I have for a long time wanted to get my images into a catalog app. I tried IView, which became MS something, which
became Phase One something and also part of their converter/editor, but never felt comfortable with it.
I've wanted to try the LR catalog, but have been stymied by an incompatibility between their import engine and my file
structure. For some years, I've been shooting Raw + JPEG. Image files are in folders by camera, then date. The date
folder has the JPEGs, with subfolders for Raw, processed, web size, video, etc.
I'm not sure why I started doing this. I imagine I had reason(s); but that doesn't matter. What matters is that I
couldn't import only the subfolders into LR, so I'd get two of each image, really annoying.
So I bit the bullet, and eliminated the original JPEGs. At first I couldn't figure out how, looked at all sorts of apps.
Then I realized it was a perfect task for old fashioned DOS commands. With little .bat files using the explorer Send
function, I can now almost instantly convert one or many folders at once. After a full backup of the image disk, I
quickly got rid of all those JPEGs and elevated the Raw files to the date folder.
It did take LR a while to absorb, index and thumbnail almost 55,000 images, but it worked nicely. Still got my scanned
images and a couple of other oddities to straighten out and import, but the vast majority are done.
My most recent impetus to of this has been my habit for several years of carrying two cameras with different zooms,
flipping back and forth. Viewing the combined results wasn't really possible in any convenient way. That part has worked
wonderfully. I can easily see all the shots from a day in time order, without regard to camera used.
The unexpected benefit, which I've already used a few times, is the Map view. As most of the 'serious' images I've made
in the last few years are geocoded, I can see together all the images from numerous visits to the same places just by
going there on the map. This is quite marvelous! I love the way it aggregates and disaggregates to different levels as
the map zooms in and out.
Now all I need is a competent, free intern to keyword everything. :-)
And the time to manually geocode some older stuff, sigh. The keywording will take care of some of that, but I'd like to
get the major stuff on the map.
Nice to have a start on being able to find things.
Orderly Moose
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What if the Hokey Pokey *IS* what it's all about?
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