How to Import & Organize Photos in Lightroom Classic

today I'm going to show you how to import and organize your photos in Lightroom classic hey there and welcome to phlearn my name is Aaron NACE you can find me on phlearn comm where we make learning fun and I want to welcome you to our intro to lightroom classic free tutorial series here in our first video in the series we're going to start off with a quick tour of lightroom classic and then show you how to import and organize your images you'll learn how to add metadata to your photos like adding copyright information so everyone knows that these are your images you'll learn how to use the folder structure in Lightroom and how it correlates to your computer and even create collections for similar images this free series comes with sample images so you can download them and follow along you can do that by clicking on the link right down below we got a great tutorial for you let's jump into Lightroom classic so here we are in Lightroom we've got a fresh copy with no images the first thing we need to do is get our images into Lightroom so to do that we're gonna go to file and then down to import photos and video there we go now we have our import dialog here on the left hand side this is where you're gonna choose your images that you want to bring in and here on the right hand side this is where you're actually going to be putting your images and then we have a few options for file handling at the top so if you haven't already done so be sure to download your sample images you can do that right here on the tutorial page because it's time to get them into Lightroom so Lightroom does have a way to browse your files right here on the left hand side but to me I actually like to do this just in my finder menu if you're using a Windows computer you could just use Windows Explorer so what I'm gonna do is open up my finder menu and then simply click and drag the entire folder that I want right into the Lightroom I'll get that little plus icon and there we go it's gonna automatically find it and give me a preview of my photos now if you're importing directly from a memory card you're gonna see the option right here on the left for your memory card all you have to do is click on that and you'll see a preview of your images so now that we have a preview of our images let's go through the different ways that we can add these into libraries so right up here in the top you can see we have four options we have copy as DNG and this is gonna be great if you're photographing RAW images so if you're bringing these in right from your memory card and you photographed raw you can actually convert those raw photos to D and G's which is a little bit lower file size so it's gonna save space on your computer and it's a little bit more of a universal format so that's what I suggest doing so if you're gonna bring raw photos into your computer through Lightroom I suggest copying them as DG's now if you just want to do a direct copy you can do that here and of course you choose your destination right here on the right hand side you can move them from one location to another and then you get to choose your location right here or you can simply add them into your catalog now if you just add these to your Lightroom catalog it's not gonna move anything around on your computer it just allows you the ability to organize and edit within Lightroom so for this example we're gonna use the add option and then we're gonna circle back around and show you how copy works as well but for now we have a couple of options that are really important when we're importing so here on the right hand side we have a few options for file handling okay here you can choose your previews had large you'd like to make those I recommend just keeping all that standard but down here in the bottom you have your develop settings and your metadata now your metadata this is actually pretty important because here's where you put your copyright information into your images so let's go ahead and click if it just says none right there we can just go to new and here you can add your metadata preset all right I'll just call this aaron nace - and here's where you want to go ahead and include there we go include your name include the fact that they're copyrighted and if you have a website there we go you can add that there as well now of course you can fill out all this information if you'd like to but this is kind of like the main stuff right here at the top that's why it's read it out so basically this will just make sure that all this information is put into your files so if you were to export these and put them on the web and someone were to like let's say they were trying to take credit for your images they wouldn't be successful because your information that you put in here is actually embedded into those files so this is a really important step so let's go ahead and hit create now there we go and our metadata here we can see just from that preset I made and you can of course create different presets if you'd like our metadata is going to be applied to these photos now here for our keywords we can add something like vacation there we go and then those are going to be key worded with the word vacation which you can then search for later and we'll show you how to do that so that's pretty much it from the import dialog now let's go ahead and click on import on the bottom right and it's gonna bring all these images directly into Lightroom now it's time for our quick tour of the program so starting the very top you have your file menu of course here's where you access the majority of the functions in Lightroom but there's also buttons to route the program so here on the left hand side you have sidebars and these so you can actually expand and collapse out all of the sidebars you can do that there we go including the one here on the bottom so if you want a little bit more