You know you have this issue when you see what is shown in the two pictures on the left:

A folder list with question marks and pictures that show the icon which also contains a question mark and a little icon that sort of looks like a computer chip.

When this happens, Lightroom has lost the connection between its database and the physical file that is your picture. In other words, Lightroom is expecting to see you pictures in a particular location, but the files are no longer there. Lightroom, not knowing what to do, will display the “?” indicating it is confused.

What is going on here? How did this happen, how do we prevent it from happening again and, most importantly, how do we fix it? Let’s look at all those questions.

What’s going on?

Most people have been used to using Adobe Bridge. Bridge is a “file browser”, you point it at a folder and it dutifully shows the contents of that folder. Lightroom does not quite work like that. To better understand how Lightroom works, think of your disk drive full of photos as being a large public library. Your pictures are the equivalent of books on shelves. The shelves would be equivalent to your folders and are labeled, just as your folders have names.

Now, in this environment, to find a book, you could walk the isles, looking for a shelf with the right label and when you find that, browse all the books on those shelves until you found the one you want. This would be the equivalent of opening Bridge, navigating to a folder of a particular name, opening that folder and browsing through all the photos until you find the one you want.

Another way of finding that book in the public library, is to go to the index, these days it is often a PC, and in the old days it would be a card system. You can search the index by title, by author, by publisher, by genre, etc. When you find the reference to the book you are looking for, the index will tell you what shelf that book is stored on.

This is exactly how Lightroom functions. The Lightroom Library Module is the equivalent of that in index. You look up your picture by keyword, or by camera, by date, etc and Lightroom knows where in your computer that photo is located.

So, now we can see what can go wrong. Imagine for a moment that someone in the public library wants to play a prank and moves books from one shelf to another shelf. You can imagine the havoc that can create when someone uses the index to find a book only to mystified when they cannot find the book on the designated shelf . . . because it is no longer there.

THIS is what has happened in your Lightroom setup when you see the two scenarios depicted in the screenshots at the start of this article! The images that Lightroom is referring to are no longer there. They have been moved. This typically happens when you go rearranging your folders within the Windows or Mac Finder environment. When you do that, you are the prankster that is confusing Lightroom. Usually, this happens when people purchase a new disk drive and move their folders full of picture onto that disk drive, believing that Lightroom will figure that out. Sadly, Lightroom is not that smart.

How to locate missing pictures and folders

Thankfully, there is a way of re-synchronizing Lightroom with your folders and images. You can do this on two levels: Individual pictures (one at a time) or whole folders (synchronizes all images in a folder in one hit). Which option you pick is up to you and depends somewhat on what you did when moving pictures. For example, if you moved a whole folder from your local drive to an external drive, you would re-sync using the “folder” option. If you moved a few individual images from one folder to another folder, you would choose the “individual picture” option.

Locating missing pictures

Make sure you are in the Library module. You should see thumbnails that display the icon representing missing images. As stated earlier, it looks like a little computer chip with a “?”.

Right-click the image that you want to re-locate and select the “Show in Explorer” Mac users will see “Show in Finder”.

This will bring up essentially an error message, but it offers the options to go locate the missing image. See the screenshot below.

Now click the “Locate” button and navigate to the new location where you put the file. Click “Choose” and Lightroom will be happy again.

Locate missing folders

If you moved a whole folder, don’t waste your time re-synching image-by-image as you can do this folder-by-folder which is much quicker.

This time we use the folder list, found on the left panel of the Library module. It will show a list of folders and the missing ones will be “grayed out” and will have that dreaded “?”. Simply right-click on the folder name you want to locate and select “Find Missing Folder”.

Now navigate to the new location you moved the folder to and select “choose”. Lightroom will ripple through the entire contents of that folder and re-synchronize its contents with its database, making everything work smoothly again. Do this for all missing folders.

That’s all there is to it!

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This setup can offer huge advantages. For starters, you can instantly see your shots on the large screen of the computer instead of the small LCD on the back of the camera, but it also saves time downloading images from your camera as the images are already in Lightroom.

So how do we do this?

Obviously, you first need a cable to connect your camera to your computer. You probably got one with the camera, it’s the same cable you use to download images from the camera. If you don’t have one, you can buy one from most computer and/or camera stores. Just check the connections in the computer (usually USB) and the camera (mini USB) and make sure you get one that is long enough for your setup.

You will need the software utility that “talks” to your camera. If you have Canon, that software is the EOS Utility which came for free with your camera. Unfortunately Nikon does not give their software away for free, you need to buy it. The software is called Nikon Camera Control Pro and you can get it at B&H for around $145. Here is the link

As I have a Canon, the following screenshots represents a Canon-specific setup.

In the Canon EOS Utility, you’ll need to identify the folder the EOS Utility will deposit the photos in. This is set up like in the screenshot below. I called this folder “incoming”.

