Lightroom Tutorial: Importing, File Renaming & Destination

hi my name is teri Lynne and I'm a lab technician and Lightroom instructor here at the image flow in Mill Valley California I'm also a wedding and portrait photographer in the Bay Area so Lightroom is definitely an invaluable tool for my image organization and I use it from start to finish with my workflow from importing image selection editing and exporting but today I wanted to go over the most common question I get in my Lightroom classes and that's how do I organize my photos and where do I save them so I'm going to go through a quick import process to show you the method I use to organize my photos and how to choose the exact location on your computer you want your images saved too I'm also going to go over how to rename your photos on import because as well as having an organized location for my files I like the file names of my images to be more customized rather than having the original image number created by the camera so to start off the first thing I do is open up Lightroom after the program opens I plug in the memory card with the new images I want to import into my computer using a memory card reader at this point Lightroom detects that a memory card device has been plugged in and will automatically open the import dialog if for some reason this didn't happen for you or you opened up Lightroom after you plugged in your memory card simply go to file import photos and videos in the toolbar at the top of Lightroom so let's get started so taking a look at the import dialog on the left hand side here you have your source area and this is where you're going to see the memory card that you have plugged in mine is reading nikon d800 since that's the camera i'm shooting with your camera should be listed there once you plug yours in as well in the center of the screen is the thumbnail view of all the images you have on this memory card if you have everything together from one event or vacation or day that you shot you can keep all of them selected and import them all at once so today I'm going to show you how you can import just to select few images from this entire memory card rather than everything all at once to start off with that at the bottom of the gridview is a option to uncheck all so I'm going to click that and then I'm going to start again by clicking the first image in the group that I want selected for this partial import and then I'm going to hold down shift and select the last image in that group so they're all selected at once and then click one of the checkboxes anyone in this group will do it and once you check that it'll select all of them for you so this is how you're going to select just a portion of this entire memory card that you're doing and then at the top before we move on you'll see there are a few different options here I have copy selected you'll see next to that is copy as DNG which is actually what I usually use during my imports but stay tuned for later videos on exactly what that means we'll get into that later today I'm just going to be doing copy so if you're following along just set it there as well so the first section of settings I'm going to go through our file renaming and that is on the right hand side of the import dialog box and as you can see there are definitely other settings here that you could go through there's apply during import file handling things like that but today we're just going to focus on file renaming and destination the first thing is I'm going to make sure rename files is checked and then we'll go down to template and this is where you'll have a list that come with Lightroom of different file naming templates that you can choose from but in this list I'm going to scroll down to edit and we're going to create our own and I'm going to show you the type that I use so this file name template editor comes up and inside of this text box I'm going to click in here and then just use the Delete key or the backspace key if you're on a PC to clear this box out so the first part of my file renaming is the date I like to insert the date of whatever I'm shooting so this may differ for what you're doing or your preferences but if it's an event such as mine is here it's from these first viewer from a wedding I like to have the year the month and the day all in the file name so if you see down here and under the additional box there's a date drop down list and you can choose any type of combination you want the date to look like I like this year year month month day day template so I'm going to click that and then hit insert and that's going to put it up here in this text box so the next part is going to be a custom text that I'll put in for each import to describe what these images are but first I need a visual separator between the date and that text so inside this text box I'm just going to click in there and then on your keyboard just type in an underscore and you're ready for the next part of the file naming the next part is custom text that's what I put in and so all the way at the bottom of this box you'll see custom text next to that I'm going to click insert again and this is just setting up your template so keep that in mind so this is just saying that for every import we do you're going to have an option to put in a custom text to change each set of images you do so right now we're just setting up a template to use on each import after this and I'm going to do one more underscore after that click back in the box and type in an underscore on your keyboard and the final part of this file naming template is adding a sequence number so under this box of numbering are different options and I this isn't listed for you can just click this box down and look at all the options you have but I keep it at the three-digit sequence number and this is because I like my filenames to all be the same length so for example if you happen to have an import that has over a thousand images you might want to bump that up to the four-digit sequence number but for most things that three-digit one is a safe place so I'm going to insert that and that's the file naming template so I have my date the custom text I'm going to put in for each import and it's going to number it 1 through however many pictures I have selected but before we hit done we're going to go up here to this preset area click the and scroll down to save current settings as new preset and you're going to title it anything that you just created I'll name it date custom text and sequence number hit create and then done one more time and now back here on the right hand side under file renaming your template drop-down will now have this customized file naming template that you just created that'll be here and available for you every import after this so we're going to just make sure that's selected and now this is the area right underneath under custom text where you're going to name a descriptive title of what these images are mine's a wedding like I mentioned so I like to put in the couple's name so just for example John and Jane so as you can see under here we have the date set up at home starts with a year month and the date and then the client's name for this example or maybe if you took a vacation to Italy you can say Italy there whatever makes sense for this import and then it's going to start that sequence number here as you can see so don't worry about the fact that this sample date has today's date in it on import Lightroom will read the metadata of each file and insert the correct date that this image was shot on into your file name so that covers file renaming and the next part we're going to do and the last part of today is going to be the destination area and that's going to be exactly where you want Lightroom to save these photos during this import Lightroom by default wants to save your photos to the pictures folder on your computer which is great but I like to organize one more level within that under the years that these photos were taken so if you don't already have a 2014 sub folder created we'll go through how to do that right now so you go to this plus button to the left of destination click that and hit create new folder like I said later automatically wants to put it in the pictures folder on your computer so we're going to start there which is great and then I'm just going to click new folder so it creates a new folder within pictures and I'm going to name it 2014 and hit create and then hit choose just to get out of that one more time so now if you see up here at the top you'll notice our final destination is your hard drive pictures 2014 and so we want to do one more step beyond that and put this group of photos inside a folder of 2014 so now that we've made our folder for this year 2014 I'm going to make a subfolder within that where these photos are going to be saved for this import so I personally like to have my subfolder name and my file names match so I'm in this box going to type in the date that these images were taken followed by just a dash and then I'm going to type the same custom text that we did up at the top under file renaming so it's going to read the same so I have my date and John and Jane or Italy or where whatever applies to this import is what this subfolder is going to be named and that lives inside of 2014 which is inside of pictures so every new year just follow that new create new subfolder step to add 2015 and 2016 and so on every year so that's my method of organization is to have everything grouped by year and then within the year they are chronologically ordered by when I shot them and then they also have a descriptive name to them so I know what that shoot actually is without having to open up that folder and click open the images and see what's inside so with naming my subfolders in the years and also renaming my filenames I constantly know what this photo is and where it's from and when it was taken just by looking at the file name or the subfolder so once you have your new subfolder titled you're done for this round and you can click import at the bottom and watch your new photos come into Lightroom thanks so much for watching I hope that was helpful and if you're in the Bay Area be sure to come by the image flowing Mill Valley and check us out

Channel: The Image Flow

Views: 127,097

Keywords: Adobe Photoshop Lightroom (Software), Tutorial (Media Genre), Youtube, Photography (Visual Art Form), digital photography, lightroom tutorial

Id: -y_Qh2K_T1I

Length: 11min 17sec (677 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 08 2014