Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2

If you use Finder or Windows Explorer or some other file browser to move a folder from one place to another, then the path stored in Lightroom’s catalog is no longer valid and you will have to update it with this new information.

Here’s how to reconnect a moved folder:

Step 1.

Right-click (Ctrl-click on a Mac) the folder displaying the question mark and choose Find Missing Folder from the contextual menu.

Step 2.

Navigate to the new location of that folder and select it. Click OK (Choose on a Mac). Lightroom will then update its catalog with this new location and reconnect to that folder and all the folders and photos contained within it.

The process is essentially the same with reconnecting moved photos. Here’s how to reconnect a moved photo:

Step 1.

Click the question mark icon on a thumbnail.

Step 2.

Note the “Previous location,” this is the last place Lightroom knew that photo to be located. Click the Locate button.

Step 3.

The file name of your missing photo will appear in the top of the Locate dialog box. Navigate to the new location of that photo, select the photo, and click Select (Choose on a Mac). If you’ve moved other “missing” photos to that new location, you can reconnect them as well simply by checking the “Find nearby missing photos” box before clicking OK. As long as the file names of the other missing photos haven’t changed, then Lightroom will update them as well.

Another significant yet subtle improvement in Lightroom 2 is the means to reconnect missing and offline folders and photos. While preventing your photos from being inadvertently disconnected from the Lightroom catalog is still just as important as it was in Lightroom 1, it’s good to know there are tools to help you get things back in order if you find yourself looking at a catalog full of question marks.

When you import photos into Lightroom you are essentially telling Lightroom where on your hard disk to find those photos. That location information is stored inside the Lightroom catalog along with all the metadata embedded in each photo. If you use Lightroom to move, rename, or delete photos (and you should only use Lightroom for those tasks), then that information is updated inside the catalog as part of the process.

The place where people can run into trouble is when they move, rename, or delete photos outside of Lightroom, which then results in the data contained in the catalog becoming out of sync with the actual state of those photos.

Lightroom lets you know when it can no longer connect to the source photos by displaying a question mark icon on all the affected photos and folders.

Another significant change in Lightroom 2 is the Volume Browser. If an entire drive is offline or missing, you will also see that the disk label on that Volume Browser is dimmed and the indicator light is dark gray.

If you use one or more external drives, then you may see this quite often if/when you operate Lightroom without those drives being connected (as in the capture above). As soon as you reconnect that drive to your computer, you will see the label turn white and the indicator change color to reflect the amount of free space on that drive. The question marks on all the folders and photos on that drive will also go away.

Lightroom was designed to operate with disconnected drives, so this isn’t a problem at all. In fact if Lightroom has already generated standard-sized previews for all the photos on that offline drive, you can still work with the offline photos in all modules except Develop. You can print in draft mode, which uses the previews, as well as create slideshows and web galleries from those previews. However, you can’t export or send photos to an external editor since Lightroom needs to access the actual source photo for those operations.

Unfortunately, too often I see people facing the problem of dealing with missing or offline photos because they made a change to the path to those photos outside of Lightroom (i.e. move or rename). This is where Lightroom’s reconnection function comes into play.

Dealing With Deleted Photos

If you deleted photos outside of Lightroom, but still see the thumbnails inside of Lightroom, then this is the easiest problem to fix. Just select the thumbnails in Lightroom’s Grid view and press Delete. Choose Remove when prompted and they will be removed from the catalog.

Creating new folders and moving photos from folder to folder is a fundamental aspect of file management. It’s also a fundamental task that should only be performed from within Lightroom in order to maintain the connection between the Lightroom catalog and the imported photos. There have been some changes to the functionality for creating new folders in Lightroom 2 that make this process easier than in Lightroom 1.

It all happens in the Folders panel and Grid view in the Library module. To jump to Grid view from anywhere in Lightroom, just press G. Expand the Folders panel and you are ready to start moving.

One important note is that Lightroom can only move photos from folder to folder. To create copies of photos, you must use the Export dialog to export copies to the folder of your choice.

Moving Photos

The most basic move operation is to move one or more photos from one folder to another folder that is already in Lightroom. Here’s how:

Step 1.

Click on the folder containing the photos you want to move. Select the photo or photos by clicking their thumbnails. You can select multiple photos by holding the Ctrl (or Cmd on Mac) key and click each photo. You can select all by pressing Ctrl+A (Cmd+A on Mac).

Step 2.

