02/06/13 03:36 PM
So much of Lightroom 5 is on how to create with LR. Improved spot healing tools, Radial gradients (should have been a version 1 feature, but for another topic.) and offline editing. This is great, don't get me wrong. But there is and has been a fundamental problem that's just going to grow as time goes on and people create more stuff. How do I manage all this stuff?
The solution is with a good workflow; the necessary evil of any production, be it a hobbyist or professional. But creating a good workflow is a black art. Having a workflow is as much of an experience-honed skill as taking the photograph or whittling a piece of wood. It's easier said then done, especially if you're not trained. And everyone's eventual workflow is a different beast. So if you are Adobe, then how the hell are going to solve this problem?
Adobe does have in place some tools that help you attempt to organize this upon importing your images. And if you follow a certain workflow and stick with it, you'll probably be ok. Unless you decide that the next set of images you import should be categorized a different way, because the previous way you've been using doesn't quite make sense for these particular images. Or perhaps you read about someone else's workflow, and you wanted to try it out for yourself. I think you can see where I'm going with this. Over time you've got yourself a real mess and at some point you may find your self needing to clean everything up. But how are you going to accomplish this daunting task?
WE’VE GOT A PROBLEM
Here's a real world example of a big problem. A problem which is of my own, and my own doing as a result of years of shooting photos, acquiring more hard drive storage, and having inexperienced, bad habits on my media management workflow. I can summarize this problem with this: Gigabytes and Gigabytes of duplicates, scattered all over my system, in various hard drives, various LR catalogs, various folders, and many various versions of the same source images. Some images are exact duplicates of hundreds of other images, because they were on two different drives as a bad attempt to backup my data, because I was a mere broke college student who didn't quite have big enough hard drives, and this was pre-time machine. Then years later as I come across these images on all these drives, I don't know which ones were backups, and which ones I needed to keep, so now I have a bloated catalog of giant freaking mess of nightmares, A nest of external drives connected to my Mac Pro in addition to my RAID storage both internal and external.
Some are master RAW files. Some are working PSD or TIFF files. Some are copies of working PSD or TIFF files that have different modified dates and are in completely different file locations. Others are "print" copies based on my working PSD/TIFF files, and I probably don't need any of those since I can easily re-create them from the working masters. And almost nothing has keywords applied to them because I was not trained in the mastery of metadata-fu. I'm still a metadata keyword apprentice. I've much to learn and habits to develop.
Holy hell. What have I done? And how am I going to fix this?
I look to the tools within Lightroom to start my journey. How about an easy way to show duplicates? Let's start there. Unfortunately, that feature doesn't exist. At all! There is a 3rd party extension someone hobbled together, and I try it. But it nearly do what I need. I immediately confuse myself, and worried that I'll trash stuff I still need, I give up on it. Supposedly it scans all kinds of image metadata to determine a match. Then it will sort things out for you in a collection, and already I'm drifting off path and I fear bad things ahead. So never mind.
What I need is LR to algorithmically scan all my images and tell me which ones are identical in not only terms of metadata, but is it the same image as I look at it even if the metadata, including filenames, including file locations….are different from the original file? Why doesn't Lightroom do this? I thought Lightroom was a database? Where are the advanced database tools for photographers?
Why can't Lightroom help me find all the multiple versions of an image in my catalog, assuming I've done a mass-import of my entire system and all my volumes? Why can't Lightroom show me which of my images are nearly identical, but perhaps you've edited this other one slightly, so Lightroom is going to identify this image as a version of this other image so you can decide if you need to keep it or not?
I can't be the only one in the world who needs this kind of advanced image recognition tools in order for me to help maintain my catalog. If you're a long time professional who has a bullet-proof workflow in place and you've never misplaced your images, then you must be a superhero. And I'm confident that you're in the slim minority on this front. I'm also confident that there are many others out there like me, who have a insanely messy catalog, or catalogs, gone out of control.
IN SEARCH OF ANSWERS
Disappointed with LR's lack of tools I look elsewhere, for apps that can tackle duplicate files on the OS X Finder level. I find a pretty good one called Gemini from the Mac App Store. It does what it says on the tin, and scans your folders and volumes for duplicate files. You can be as granular in your scanning as you want to be, or you can go all out and scan your entire system. It works, and it works well. Gemini has the abilities that I wish Lightroom had, the abilities to point out clear duplicates no matter where they lie, and what their file names are. But it does have a bit of an unexpected learning curve to it, because again, you've been completely unorganized for the past 10 years, and there is stuff all over the place, and sometimes you don't know for sure which version of what you want to keep.
Yet unfortunately, it does not identify versions of files, only exact duplicates. So the three different edits you have of image #_5793.DNG are still in 3 different places and you still have multiple jpg “prints” of those files in 4 different resolutions, because all of the social web sites you post to require different versions and techniques to optimize viewing quality (and that shit matters to you). So unless you stumble upon those versions in your catalog or the finder, there really is no easy way to cowboy-lasso all those copies together into one folder-pen where they belong.
Once go through the very long process of scanning and selecting your duplicated, you have to wonder, now how am I going to consolidate all these files that are left over? How am I going to re-organize? It sure seems like I'm going to have to go through my Finder with a fine tooth comb, find the leftovers from their various locations, and dump them into some kind of holding bin for me to sort through later. Which images belong together? Which ones from that volume were part of this same shoot over here on this volume? These PSD files… what are they doing in this folder, how did they get here?
I've spent countless hours trying to get a hold of all my data over many many many months. A weekend here, a day there….Those rare times when I can site down and I have the motivation and time to tackle this massive project and wrangle everything all together again. It seems like a never ending mission. And of course I'm still adding new images as time goes on. But I can't help but think that the good folks over at Adobe could really put some of their muscle in this area, and give everyone the tools to help wrangle and re-organize their assets. Perhaps it's not a cool enough feature that's flashy enough for marketing. But I'd be willing to bet that it's a problem that many people have whether they want to realize it or not.
It feels good to re-gain another 130GB of drive space just from cleaning up my digital house. Storage is cheap, except for when it isn't. Sometimes less really is more.
Tags: Media Management, WorkflowsWorkflows, Media Management