Adobe Photoshop Lightroom does not force you to change your existing folder structure. You could keep your files in their existing folders and still create reference points for them in your Lightroom image database. Our tutorial on Using the Add Command to Import Files Without Moving or Copying demonstrates this technique.

There is one big difference between the Adobe Bridge / Photomechanic and Adobe Photoshop Lightroom or Apple Aperture. Lightroom and Aperture create a database that is separate from your images. This database, or index, is the Lightroom Catalog. Bridge is simply a browser. It never creates a separate index for your photography. This article on the Adobe Bridge vs. Adobe Photoshop Lightroom discusses these differences in more detail.

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David Marx

Neither of those program (Apple Aperture or Adobe Photoshop Lightroom) “force” you into any specific folder structure. You may certainly keep your folder structure exactly the way it is if you’d like.

You’ll be happiest if you can use either Aperture of Lightroom as your primary workflow tool. In other words, don’t try to import and organize with Photomechanic, then send to Lightroom, then back to something else. You can use Lightroom (or Aperture) to import, organize, develop, and share your work. Within that workflow, however, you can send an image to Photoshop (or other editing program of choice) for further tweaking.

Best,
Scott

To truly backup you Lightroom catalog you will need to maintain a copy of it on another drive. This could be a network drive, a second internal hard drive, or an external. Lightroom’s automated catalog backup utility might help with this process. (See Catalog Settings > General < Backups.) Personally, I would use the integrated utility and clone your entire Lightroom catalog folder plus all the sub-folders to a second disk on a regular increment.

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David Marx

Apologies if I jump in for Scott here. Adobe Photoshop Lightroom might not be the best solution for your needs because your Lightroom catalog must live on a local disk. Your images can live on the server but your Lightroom catalog cannot. This maybe a major limitation for someone like you if you were looking to access the catalog from multiple computers or if you intending to have multiple users accessing the same database simultaneously. See http://forums.adobe.com/thread/354044 for more on Lightroom’s network limitations.

If, on the other hand, you are ok with your catalog being stored on your computer’s internal hard drive then this might not be an issue. If your computer is powerful enough then you might even be able to store your catalog and all of your images on your internal drive. If I had a MacPro tower with four internal hard drives then I wouldn’t waste my time or money on external hard drives either :> With the right IT help you could store everything locally and still backup all of this up across your network.

You have options but if I were you I would do some critical thinking about Lightroom, your storage needs, and your network.

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David Marx

Apologies but I am going to jump in here for Scott. The best way to stay sane while using Adobe Photoshop Lightroom on two computers is to store your Lightroom Catalog and all of your images on a high-speed high-quality external hard drive. Our article on <a href="http://thelightroomlab.com/2009/05/my-photo-storage-system-two-external-hard-drives/&quot; target="_blank""My Photo Storage System" and our tutorial on creating a Lightroom catalog on an external drive might help.

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David Marx

As for moving them on to my local drive, I ‘d rather not split up a set. But let me see how that can work… thanks!