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Don & Julane Crabtree
Participant
March 10, 2017
Answered

Can I Track Physical Media Location In CC / Lightroom?

  • March 10, 2017
  • 2 replies
  • 569 views

I'm a Lightroom and CC novice and have been learning the apps and now need to take the next step.  I have, quite literally, thousands of unorganized photos, negatives, slides in numerous formats that I want to digitize and share.  I'm having good success with scanning and sharing but I'm struggling with how to "track" the location of the physical negatives, slides, prints etc. once I've scanned them.  Is there a way to do this within Lightroom or an add-on that would do this?  Since I'm starting fresh with no organization plan for the physical media I'm open to all ideas and I'm not against investing additional $$ if I need to do so.  Thanks.

    This topic has been closed for replies.
    Correct answer john beardsworth

    I've watched  training videos from Lyda.com and Julieanne Kost. They've been really helpful with organizing by metadata. That's going pretty well.  The part that I'm missing is, once they are properly organized in Lr, how to use Lr to find the physical location of the original unscanned negative, slide or picture in case I need to go back to it.  I would like to have that as an integrated function instead of tracking with a separate application if possible.  There may not be a way to do in in Lr or CC  but since I'm just starting on this journey I'm looking for ideas.  Worst case, I can create an Excel spreadsheet but I'm looking to see if there is a better way.


    jcrabtree2  wrote

    The part that I'm missing is, once they are properly organized in Lr, how to use Lr to find the physical location of the original unscanned negative, slide or picture in case I need to go back to it.  I would like to have that as an integrated function instead of tracking with a separate application if possible.  There may not be a way to do in in Lr or CC  but since I'm just starting on this journey I'm looking for ideas.  Worst case, I can create an Excel spreadsheet but I'm looking to see if there is a better way.

    Just use a field that isn't used for much else. Ideally that would be one like Job because it can be searched very easily - so you might type in "Slide Box 59" as the job. Alternatively, use a parent keyword called "Physical Location" and add "Slide Box 59" as a keyword.

    John

    2 replies

    D
    Don & Julane CrabtreeAuthor
    Participant
    March 11, 2017

    Thanks to everyone for the suggestions.  I've settled on the following.

    • BXXX - Keyword for the location of the original slide/negative where B=Box and XXX is the box number sequence including the leading 0s.  E.g. 001, 002, etc.  This will allow me to use Lr to locate a negative/slide easily.
    • I've procured acid free negative/slide archival storage boxes and sleeves.
    • As for the photos... Since they are being organized into albums I'm just going to organize them by subject in folders until they make it into the albums.
    JP Hess
    JP Hess
    Inspiring
    March 11, 2017

    Seems to be a workable plan. There isn't a right or wrong way to do it. There is just the way that works for you.

      JP Hess
      JP Hess
      Inspiring
      March 10, 2017

      I have a completely separate folder structure on an external hard drive for my scanning. I'm in the middle of scanning 50 years of photographs, slides and negatives. I group them according to subject and then scan them to a folder within my scanning folder structure. When I am finished scanning I open Lightroom and import the images using the Add option which leaves the images in their location. If I add more images to one of those folders I just synchronize the folder which imports the new scans. It works for me. In other words, I do my folder organization as I scan the images. I use Vuescan as my scanning software. Whenever I start a scanning session  I always make sure I have specified the right destination folder.

      D
      Don & Julane CrabtreeAuthor
      Participant
      March 10, 2017

      I'm thinking of doing something along the same lines as you.  It's seems like it would be a good workflow.  How do you store/index/track your physical slides, negatives etc. so you can find them if you need to?

      dj_paige
      dj_paige
      Legend
      March 10, 2017

      jcrabtree2  wrote

      I'm thinking of doing something along the same lines as you.  It's seems like it would be a good workflow.  How do you store/index/track your physical slides, negatives etc. so you can find them if you need to?

      This is one of Lightroom's great strengths. If you organize your photos via metadata (keywords, collections, GPS locations, captions, titles, etc.), then you can use these to locate your photos; you do a search in Lightroom to find photos (for example) with the desired keyword, Lightroom finds them (so you don't have to find them), and then you can perform any task you want with these photos (edit, export, e-mail, web, print, etc.​)

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