Getting started with Lightroom on an iMac

Lightroom for beginners, where are my files? 




I have been using Adobe Lightroom on an iMac for a few years now. I started off with Lightroom 6 in 2016, bought as a stand alone product with a perpetual licence. Adobe provided updates until they launched Lightroom 7 and phased in their Creative Cloud subscription model. I have trialled the later versions of Lightroom and they have been enhanced versions of the program I use but I can still do what I want with Lightroom 6 so I haven't taken the plunge into a monthly subscription yet.

When I first installed Lightroom I found everything very confusing, not least knowing where my files were and how to access them. Over the years I have attended various training sessions to learn the basics of the program and I now have a workflow that suits me.

Adobe Lightroom is an extensive program with many capabilities, some I still haven't tried out yet too. It can seem very daunting at first and I thought I would start to put together a few simple How To blog posts to help any of you just starting out.

I plan that these will be in small, bite-sized, posts that you can dip into for that quick "how do I do this?" question.

First let's start with Getting Started on a Mac.

Step 1 - get the files onto your Mac

Before you even open up Lightroom you need to think about how you are going to store your image files from your camera. You might not have many photos to start with but, believe me, you can soon build up a huge library of images and it's a good idea to sort out a filing / naming convention to use when you first import the photos from your memory card onto your Mac.

I have 3 different cameras and refer to the camera the images are from in the folder name, I also like to put the month and year in the folder name too. I manually import my files from the memory card into the folder that has the name of that camera, the month and year that the photos were taken.

For example I have my latest photos on my Memory Card called LUMIX 0520 and I want to copy them to a folder on my hard drive called Lumix Jan 2021.



I click on the memory card icon on the desktop, open the latest folder inside which in this case was called 108_PANA in a folder called DCIM (this is the format that Panasonic use for their image files).

I also open another Finder window and find my folders where I keep photos and look for the latest Panasonic one, in this case it is called Lumix Jan 2021 and is in my File Store folder.

Now that both windows are open I need to select the new photos from the memory card and drag the selection over to the Lumix Jan 2021 folder. This copies the photos to the correct folder. 

Once the copy has finished I can eject the memory card and return it to my camera.

NOTE:
You can do this import directly in Lightroom if you want to but you will still need to think about where you want to save the files. Also I might import files from more than one camera and not want to work on them in Lightroom straight away so this method noted above suits my way of working best.

Step 2 - import the images into Lightroom

When you are ready to work on your images in Lightroom now is the time to open the program.

Lightroom needs to be able to locate the images you want to work on so you need to Import them into the Lightroom Catalogue. This doesn't make a copy of the images, it just points to where they are located and saves the information about any edits you apply to them. Lightroom does not change the original image, it is non-destructive. This means you can experiment with edits and always recover the original image.

When you open Lightroom this is what you will see (or something similar, depending on the version of Lightroom you are using).

There are 3 panels.

The left and right side panels can be closed to allow the image you are working on in the centre to fill your screen. They are closed by clicking on the triangles in the middle edge of the panel.  If you can't see these panels look for the triangle and click it to redisplay the panel.

You need to make sure you are in the Library section (or module), look across the top, above the 3 panels and make sure Library is highlighted. This is where you catalogue all your photos.



At the bottom of the Left hand side panel there is a button labelled Import.

Click this to start the import process.

Next tell Lightroom where to find the files, you need to locate the folder where you put them on your Mac.


If you can't see your folder listed you will need to click on Mackintosh HD, then Users, then your user name and follow the folder list down until you see the folder you put the photos in (it might be in the Documents folder).

When you see the folder click on it and the photos in it will display in the centre panel.  Make sure the tick box New Photos is ticked, otherwise all photos in the folder will be displayed.



All the photos that have not yet been added to the Lightroom catalogue will be displayed with a tick against them. If you only want to import one or a few of these untick the New Photos box at the top and manually tick the boxes at the top left of the individual photos you want to import. You can also use the Uncheck All / Check All buttons at the bottom of the centre panel too.

For example, I just want the 4 photos highlighted below to be imported.



Before you press Import take a look at the right side panel.
Here you can apply various settings as you import the photos.
You can add them to a Collection (I will add these 4 photos to a collection called Snow that I already have set up). If you want to start a new collection tick Add to Collection, click the + sign that will appear next to it and give your collection a name.

You can also apply Develop Settings and Metadata on import - don't worry about these at first.

You can apply Keywords and these could be useful for you to find the photos later. For instance I could put snow, winter, Cheshire as my keywords then at a later date I could easily find all my snow images taken in Cheshire.




Once you are happy that the Keywords are suitable you need to click on the Import button at the bottom of the Right side panel.
Lightroom will catalogue the images and build previews of them to display in the centre panel and below in the filmstrip.


Congratulations. You have imported your photos ready for editing.

Step 3 - editing a photo in the Develop module

This will be covered in the next blog post. 

You can now close Lightroom by clicking on the Lightroom name at the very top of the screen, next to the Apple icon, then at the bottom of the dropdown list click on Quit Lightroom.


A small window will pop up asking if you want to backup your catalogue. You can choose to skip this time or Backup the catalogue. It is a good idea to regularly backup your catalogue, but you don't have to do it every time.


NOTE: this doesn't back up the actual original photos so make sure your Mac gets backed up too.


For the next mini guide to Lightroom click below:


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