space he'd also hold down shift and hit tab and all of your sidebars will go away shift tab will bring everything back together again so on the left hand side you have information about your catalog you have folders now these are the actual folders that correlate to the folders on your computer we're gonna get to these in just a second here you can add collections like if you have a number of similar images you can put those all in a collection here and of course you can import and export now you have a few different views of your images here on the bottom you have your grid view a loop view which will allow you to just see your image a little bit larger you can compare two images there we go and you use your left and right arrows to move those together so you can decide you know which one of these is my favorite okay you have a survey view which will allow you to use multiple images let's go ahead and click on a few of them and then click on survey view so you can see just these if you hit shift tab it's a really nice way to look at those you can then click on the X to just remove one of those and maybe you just want to show your client a couple of you your favorite images from a photo shoot this is a great way to do that so let's go ahead and back to our grid view here and here on the right hand side you have all of the information about your images so you can do like a quick develope like if you wanted to bring your exposure up or down clarity and vibrance here we have our keywording and don't forget we added the keyword vacation so it's all showing up here in my images which is fantastic and then we have our metadata and here you can see in fact a copyright is now aaron nace now I'm gonna remove this later because I actually didn't photograph these these are stock images but for your images it is important to add your copyright information so everything that we've been looking at so far has been in the library module which is about organizing and viewing your images now if you want to start editing your images which we're going to get to in a later video in this free series then you want to click up here on your develop module there we go choose your images and here's where you can start actually making changes to your photographs for instance if I want to bring my exposure up or down I can do that right here in my develop module now there are other modules like looking at a map if you geotag your images you can create books slideshows for print and the web but in my experience I spend majority of my time right here in the library and develop modules so that's what we're gonna be covering in this free series so that's it for our quick tour we're gonna go a lot more in depth in later videos in this free series but for now we're gonna go back to our library module and I want to show you a different way to import because if you're importing images that are already on your computer I like to do it this way but if you're importing images from a memory card I like to do it a slightly different way that helps me with organization so let's go ahead and back to our library module and we'll show you that so let's go back to our library module here up at the top and then here on the left hand side we can see our folders now these are the actual folders that correspond to folders on your computer and right now I just have a sample images folder which is fine but let's say I wanted to import images from my memory card which is a lot of the time when I use Lightroom I don't want to just like create a folder on my desktop called sample images right I need something that's gonna help me organize my images just a little bit better so let's go ahead and I'm gonna just right click here on this folder and we're gonna go to remove this folder okay just hit remove there and it's just gonna remove all the images from my library catalog now it doesn't delete the images on my computer that's totally okay they're just not in Lightroom right now so we need to go ahead and re-import so let's go back here to import okay now same deal here I'm sitting I'm gonna choose my sample images once more so we all of our little previews here now instead of the ad option we're gonna go to the copy option and if you've shot RAW images and you're bringing in from your memory card I suggest doing a copy SD and G but you'll have the same settings you can see copy and copy and DG same settings here on the right so now we're gonna choose the copy option okay metadata is the same keyword is the same there we go looks good but here at the bottom we have some options for a destination because I'm not simply just like bringing them right into Lightroom I'm actually going to copy them from one place to another and here is where we bring in a lot of options that are going to help us stay organized so here in our destination we're going to go ahead and make sure that they're organized by date so organizing these by date of course you can choose original folders put everything in one folder but I suggest doing this by date and that way it's very easy to stay organized for the long term so here we have a few options for the date format this is the one that I prefer and then we're gonna choose our main folder so I have a pictures folder here there we go we can see florrum pictures we have a 2019 folder and now I have a 2020 folder and it's gonna go ahead and put everything into today's date which is fantastic so it's gonna organize everything by date that's the format it's gonna use and it's gonna put it here on my computer so let's go ahead and hit import here and now it's gonna copy everything from this original folder and then put it into this location so now our images are back into Lightroom that are organized by date so let's take a little bit of a deep dive into organization because that really is one of the pillars of Lightroom classic so back here in Lightroom classic now we can see