Ingesting photos directly into a LR folder, to be added to the LR catalog

[mikemyers]

If I want to ingest a disk of photos directly into my Lightroom folder tree, where they are destined to go anyway, is there a simple way to click on the LR folder, and have PM ingest the new folder of photos, directly under that LR folder?

If I have a folder tree:   _Lightroom\2018\Madurai\Aravind      ......can I click on that folder somehow, telling PM that the newly created PM folder will be under "Aravind" in the above example?

I know I can type out the path, but it would be nicer to just navigate to the Aravind folder in the above situation, and select it.

If not now, maybe a suggestion for the future.

[Kirk Baker]

Mike,

Use the "Primary Destination..." button in the Ingest dialog to pick the folder you want to ingest into.  A folder chooser dialog will appear.  Navigate to your folder, select it, and click the "Open" button.

It's as simple as that.

-Kirk

[Bob350]

Joining in a bit late. It may be useful to remember that the "folders" displayed in Lightroom are just representations of data stored in the Lightroom database (library). Despite looking like what we may see in system file browsers, the Lightroom folder function is not a browser that looks directly at the folders on the hard drives. The similar appearance causes much confusion. Apologies if that was already clear to you. If so, I write for others who may not fully appreciate the distinction.

Photo Mechanic can do a great job of ingesting images into folders on the hard drive, and can be used to automatically (using variables) make new folders in the process. However, Photo Mechanic does not directly modify the Lightroom library database.

So it is great to use Photo Mechanic to ingest image files into actual folders on your hard drive (and make new folders as needed). But the new files and any new folders will not yet be in the LR database. For Lightroom to "see" the newly ingested images or any new folders created in the process, you need to instruct Lightroom to "synchronize" the data. Right click on the appropriate parent "folder" in LR is the easiest way to find the command. When you do that, Lightroom executes a new read of the files and folders on the hard drive and refreshes the LR library database with any changes or additions. Then Lightroom uses the newly updated LR database to display the folder and image information in the "folders" section of LR of the LR interface, with new images now available to work with in Lightroom.

[mikemyers]

.......It may be useful to remember that the "folders" displayed in Lightroom are just representations of data stored in the Lightroom database (library). Despite looking like what we may see in system file browsers, the Lightroom folder function is not a browser that looks directly at the folders on the hard drives. The similar appearance causes much confusion.......

...........For Lightroom to "see" the newly ingested images or any new folders created in the process, you need to instruct Lightroom to "synchronize" the data. Right click on the appropriate parent "folder" in LR is the easiest way to find the command. When you do that, Lightroom executes a new read of the files and folders on the hard drive and refreshes the LR library database with any changes or additions. Then Lightroom uses the newly updated LR database to display the folder and image information in the "folders" section of LR of the LR interface, with new images now available to work with in Lightroom.

The first part of what you said was not at all obvious to me - thanks!  I never realized that.   So, the whole structure is only from the LR catalog.  It won't change what I do, but it will certainly change how I think about my files and folders.  Lightroom is only showing a structure of its own files, and locating folders.

So, if I understand you correctly, since my top LR folder is named _Lightroom_  (to make it visually different to me from other folders), all I need to do is periodically right click on that folder - and LR will take over and make sure everything under that folder will be included in the folder list for LR, even if there are folders there that don't contain any images that have been imported into Lightroom?  ....and when I do right-click on it, what do I do next?  None of the choices seem to indicate it will do what you suggested??    Am I missing something?

I think you're saying that I can keep my other photos there, even if I'm working on them with a totally different editor?

[Bob350]

"So, if I understand you correctly, since my top LR folder is named _Lightroom_  (to make it visually different to me from other folders), all I need to do is periodically right click on that folder - and LR will take over and make sure everything under that folder will be included in the folder list for LR, even if there are folders there that don't contain any images that have been imported into Lightroom?  ....and when I do right-click on it, what do I do next?  None of the choices seem to indicate it will do what you suggested??    Am I missing something?"

The term "folder" has some ambiguity. On the computer hard drive, folders hold groups of files and these can be visualized and manipulated using the system file browser (Windows Explorer in Windows,  or "Finder" in Mac I think). If you have a computer disk folder named "_Lightroom_" with sub-folders under it, that can be useful. Right click on a hard drive folder viewed in a system file browser may bring up a system contextual menu with system choices (copy, delete, move, etc.) but no Lightroom commands. The folders on your computer drive can contain images, videos, documents, spreadsheet files, and so forth. You can use various programs (including Lightroom, Photoshop, OnOne, etc.) to edit the image files and save the edited versions back to the hard drive in the same folder if you like.

In Lightroom, the catalog "folders" seen in the Library module over on the left hand side are a representation of what the Lightroom catalog "knows" about your hard drive folders and files. If you right click on one of these catalog "folders" showing within Lightroom, you will get a Lightroom contextual menu. One of the choices will be to "Synchronize Folder..." Clicking on that will bring up a small dialog box with some choices. It will count the number of images not yet in the catalog and let you check a box to import them into the catalog. It will let you check a box to scan for any metadata changes and import the new information. If you synchronize from high up in the Lightroom folder hierarchy, Lightroom will execute a new read of that folder and all associated sub-folders and then update the Lightroom catalog. If you synchronize from a low level of the hierarchy, Lightroom will execute a new read of just that part of your system (which may be faster and might be all you need if you just used PM to put new images into a single new hard drive sub-folder).

When Lightroom synchronization detects an image file (and at least some sorts of video files), the "synchronize folder" command will add those files to the Lightroom catalog database whether the images have been edited in some other program or not. Once imported into the Lightroom catalog, you can use Lightroom to edit the files. Of course, even after addition to the Lightroom catalog, you could still find those files in your computer hard drive folders using other programs to further edit those images if you wish. Just remember that if you do that, some changes (like keywords added) might be invisible to Lightroom until you synchronize the catalog folder(s) again.

Victoria Brampton, known as the "Lightroom Queen" has a web site where she sells eBooks that do an excellent job of explaining all the mysteries of Lightroom. Worth considering as a way to accelerate getting the most out of that program.

Edited to add a disclaimer that my description applies to the "Lightroom Classic" desktop version. The Lightroom CC version using the cloud for storage might have different features. Also, the "Import" function in Lightroom is sometimes more appropriate than "file synchronize," depending on what you need to do.

[mikemyers]

Thank you - if nothing else, I have a better understanding of this.   

I do want to do the "synchronize", but I need to do something else first.  Many years ago, I read something from Laura Shoe (not sure if I spelled her name correctly) that identified any "orphan" files within my _Lightroom_ folder structure that Lightroom was not using, and allowed me to delete them.  I never really understood where they came from, unless it's files that were "removed from disk" but didn't actually get deleted.  As I recall, some were 'jpg' images when Lightroom imported both the 'jpg' and the 'raw' file.  At any rate, I deleted everything, so as of then things were fine.  For now, I don't want LR to Synchronize things, until I make sure those extra images are gone.


I try not to put anything under that _Lightroom_ folder without doing so via an import, so as long as I keep doing this, I'll be fine.  If I want to work with a different editor, but keep the photos in the _Lightroom_ folder, I just need to import the images into Lightroom. 



I'm feeling very good about Photo Mechanic.  Over the past few days, it saved a lot of time ingesting several memory cards of sometimes different photo functions.  It helped organize the photos even more than I expected - apparently it separates photos based on the day they were taken, which I wasn't aware of until now.