Import – Where It All Begins

Jun 082010

Lightroom 3 is finally here! It’s been a long ride full of adventure and discovery from Lightroom 3 Beta through Lightroom 3 Beta 2 to Lightroom 3. Along the way we all made suggestions and requests. Adobe listened. If one of your suggestions didn’t make it into this version don’t worry. This won’t be the last version of Lightroom. I am confident that we have a lot of new and exciting things in the future. For now, let’s get comfortable with Lightroom 3!

As with any version of Lightroom it all begins with Import. And this time around we have an entirely new and improved import feature. While this has been the source of some consternation and controversy, once you dig in and look at what’s new here I think you’ll be on board.

The first time you click the Import… button you will see a very different, and very small, import dialog.

The top section in this dialog is a representation of the workflow; from (source) -> what to do -> to (destination). The section below that goes into a little more detail. What should we apply to the images on the way in, metadata preset & keywords (#1). Next, how do we handle duplicates and previews, file renaming, backup copies (#2). Lastly, where do we put the images at the destination (#3).

After that we have a button with a triangle in it (more on that shortly), the number of images and the size of the import, the Import Preset section, and the Cancel and Import buttons.

If everything is the way you want it then press Import and your images will come into your catalog. Simple. What? you want more? OK. Then press that little button with the triangle in it.

Wow! Now that’s a dialog! The top and bottom sections remain the same but the middle expands to reveal tons of functionality. There’s a lot going on here so let’s take this piece by piece.

The top of the from and to section are just big buttons. If you click anywhere in that area you can choose quick locations or previously used paths.

As soon as you navigate to a folder you can choose to include it’s subfolders. Just check the box next to Include Subfolders.

If your list is long you can tidy up the display a bit by right clicking on the folder and choosing Dock Folder.

That gets everything else out of the way and let’s you see what you are doing.

Moving to the middle section of the dialog we can decide how to import our images. At the top of the window are the usual selections.

The choices available will depend upon what your source medium is. For example, if you are importing from a camera or a flash card the only Copy as DNG and Copy will be valid choices. Just below these familiar choices are three new view options:

All Photos
New Photos
Destination Folders

All Photos is self explanatory. Choose this and the grid view will display all photos from the source. New Photos will display the images Lightroom interprets to be new for this catalog. The last choice, Destination Folders, will groups your source images to match the destination folders that will be created.

These groups can be collapsed and expanded using the disclosure triangle to the right of the group name. Also, notice that in addition to the usual selection checkboxes on each image, the groups also have selection checkboxes. This allows you to select and deselect entire groups of images at a time.

Do you want to see more detail before importing an image but you can’t make the thumbnails large enough? Lightroom 3 now has a loupe view available during import. Just select the loupe icon at the bottom left of the main view window or just double click the image you want to examine.

Once you enter loupe view you can zoom in to examine the details in the embedded preview. You can return to the grid view by clicking the grid icon in the lower left of the window (or, again, double clicking the image).

Finally we look to the destination panels. The choices here look very familiar from Lightroom 2.

One enhancement has been added to the Make a Second Copy To: option which provides a backup of your imported files. Now, the second copy will have the same custom filename you’ve set up for your catalog. This makes it far easier to locate the backup file if you ever need it.

Like the folders in the source panel, the folders in the destinations panel are dockable. You will also see the folders that will be created by the import. They will show in italics with the number of images that will be placed there.

At the bottom of both the small and large import dialogs you will find the Import Preset menu.

Once you’ve set up your import the way you like it you can click on the dropdown menu and choose Save Current Setting as New Preset… Give the preset a name. Then when you need those settings on another import you can simply pick it from the menu and they will all be restored. That’s a real workflow time saver!

One more feature has been added to the Folders section of the Library module. If you want to import new images into an existing folders right click on the folder name and choose Import into this Folder… and the import dialog will open with that folder as the destination. Another workflow timesaver.

There is a lot going on in the new Import dialogs. Spend a little time and get comfortable with all the new functionality. Once you get used to it I think you’ll agree that the new import workflow is a big improvement.

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About the Author: Gene McCullagh
Contact Gene

Gene is an Adobe Community Professional and and Adobe Certified Expert in Photoshop Lightroom, Photoshop, and InDesign, and an avid Lightroom fan. He belongs to the Professional Photographers of America (PPA) and the National Association of Photoshop Professionals (NAPP). Gene also the Co-Founder, Manager and a frequent blogger for the Dallas Fort Worth Adobe User Group (DFWAUG).

In addition to running Lightroom Secrets, Gene also contributes to O'Reilly's media blog, moderates on the Adobe forums, and helps out on lightroomforums.net.

Nikkor-man

Hi Gene,
Is there a simple way to import my Aperture2 library into my new LR3?
http://lightroomsecrets.com Gene McCullagh

Hi Nikkor-man!

Unfortunately I haven’t delved that deeply into Aperture. I suspect that the library may be setup in a similar fashion to iPhoto but that’s only a guess. Try and find out where Aperture is storing your images and create the alias to that.

