From Camera Card or USB Connected Camera

Insert Camera Card into Reader or plugin USB Cable and connect to camera.

Run Lightroom and choose “Import” from bottom left.

You should see three areas, Left is the “Source” and will show any drives connected to your computer, select your camera card by clicking on it. It should be highlighted in White/Light Grey.

At the top of the Centre section you should see,

“Copy as DNG Copy Move Add”

Choose “Copy” and it will highlight as white text.

On the right hand side you should see another list of drives on your computer with the heading “Destination”

Select the drive and folder that you wish to use to store your images. I use and external drive but if you have large hard drives in your computer choose one of those.

I choose to store my images by date and would suggest that you go with the defaults in Lightroom, at least until you develop your own system.

You can change the organization on the right hand pane just under the heading of “Destination“, choices are “By Date“, “Into one Folder” and there is a checkbox “into subfolder“, you can add a folder name here eg: “Blackie’s Spit”. (Remember to change this folder on your next import, Lightroom will keep the folder name until you change it)

“By Date” gives a “Date Format” list that allows you to change the folder layout. Try a sample import when you first start using Lightroom and see what the folder structure looks like.

Once you have checked all three areas, Source, Operation, Destination then you can click the import button on the bottom right and Lightroom will copy your images to the folder and drive you specified.

There are other features of the right hand pane that you can set, you can change the names of the files as they are being imported and add copywrite information etc. Use these extra features with caution as they make changes to the files. These changes can be applied after import and I prefer to import the images as is and then do other changes later.

Example:

If you already have your images organized in some kind of folder structure.

“Photo Collection” is your folder name for where you store your images, it might be “MyPictures”, “Pictures”, “Photos” or any other folder name but it is where all your exiting images are stored.

Run Lightroom and choose “Import” from bottom left.

You should see three areas, Left is the Source and will show any drives connected to your computer, select your folder that contains your “Photo Collection” if you are starting a new Lightroom catalog. It should be highlighted in White/Light Grey.

At the top of the Centre section you should see,

“Copy as DNG Copy Move Add”

Choose “Add” and it will highlight as white text. Choose “Subfolders” if needed. It will show if all your photos are inside other folders within your “Photo Collection” folder.

On the right hand side you should see “File Handling” and “Apply During Import”

I choose “Don’t Import Suspected Duplicates“, if you may have files in your photo collection with the same names but different images then turn this off.

If you are not sure, turn it off.

Lightroom will read your “Photos Collection” folder and add all the images it finds to the catalog. (It does not move the images from where you put them, it just creates a catalog and small thumbnail so it can find the images when needed)

Note: Once you start using Lightroom to import and manage your files, DO NOT move them by hand. You can create new folders in Lightroom and copy or move images between them and Lightroom will create the real folders on your hard drive and perform the copy or move for you. If you create folders outside of Lightroom and move your images into them or between folders that are part of the Lightroom catalog, Lightroom does not know where the photos went and will flag them with an “!” in the corner of the image on the catalog. If you attempt to edit the image, it will tell you that it can’t be found.

If you accidentally create, delete a folder or move images between folders outside of Lightroom it can be fixed.

In Lightroom “Library” view, look on the left pane and you should see a section titled “Folders“. Select the folder containing the files/folders you moved, usually the main “Photos Collection” (insert your folder name).

Right click the folder and choose “Synchronize Folder”

Lightroom will scan through the folder and all subfolders and find the images you moved. It will suggest that it can delete missing images and import new ones. Just let it do it’s thing and you will have your images all in the right place with the “!” removed.

It does not move or remove the actual images, it just fixes the catalog to reflect the changes you made.

Of course if you did delete the images from the hard drive they will be removed from Lightroom.

Your Lightroom catalog can be thought of as a card catalog in a Library with the thumbnails as the cards.   Each one points to the real image (book) and tracks what you have done to the image.  It makes a list of all the changes you made to the image but it does not change the original,  if you export the image Lightroom will apply all your changes to the exported image.

This structure is why you do not want to move the images outside of Lightroom.   If Lightroom can’t find the image it does not know how to process it for export.

The changes you do in Lightroom are stored within the catalog itself.  Other external editors may change the original images so you should choose a Copy or a Copy with Lightroom edits when sending a file to external editors.

I hope this helps anyone that is struggling to understand Lightroom.  There are many videos on YouTube on organizing your photos with Lightroom, it seems to be the most confusing part of the system.