Hi everyone. Just got back from Photoshop World and I have lots of good questions that I got from the show to share with you. Let’s get started:

Q. Matt. Did you have a good time at Photoshop World and was there a lot of interest in Lightroom?A. Heck yeah to both questions! Photoshop World was awesome. Its one of the few times a year I get to get out and see the people that I work to train everyday. Thanks so much to everyone who came up and said hi. As for questions and interest in Lightroom, it was crazy. I know the name of the conference is Photoshop World but I’d say that 70% of the questions I got were about Lightroom. Great stuff though.

Q. Concerning the “Merging Catalogs” video you did last week, is LR smart enough to not duplicate the same RAW files once it merges the 2?A. Yes, Lightroom will not import if it detects duplicates. However its going to leave your library a mess. There’s really no magic bullet to rectify this situation other then good old hard work of you going through your photos and figuring it out yourself. Again, Lightroom will help alert you to duplicates but there’s a bigger problem here – you’ve set up your folders and catalogs so that the same photos exist in multiple places. No program is going to help you “fix” that per se. They’ll let you know you’ve done it but you have to fix it.

Q. Can you do a video on the easiest way to move photos from multiple hard drives to one in Lightroom? I have filled up several external drives and want to consolidate to a Drobo but don’t want to have Lightroom spend hours to create a new catalog if I just move the files outside of Lightroom?A. I’ll see if I can make a video out of it but here’s something to get you started. First, I did a video a while back on moving folders in Lightroom that kinda covers this but not totally. Next, try just moving them. Do all of the consolidation yourself. Then, since you’ll have inevitably broke the links to those photos when you open your catalog in Lightroom, just right click on the little folders with question marks (in the Folders panel in the Library module) and choose “Find Missing Folder”. Then point it to your new drive and everything will be good again.

Q. Can I export all my photos of the same catalog as JPEGs, but keep the same folder structure (basically I want to export the folders also not put them in just one folder)? A. Nope. Best you can do is put them all in a sub folder but they’re still going to be on the same level and not in a folder structure.

Q. Is it possible to use a Lightroom catalog made with the Mac version, with one made with the Windows version??A. Absolutely. It’ll work just fine.

That’s it for today. Have a good one!

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