Now we have completed the link between the computer and the camera.

Next is to setup Lightroom to watch this folder for incoming images. This is done in the Auto Import Settings under the FILE menu. First you need to “turn on” the Auto Import function, by selecting the first option, as seen here:

Then, you set it up in the Auto Import Settings . . . .

As you see below, I selected the “Incoming” folder as the folder to “watch”. That is exactly what Lightroom will do. It will sit there and monitor that folder waiting for anything to arrive. When you take a picture, the EOS Utility will save the picture into that folder where Lightroom will pick it up and process it, just like a normal IMPORT session.

The rest of the Auto Import Settings therefore look very similar to the normal Import settings. You specify a folder where you want Lightroom to put the image and you select the various other settings like presets and keywords.

Now you are all set!

Connect your camera to the computer, launch EOS Utility and Lightroom and shoot away. Every shot will be automatically imported into Lightroom.

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Determining how you back up, how often and where to, will depend on several criteria such as amount of photos you have and budget.

If you have just one disk drive, then one option is of course to burn the images to disk. Today, with 8, 10, 12 or more megapixel cameras, you’ll find that a CD won’t hold much. After all more and more people have 2GB or 4Gb memory cards, while a CD is only 800Mb. A writable DVD is therefore a better option at 4.7GB. However, make sure you invest in Gold Archival quality media. Admittedly, they are much more expensive, but be warned that “normal” media will not last very long. The “100 year life cycle” is a myth, with “regular” CDs and DVD often showing errors after only 6 months or a year.

A much better solution is a second disk drive, either internal or external. Internal drives are usually faster, but they require installation. If you do not have the know-how to install an internal drive, then an external disk drive is the obvious answer. They come in Firewire as well as USB2.0 versions, two common connection types. USB is very common as most peripherals such as printers and memory card readers need USB ports. Firewire is the name that Apple uses, but it is also known as as IEEE 1394 on PCs and Sony uses the term i.Link. They are all the same.

Backup Configurations

My preferred set-up is having two identical external drives. One is the “master” the other is a clone. I leave my internal drive (C: drive) for operating system and for transient images, such as exported files I upload to websites or email).

My Lightroom Catalog (the database) does reside on the C:Drive. That way, I can browse my images even if the external drive is offline (which is rare).

So, how do we back files up?

Upon importing, Lightroom gives you the option to backup your images to a second location.

Backup at Import

This is extremely convenient and assures you have two copies of you images. However, it does not create a backup of your database. This feature simple copies the pictures to a folder and, in the case of a disaster, you need to do the import process again in order to get these images into your working catalog.

For that reason, I do not use this method. Not because there is anything wrong with it per se, it’s just that I prefer to have my two external disks to be identical copies of one and other. Therefore I use a backup tool to duplicate the images. It requires some discipline as I have to remember to do it. The tool I use is from Microsoft, called SyncToy (soorry, I have little Macintosh experience, so if you are a Mac user, this tool is of no use to you, but I like to think the method is still applicable and that there is a similar Macintosh tool available) . It is free and does not come with Windows or Vista automatically. You need to go and download it. You can find it here.

SyncToy is a tool that works on the principle of identifying two folders (a source and a destination) and then defining how the two relate. SyncToy offers copying options. They are:

1. Synchronize – Files are copied both ways, assuring each folder is identical.
2. Echo – Files are copied from only ONE Folder to the Other, this will include renames and deletes. The destination is a clone.
3. Contribute – Files are copied in one direction, but no deletes. The destination accumulates everything.

I use the “Echo” option, so everything I do on the master drive, is “echoed” on the secondary drive. This includes new images, renaming of images and any deletions. I never access the second drive, I prefer it to be my backup only.

It copies everything within the source folder, so that includes subfolders. So, I create folder “sets” such as “2007 Photo Backups”, “2008 Photo Backups” etc.

Backup in Progress

Lightroom Backups

When you start Lightroom it will ask you to backup your catalog. I’m sure you will have seen this dialog box. It is of course a good idea to do this, but note that this does not back up your photos, just the Lightroom database which includes the work you have done to your images.

Backup Lightroom Catalog

How often do you need to do this? I recommend once a day, every time you start Lightroom.

you can find this setting under the File Menu -> Catalog Settings.

Removing old backups

Every time you have Lightroom make a backup of the Catalog, it creates a file and this can start to eat away at you disk space. Older backups can easily be deleted as you’ve made fresher backups since then. It’ll save you a lot of space.

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2	The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2 Book for Digital Photographers (Voices That Matter)	The Photoshop Lightroom Workbook: Workflow not Workslow in Lightroom 2

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Well, the image you first see appearing is the JPEG preview that is embedded in the Raw file. It is an image that was created by your camera. Canon users may have one of the PictureStyles selected which gets used when these JPEGs are created.

