Lightroom Tips

Friday Tip and Some Weekend Reading

Happy Friday afternoon everyone. I’m a little late on the post today because I had an early flight to Las Vegas this morning and, like always, I waited until the last minute to pack. But hey, I’m here right? Anyway, I’m in Vegas for some work on Sunday and Monday but my wife and I decided to come out early and have a little mini-vacation (no kids! woo hoo!). Here’s the tip and stuff.

The tip, and the link below, really centers around backing up. When it comes to Lightroom there are 2 main areas that need to be backed up. The first is your catalog and the second are your photos.
1) The Catalog: This is all the “stuff” about your photos. The changes you’ve made to them, collections, metadata, etc… You know, the stuff. You can back this part up by going to the File menu and choosing Catalog settings. Make sure you’ve got a backup scheduled under the Backup area. That will backup the catalog file which is the first part. However, just backing it up onto your computer’s hard drive does no good in case of a disaster. You’ve got to backup the backup. So make sure you store this backup on to some sort of external hard drive, CD or DVD (click the Show button at the top of the Catalog settings dialog to have Lightroom show you the folder where your catalog is stored).

2) Your photos. This should already be done. You should always be backing up your photos as soon as your put them into Lightroom. But how about your Lightroom library of photos (I call this the working library). Surely that can differ from your entire photo backup that you make right after the shoot. Here’s what I do. I store all of my photos (when I import them in to Lightroom in the Import dialog) into one folder called “Photos”. That’s where Lightroom will always look for the photos that it manages. That way, I only have one folder to backup and restore if ever needed. So you can just drag this folder (your working library of photos) to a backup device and you’re set.

Here’s a recap:
Lightroom library catalog (.lrcat file) + Your photos folder(s) = Lightroom’s library.
If you have both backed up daily then all you ever need to do is restore them in case of a disaster.

Ok, last thing if you’re interested in some weekend reading. I found a cool article the other day about backing up online. I’ve been tossing the idea around for a while so I found it a really interesting, yet quick read. My take: Basically, I think I’m holding off from any online backup for now. I have another external hard drive that I keep at the office so I essentially have 2 backup devices in case 1 gets stolen or something like that.

Enjoy your weekend folks. My wife has allotted me $50 to gamble with this weekend. Truth be told I’m going to try to sweet talk her into $100. I just know that if I can start with a hundred it’s a sure bet I can turn it into a least $30,000 or $40,000. Seriously, I feel it. I’m on a roll. How can I lose!? 😉 Wish me luck.

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