and that minimizes delays in data access.
OWC (Other World Computing, at www.macsales.com) has a range of decent external drive cases with flexible connectivity options. Worth a look even if they do not suit your price range. They're not just for Macs.
p.1 #20 · Would I be Better off Using Lightroom 3 (or 4)?
ChipinSD wrote:
On an aside, you mentioned you scanned all your old photos. I have thousands in various albums. For a couple of special occasions I pulled select photos and scanned them with my entry level Cannon scanner. It was very time consuming. Any suggestions how to do that without spending weeks at it?
Yeah - spend months or years at it It is a very time-consuming task if you want to do it well and in a way that you can associate the scans with the originals. e.g. there is no metadata in a slide and so you have to manually enter anything you might need. Even the scanner may add very little data about the scanning resolution or other settings.
It is a very time-consuming task if you want to do it well and in a way that you can associate the scans with the originals. e.g. there is no metadata in a slide and so you have to manually enter anything you might need. Even the scanner may add very little data about the scanning resolution or other settings.