Once all the duplicates are all sitting next to each other, is there a batch process to determine which file is the real thing and eliminate dupes and bad links? I do not think Lightroom has any such capabilty. Nor do I think any software can determine which is the "real thing" and which is a "duplicate", I would imagine that has to be a human decision. ... View more

As I said, I have no experience with offline images. It is my understanding/guess that the images must be online when you upgrade to Lightroom. PSE Organizer Albums will become Lightroom Collections when you upgrade the PSE catalog. PSE Notes will not transfer via this process. There have been threads here somewhere or at ElementsVillage.com regarding how to use ExifTool to transfer the PSE Notes to some other metadata field so they can indeed be transferred to Lightroom. I leave it up to you to search for them. ... View more

I don't know what needs to be done in your case, as I have never been in the situation where my photos were offline. My GUESS is taht all the images have to be online before you convert the catalog to Lightroom. If I have any recommendation for you at all in this situation, it is that external hard drives are not expensive these days, use PSE to put all your images on an external hard drive, and the problem goes away. ... View more

my big question will be whether I want to continue to use Elements as my Organizer and just use LR as an editor In my opinion, this is an absurd way to go. Lightroom was designed to seamlessly work with the Phtooshop Elements Editor. Not true the other way around, you have to jump through hoops to make the PSE Organizer work with the Lightroom editor (as in lots of extra steps, which I don't particularly recommend). So if you are going to use Lightroom and PSE together, the only sensible way to go is to organize and do primary editing in Lightroom, and extra editing in PSE. Yes, definitely download the Lightroom trial. Lightroom has not been a "gateway drug" to full Photoshop for me, and in fact you can read many people in these and other forums who say that 99% of the time, they don't even need another editor (in other words, they are using PHotoshop or PSE less and less) I have no comment regarding pricing issues. ... View more

Lightroom provides non-destructive, 16 bit editing without the extra step of converting to TIF. Many people use LR for primary editing and organizing and then Elements for advanced editing; which seems to me to be a more streamlined and efficient method than what you are currently using. Does LR give me better quality than the editing filters in Elements? For some things, yes it does, in my opinion. Does Lightroom keep everything in the 16-bit color domain even when working with NIK plug-ins? Yes, everything in Lightroom is done 16bit. I assume (but I don't know as I have ever used the NIK plugins) that if the NIK plugins work 16bit, then you don't lose the bit depth going back and forth. ... View more

I suggest you work your way through the suggestions in this FAQ http://forums.adobe.com/message/4899335#4899335 ... View more

Have you optimized the LR catalog recently? ... View more

Consider using true multi-user software, like Daminion ... View more

My guess is that Facebook is having troubles today (I know if was having trouble yesterday as well); perhaps you can wait a few hours and try again. ... View more

Yes, that's correct BLC1002 --  McLion is correct about how PSE handles non-RAW files, but McLion is wrong about PSE's behavior with RAW files. PSE saves your edits to a RAW in a sidecar file, and so it is completely non-destructive when editing RAW files. ... View more

I did say to check permission on the folder, and I forgot to say check to see if the file itself is marked read-only. If that's not it, try: Create a blank catalog Then File->Import from Another Catalog and point to this problem catalog See if that produces a working catalog file. ... View more

Not writable indicates that there might be a permissions problem, that the catalog file is located in a folder where Lightroom doesn't have write access. It does not mean the catalog is corrupted. Please check that. Also, could you provide us with the exact error message, verbatim? Thanks. ... View more

Yes, daily backups.  Right now, LR has corrupted two days of backup. If you made a copy of your backup and moved it to the original catalog file location and then open it, your backup could not get corrupted. And I remain skeptical that the catalog is really corrupted. How do you know? ... View more

How do you know the catalog is really corrupt? Sometimes when the computer freezes, all you have to do to re-open the catalog is to remove the .lock file in the same folder as your catalog file. ... View more

I'm also stuck: no going back to the previous versions, all catalogs are upgraded. Too bad... You're not stuck. All your earlier catalogs remain in place, unchanged, if you want to use them in earlier versions of Lightroom ... View more

As John explained, a large catalog being slow is a myth, and it is in some sense on of the most widespread myths regarding Lightroom. Lots of people initially jump to that conclusion when Lightroom is slow, only to be told that this is not the reason. John has a catalog of over 450k images, and many other people also report catalogs of over 200k images and they are as happy as pigs in mud (so to speak). So, you would really benefit by getting this false idea out of your head. I guess my workaround will be to go through images on various catalogs (many have fortunately already been assigned "portfolio" keywords), and then export them to a common location (they currently are spread out on any number of various external drives). Then I'll import those images as a new portfolio catalog. Admittedly, not the most convenient method imaginable, but workable, and etcetera might find it helpful. This is indeed a workaround, but it involves unnecessary work. If you want to create a portfolio catalog, and the relevant photos already have a portfolio keyword, then you don't need to copy those photos to a new location. That is unnecessary work! There is no need to do this. In each of your catalogs, find the photos with keyword "portfolio", and export them as catalog to somewhere (do not check "Include Negatives"), then merge all the catalogs via File->Import from Another Catalog. There is no need to import the images, no need to make copies. Saves you time and disk space over what you had planned. Plus, some or all of your metadata will not make it to the new portfolio catalog if you copy the images to somewhere and reimport the photos. But, in case you haven't guessed, the ideal solution, from my point of view, is to put everything into one single catalog. ... View more

cheer89fjh wrote: So which program is better? Which should I buy? I still have no idea. So, based upon your description of what you want to do ... there is no program that is "better" ... because you haven't told us what types of things you want to do with your photos, and that in turn will identify features you need. You need to tell us more about what you want to do with your photographs, and then perhaps we could say that one is "better" for you than the other. ... View more

