Lightroom 5 (LR5) & Backup to an External Hard Drive (X-HD) Issues
Discussion
5 replies
Posted by Dottie Short on December 31, 2013 at 3:26 PM
I'm trying to start the year off right by making sure that I have a consistent back up plan. I'm doing some testing before I make any changes. I ran into an issue today that is confusing.
I want to move some images off my iMac HD to an external HD. During my research I realized that if I go back to a folder and do edits, these edits will not appear on the X-HD unless I export the newly created edits from LR5 to the X-HD.
Problem #1 is the when a photo is edited in (LR5) only and exported to the X-HD, the edits do not appear on the X-HD. File format is dng.
Problem #2 is if I start the edit in LR5, send to CS6 PS for minor edits, flatten layers, save back into LR5 as a psd, export from LR5 to the X-HD, then I can't open the image and it is now a dng file rather than a psd.
I hope this makes sense and someone can help. Thanks for any assistance provided
Posted by Keith Bauer on December 31, 2013 at 6:13 PM
Dottie: I'm doing a little interpretation so I hope I understand your intent and goal. Here's the path I would suggest to move images from your internal drive (iMac HD) to your X-HD. Rather than trying to export them, just drag and drop them from the internal drive to the external drive. Be sure to do this INSIDE of Lightroom. Do not use the Finder to do this or the LightRoom catalog will not know where they are.
Problem #2. Starting the Edit in LR5, sending to CS6 for minor edits… Sounds good. Why are you flattening the layers. That eliminates the possibility of going back to do further tweaks to those edits without starting over again. When I teach Photoshop, I'm adamant that any edit made should be a non-destructive edit. That means you can go back in an hour, or a year and see what was done, and tweak the edit, remove the edit, or whatever you'd want to do. Flattening an image precludes that ability.
Saved back to LR5 as a psd should be just fine. Again, rather than an export to the X-HD, just drag and drop. You say that it you can't open the file as it is now a dng rather than a psd. The problem is that the image format that you have set in the Export Dialog box in LightRoom is DNG. Again, there's no need to even be in the Export Dialog as you can just drag and drop the file from your internal drive to the X-HD.
If for some reason, you really want a copy of the file, rather than moving it, you can use the Export dialog box and set the image format to "Original". That applies to problem number 1 as well although you said you wanted to move some images off your iMac HD to the X-HD. I don't know if that all makes sense or not. I'd be happy to help you through the logistics if needed.
Keith
Posted by Dottie Short on January 1, 2014 at 3:28 PM
Keith you did an excellent job of deciphering my email. I'm testing each item that you spoke of. From within LR5 I'm having difficulty dragging and dropping into the X-HD. Nothing moves. Q#1: Do I drag folders or a images into The X-HD? I'm also trying to clean up my mess of folders from within LR5, but continue getting messages saying, "can't move". I'll address that another time.
My X-HD does not appear the same way on the Finder and from within LR5.? I erased the X-HD recently and the erased images continue showing up on the X-HD from within LR5 with a ? mark on them. Seems as if they should be mirror images. See two examples attached. Maybe I need to erase more securely??
The good news. I was able to export the images, making sure the tag was .psd and it worked. Regarding the 'flattened layer in PS. I don't do that normally, but I thought maybe that was causing the problem.
Posted by Dottie Short on January 1, 2014 at 3:29 PM
Forgot to send the LR5 screen shot.
Posted by Keith Bauer on January 1, 2014 at 5:39 PM
Hi Dottie:
I'll try to answer your questions here:
You can drag either folders, or individual images from any folder in LightRoom to any other folder in LightRoom. It will work whether it is on the same drive or to another drive. I'm not sure what might causing the "can't move" message. Maybe you can provide more context on what you are doing when you get that message and it will help. I'm guessing you are trying to drag files from your internal drive to one of the folders you are showing in your screen shot from above. Those folders on your drive called "Photo Backup" don't really exist on your file system. They only exist in the LightRoom catalog. See the following explanation to understand why.
