On Nov 11, 2022, at 3:57 PM, Stanley Halpin stan@stans-photography.info wrote:
But, to the Question: Now that I have his scanned slides and digital images on a hard drive, readable on their HP and on my Mac, I thought I would create a new Lightroom Catalog on my system as a way to review/preview his images. And then I would export-as-catalog to an external drive, and then import that to their new HP. So, would this work? Will LR on a Windows machine read an LR catalog created via LR on a Mac?

On Nov 11, 2022, at 7:10 PM, Larry Colen lrc@red4est.com wrote:



On Nov 11, 2022, at 3:57 PM, Stanley Halpin stan@stans-photography.info wrote:
But, to the Question: Now that I have his scanned slides and digital images on a hard drive, readable on their HP and on my Mac, I thought I would create a new Lightroom Catalog on my system as a way to review/preview his images. And then I would export-as-catalog to an external drive, and then import that to their new HP. So, would this work? Will LR on a Windows machine read an LR catalog created via LR on a Mac?

Everybody has their own way of organizing their Lightroom Catalog.  I would strongly recommend that the files themselves are organized in a manner that makes photos relatively easy to find without using lightroom.

I don’t know for sure, but I strongly suspect that the catalog format is OS independent, so long as the file trees are compatible.  Again, I’d strongly suggest testing with a smaller catalog first.

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Larry Colen
lrc@red4est.com.  sent from Mirkwood

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On Nov 11, 2022, at 8:22 PM, Stan Halpin stan@stans-photography.info wrote:

Thanks Larry. Totally agree with both points: (1)  file organization should be such that it helps people find images, not just so that LR or other software can find stuff. My brother has his CDs for example, well sorted by image capture date. Which is fine if you have his calendar and list of key event date times. And (2) I’ll test any possible solutions with a small sample.

I told my sister in law this evening that I had recovered 39,000+ Digital images from 2000-2011. And I showed her a small sample from 2004. Her reaction: “why did he keep those!?! I would have thrown those away!” In short, she won’t be compulsive about retaining everything -she wants reasonable access to key images of important times and places. (They both worked quite a bit outside the U.S. and did much travel…) so my.challenge is to help her ID and organize what is important to her, not necessarily what my brother would have wanted to preserve.

On Nov 12, 2022, at 12:32 AM, Larry Colen lrc@red4est.com wrote:

Stan,

Your sister in law’s reaction is an important detail. It changes a bit about how I would want to go about it.  It is arguably a bit more work for you though.

One important thing I have learned is that you never know what “merely decent” photo is going to prove useful later on.  On  multiple occasions I’ve had cause to rummage through my library for photos to share for someone’s memorial.

The good news is that with Lightroom it is very easy to make a collection and use that to create a smaller, select, catalog to share with your sister in law.

Jeffrey Friedl also has a couple of plug-ins that you’ll find very helpful for sharing photos with your SiL.

http://regex.info/blog/lightroom-goodies/folder-publisher
will export photos maintaining the directory structure that you store the raw files in.

http://regex.info/blog/lightroom-goodies/collection-publisher
does the same but with collection structure.

I have the feeling that your SiL would just want a reasonable chance of finding the final JPEGS rather than the ability to access the files in Lightroom.

On Nov 11, 2022, at 8:22 PM, Stan Halpin stan@stans-photography.info wrote:

Thanks Larry. Totally agree with both points: (1)  file organization should be such that it helps people find images, not just so that LR or other software can find stuff. My brother has his CDs for example, well sorted by image capture date. Which is fine if you have his calendar and list of key event date times. And (2) I’ll test any possible solutions with a small sample.

I told my sister in law this evening that I had recovered 39,000+ Digital images from 2000-2011. And I showed her a small sample from 2004. Her reaction: “why did he keep those!?! I would have thrown those away!” In short, she won’t be compulsive about retaining everything -she wants reasonable access to key images of important times and places. (They both worked quite a bit outside the U.S. and did much travel…) so my.challenge is to help her ID and organize what is important to her, not necessarily what my brother would have wanted to preserve.

Again, this is how I would want to go about it, I’m not assuming this is what would work for you, but I hope that it would give you a good start on a procedure.  I’m also assuming no knowledge on your part, I don’t mean to insult your intelligence by stating the obvious.

Are the CDs flat directories?  Or are the directories on them organized.  If your brother organized the file on the CDs, you’d probably want to maintain that structure, otherwise you can import into your file tree directly.

I would organize the directories

Year

• Month
  +--    CD, by name. or  YYYYMMDD_cdname

When importing files I have lightroom prepend the capture date to each file name, that makes it easier to find the raw from the jpeg.

Any keywording you can do at this point could prove helpful later on.  CD name, location, names of people, even facial recognition.

I do a lot of winnowing down large numbers of photos.  My strategy is to go through several passes very quickly. If I have any doubts of whether to keep or throw away, I postpone the decision to a later stage when there are fewer decisions to make.

My personal star rating is:

1. the file is totally ruined, there is nothing recognizable, could be deleted
2. Not worth taking a second look at (though it might be useful for HDR, pano, greycard etc.)
3. Nominally it means “good enough to post on the web”, at this stage it means “good enough to look at again”
4. Good enough to print
5. Good enough for my portfolio

For speed, my first pass I just mark anything worth a second look as a 3, and at the end do a group set to 2 stars of anything left unrated.
If I find something I KNOW is amazing, I’ll use P to mark it (yes I P on the good ones) now.  I’ll do this stage with the filter set to show me unrated photos, and I work from the start to the end.  I may do a grid/group selection and rate as 2 to a bunch that I’ve looked at and passed over incrementally as I go through a really big directory.

Once I’ve gone through all my fresh photos like this (ideally not immediately after) I’ll go through each directory, starting at the back, working towards the front and use P to “pick” any that I want to look at again.

I’ll do a few more passes using the collection and subcollection tools to winnow things down further, incrementing a number on each pass. I delete from a selection moving from the left and pick for the next selection moving from the right.

At some point, if I can get someone else to look over the photos I have them use the color flags to give their independent rating (this is where your SiL might come in if she is interested and willing.
6 = red = yuck
7 = yellow = meh
8 = green = like

9 = blue and can either be “super like”, or I like it no matter what they decide.

P and X are often fairly transient.

I try to put off much processing as long as possible, though sometimes mass correction of color or exposure fairly early can be helpful.

As I said, the most important thing is multiple fast passes, put off slow decisions until you have many fewer decisions to make.

If I had known I would be doing this, I would have started a year ago when my brother still had the mental capacity to help with this project!
Stan
Sent from my iPad

On Nov 11, 2022, at 7:10 PM, Larry Colen lrc@red4est.com wrote:



On Nov 11, 2022, at 3:57 PM, Stanley Halpin stan@stans-photography.info wrote:
But, to the Question: Now that I have his scanned slides and digital images on a hard drive, readable on their HP and on my Mac, I thought I would create a new Lightroom Catalog on my system as a way to review/preview his images. And then I would export-as-catalog to an external drive, and then import that to their new HP. So, would this work? Will LR on a Windows machine read an LR catalog created via LR on a Mac?

Everybody has their own way of organizing their Lightroom Catalog.  I would strongly recommend that the files themselves are organized in a manner that makes photos relatively easy to find without using lightroom.

I don’t know for sure, but I strongly suspect that the catalog format is OS independent, so long as the file trees are compatible.  Again, I’d strongly suggest testing with a smaller catalog first.

--
Larry Colen
lrc@red4est.com.  sent from Mirkwood

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Larry Colen
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