Hey guys! This is Janine from Pangolin. Thank you
for tuning back into my Lightroom course. If you missed the previous modules, feel free to sign up on our homepage for the full Lightroom course for wildlife photographers. It's for free! Today I want
to tackle how to import images into Lightroom. Let's get started... So, normally we would come back from a shoot and we would get something like that...an SD card, or maybe a CF card, CFast card XQD card...whatever card your camera takes, and we would be stuck with having to download our images. So, first you definitely need a card reader. A lot
of computers have a SD card slot - here on the side. Some computers only have a USB type-C stick nowadays...and then you need different adapters, such as that. It now depends...
do you work from a desktop? Then you can load them straight onto your desktop...if you have enough
space. But, if you're working from a laptop... which you usually do when you're on a trip, for
instance. Make sure that you have enough external hard drive space with you. An external hard drive
will make sure that your laptop space doesn't get full too quickly, because once your laptop is full,
and jammed up, it refuses to work smoothly...and then it's also difficult to reverse, because as you're
trying to get the files back off your laptop, your laptop simply works so slowly there is not enough
ram left, and it struggles. If you do travel a lot, and you're bouncing around with your camera gear, and your laptop, maybe think about buying an SSD card. Sandisk, Toshiba and WD all have fabulous SSD cards...and those just don't break as easily. So, if you travel a lot, and bounce around a lot, or
you're simply a clumsy person, you want to make sure your images are safe. Make sure to
get a hard drive that can take a beating. So, let's get started. Make sure you have a
a card reader.. and make sure you connect your hard drive. I have taken this little tip from my partner. I have
velcro here, on the back, so that my hard drives don't dangle around (with my laptop) as I carry
it around...and you would just connect it. So, this is my SD card...and you will find the exact same
images on our home page (to download) if you want to try and do it alongside me. This is my hard
drive. I get a lot of guests that just take the images straight off their SD card, and will
either copy and paste it onto the hard drive, or even worse, straight onto their picture
folder on their computer. Now that we have Lightroom, we do not need to take that extra step
in order to import our pictures into Lightroom. Rather than shifting them manually onto our device, we can make
Lightroom our tool to import them, and shift them at the very same time. So, as you connect your
memory stick, you would usually have an import window open in Lightroom - automatically. If that doesn't happen, you can simply drag and drop your files - either the whole folder,
or the files individually - onto your Lightroom icon, and Lightroom will open this dialogue window for
you. Last but not least, if you're in Lightroom self, you can press file. Use a drop down menu
to go to the icon, import photos and videos. Again, our import dialogue will open...but
it will not select the right pictures, yrt. We now have to select the source. Where do you
want the pictures from? It would be straight off our LR course SD card. So, on the left side you
choose from where you want to shift the images... and on the right side, you choose to where
you want to shift the images. In my case, I always shift them to my external hard drive,
which is always called JK photos. I keep the name identical for all my hard drives, so that it
looks like one hierarchy structure in Lightroom... and then you need to choose the way you
want to move the pictures - from A to B. So, you can do that by copying them, which
is usually the safest way. You do not want to move them, because if something goes wrong in
the process of moving the pictures from A to B, you don't want them to be lost. If they are copied,
then they will always still be on the card, and you can format the card afterwards. You
can also copy them as a dng that means you have a more general raw format, but every
camera has their own raw formats that work just fine. So generally, I would choose copy. You can
check out each image individually (in large), however loading them from the SD card directly usually
takes a while. So, just importing them and looking at them in your library afterwards, is the faster
way of reviewing your images. You can check them all. Uncheck them all. Check them individually,
depending on which image you want to have imported. So, in summary, you can move your images from your SD card straight to the end location, without having to shift them to your computer first...which saves you quite a lot of time, especially if your ram is rather low. On a side note, a high
amount of ram - 16 gigabyte and more - will help you tremendously with your workflow of going through
your images. If you have downloaded the images from our homepage, simply choose other source, and
choose your files from your download icon,to import them together with me. After choosing
the source, as well as the final destination, we have a few options of how to handle and import
the files that I want to go through with you. So, what is our file handling? When we import images,
we build previews which are little thumbnails, which you can look at, in case your hard drive
isn't connected, or your images are not close by. The size of your preview will determine how
quickly your import process is. Obviously, you can see the most detail on a one-on-one preview,
but it also will take the longest to import. Secondly, you can build something called smart
previews. Smart previews have the ability for you to edit your files, even if the original file
isn't with you. So, if you do not have your external hard drive close by. You left it at home in your safe. You can still work, and edit on your files. How does that work? As I have explained in a
different module, we never edit and work in our original files. What we would do, is whenever
we create a change, we have a little .XMP file created. Which is a text file. So, with our smart
previews, that .XMP file will be created...and later on, once your hard drive is connected, it will be
allocated to the original file that it belongs to. So, I like to always build smart previews. Please
