I'm glad I tried using my laptop to test LR on the Mac. I Imported 3 groups files selected on an SD card to folders with identifiable names. The folders appeared in finder on the system drive. I imported them into my main library using a different catalog. and my external drive.

Come to find out, each of the named folders had a subfolder named "2012" with subfolders to it with the photos. The folders never made it into my main library, just the subfolders. I went back to my system drive and found out that the subfolders were created. Why is that!!!!

Scott Chapin
Powder Springs, GA, USA
Nikonians Team Member

My heart rate has slowed and breathing normal agin...LOL. Had to select organize photos into one folder under the destination options bar. Don't think I had to do that in Windoze. Don't know why one would want a lot of numerically named folders either.

Scott Chapin
Powder Springs, GA, USA
Nikonians Team Member

Sounds to me like during the import process, in Lightroom, over on the right is a section called "Into Subfolder", then there's a dropdow box "Organize" and it appears to me you selected by date which gives you nice, pretty date folders.

That could be the default when you start with a new installation of Lightroom. I sometimes find that if I have happy fingers that selection gets changed. Make sure you reorganize/move your images INSIDE of Lightroom to keep everything in tact.

UPDATE: Didn't refresh the thread to see that you figured that out! Excellent.

The reason that option is there (by the way, I don't use it) is let's say you went on a month long vacation and you want to have various additional subfolders added automatically for each of the days that you captured images during that trip. For me, I know how to use the filters to look up my dates and prefer not to subdivide my folders that way.

It all comes down to how you want your organization of your images and that all ties into your particular workflow. The important thing is establish a workflow and stick to it to maintain consistency.

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>Sounds to me like during the import process, in Lightroom,
>over on the right is a section called "Into
>Subfolder", then there's a dropdow box
>"Organize" and it appears to me you selected by date
>which gives you nice, pretty date folders.
>

Actually, It defaulted to "by date", believe me, I didn't choose it.

>That could be the default when you start with a new
>installation of Lightroom. I sometimes find that if I have
>happy fingers that selection gets changed. Make sure you
>reorganize/move your images INSIDE of Lightroom to keep
>everything in tact.

Yes, I have been very careful not to mess the catalog.
>
>UPDATE: Didn't refresh the thread to see that you figured
>that out! Excellent.
>
>The reason that option is there (by the way, I don't use it)
>is let's say you went on a month long vacation and you want to
>have various additional subfolders added automatically for
>each of the days that you captured images during that trip.
>For me, I know how to use the filters to look up my dates and
>prefer not to subdivide my folders that way.

I think I intuitively think "filters".

>It all comes down to how you want your organization of your
>images and that all ties into your particular workflow. The
>important thing is establish a workflow and stick to it to
>maintain consistency.

Well, I decided to combine all my vacations/trips into a folder named Vacations-Trips. Well It would not appear int he folders list. It appeared in Finder. I wondered whether it was an Macism called Aliases, but I couldn't find the real location. FINALLY, I found it in All Files and deleted it. I have no earthly idea why LR dumped it there. So I deleted it and in LR, recreated it. Lots to figure out here...LOL.

Scott Chapin
Powder Springs, GA, USA
Nikonians Team Member

Try 'add parent folder' and/or 'promote subfolders' in LR's Library module left panel to get all the folders and subfolders to show in the list.

Charlie...
stalking light

Nikonians Team Member

I will try that next time. I am not absolutely sure I created an alias, because I think there needs to be a real folder there to begin with.

Scott Chapin
Powder Springs, GA, USA
Nikonians Team Member

I always have LR put my photos into subfolders under a 'subject' folder by date on import in both win and mac. Makes it easier for me to find stuff in folders outside of LR should I need to. For example. on my trips to the southwest I have a 'southwest trip' folder with date organized subfolders inside it. When I select 'southwest' in LR I see all the photos in all the subfolders, so there is no difference from what I would see if I didn't have the subfolders.

You do need to select 'show parent' or something like that to see the whole tree. I like this a lot better than just dumping all my southwest photos into one folder, for example.

Charlie...
stalking light

Nikonians Team Member

I guess I have been creating subfolders named according to the date. For instance, I might name a folder "Smokey Mountain 2009" and place it under a folder named "Vacations-Trips". I'm not sure I could remember a shoot by it's date as much as by its subject matter.

in any event the first level sub folders were named 2012 and the next level folders were named 2012-nn-nn, where I could not relate tie 2 digit numbers to month or day and certainly 2012 is not the year. But that might be intended to be transparent to the user.

I do go to the Renaissance Festival most every year and create a folder for each year. Maybe one Renaissance folder with imports by date, might make sense.

Scott Chapin
Powder Springs, GA, USA
Nikonians Team Member

I have to admit, Scott, that three months into Lightroom I am still not fully comfortable with the Import function. I too occasionally get a subfolder when I intended the images to go into an existing folder, or I get a subfolder when I wanted to create a new "subject" folder. I find LR Import to be less intuitive than Photo Mechanic.

That said, otherwise I am completely satisfied with my move to LR from PM-CNX2. WHile I do miss some aspects of both of those programs, the overall Lightroom experience — and the results — is superior.

Jon Kandel
A New York City Nikonian and Team Member
Please visit my website and critique the images!

I used to manually create 'smokies 2011' , 'smokies 2010', etc. folders. Now I just create a 'smokies' folder and let LR create date subfolders. After I have gone through the folder and rated and key-worded the images, though, I rely on collections for organization within LR.

You can choose what date format to use, and I use the 2nd one in the list wich is 4 digit year-mm-dd. If you are seeing 2012 I'd check the date in your camera, since the date subfolders are based on the date and time the photo was taken.

If I was more organized I might use the 'rename' functionality on import to rename the files by shoot name, but I'm not quite there yet.

Charlie...
stalking light

Nikonians Team Member

Ach was! So obvious about the date and I have been preoccupied with Mac matters. The pictures were from my P7000 and I very well might not have paid attention when I got it last December.

Scott Chapin
Powder Springs, GA, USA
Nikonians Team Member

I actually LOVE the auto creation of folders and sub-folders by date, then I can use Collections to add by subject. I have a lot of back logged photos to add to the collections but sinc my library has been updated by date going back and finding where i left off is easy.

Question however; In doing this I have discovered one of my older P&S cameras was 2 years off on the Date/Time stamp. Month/Day is correct but year is off. Does anyone know a quick way I can update or correct this through lightroom?

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Yep, correcting could be handy this time around. What bothered me, and why I didnt recognize what was going on, is that the parent folder did not show up in the folder listing. The 2012 folder was in a parent folder on the HD, so I thought something was seriously awry.

I too would like to filter by camera and change its year.

Scott Chapin
Powder Springs, GA, USA
Nikonians Team Member

select the photos in question - probably from library view, metadata, camera, then date? Then do Metadata -> Edit Capture Time and you'll be on your way.

_____
Brian... a bicoastal Nikonian and Team Member

My gallery is online. Comments and critique welcomed any time!

I'm a big fan of Victoria's Lightroom book and her blog is great too.

Give this a try:

http://photoshopservices.wordpress.com/2007/10/19/changing-the-time-stamp/

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