instead of this just saying sample images we have our 2020 folder and then we have a folder with these images now I'm gonna go ahead and give this a name because I find that not only organizing by date but also giving a name just helps me find exactly what I need later on so we're gonna right click on these images on this folder rather and I'm gonna go down to rename and then here at the end I'm just gonna add vacation okay so it's gonna keep the folder name and then it's just gonna say vacation at the end fantastic now check this out if I right-click on this folder and I go to show in finder okay so here you can see in my finder on my computer I can see this folder structure is exactly the same as it is here in Lightroom and not only that it's very easy for me to find my images for instance my 20/20 folder now I'll have all of my photoshoots from 2020 I can go to my 2019 folder and all my photo shoots from 2019 are listed here by date and on most of them I've added names but some of them I was a little bit lazy and didn't add some names so you can see if it just has a bunch of dates it's a little bit hard to know what you actually shot so that's why I prefer to go ahead and add a name so all of the folder structure that we do here in Lightroom actually syncs to the folder structure on your computer so it's not a completely different system folder structures in Lightroom are the same as on your computer so now let's get back into Lightroom classic I'm going to show you my preferred method for organizing your folders so as of now you can see I have one folder and all of my images are just in that folder and that might be fine if you just have a collection of JPEGs but what happens if you have your raw images and then maybe you edited some images so you have some PSD s and then maybe you have some images that you've output for the web or Instagram it's a good idea to keep those separate and organized so here's where subfolders come in really handy so let's go ahead and create those in Lightroom and it's gonna correspond to our computer so here in art 2020 vacation we're gonna right-click and go to create folder inside this main folder and I'm gonna call this capture okay now I use this as like my main images that I've actually photographed let's go ahead and create another one okay and you can just call this PSD fantastic and we're going to create another one and I'm gonna call this output okay now you can choose to call these folders whatever you'd like main goal here is to keep those folder names consistent throughout the years and to make sure that you are organizing your images so let's go ahead and click on all of our images we're gonna hit ctrl or command a I'm gonna put these just click and drag them right into our capture folder okay now let's say I want to edit one of these in Photoshop I'm just gonna right click on this we're gonna go to edit in and I'm gonna say Adobe Photoshop 20/20 okay there we go we're just gonna speed this up because it's this isn't about the editing this is mostly about our organization let's go ahead and grab a curves adjustment layer we're just gonna make our darks a little bit brighter while still protecting our highlights and go ahead and save and close this out and we're gonna go back into Lightroom and here we go we have a PSD so this PSD that's gonna go into our PSD folder so all of our PSD s from this entire journey are gonna go in there and then let's say we have our PSD and I'm gonna export this out so I'm gonna hit shift command e for my export our settings look pretty good we're gonna get into more in-depth than all this stuff later for now it's all about organization so let's go ahead and hit export and now it's like where do we put this well here in our 2020 folder we have 2020 vacation and check this out this is gonna go into my output folder let's go ahead and open that up and then we have a JPEG that we're gonna put here in our output now sometimes it's not gonna sync automatically with Lightroom again so what you can do is just click on your main folder here right click and go to synchronize folder it's gonna look for new images in there and you can see it found one okay we're gonna click on synchronize and here we have our output folder that's gonna be perfect for the web so I realize we did this very quickly but basically we found all of our images from the photo shoot put them in their capture folder I chose an image I edited it in Photoshop and then I exported it out and put that into my output folder that's the image that's gonna be ready for the web so personally I've been organizing my photos like this for years and I find it's very easy to find exactly what I need to find for instance if I go back into my Finder window okay and I want to find I'm thinking back to my vacation when was my vacation I think it was in 2020 so I'll go to my 2020 folder then I'll go to my 2020 vacation and I'm like okay fantastic it's here then in my capture folder these are all the images that I captured on vacation if I made any PS they're right here and the stuff that I exported out for the web is right here so it makes it very easy to find this at any point in time just again as long as you keep your folder structure and names consistent years from now you should be able to get back in and find exactly what you need super quickly and that is one of the main reasons that I like to use Lightroom classic is to help out with my organization now the other reason that I like to create folders with things like my images that I captured images that I output for the web my PS DS is that this stays consistent whether I'm using Lightroom or not like this is just my Finder window here I can quit Lightroom if I wanted and still find the PSD for this photo shoot incredibly quickly now there's one last way that I like to organize my images and this is with collections in Lightroom so let's go back here into Lightroom we're