To answer your second question: I want you to think of Lightroom with an architecture or design like a library (I mean a library where you'd go to check out books). When there was a physical card catalog (remember those with little 3x5 cards), the card catalog was a database of the books that were physically on the shelves in the library. The card catalog was NOT the books, it was a reference to the books. LightRoom's catalog is EXACTLY the same concept. It is NOT the physical files on your hard drive, it is a reference to the physical files on your hard drive. If you perform data management operations (adding, deleting, renaming, etc) outside of LightRoom, you have changed the physical file on your drive, but you have not updated the catalog. If I were to walk into a Library, and move books from one location in the library to another location in the library, but not then go update the card catalog, the card catalog would be wrong.
You said you erased the X-HD. That is something you did outside of LightRoom. The catalog in LightRoom now has question marks for all of those directories and files because you did not erase the files from within LightRoom. The question marks are Lightroom's method of telling you that the information in the catalog isn't right because the physical structure on your hard drive no longer matches the info in the catalog. Do you see the analogy with the Library that I'm using.
So, not to worry, just go into LightRoom and Right Click on the Folder you have labeled "Dot's Images". That will bring up a context sensitive menu. Chose "Remove…." That will allow you to remove that information from the LightRoom catalog. Based on your screen shot, that will remove Dot's Images and all of the folders that are children of that parent folder. Assuming you have not placed any real images back on the hard disk in that directory structure, all you will be doing is removing entries from the LightRoom catalog. You will not be affecting any physical files on disk (books on the shelf in my analogy).
Hopefully that explains why what you are seeing in LR and what you see in Finder are not Mirror images. They are not because you changed/altered/deleted information from Finder, but LR was unaware of the changes you made. LR provides tools to synchronize the physical files on disk with the LR catalog, but it is much easier to just do all of your data management (adding deleting, renaming, etc.) from within LightRoom and then you don't have to worry about any synchronization issues.
Posted by Dottie Short on January 2, 2014 at 9:51 AM
What I Can Not Do
• When I try to create a folder in my existing LR5 catalog from within LR5(control + click on a folder) I receive this message.
o The folder /Users/dorothyashort/Desktop/1-PS5Bridge/1-Downloads/test could not be created on disk. OK
• When I try to drag and drop a folder into another folder from within LR5 I receive this error message:
o Could not complete the folder move. An unknown error occurred. OK
• When I try to rename a folder I receive this message.
o The folder 1-Downloads (original) could not be renamed or moved. OK
What I Can No Do
• I can select images from one folder and drag to another folder.
What I’m trying to do to my old organization
I did not start out using LR in 2010. I thought I would teach myself Photoshop. I did not do research into the best way to organize my images; therefore they are in a mess. I thought that I would reorganize folder from 2009 through 2013 staying away from dates and using events, but because of the above list of “What I Can Not Do” I’m going to plan two.
Plan two is to create another folder named “Dot’s Lightroom Images”, and begin a simpler organization starting with 2014.
Thank you so much for your assistance. Everything you have suggested has been right-on and I am making progress and understanding Lightroom more fully.
Discussion
5 repliesI want to move some images off my iMac HD to an external HD. During my research I realized that if I go back to a folder and do edits, these edits will not appear on the X-HD unless I export the newly created edits from LR5 to the X-HD.
Problem #1 is the when a photo is edited in (LR5) only and exported to the X-HD, the edits do not appear on the X-HD. File format is dng.
Problem #2 is if I start the edit in LR5, send to CS6 PS for minor edits, flatten layers, save back into LR5 as a psd, export from LR5 to the X-HD, then I can't open the image and it is now a dng file rather than a psd.
I hope this makes sense and someone can help. Thanks for any assistance provided
Problem #2. Starting the Edit in LR5, sending to CS6 for minor edits… Sounds good. Why are you flattening the layers. That eliminates the possibility of going back to do further tweaks to those edits without starting over again. When I teach Photoshop, I'm adamant that any edit made should be a non-destructive edit. That means you can go back in an hour, or a year and see what was done, and tweak the edit, remove the edit, or whatever you'd want to do. Flattening an image precludes that ability.
Saved back to LR5 as a psd should be just fine. Again, rather than an export to the X-HD, just drag and drop. You say that it you can't open the file as it is now a dng rather than a psd. The problem is that the image format that you have set in the Export Dialog box in LightRoom is DNG. Again, there's no need to even be in the Export Dialog as you can just drag and drop the file from your internal drive to the X-HD.