remember...if you go through the process of deleting all backups of your Lightroom, you might lose your
smart preview. You will not lose your .XMP files, or your original files, but the option to work in a
file that is not physically present...might be gone. You have the option to tick 'don't import
suspected duplicates'. That means, if you have downloaded a memory card previously, and you put it
back into your camera...and you forgot to format the memory card. The next day you place it
in your card reader, in order to download your images. You can press 'don't import suspect
duplicates', and it will only import the new images. You will see these images have all been added to my
catalogue (previously), so they all start greying out. if they have been imported previously. This only
holds if you haven't gone through the images already, and deleted them again...because obviously,
if the images have been deleted, they will be added back to your catalogue, which is really annoying,
because now you have to do double the work. You can make a second copy straight to a second
hard drive, to have a back-up immediately...and you can also immediately add it to collections. For
me, this doesn't work for my workflow, as my collections usually only hold the best off files,
but that i will teach you in a different module. Our next drop down menu is to do with file renaming. You can rename your files by date. You can custom name it. You can have
any file name you would like. I really don't mind much about my file name. So I keep it as it is. Furthermore, you have options to apply
certain settings during the import. So, you can change your color space. Your grain. Your
sharpening, etc...as you are importing your images, so you don't have to do it afterwards. However, I
find that wildlife photography is so versatile, that there is generally not one
preset that you can make use of, to apply to all of the different light conditions
and animals you might have photographed. If there is. Usually it would be a preset that
you have created previously...and I will show you how to create presets - in a different module -
to be applied during import afterwards as well. You can add your metadata. Metadata makes sense
if you are concerned that your images are stolen...either from social media, or during competitions, or any
other way. You create a metadata by pressing 'new'. You can give it a title - Lightroom course for beginners - and usually, you would not have to fill in all these different options. Your
most important is your basic info. Your IPTC copyright saying that this image is
yours, and it may not be used without written consent. As well as your IPTC creator. This is your most important metadata information. Which camera it has
been shot on. In what settings it has been shot with, will automatically be imported with the
image. You then create your metadata, and you can choose for it to be imported straight with
your image. It will not show on your image, but it will be embedded in your image, to make sure you
can prove that was an image that you have shot. You can also add keywords to start with. That will
save you a tremendous amount of time. We have four different subjects here. An elephant baby. A pied kingfisher. An adult elephant dusting..and a fish eagle. So you cannot specifically say which animal you
have, but you could say that it was shot in the Chobe, in Botswana...and that is a wildlife shot. Now
to the final drawing card...your destination. So, I have already chosen that I would like
to import these images to my external hard drive. You might choose a different place for the
tutorial purpose. That depends and is up to you. In my previous module, I have talked about file
ordering. So, before you choose a destination, you need to make sure that you know
how you want to organize your files.... because, if you keep the same file structure
throughout your entire Lightroom library, it will be organized...and your images will be more easy
to find. If you have 10 different hard drives, in different folder structures. On this one you have
it chronological...and on this one you have topics.. and this one is a trip to Kenya, then it will
be very difficult to find your images afterwards. So, Lightroom gives you the option to organize
it by date -automatically - if your timestamp on your camera is correct. This is a beautiful way
of organizing it. You can also keep it in the original DCIM folder, or you just dump all your
images in one folder, which I would not suggest. So, I usually keep it by date...and then you have
a lot of different options on how you want to have your drop down menus appear. You can have the year,
and the specific day, as a twofold drop down menu. You can have the year, and the month, as a twofold
drop down menu. You can have a threefold drop down menu that displays the year, the month, as well
as the day...or you simply have it day by day. So, it depends on you how you would
like to visualize your folder structure... and I have chosen a three-fold drop down
menu. It really depends on what you prefer. If you do like to keep your images in
topics, you can also choose a subfolder with a topic, such as Chobe 2019...and then you
have it chronologically imported afterwards. But, because I am making use of collections, I feel
the need for subfolders in my file structure, is not necessary...and I personally, only import it
by date. Once you're done with that, you're going to press import...and you will see a little working
bar appear up there. That will show the progress. I have two of them, because one of them copies
and imports the photos, and one of them builds my previews. I will soon have a third one
appear, that will build my smart previews. There we go. 21 out of 24. Once the whole
process is complete, I will have Lightroom inform me about it, and I can press OK. I really hope
you got a better idea on how to transfer data from A to B. You really do not need to move
this data through your computer. The only way you need to move it is through Lightroom. I
do not touch my images unless my Lightroom Classic is open. That is my tool, to work with
my images, and to go through my images. If your images are not on SD cards anymore, but you
have a whole existing folder structure on your hard drive, or on your computer...and you
want to know how to get started with Lightroom, this will be in a different module. Check out the link below and you'll be able to get started. Completely
fresh. With the existing images you have. Bye, bye!