Click on one selected thumbnail and drag it to the desired destination folder. As soon as you start to click and drag, you will notice the cursor changes to a hand and thumbnail icon. If you have multiple photos selected, you will see multiple thumbnails in the icon (this is a great clue if you’ve accidentally selected more than one photo).

Step 3.

Once you move the cursor over the destination folder and it appears highlighted, you can release the mouse to drop the photos into that folder. The first time you do this, Lightroom will display a confirmation dialog asking if you really want to do this. Click the Move button to continue the operation. You could check the “Don’t show again” box, but I’d leave it unchecked as a precaution against accidental moves.

Lightroom will then move the photos to the new folder and update its catalog to reflect this change.

Moving Folders

You can move one folder into another folder in the same fashion. Just select the folder in the Folders panel and drag it into the new destination folder. Lightroom will again ask you if you really want to do that, so click the Move button to proceed.

Adding Folders

Lightroom 2 has made it easier to add new top-level folders and sub-folders from the Folders panel. Adding top-level folders was always trickier in Lightroom 1 than it needed to be, so this is a welcome change. This will also make it much easier to use Lightroom to move folders and photos from one drive to another (such as when your current disk starts bursting at the seams from too many photos). Here’s how to add a new top-level folder on a new drive:

Step 1.

Click the plus-arrow icon at the top of the Folders panel and choose Add Folder. This will launch the Browse For Folder dialog on Windows or the Choose or Create New Folder dialog on Mac.

Step 2.

Navigate to the new drive. If you’ve already created a folder on that drive outside of Lightroom, you can just select it now. If you haven’t created the folder, then use that dialog to create a new folder. On Windows, click the Make New Folder button. On Mac, click the New Folder button. Once the new folder is selected, click OK on Windows or Choose on Mac.

Step 3.

If the folder you selected already contains photos, then Lightroom will open the Import dialog and allow you to import them as well. Click the Import button to bring those photos in. If for some reason you don’t want to import those photos, just click the Uncheck All button first, then click Import to bring just the folder in by itself.

If there were no photos in that new folder, then it will just appear in the Folders panel.

Once the new folder can be seen in the Folders panel, you can drag and drop folders or photos into it and have Lightroom move them to this new drive.

If you want to add a sub-folder within an existing imported folder, the easiest method is to right-click (Ctrl-click on Mac) the parent folder and choose Create Folder inside “[foldername]”, then give that subfolder a name and click Create.

New Move Shortcut

Now that the basics are covered, there is one other new feature in Lightroom 2 designed to assist in moving photos that can be accessed via the right-click contextual menu. It works like this:

Step 1.

Select the photo (or photos) you want to move.

Step 2.

Right-click (Ctrl-click on a Mac) the folder you want those photos moved into and choose Move Selected Photo(s) to this Folder.

Step 3.

Click Move in the confirmation dialog and Lightroom will move the photos.

While these aren’t as sexy as some of the changes in Lightroom 2, I do think they have the potential to make your life much easier just the same.

Lightroom’s Secondary Display option allows you to make the most efficient use of your screen real estate when you are working with your photos. Ordinarily, when you open Lightroom you are greeted with Lightroom’s primary window. This is where you do all your work on and with your photos and navigate between modules. This is the window every Lightroom user is familiar with.

What’s new is the ability to open a second Lightroom window that is geared toward extending your ability to access and view your photos. You can enable the secondary window by going to the Window > Secondary Display > Show menu or by clicking the secondary window icon in the Filmstrip.

Technically you can open the secondary window if you only have a single monitor, but while interesting to explore it is not as practical to use with a single monitor system. On a dual monitor system you will be able to place this secondary window on your other monitor, which essentially increases your ability to view, select and work with your photos by taking advantage of that extra screen real estate. Here is an example of the primary and secondary window side by side.

Here is what multiple monitor support does not mean (because this is what some people assume), you can not separate panels or toolbars from the interface nor can you separate the photo you are working with from the interface. This is not like the multiple monitor support that you might be used to in Photoshop.

What it does mean is that you now have a second window on your other monitor that offers the following viewing options:

• Grid view
• Loupe view
• Compare view
• Survey view
• Slideshow

You need to think of this secondary window as an extension of the Library module that you can have open and use while you are working in any of the other modules on your primary display. One of the most significant things it does is allow you to collapse the Filmstrip (and the Module picker while you are at it) and thereby devote more of your primary monitor real estate to your photo and tools. This is a real asset when working in the Develop module!

So, thinking of it as an extension of the Library module you probably recognize that the Grid, Loupe, Compare and Survey views function just the same as they do in the Library module, but with a few minor differences.

