Transfer folder(s) -> Impact collections?

[Weerz]

Hi all,

After a while in using Lightroom and getting more experienced i 'm seeing that the arrangement of my folders and structure can be a lot better.

Also i'm changing from an external HDD to an external SSD, so good oppertunity to rearrange my folder structure. 

A new catalog and start from scratch is not what i want, because of the edits and tweaks in photos

But the question i have and can't find is if i tranfers the folders within Lightroom will this impact the collections i have made? Or will lightroom know update the path itself?

Thanks in advance for the help!

[gary_sc]

It's all doable. It sounds like you are doing two different things though: 1) moving your photos to an external drive and 2) rearanging your photo's folders.

It's very important to do all of #2 IN LR-C. If you do anything in the Finder (or Explorer), LR doesn't know about that and will be confused (fixable but confused). 

Here's a video that should help: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9B0lq6GJZc

BTW, even SSDs are not bullet proof. The axium "There are two kinds of hard drive users: those who've had a hard drive crash and those who've not had a hard drive crash yet." With that in mind, I have a 4TB drive I keep all my images on (not SSD) and a 2nd hard drive I back up the first one with. I also have my computer and drive 1 backed up to the clouds for that 3rd layer. 

Good luck to your new system setup!

[Weerz]

Thanks! And that is correct, 2 things 🙂

Also did some research and saw the video's and i will need to do this within Lightroom.

But the question i have still stands, will rearranging the folders have effect on the collections i have made?

[gary_sc · Accepted solution]

Hi Weerz,

It should not. The collections are, in essense, aliases/shortcuts so as long as LR knows where the originals are, it can link the two. 

LR really doesn't care where the originals are located, nor does it care if the original photos are all together or distributed all over the place. It just wants to know where they are. So, as you move things around, as long as you do that INSIDE Lightroom, you'll be good. 

Some hints: If you have a folder called "New York" and you've traveled there in 1990 and again in 2000, you can right click on the New York folder and look for the option "Create Folder inside New York." At that point a new folder will appear inside New York that you can name 1990. You can then put all the 1990 images into that folder. Alternatively, if you were to have all 2000 images selected, and then did the same thing about creating a new folder inside New York but this time on the bottom of the New Folder window notice a check box to move all of the selected images into the new folder, it will.

Hope that helps. If it does please answer one of these as the correct answer. Thanks!

[Weerz]

Great and thanks! I will put it to the test when i have my new stuff.

But it seems logic and i have faith that it will work 🙂

[dj_paige · Accepted solution]

"Also i'm changing from an external HDD to an external SSD, so good oppertunity to rearrange my folder structure."

NO NO NO NO a thousand times NO

Accomplish one task before you even start on the other. Move everything to the external drive without rearranging the folders, make sure that is working properly (now I'm going to say it again in capital letters so you know its important) MAKE SURE THAT IS WORKING PROPERLY. Only then should you re-arrange folders (although my personal opinion is to organize via keywords and other metadata and leave the folders as they are).

The easiest way to move the folders to a different drive is in "Part 2 — Updating Folder Location" of this document where you leave the folder hierarchy literally unchanged, its just on a new drive..

[gary_sc]

Thank you dj_paige,

I assumed that Weerz would be doing that but didn't think to emphasize that. 

Absolutely correct!

[Weerz]

Thanks Dj! And you are correct, never advance to a second stage before testing testing testing 😉