just gonna go ahead and click on all of my capture images so I see all my images that I've actually photographed okay now here are our collections we're gonna go ahead and add a collection I'm just gonna call this sport and activity there we go now in this case we have like 41 images in this series but let's say you had a couple thousand it could be really nice to have those laid out so sports and activities that looks like us or it's an activity someone's diving we're paddling we're sailing or surfing we're doing all kinds of fun stuff there we go some stand up paddleboarding a couple more surfing and some diving that looks great so let's go ahead and put those in sports and activity let's go ahead and create another one this is you can just be called drone there we go so we have a couple of drone shots here brought your new fancy drone on vacation with you and captured some cool aerial photographs alright those can go in your drone folder and then let's just do one more we're gonna call this food and Bev fantastic so I'm gonna just hold ctrl or command and click on some of these images food and beverage from our trip because obviously that is a big part of well my personal vacations anyway let's eat and drink fun things so now if you want to find just your food and beverage photos this trip they're incredibly easy to find the sports and activity photos you can find those as well or the drone photos as well you can add or remove things from your collections very easily now there are a lot of ways to use collections in legroom in this case I know we were using for like drone shots and sports and activity but let's say you're photographing a wedding you could have a collection for the engagement session you could have a collection for the ceremony itself you could have one for the reception you could have one for dancing you could have one for the vows maybe some b-roll you could have a collection for your video shots and another one for your stills there are a lot of ways that you can create collections and help stay better organized and generally I like to do them by different themes of whatever I've photographed or taking videos of from the trip now in my opinion there is one downside to using the collections feature in Lightroom it's fantastic as long as you're using Lightroom in that specific catalog but if you change your Lightroom catalog or you just don't use Lightroom anymore those collections kind of like don't apply anymore so if you're like you know what I want everything organized by folder you can totally do that too so let's go back here and right now I've created a drone collection but here in my capture I can right click and I can say create a folder inside capture and I can call this drone there we go let's go to our drone collection and I'm just gonna take my images let's go ahead and click here and I'm gonna put them in my drone subfolder okay we can do this again let's just do create a folder inside and just call this food and Bev there we go let's go to all of our food and beverages and put them right here as well all right we'll do this one more time we're gonna right click and go to capture and there we go and then we're gonna put all of our sport and activity in this folder so if you've organized by folder then you can right-click here you can go to show in finder and then here within your capture you have your drone shots you have food and beverage and you have your sport and activity and then these ones basically are on categorized so it's still extremely easy to find exactly what you need to find this time everything is organized by folder so if I quit Lightroom or I'm working on a computer that doesn't have lightroom on it I can still stay organized so whether you decide just completely organized by folder or use collections is totally up to you just remember if you're not using Lightroom or if you change your Lightroom catalog then your collections are not going to be available to you so that's how we import and organize our photos in Lightroom now let's put it to the test let's see how fast I can find that PSD that we created earlier so here we are I'm going to create a new Finder window alright I just need to go to my hard drive where everything is stored here we are phlearn pictures 2020 or vacation PSD and boom right click open that in Photoshop and we're good to go that took very little time browsing from many different photos right down to one all right we did it thank you so much for tuning into our free series on Lightroom classic we have a special gift for you we actually have a 10 pack of free Lightroom presets that's available for yours to download you can click on your screen and on the link right down below to get to those we released Lightroom presets on phlearn dot-com all the time we've got a fantastic giant library and you can get a 10 pack absolutely free just follow the link on your screen right now if you enjoyed this video want to get more free tutorials from Fleur and click on that subscribe button up there YouTube things are gonna love this video and if you want to really enhance your skills and learn all about Lightroom and Photoshop and take your photos to the next level I recommend learn grow thanks again i'll phlearn you later bye everyone

Channel: PHLEARN

Views: 85,550

Rating: 4.9518766 out of 5

Keywords: Phlearn, Photography, Aaron Nace, Photoshop, Adobe, Tutorial, Help, Tips, How-to, Education, Adobe Photoshop, Class, Course, lightroom tutorial, organize photos, lightroom cc, lightroom classic cc, adobe photoshop lightroom, lightroom classic, how to use lightroom, lightroom tips, photo management, lightroom workflow, adobe cc, how to organize photos in lightroom, lightroom tutorial presets free, lightroom import, import photos, lightroom for beginners, adobe lightroom cc tutorial

Id: ls7O44xA6pk

Length: 21min 33sec (1293 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 25 2020