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berryphillips
Participating Frequently
October 23, 2017
Open for Voting

P: Support sidecar JPEGs for raw files

  • October 23, 2017
  • 12 replies
  • 1489 views

Lightroom  hides JPEGs when there is an accompanying RAW file. The majority of photographers - even amateur - import JPEGs alongside the RAW files. This will need to be supported for a lot of people to consider the switch.

    12 replies

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    MohaElder169
    Participant
    February 12, 2023

    I was trying out the new Lightroom CC today. The import feature is just kinda weak now. My camera takes a normal quality jpeg and a raw for each pictures. So in the file explorer, there will be a FILE_NAME.jpg and a FILE_NAME.raw. In Lightroom CC, the import window would automatically omit the .jpg files and just show me the raw files. But since the new CC directly calls the File Explorer api, this feature is gone. Can we please have this feature on the new CC 🙂 Thanks!

     

     

    J
    Community Expert
    Jao vdLCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    February 12, 2023

    Realize that Lightroom desktop is NOT the new version of Lightroom. It is a port of the mobile os version of Lightroom to desktop operating system. It has all the many limitations of something running on a phone or tablet. It has the nice feature of syncing everything to the cloud but misses many really important features of the 'real' Lightroom. The real new version of Lightroom is called Lightroom classic. It has the full featured import panel, can print, full featured keywording, etc etc etc and stores all your images locally. Adobe's very unfortunate naming causes endless confusion. The cloud based version is meant to present a very simplified interface so as to retain feature parity between it running on mobile operating systems vs on the desktop. So if you want powerful features use classic. If you want simple interface and your images appear the same on every device use Desktop (the cloud based version)

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    hgrutter
    Participant
    January 2, 2019
    Can somebody please follow up on this issue?  Either enable users to import JPEG/RAW only, or at least enable filter by file-type so it can be easier to delete all JPEGs post-import.

    I have to shoot RAW+JPEG because of WiFi/Smart device transfer requirements for JPEG files, but any time that I actually want to interact with photos in LR, it's almost always RAW.
    pf83ita
    pf83ita
    Participant
    February 18, 2018
    My phone can take JPEG+RAW but not RAW only. So in Lightroom CC I'd like to import RAW only and ignore the JPEG files with the same filename.
    F
    FeedbackCommunityMember
    Inspiring
    December 3, 2017
    I would really like the option to choose the behavior here too.
    F
    FeedbackCommunityMember
    Inspiring
    November 12, 2017
    The main problem we encountered here is that lightroom cc will offer importing jpeg and raw separately. We'd love if we could just instruct lightroom cc to ignore jpeg files during import if there is raw counterpart.
    M
    miked76040984
    Known Participant
    October 25, 2017
    I just discovered this issue (sidecars are apparently either absent by default or hidden when a catalog is migrated). Fortunately, I found it before importing a huge batch of with-sidecar files and can take steps to mitigate the issue when dealing with the rest of my (large) planned imports. 

    For me, shooting the RAW+JPEG combination has been one of many backups. Once things are in Lightroom, it's probably unnecessary to have both, and I can see myself hitting my current 1 TB cap within 18-24 months from now, so I'm happy to exclude them.

    But I agree fully with Berry on having an in-app method for excluding JPEGs. The files I'm importing are currently in folders sorted by month and, even if it's just because I'm a creature of habit, I'm probably not going to stop shooting with sidecars any time soon. That means I'm going to have to put extra steps into my workflow to exclude the jpgs - sort by file type to select only RAW files, and double check to make sure there weren't any times in the session/month when I was shooting JPEG-only.
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    berryphillipsAuthor
    Participating Frequently
    October 24, 2017
    Also, for those who do not want to backup the JPEGs it would be very useful to have the option to exclude JPEGs during the import, so users don't have to go through all the files selecting only the RAWs.
    B
    berryphillipsAuthor
    Participating Frequently
    October 24, 2017
    I personally would like the JPEGs backed up and hidden in the interface. If I really were to run out of capacity then I would be forced to rethink my storage strategy. Until then I really would like to have the JPEGs backed up.

    Could this not be controlled by the same setting that Lightroom Classic has: `Treat JPEG files next to RAW files as separate photos`?

    It's worth noting that Adobe's own DNG format embeds JPEGs in the file itself, so you wouldn't have a reasonable option to save space in the way you have mentioned.
    Julie k
    Julie k
    Participating Frequently
    October 23, 2017
    Thanks for the input, Berry. We hesitated on this one, not knowing how people would want to handle the storage. Given that there are limits on cloud storage, would you want the sidecar JPEGs backed up?
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    berryphillipsAuthor
    Participating Frequently
    October 23, 2017
    Lightroom CC only issue, not Classic. Maybe a mod could remove this post from the Classic category?
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