Using Adobe Photoshop Lightroom to Copy New Images in from a Memory Card

“Importing” means adding new images into your Lightroom Catalog. This is a critical step, and it is one of the first tasks that you will do with Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. If you haven’t already, please read these posts on how Lightroom works, and on how to set up your preferences, before using Lightroom to copy files in from a memory card. You will want these skills, and these settings in place, before you start adding lots of files into your Lightroom Catalog.

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Introduction

My Photo Storage System: Two External Hard Drives

How to get your Lightroom Catalog onto an External Hard Drive

Setting the Preferences in Lightroom v2

The Mega-Important Automatically Write Changes into XMP Switch

Creating a Metadata Preset in Lightroom

Before we get into the specifics of the Import Dialog, I need to make sure that you understand how the Lightroom Catalog functions. Lightroom is, first and foremost, a database program. As an analogy, think of Lightroom as if it were the card catalog in a physical library. Think of your Lightroom Catalog as if it were a library’s wooden box full of index cards. Whenever you import an image, Lightroom adds another index card into this wooden crate.

Lightroom's Catalog file is like a library's card catalog

The index cards in the Lightroom Catalog mirror your files. Each index card records a file’s name, its location within your computer, and all of your file’s metadata. In addition, the catalog entry also includes thumbnails and previews for each image.
The critical point though is that the Lightroom Catalog isn’t a place; it is an index.

You must understand that your images, the actual files, are not stored in the Lightroom Catalog. The Catalog references your files and tracks their changes, but the files themselves do not live in the Lightroom Catalog. You have got to keep this “database / index vs. file location” distinction in mind when you are looking at the Import Dialog, and this distinction is particularly important when you are using Lightroom to empty a memory card.

You have got to keep this clear in your head, because the Import Dialog needs to know where it should put your new files! This is what the first section, the File Handling section, of the Import dialog is all about.

Lightroom v.2 Import from Memory Card Dialog

File Handling

When using a memory card, you only have two choices for file handling behavior. Both choices are very similar and there is no bad option here. So, how do these choices differ?

The critical line in the File Handling section is the one where you tell Lightroom where your files should go. Pay attention to this line. Too often people neglect this line. If you don’t set it up right, Lightroom will put your files in the wrong folder or on the wrong hard drive.

Organize

This area lets you tell Lightroom how it should distribute the new files. After years of working with Lightroom, I have found that the “Organize by Date: Year-Month-Day” option is the best choice. This is the choice that reads “By date: 2005-12-17.” The “2005-12-17″ part here is just a sample. In my opinion, this is the easiest way to go. No matter what you pick here, you can always rename your folders or move your files from one folder to another using Lightroom later.

Organize By Choices (I like the third one from the bottom the most.)

Lightroom is designed so that you can divide your files up any which way you want. Flexible is great, but the truth is that file folders serve very little purpose within a sophisticated metadata catalog-based image storage system. Once you start using Lightroom, folders are basically decorative. You could lump a lifetime’s worth of digital images into a single folder and your computer would still work just fine. Since how you divide up your files is not an import decision anymore, I think that having Lightroom distribute my files into a folder for each and every day that I photograph is the simplest and most elegant choice.

The Don’t re-import suspected duplicates checkbox tells Lightroom to watch for images that have already been added into your Lightroom catalog. I like turning this option on. It prevents me from emptying the same memory card twice in a drunken stupor!

The Backup to: setting allows you to copy the files on your memory card to two locations at once. The location specified in the File Handling section will be the images that are added into the Lightroom index. The second set, the Backup To set, will not be added into your index.

I understand why the folks at Adobe created this option, but I don’t like it at all. I don’t use it because I have my own backup system that does a much better job. If you use this choice, be aware that the backup files this option creates are static. These files are not updated automatically nor are they indexed. Since these files are static, they will not contain any of the improvements that you make to their twins while you are working in Lightroom.

File Naming

The File Naming Template drop-down allows you to batch-rename your images as they are imported. Most photographers do not need to mess with this option until they have shot more than 10,000 frames with one digital camera. If you are just getting started, I would leave this option alone since you can batch rename your files at anytime within the program. We will have another article on when and why I might rename my files in a few weeks.

Information to Apply

This section lets you apply metadata or develop settings to your images as they come in to the computer. These choices can be great time savers, but there is nothing in this section of the import dialog that you can’t do elsewhere in the program. Nothing that you add, or change, in this box is permanent. Remember that Lightroom is a completely non-destructive program.

• Develop Settings – You can choose a develop preset to apply to all of your images as they are imported. I rarely use this option.
• Metadata – You can apply a Metadata Preset, your copyright and contact information, to all of your images on import. This is a very useful time saver! More on Creating a Metadata Template is covered here.
• Keywords – Any keywords that you put in this box will be applied to all of the images in your current import. I rarely find this choice useful, since the same keywords rarely fit each and every image on my memory card.

Initial Previews

When you view your images in Lightroom, you are looking at “previews” of your image. Lightroom uses three different size previews for each file; a thumbnail, a standard (full-screen) version, and a zoomed into 100% (1:1) version. Your choices in this box have no effect on your image quality, but rather on how quickly you can flip through your files and zoom in on them while editing and developing later on. This setting controls which of these three preview types Lightroom should create as part of the import process. The four choices are (in order from fastest to slowest):

• Minimal – Immediately displays the images using the smallest previews embedded in the photos. Standard-sized previews will be generated as-needed. This is the fastest method on import.
• Embedded & Sidecar – Displays the largest preview possible from the camera. This option take slightly longer than the “Minimal” setting, but it is still pretty fast.
• Standard – Renders full-screen previews as the files are imported. This takes more time, but once the import is complete you can flip through your images in the Fit on Screen display mode without any delay.
• 1:1 – All three preview sizes are generated on import. The 1:1 (100%) previews take quite a while to create, but once these previews are built you can zoom in on your images without any delay. I use this option most of the time. I would rather wait longer during import then during sorting. Generally, I am not in a big hurry during the memory card emptying stage, and I hate waiting for Lightroom to render my 1:1 (100%) previews while I am sorting through my images.

Show Preview

The Show Preview checkbox at the bottom expands the Import Photos dialog box, on the right side of the screen, so you can see which images you are about to import. I suggest you turn this option on and leave it turned on.

Once this option is turned on, you will be able to see all of the images on your memory card. You will also notice that each file has a little check mark in the top left corner. These check marks indicate that these files will be imported. If you uncheck the box next to an image in the preview section then it will not be imported. I rarely find this feature useful. There are buttons below the previews to Check All and Uncheck All photos. The slider in the bottom-right of the dialog box changes the size of the previews.

Ready to see all of this in action?

Importing Files From a Memory Card with Lightroom v.2 from David Marx on Vimeo.

Filed Under: Getting Started • Importing Images • Organizing • Tutorials • Workflow

Tags: beginner • catalog • dialog • dng • import • lightroom • memory card • Tutorial • video