3 quick Lightroom tips for the New Year

Happy New Year if you are reading this a day or so after it has been published. It’s always tricky to know how long into January you go before it’s inappropriate to keep saying those three words. Before you return to your day job, I will share a few quick and simple tips to keep your Adobe Lightroom catalogue working at its best.

Change the date on metadata

Just like it’s easy to forget to change the clock on your microwave, with the excitement of Hogmanay, it’s easy to forget the copyright statement hidden in the metadata of Lightroom. While it’s not 100% necessary in the UK to protect your copyright with metadata, it is still good practice.

Most people usually have a statement in the Copyright field with the date included. Unfortunately, Adobe still hasn’t added the ability to add look-up fields into metadata fields (come on, Adobe, there’s no reason for you not to do this), so you will need to update the year manually every year.

To update the year in the metadata fields, take the option Edit Metadata Presets from the Metadata menu at the top of the Lightroom screen.

Make the changes to the metadata. Next, click on the preset name at the top of the box and select the option “Update Preset xxxxxxxxxx”.

Archive folders to an external drive

To get Lightroom working quickly, it helps if you have space available on your hard drive. A busy photographer can take thousands of photos, and larger-sized files are taking up more and more space. However, once you’ve edited the photos, you’ll probably not need to access them daily, but you might need them in the future. This is where archiving is a good option. I do this every month, but an annual archive will be enough for many.

The key to archiving photos in your Lightroom catalogue is keeping the link between Lightroom and the hard drive location. Whatever you do, do not move the images using File Manager or Finder. Instead, drag the folders from the folder view in the Library module of Lightroom. A message will pop up confirming you want to move the photos and advising that this can’t be undone. If you are confident you are moving the correct folders to the right place, click Move, and all the photos will be catalogued in Lightroom to the new location.

Back up your Lightroom Catalogue

The final tip is again something you should do all the time: take regular back-ups of the Lightroom catalogue. Hopefully, you’ll never need them, but if something goes wrong, you’ll be glad you did this task.

You can set up the frequency of how often you want to be reminded to back up in the General Tab of the Catalog Settings. It would be best to note where your backup files are being saved from this screen.

Depending on the option chosen, the next time you exit Lightroom, you’ll be asked if you want to make a backup. I do this at least once a month as I also have Backblaze taking backups of all the files on my hard drive on the fly.

When the backup has been completed, it’s good practice to retain at least three versions of backups. Navigate to the folder on your hard drive where the backups are stored, and you can delete any backups older than three generations to save space on your hard drive. Another way to help save space is to save your backups to a Dropbox folder and then take the option to make them available online only. This keeps your files stored on the Dropbox server without cluttering your hard drive.

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About the author

As well as running Edinburgh Photography Workshop, Rich Dyson is a professional photographer. His photographs are regularly used in newspapers such as The Times, Guardian and Daily Telegraph. He also had two solo exhibitions and was featured in a members-sponsored exhibition in the Scottish Parliament. You can see and buy his photography at richdysonphotography.com.