Canon Options

Upon import, Lightroom creates its own previews and because you have not done any post-pressing yet, the preview is built from the unadjusted Raw file, which will typically not be very bright or saturated so the Lightroom-generated previews will rarely look the same as the embedded JPEG.

Thankfully, Adobe has worked with the manufacturers and have created camera profiles that can be loaded into Lightroom and which closely match what the camera would do. These profiles, while still in beta, are an essential download in my opinion. Here is how they work and where to get them.

Here is how they work. And, by the way, they will only work with Lightroom 2 and ACR 4.5 or later.

They are “context sensitive”. In other words, they only appear when appropriate. So, if the EXIF data in the photo indicates the picture was taken with a Canon 5D, only the Canon 5D camera profiles will be displayed.

Here, on the left, you can see these profiles in the camera Calibration panel (Develop Module).

Canon users will immediately recognize them as being similar to the PictureStyle names. And that is precisely the intention of these camera profiles.

They aim to duplicate the manufacturer’s color appearance.

See the example below, where the top image is the untouched Raw file, while the one below that has the Landscape Profile assigned to it.

Not a huge difference, but definitely an improvement. You are now in a much better starting point to commence your post processing. It’s sort of like starting by setting your white balance.

Untouched Raw

With Canon "Landscape" Profile

The link to get these profiles from Adobe website is here: Get the profiles from Adobe

At the moment only Canon and Nikon camera profiles are provided.

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The Lightroom team would like the community to help verify the quality of this update through normal usage as this will ensure that the application is tested on a diversity of hardware and software configurations not available internally at Adobe.

The release candidate is readily downloadable, but obviously only works if you have a valid V2 license key. By default, this Lightroom 2.1 release candidate will remove or overwrite your existing Lightroom 2.0 installation so caution is called for.

If you wish to return to Lightroom 2.0 after installing Lightroom 2.1, simply reinstall Lightroom 2.0 from your original download file or from the CD after performing the following:

• Mac: Delete this file before reinstalling Lightroom 2.0: Library/Receipts/Adobe Photoshop Lightroom.pkg.
• Windows: Uninstall Lightroom 2.1 using the Windows add/remove program utility.

Both versions of the application share the same catalog format allowing your catalogs to be opened by either version without complications.

Go to the Adobe Lightroom 2.1 page

What’s New?

Support was added for some new cameras, notably the Fuji Finepix IS Pro, Nikon D700, Nikon D90 and the Nikon Coolpix P6000.

For the rest, the release mainly dealt with addressing some stability issues and performance bugs. The “Edit in Photoshop” bug was addressed too. For a full list, see the Adobe page found by following the link above.

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However, over time, as you collect more and more presets, your preset panel can grow to unmanageable proportions. Time to get organized by creating preset folders into which you can organize your own presets or import presets downloaded from the Internet.

Develop Presets

First we need to go to the Develop Module as the Develop Presets panel only shows up on the left when that module is.

To create a folder, pull down the “Develop” menu and select “New Preset Folder

Create a new folder

Type in the name want to use in the dialog box and click “create”. This will create a new folder in the Presets Panel.

Now we are ready to manage our Presets. You can do so, simply by dragging and dropping. You’ll find that you can quickly reduce a long, unorganized list of presets, into neatly presented folders.

Importing

Importing Develop Presets is easy. Adobe has done all the work for us.

After creating a folder like we did above, simply put your cursor on the name of that folder and hit the right mouse button. A menu will pop up that includes an “Import” option.

Import Develop Preset

Simpley select the Import option and navigate to the location you downloaded the preset to (make sure you unzip the preset first!). Simple.

What are presets and where are they kept?

A Develop Preset is simply a file with instructions that tell Lightroom what to do. Everything you need is contained in such a file, they come with an extension of .lrtemplate. For example, the Solarize Preset you can download from this site is called ADB_Solarize.lrtemplate.

These files are kept in a special folder on your PC.

For Windows this is

C:Documents and Settings/username/Application Data/Adobe/Lightroom/Develop Presets (and “username” is the name of the user you are logged on as).

For Vista, it is slightly different:

C:Users/username/AppData/Adobe/Lightroom/Develop Presets

Two things to watch out for here:

1. Develop Presets are stored per User. So if you have multiple people using the same PC using different login names, they will not automatically have the same presets.
2. Often, especially in Vista, the operating system hides the AppData (or Application Data) folder from users. You simply don’t see them eventhough they are there.

If you have a lot of presets you want to import (or export), it might be easier and quicker to open this folder and copy batches of preset files like you would any other file. Take note: you cannot have nested folders. In other words, you cannot put a folder with presets inside a folder of presets. Lightroom will not recognize them.