I’d be interested in hearing what you find out.
Fletcho

Gene,

I’m suddenly having an import problem I hope you might be able to help with. I’ve been running LR3 on a MacOS 10.6.X with no problems. Over thanksgiving, I went through and cleaned out a lot of pics that were taking up disk space. Now I can’t import anything – jpgs, CR2 – from any location into LR3. What did I do to mess this up? After my probs, I upgraded to the latest version, deleted the prefs file and purged the cache. Now I’m lost. Any suggestions?
http://lightroomsecrets.com Gene McCullagh

Hi Fletcho!

How did you clean out the images that were taking up space? Did you do it from within LR or with the Finder? What exactly happens when you try to import new images? Let’s see if we can work through this.
Fletcho

Thanks for the help, Gene. I’m assuming this “cleaning out” was the event that messed up my importing since that was the last thing I did. Anyway, I right-clicked on them in LR3, chose Delete Photo-Delete From Disk. Took out many, many photos that were hogging space. Now the import problem. When the import screen comes up, I can see all of the CR2 images from a card reader, but when I select Import, the gray progress bar in the upper left moves very quickly and I get the dreaded “Cannot read files.” I shot some sports photos – 400+ – and the progress bar finished in just a few seconds. Tried reading jpgs from my wife’s camera (also through a card reader) with the same result. Imported them via Canon’s Image Browser directly to the hard drive and attempted that with the same result. I still have LR2 on this computer as well. I can import into that (and import the photos from that catalog into LR3). But regular importing is eluding me and that process is clumsy at best.
http://lightroomsecrets.com Gene McCullagh

Three things to try:
1. Optimize your catalog
2. Create a new catalog and see if the behavior continues in the new catalog
3. Uninstall and reinstall LR
Fletcho

Did all with same result. except for the last one. Can I safely uninstall LR from the – protect the catalog – and reinstall directly from the disk?
Fletcho

Not sure if this helps or not but thought I would use the Mac Time Machine to see if there were any changes in files, etc. I noticed that for a long time I simply had two files related to LR3 catalogs: “lightroom 3 catalog previews.lrcat” and “lightroom 3 catalog.lrdata”

Yesterday a couple more appeared with a .lrcat-journal” ending and “lrcat.lock” ending. Plus, now I have multiple, multiple “lightroom 3 catalog.lrdata” files in the same folder, some dating back to October. Plus a lightroom 3 catalog-2.lrdata” file. Man – what did I do?
http://lightroomsecrets.com Gene McCullagh

Yes. But before you do it is always good practice to backup your catalog. The only key file here is the one ending in .lrcat so copy that to another location first to be safe. I wouldn’t worry about the .lrdata file as LR will rebuild this one for you. It is the file that contains your previews. If you don’t want to wait through building new previews then copy that one as well. Given what you are experiencing though, I’d first try this and let LR rebuild that file.

Now uninstall LR and then reinstall it. Your catalog should still be there but if it isn’t then that’s what the backup is for. Copy the .lrcat file back to the location it was at. Fire up LR and see if the behavior persists.
http://lightroomsecrets.com Gene McCullagh

.lrcat-journal and .lrcat.lock only appear while LR is running. If LR or your Mac crashed while you were working in LR then these files would remain. If they are there and you are NOT currently running LR then you should delete those two files.

Files like the -2.lrcat file are usually the result of converting a catalog from a previous version. Sometimes, LR offers to reconvert a catalog and if you don’t offer a new name will append a -2 or -3 to the name to distinguish it.

Clear out all the files but the .lrcat file that is your catalog. Now run LR again. It will start creating the .lrdata file for you.
Fletcho

Uninstalled. Re-installed. Copied back the lrcat file. Same behavior. I’m officially bummed. Even tried it from a different usb port, different camera.
http://lightroomsecrets.com Gene McCullagh

Have you deleted your Preferences file for LR? Take a look at /Users/YourUserName/Library/Preferences/com.adobe.Lightroom3.plist

Copy it somewhere first. Restart LR and it should recreate this file. Be aware that all of your preferences will be back at default after this.
Fletcho

Deleted the plist file with the same result. I can still import into LR2 but not LR3.
http://lightroomsecrets.com Gene McCullagh

Wow! Tough one Fletcho!

Have you tried creating a new user account on your Mac, installing LR, and then see if you can import? If you can then the problem is somewhere in your usual user account. If you can’t then the issue is at the system level LR files. Perhaps that will help narrow it down a bit.
Fletcho

Aha! We’re getting closer. I created a new user account as recommended, installed LR3 and was able to import just as I always did. So it might be something in my user account. Any suggestions on rooting that out? I suppose I could always do a time machine restore …. ?
http://lightroomsecrets.com Gene McCullagh

Great! So now we know that whatever is stopping your import is localized to one user account.

Picking this apart could be tedious. You could open two finder windows and compare the LR files between the two user accounts to see if anything jumps out.