When working in Loupe view you can choose between three different modes—Normal, Live and Locked.

• Normal mode allows you to see the selected photo in either fit or zoom view, just like in the Library module.
• Live mode means that the photo you see is determined by what photo is under your cursor at the time. This makes for a quick way to scan photos with Grid view enabled on the primary window just by moving your cursor over the thumbnails.
• Locked mode means that the selected photo at the time the lock is enabled will remain there while you select other photos. This is useful for making comparisons.

One thing to keep in mind is that you can’t have Grid view enabled on both the primary and secondary windows at the same time. Lightroom just won’t let you.

The Slideshow option is only available when the secondary window is in full screen mode. It is a nice addition and allows you to display your slideshows within that secondary window. This is particularly useful if your secondary monitor is facing your client while you are working on your primary monitor. To that end Adobe also added the option of having a second monitor preview window, which is a tiny third window that displays on the primary monitor and gives you a peek at what is being displayed in the secondary window. Note: this preview window works with all secondary window view modes. You can access it view the Window > Secondary Display > Show Second Monitor Preview menu.

While you are in the Window menu be sure to make note of the keyboard shortcuts, which will further increase your efficiency when using these options.

There are four main panels that appear in all Lightroom modules. They can be manipulated as needed to allow you to control the size of the center workspace, as well as to only reveal the set of tools required for the task at hand. These four panels are called the Left Panel Group, Right Panel Group, Module Picker (top), and Filmstrip (bottom).

While you can click and drag the inside edge of the Left and Right Panel Groups and the Filmstrip to resize them, you can also choose to show or hide any (or all) of the four panels. The center workspace automatically expands and contracts to fill available space as you alter the panels. Of course, as with most things in Lightroom, there’s more than one way to get the job done.

The quickest option is to use the keyboard shortcuts:

• F5 = Hide/Show Module Picker
• F6 = Hide/Show Filmstrip
• F7 = Hide/Show Left Panel Group
• F8 = Hide/Show Right Panel Group

If your head is already full to the brim with keyboard shortcuts, you can access the same controls by going to the Window > Panels menu. You’ll also find the keyboard shortcuts listed there in case you forget.

For all you hands-on folks, you can simply click on the outer edge (note the light gray arrow in the center of each outer edge) to hide that panel and click it again to show it. If you right-click (Mac: Control-click) the edge you can access additional menu options, which include:

• Auto Hide & Show, which means the panel will hide when your cursor is moved away from it and then automatically reappear when you move your cursor back over the edge of the panel.
• Auto Hide, which means the panel will automatically hide when you move your cursor away from it, but you’ll need to click the panel’s edge to make it show again. It will remain open until you move the cursor away from it. This is my preferred way to work, as I find the Auto Hide and Show option to get in the way of normal operation.
• Manual, which means you need to click the panel’s edge to show or hide it.
• Sync with Opposite Panel, which is a new feature of Lightroom 2. It allows you to configure one panel and then apply those settings to the opposing panel (i.e. Top and Bottom, Left and Right).

If those options aren’t enough there are two shortcuts for controlling multiple panels at once:

Tab = Show/hide both the Left and Right Panel Groups

Shift+Tab = Show/hide all panels

Now that you have a handle on how to manage the larger panels, let’s take a look at what you can do with the smaller panels contained within the Left and Right Panel Groups.

To cut down on the amount of scrolling you do in a day, as well as to only reveal the tools you need for a given job, you can expand or collapse each individual panel by clicking on each panel header (not just the arrow). As an alternative, you can Ctrl-click (Mac: Cmd-click) any panel header to expand or collapse all the panels on that side in one fell swoop.

A really neat trick is to Alt-click (Mac: Option-click) any panel header to engage what is called Solo Mode. With Solo Mode enabled you’ll only be able to open a single panel within the larger panel group at a time. This makes it very easy to switch between panels with a minimum amount (if any) scrolling. As soon as you expand a new panel the last one you were using automatically collapses. Alt-click (Mac: Option-click) any panel header a second time to disengage Solo Mode. Adobe Photoshop

Note that while the Navigator, Histogram, and Preview panels within the various modules can be collapsed or expanded individually, they are not included in Solo Mode or the expand all/hide all commands.

One last panel option I want to call to your attention is the ability to completely remove a given panel from the panel group so that you no longer even see its header label. If you right-click (Mac: Control-click) any panel header—except the ones noted above—you can simply uncheck any panel from the context menu that appears and it will disappear from the group. Just re-check that panel in the menu to bring it back. You can also restore panels from the Window > Panels menu.