Numbering system in Lightroom: can this be done?

Question

My question comes out of the need to number older film images I've scanned. I want to include them in Lightroom for organizing purposes.

I'm currently importing the last 20 years of digital images and I am using a single catalog for all images. The numbering system I chose is YYYYMMDD_### plus some descriptive text.

I am also scanning *select* images from film and I want to retain the series number they were originally assigned. The numbering system for the film is YY-XXXX where the serial XXXX runs the entire year - i.e. 90-1234.

I intend to enter each scanned image into Lightroom manually. Using the example above, I would assign the image the number 19901028_1234 (for October 28, 1990, image sequence 1234) so that the YYYYMMDD convention I'm currently using is maintained.

Will I be able to assign a serial number that runs the entire year (instead of one day as is currently done) and have Lightroom sort those images into the folder structure it currently has (which is, for example, 2019 > 2019_05 > 2019_05_14 for May 14, 2019)?

In other words, will Lightroom carry the sequence number for the scanned images throughout the entire year even though those images are in folders by month, then day?

Or is the solution to create a second catalog for the scanned images? Or something else?

Thank you!

Jao vdL · Answer

There are a lot of questions in this. I am assuming that your scans have filenames that are according to the numbering scheme you give above - basically 90-ordinal number - and that they are already numbered in this fashion. Also I am assuming that these filkes do not have correct date metadata - i.e. the date metadata is simply the time they were scanned, NOT the time they were taken. So in effect you have two naming schemes and filing structures. One for your scans and one for the images from digital cameras (which all have correct date metadata and have automatically been filed by Lightroom into the correct date/month/day folder structure. So I would recommend you don't mess with either of these and simply kep the naming structure you have for the scans and integrate that. In that case, the very simplest thing to  do is to move these files by year using Finder/explorer into your current folder structure manually first into a subfolder in the year (say 1990) called simply scans. Then you simply import these files into Lightroom Classic using the add option in the import panel. Do NOT make Lightroom rename on import or auto file in folders. They will now show up in Lightroom Classic under the correct year but in a subfolder called scans. You can't make them autosort into the correct day folders, since these scans will not have capture date metadata in them that would allow Lightroom to sort them out. This is the next best thing and at least you have them in the correct year folder and segregated from any digital captures. I would also give all of those imported scans a keyword "scan from film" or something like that upon import, to make them easy to find and sort into Lightroom.

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