- Getting started
- Lightroom is your digital notebook
- The import process
- Importing photos from a digital camera
- Importing images from a hard disk
- Importing via drag and drop
- Evaluating photos before importing
- Images that are already imported
- Importing to a specific folder
- Importing from a watched folder
- Tethered shooting
- Viewing imported photos in the work area
- Review questions
- Review answers
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
Images that are already imported
Lightroom does a great job trying to keep your collection organized and free from duplicates. During the import process, there is an option in the File Handling panel on the right side that prevents you from importing images that have already been added to your Lightroom catalog. It’s a great idea to keep this selected.
When you try to import from a memory card or folder that you have already imported from, any of the images that are duplicates (that are already in your Lightroom catalog) appear in gray and are not selected for import. (Here, I added four already-imported images to my lesson02B folder as an example.) If the card or folder has new images, those images are visible and will already be selected, so you specify where you would like them imported.
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As a general rule, I advise photographers never to format their memory cards until after they have used up all of the cards they own. For example, if I have four memory cards (A, B, C, and D) and I make images on card A, I will import that card into Lightroom but will not format it. At the next shoot, I use card B and repeat the process. The following shoot? Card C.
Should something go wrong on my computer, I have a much better chance of recovering the images from the memory cards if I stagger the formatting in this manner. Working this way, you may forget to format a card and shoot with one that you’ve already imported. Thankfully, Lightroom is there to catch these kinds of things. Go ahead and import the images from the lesson02A folder.
Importing and viewing video
Lightroom Classic will import many common digital video files from digital still cameras, including AVI, MOV, MP4, AVCHD, and HEVC. Choose File > Import Photos And Video or click the Import button in the Library module; then set up your import in the Import dialog box, just as you would for photos.
In the Library module Grid view, you can scrub backward and forward in your video clips by simply moving the mouse over the thumbnails, making it easy to select the clip you want. Double-click a thumbnail to preview the video in Loupe view; drag the circular current time indicator in the playback control bar to scrub through the video manually.
Setting distinctive thumbnail images (poster frames) for your videos can make it easier to find the clip you want in the Grid view. Move the current time indicator to the frame you want; then, click the Frame button in the control bar and choose Set Poster Frame. Choose Capture Frame from the same menu to convert the current frame to a JPEG image that will be stacked with the clip. To shorten a video clip, click the Trim Video button. The playback control bar expands to display a timeline view of the clip where you can drag the start and end markers to trim the clip as desired.
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