You could also use Time Machine as you suggest and pt your user account back to the date before the problem arose. Depending on where your images were stored you will either have the images back in the catalog or, if the images were on a different drive, LR will indicate that it cannot find the files. Either way you can delete the images again. Try doing it in groups followed by a test import between groups just to see if there is a particular image that caused this.
Fletcho

Gene – Thanks for all your help. I’ll let you know what I find out though this sounds like it may take awhile. Regardless, your advice has been tremendous and I appreciate it. Best – Fletcher
http://lightroomsecrets.com Gene McCullagh

Sorry it’s one of those gnarly problems that require you to dig through the folders and files. But at least we’ve narrowed it down. Let me know how it turns out!
Rich

Hi Gene –

Wonderful place you have here, thank you for sharing your expertise. I have an odd problem that I have seen mentioned earlier here but the fix that poster used does not work for me. I just installed LR3 on a new MacPro, and moved my catalogue (with over 27,000 images) into the Mac. I imported some pre-existing LR worked files from an external hard drive, no proble, but when I try to import from a compact flash card reader the import previews look fine, I select the metadata preset I want and select the destination (also a folder on the external HD) & click import. LR then gives me this message: “the files were not imported because they cannot be read”.. So I moved the files off the card & into a folder on my desktop & tried to import from there. The previews looked fine, I made my selections & try to import, this time the error message is “LR could not copy files to the requested location”. These are D700 NEFS, no different than what I have been importing into LR on my PC for well over a year. I purged the Camera Raw cache & tried again with the same result. I also opened the files in photoshop with no problem.

Any ideas?
http://lightroomsecrets.com Gene McCullagh

Hi Rich!

Thanks! I’m glad you like Lightroom Secrets!

I haven’t been able to dig up any solutions to your issue. However, since you are moving from a PC to a Mac one thing does come to mind… what format is the external drive in? A problem I’ve seen several times is taking a drive from a PC that is in NTFS and attaching it to a Mac. Mac can read NTFS but cannot write to it. It’s a long shot but I thought I’d raise the issue. That could explain the cannot copy message.

As for the other issues it seems to plague Nikon owners more than others. Perhaps it’s a Nikon LR problem.

If you do reach a solution please share with the rest of the readers.
http://www.myrealnameismatt.com Matt Cullen

I had the same problem and this fixed it. Thanks!
Parigby

Gene,

I’ve been using Lightroom since Beta and Version 1 and have been using v3 from it’s first days.

I imported a batch of RAW files (via a card reader ) on the 1st May with no problems at all. However this morning when l attempt to import l’m getting the error message ” can’t read “. Initially l thought it might be a faulty card, but upon doing test shots on other cards, l get the same problem. I then thought it might be a problem with the reader, but get the same message when using my other two readers. I then attempted to upload the images into both Aperture and iPhoto and had absolutely no problems at all.

I’m left with thinking it can only be a problem with Lightroom 3. As far as l’m aware l’ve changed absolutely nothing between the 1st May and today.

Can you help please.

regards …….. philip
http://lightroomsecrets.com Gene McCullagh

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Rmwpro

I havethe same problem on ONE of my 2 PCS with Win7 64bit and CS5. I can sync existing folders without issues but try and import something and it’s off for a long time..like 10 minutes to never coming back at all. Any ideas? I use several eSATA drives that are often offline. Could they be casuin the proiblem? I un hooked them and the problem remained but I never uninstalled the eSATA card.
Sitetech

Gene,
I purchased Lr about a month ago and now this is the second time that when I opened LR all my photo files were gone and I was given “The file named …… is either offline or missing”. If my memory serves me correctly, this issue came to life after Lr did some kind of auto backup. I keep the files on an external HD. I can view all of the photos in the catalog, but its like it doesn’t see the external HD.(It will show the HD in the folder menu, the folders are in light print with questions marks) I can click on the question mark and find the file; and it will restore the entire folder, but it is time consuming. Do you have any advise? I have researched this isssue and came up with nothing.

Thanks
Tom
http://lightroomsecrets.com Gene McCullagh

Hi Tom!

I did a few tests and I was able to reproduce this behavior. It appears that if the external drive goes offline for some reason then LR seems to behave the way you describe.

Try this… export 3 or 4 images as a catalog to your internal drive. Make sure that you click the export negatives so copies of the image files also wind up on your internal drive. Now open the new catalog. See if you can recreate the behavior. If not I would check the external drive and its settings. If the behavior does persist then I would reinstall LR and see if perhaps the original installation was corrupted somehow.
Sitetech

Gene,

I followed your forums link to the lightroom troubleshooting page and came to the conclusion that my external HD was re-lettered from G: to F: by windows. I went in and named the HD and changed the letter back to G. I will monitor over the next week and see if that resolves the issue. Thank you for the information and your time!
http://lightroomsecrets.com Gene McCullagh

Ah! That would do it Tom. Having the drive letters change would act just like the drive going offline as far as LR is concerned. Let us know if locking it down to G: solves the issue.

Import – Where It All Begins

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