If for some reason, you really want a copy of the file, rather than moving it, you can use the Export dialog box and set the image format to "Original". That applies to problem number 1 as well although you said you wanted to move some images off your iMac HD to the X-HD. I don't know if that all makes sense or not. I'd be happy to help you through the logistics if needed.
Keith
My X-HD does not appear the same way on the Finder and from within LR5.? I erased the X-HD recently and the erased images continue showing up on the X-HD from within LR5 with a ? mark on them. Seems as if they should be mirror images. See two examples attached. Maybe I need to erase more securely??
The good news. I was able to export the images, making sure the tag was .psd and it worked. Regarding the 'flattened layer in PS. I don't do that normally, but I thought maybe that was causing the problem.
I'll try to answer your questions here:
You can drag either folders, or individual images from any folder in LightRoom to any other folder in LightRoom. It will work whether it is on the same drive or to another drive. I'm not sure what might causing the "can't move" message. Maybe you can provide more context on what you are doing when you get that message and it will help. I'm guessing you are trying to drag files from your internal drive to one of the folders you are showing in your screen shot from above. Those folders on your drive called "Photo Backup" don't really exist on your file system. They only exist in the LightRoom catalog. See the following explanation to understand why.
To answer your second question: I want you to think of Lightroom with an architecture or design like a library (I mean a library where you'd go to check out books). When there was a physical card catalog (remember those with little 3x5 cards), the card catalog was a database of the books that were physically on the shelves in the library. The card catalog was NOT the books, it was a reference to the books. LightRoom's catalog is EXACTLY the same concept. It is NOT the physical files on your hard drive, it is a reference to the physical files on your hard drive. If you perform data management operations (adding, deleting, renaming, etc) outside of LightRoom, you have changed the physical file on your drive, but you have not updated the catalog. If I were to walk into a Library, and move books from one location in the library to another location in the library, but not then go update the card catalog, the card catalog would be wrong.
You said you erased the X-HD. That is something you did outside of LightRoom. The catalog in LightRoom now has question marks for all of those directories and files because you did not erase the files from within LightRoom. The question marks are Lightroom's method of telling you that the information in the catalog isn't right because the physical structure on your hard drive no longer matches the info in the catalog. Do you see the analogy with the Library that I'm using.
So, not to worry, just go into LightRoom and Right Click on the Folder you have labeled "Dot's Images". That will bring up a context sensitive menu. Chose "Remove…." That will allow you to remove that information from the LightRoom catalog. Based on your screen shot, that will remove Dot's Images and all of the folders that are children of that parent folder. Assuming you have not placed any real images back on the hard disk in that directory structure, all you will be doing is removing entries from the LightRoom catalog. You will not be affecting any physical files on disk (books on the shelf in my analogy).
Hopefully that explains why what you are seeing in LR and what you see in Finder are not Mirror images. They are not because you changed/altered/deleted information from Finder, but LR was unaware of the changes you made. LR provides tools to synchronize the physical files on disk with the LR catalog, but it is much easier to just do all of your data management (adding deleting, renaming, etc.) from within LightRoom and then you don't have to worry about any synchronization issues.
• When I try to create a folder in my existing LR5 catalog from within LR5(control + click on a folder) I receive this message.
o The folder /Users/dorothyashort/Desktop/1-PS5Bridge/1-Downloads/test could not be created on disk. OK
• When I try to drag and drop a folder into another folder from within LR5 I receive this error message:
o Could not complete the folder move. An unknown error occurred. OK
• When I try to rename a folder I receive this message.
o The folder 1-Downloads (original) could not be renamed or moved. OK
What I Can No Do
• I can select images from one folder and drag to another folder.
What I’m trying to do to my old organization
I did not start out using LR in 2010. I thought I would teach myself Photoshop. I did not do research into the best way to organize my images; therefore they are in a mess. I thought that I would reorganize folder from 2009 through 2013 staying away from dates and using events, but because of the above list of “What I Can Not Do” I’m going to plan two.
Plan two is to create another folder named “Dot’s Lightroom Images”, and begin a simpler organization starting with 2014.
Thank you so much for your assistance. Everything you have suggested has been right-on and I am making progress and understanding Lightroom more fully.