LR1.1 has improved file management (catalogues and the ability to export un-modified files) but I am still looking for ideas in terms of the data management part of the workflow. I will start with the following assumptions:

- No matter how big our internal hard drive, this will get full quickly, so an external HD is the main vehicle to store both originals and processed photographs

- Each photographer will need at least three, perhaps four or five storage zones for their pics: originals, LR database, exported pics, backups (you can make this as complicated as needed and add show gallery, print-ready pics, etc.)

- In the original tutorial Michael was using one database per HD, Jeff one big one for everything, or at least that's how it looked.

Based on this, the ability to move catalogues around and the need to have at least one redundant backup, how do you propose to build a data workflow? In particular, how do you manage multiple external hard drives? One database or several?

This is almost overwhelming!


Thanks for your thoughts...

Its overwhelming sure, but I am playing with the idea of having 1 master database.
Each shoot can now be selected & exported as a new catalog > this can go to a backup drive with exported DNG.
So in thsi case when you backup You have original raw > processed/keyworded > metadata added files as DNG which have an option to embed a full size jpeg preview now. & you have a database of this particular shoot only.

At any time I can either open my master database & have the images or can have the backup dvd/hdd & have just that particular shoot images.

I can now make & export catalogs based on keywords/assignments/date/metadata/iso/camera etc etc, so the posibility is endless.

I prefer to work with multiple catalogs. I build them based on the bucket size idea (about 50 gigs per). What I'd like to see is the ability to span collections such that, I can have images that span catalogs and can get to them from a collection in any catalog but who knows if something like this (or better) will come along.

Now I keep separate catalogs all on a Raid 1 drive plus about 2 other external drives (all cloned) with one in a fire proof safe, one for travel. As long as I update the other's (a utility like ChronoSync is what I use) keeps everything current. On my one printing machine, I often export the catalogs with images I want to print, then I can merge the edit files back into the master catalog.

I don't know if what I'm doing is right, it seems to work for me (so far). The big issue is mutliple copies that remain in sync.

So to pull up all the photos from a particular location from the last 3 years, you have to go through each catalog?

I'm trying to get a handle on this as well, and don't know if I'm doing it the smartest way. I'm using one big catalog with about 20K images. As I run into single-drive space limits, I've thought about importing photos in place from separate drives - perhaps by year.

That works fine except when your single years start to get too big for one drive. Where to from there? Monthly catalouges?

I LOVE Lightroom, but the workflow thing makes it completely useless in a commercial setting. We are not a big studio, but even we have a server, two capture macs, two retouch macs, and a scanner mac. What do we do when we need more than one person to be working on a job at once, to meet a deadline?

I know the underlying technology is different, but the "Version Cue" concept may be an answer that Abobe could adapt? We really want to use Lightroom, but it needs to be truly multi user before it is practical. Not really a harsh criticism, I know they will get there in the end, just wish it was now.

:-)

Jason Berge.

Lightroom being (at it's heart) basically a database, the whole point would be to have ALL your images on the one catalogue (=database, or library in version 1). I have my photographs spread over more than one drive but all in one catalogue. If a particular drive is not plugged in, the images show in the catalogue but I cannot edit or print them. I can even have images on a CD in the catalogue, no worries, even if the CD is locked away in its case.

The way to make this easy, is to ensure there is a main folder within the catalogue for each drive, with the folders on that drive listed as children of the drive's main folder. It is very, very easy and effective. In practice, I don't bother putting CD/DVD backups on the catalogue but they are named to match backup folders so would be easy to reimport from.

It's one of the reason's I love Lightroom. My photos can be anywhere but I can access them through the one programme. By the way, this should also work for a large business with a network, with each person having his or her own "master" folders, though I haven't tried it.

Incidentally, there is a big improvement here with version 1.1. With version 1, if I opened Lightroom without one of the drives plugged in which had been plugged in the previous time, it took a while for the programme to sort out the file locations. Now it is instant, thankfully.

Finally, I regularly backup the main catalogue and previews to an external drive. Just in case. The catalogue, by now, represents quite a lot of work!

Hope this helps,

Don.

All great ideas, and I do actually use Lightroom for a few personal projects.

The issue I was referring to, is not the having stuff scattered everywhere, sorry if that was the impression I gave.

What we want is to have more than one person/workstation able to access a project at once, ala Version Cue and its interaction with the Creative suit as a whole. So that we can process, sort, edit, retouch, whatever, large shoots in short amounts of time. The main "fly in the ointment" so to speak, comes after the initial editing, and processing, when there may be large numbers of images that need to roundtrip to Photoshop or another external editor for selective editing or comping, and then come back to lightroom, to keep all our ducks in a row. We currently use Bridge, but really want to switch. I know they will do something to address this type of workflow, as I said, I just wish it was now.



Jason Berge

Does Jeff and Michael's video address these file management/workflow/archiving issues in a detailed manner that one can emulate?

This is my greatest need and I'm hesitating to get into LR too deep (or purchase the download) before having some kind of road map on these issues.

No, I do not think our video addresses the challenge of a multi-user 'Version Cue' setup. There is a huge difference in the demands of the fine art or single professional photographer - whose needs are addressed in the video and largely met by LR 1.1 - and the demands of a studio multi-user situation.

There is no doubt in my mind however that the principle of a single, central, muti-user, networked database is something that Mark Hamburg and the LR engineers are striving for - eventually. Implementation is another matter - given the exigences of both Windows & Mac.

What makes LR so attractive now is its workflow from Raw conversion through output - this despite the absence of output sharpening and Soft Proofing. The fully implemented industrial-strength database suitable for the large studio org. server may still be some time off but based on what I have seen, it will come - eventually...
CS

And at the moment, it would be impossible anyway since Lightroom is currently using MySQL as the basis of the database and that is limited to a single user environment. There is no way of checking in and out images from the database and without that there would be the real and serious risk of update collisions.

There is thought being given to a multi-user client server version sometime off in the future but that's a ways away.

At the moment, Michael and I are generally of the mind to keep images and catalogs together on movable HDs. We do talk about that and also talk about the 1.1 update being able to move catalogs and images to and from machines. But each user will need to make an informed decision regarding how best to set up THIER environment.

Uhm, that would be SQLite, not MySQL. Sure, MySQL is crap, but it's not single user environment crap; it's very nearly a RDBMS.