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Undoubtedly, you know you can makes changes to one photo, then apply those changes to multiple photos using the Synchronize function. Well, Auto Sync, as the name implies, does this automatically, in real time as you work on your main photo. It’s kind of fun, making a change, than watching it ripple through the thumbnails automatically. It is also very handy if you are working on a series of images all shot at the same location at the same time.

Here is where you find it and how to switch it on.

Make sure you are in the Develop Module.
When you select more than one photo, the “Sync…” button automatically becomes active. Now hold down the “CTRL” key and click the Sync.. button. This “turns on” the Auto Sync function, You’ll see it as the text on the Sync.. button now reads “Auto Sync”.
From here on, any changes you make to the main photo you are working on, is automatically applied to all images you selected.

To turn this off, simple CTRL – Click the button again and the function returns to its normal state.

Cool.

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Let’s take a look at how efficient this this.

Creating a filing system is probably as old as the art of writing. We needed a place to put something we wanted to keep. And we needed a way to find it again when we wanted. We’ve all had to deal with such “systems”. We have filing cabinets, telephone directories, recipe books and of course, PCs with copious amounts of folders.

Everyone “files” their stuff differently. Some people are extremely organized and methodical, others are sloppy and undisciplined. Sometimes the information itself dictates the way it should be organized. Whatever the system however, the larger the amount of information to be filed, the more complex the system becomes and the more prone it becomes to failure. In other words, misplacing something in a filing system that only contains 15 items is a recoverable problem. Misplacing that same item in a filing system with 100,000 items is a different problem altogether.

Lightroom has a database and databases were explicitly designed to manage large amounts of data. To take advantage of this database, we need to remove ourselves from “thinking in folders” as this metaphor does not apply to databases.

Lightroom excels at indexing all metadata associated with the photo and that includes the date and time of the shot. Why then, would someone download the images first, into a folder structure of date and time, when Lightroom already does that, automatically?

Import

I highly recommend therefore that you let Lightroom “do its thing”. Once you commit to Lightroom, you should use Lightroom for all your work.. Trust me, Lightroom will know what it did with your photos, where they are stored, how to find them and how to manage them, much better than you can. Here are some do’s and don’ts.

DO

• Use Lightroom to download photos from your memory card. Lightroom will automatically create folders for them and indexes all EXIF data including the date and time. If you create folders by date, you are, actually, wasting your time as Lightroom does that automatically.
• Use Lightroom to move and delete photos.
• Specify keywords when you download images.
• Do use presets for Copyright and Metadata information. It’ll make your life much easier
• Use Lightroom’s “Edit in External Editor” function to launch a 3rd party application. If you do, files will automatically be managed and stacked with the originals, greatly reducing the chances of misplacing them.

DON’T

• Create your own folderstructure and expect Lightroom to function efficiently. Lightroom can index your images in far more sophisticated ways than you can organize them in folders.
• Work with images outside of Lightroom. In other words, do not navigate to the folders with images and open them in ACR, edit and save them back. Lightroom will not know about these edits and you will get mightily confused when using Lightroom.

It does take a little getting used to, but once you dicipline yourself in using Lightroom as main “view” into your database of images, life will be much more efficient.

Even if you use Photoshop a lot, there is a huge benefit is using Lightroom as your “raw converter” instead of Bridge and ACR. Using Bridge and ACR, a typical workflow would include the following steps:

1. Open the photo in ACR
2. Make edits as appropriate
3. Open converted photo in Photoshop
4. Make adjustments using adjustment layers
5. Save PSD in designated folder with layers in tact (for future use)
6. Copy layered PSD and flatten image (now you have the original plus a layered copy)
7. If you are going to print – Sharpen for output
8. Save as JPEG (if you are using a lab) or print to inkjet (now you have 3 copies, more if you also create versions for email or website)

With Lightroom managing your images, many of these steps become totally redundant. This is because the Lightroom recognizes Photoshop files.

PSD files in Lightroom

In the example above, you can see a PSD version next to the original raw version (Canon’s CR2 format) . I used Photoshop to straighten the photo caused by the distortion of the wide angle lens. Now that this layered Photoshop file is in Lightroom, I can use all of Lightroom’s features. Export to JPEG or TIFF, sharpen for whatever output medium I am targeting, etc.

I have omitted the need to save a flattened copy, and any additional  JPEG copies.

My new workflow looks something like:

1. Open the photo in Develop Module
2. Make edits as appropriate
3. Select “Edit in Photoshop” (click “edit a copy” and “stack with original”)
4. Make adjustments using adjustment layers
5. Save
6. In Lightroom, I can now see the PSD and do several things: Export to JPEG, put in WebGallery, Print, etc.

By using Lightroom to find my picture, open it in Photoshop for editing, II effectively use Lightroom as my raw converter and have saved significant diskspace and cut out several steps in my workflow without any compromises.

That is the power of Lightroom.

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