Two-way syncing would let "sets" on Flickr become "collections" in Lightroom, and vice versa. As far as I can tell (and I use this plug-in regularly), "sets" in Flickr cannot be synchronized with Lightroom constructs. Going the other way, a grouping of Lightroom photos (whether they are in a collection, publish collection or neither) can be turned into Flickr "sets". If there is a Flickr "set" and a Lightroom "collection" that are supposed to be the same, but the number of photos contained in each is different, there is no automated way of determining where the mismatch exists. ... View more

It was mainly developed as a geotagging tool You must be thinking of a different plug-in from Jeffrey Friedl. ... View more

While Jeffrey's Lightroom Exporter plug-in is a very powerful piece of software, it was not designed to be (and falls far short of ) "two-way syncing" between Lightroom and Flickr. ... View more

Wow, etcetera, you still have a bunch of misconceptions it's fine with me if Adobe wants to call a database a catalog, cornelia-l... but it should have a pretty little button that says, "copy this database item, including its original image and metadata and stuff, over to this other database." oh well, i am but a lowly user and i am not the person Adobe makes these things for.  😛 No, the problem is that you are not a lowly user; the problem is that you are using LR in ways that it wasn't designed to be used. And the reason Adobe doesn't give you a "copy to another catalog" button is because Lightroom was designed for primarily a single catalog; yes you can indeed use multiple catalogs if you want to give up some features and work harder. i would rather not have a single database of around 10,000 images to deal with every time i want to edit, export, copy, or back up anything. I would guess that most LR users have a LOT more than 10,000 images in a catalog. I have a catalog of about 21,000 images, and I don't have a single issue with having a catalog that large. Nor do I have a single issue with trying to find, for example, my railroad photos in this large catalog that contains personal photos, architecture photos, landscape photos, travel photos and railroad photos. In this situation, you are given a HUGE number of tools (because that's what LR was designed to do) to find/organize/separate these photos when I want them. So its really your choice ... use LR in a way (one catalog) that has a HUGE number of tools at your disposal, or use it in a way (multiple catalogs) that has much more limited tools. also, for some reason my brain really objects to having the files I need for a single operation spread out all over the place and yet Lightroom was designed to eliminate the problems that you might have when your files are spread out i would like to have the Family database and all the image files in one place/in one folder/on one hard drive. something i can easily drag the whole thing onto another drive to copy it. Lightroom does not prevent you or hinder you from doing this. And if you want to drag the whole thing to somewhere else, use Lightroom to do this!! Lightroom doesn't prevent this at all. if LR's later versions make this easier, i might bother with upgrading! All of this is amazingly easy in the version of LR that you have. Upgrading doesn't make these issues any easier i suppose i could redo everything i've already done in LR over the last year, so it's all one catalog, You don't have to redo anything to create a single master catalog. You just merge them. You already figured out the process of moving photos from one catalog to another. Do that for ALL photos and you now have one catalog. I think you should give it a try. Everything you said you wanted can be done in a single catalog; it gets a little tougher with two catalogs. ... View more

I remain confused about how to quickly and easily get photos from one existing catalog to a different catalog I think you understood the process properly. The error you make, that causes you to be confused, is expecting a method that can be done "quickly and easily". Unrealistic expectations! Which is why you should use a single catalog, and then the effort of moving photos from one catalog to another is ZERO EFFORT! Can't beat that! ... View more

Well, next time we're in the same coffee shop, you can buy me a donut. Glad to see it worked, and now you know it really is that simple. If I could be so bold, I think you might want to spend some time learning about how the cataloging system in LR works, and how photos on your hard disk are referenced in LR. A good video on the subject is "Dude, Where Are My Photos". ... View more

So it seem that to import is the only way to get the ext hd into LR. Let me say emphatically that this is incorrect. We can link the LR catalog to your photos on the external HD without importing. Let me also say that I would like you to not go and do things on your own, because this will lead to more confusion and problems. Ok, let's get back to my earlier question ... I think that when you right-click on a folder name in the Folder Panel, you should see a menu item that says "Update Folder Location". You said no such item appears. So ... when you right-click on a folder name in the Folder Panel, and a menu pops up, what are the items in this menu? Make a screen capture, or write them down and then type them in and let me know. I also asked this next question, and I would appreciate it if you would provide me with an answer. Do you, or do you not, have question marks on your folders? ... View more

Let's stop right here. You should NOT be importing photos. If you really are importing photos, STOP. This isn't the solution. My suggestion above was not to import anything, it was to fix the links in your catalog Please clarify what you are doing. ... View more

According to this, you should have "Update Folder Locations" http://help.adobe.com/en_US/lightroom/using/WSE828B644-9097-46ab-98A7-E2719BBB6647.html Do you, or do you not, have question marks on your folders? ... View more

Right-click on a top level folder in the LR Folder Panel, select Update Folder Location, then point to the equivalent folder on the external HD By the way, for future reference, if a thread doesn't cover your situation, start a new thread ... View more

fotonatur13 wrote: I have copied alle my images (one folder with all its subfolders) from my Imac-internal hd to an external drive. Now i want to use the external hd in Lightroom, and delete the internal folder. But i cant find the external hd in LRs Folder and therefore move the images. Now i am very unsure what to do. Can somebody help? Have i done something wrong in this operation? Hello, fotonaur13 This thread contains all the information you need to fix the problem, particularly (if I understand you properly) the link given by Web-Weaver in reply #1 ... View more