Shannon asks:
I really enjoy reading your blog, and I have a question/possible blog topic… I’m wondering how to deal with all the large raw files that I am uploading into lightroom. The other day, I had an alert come up that said that I had no more room on my computer for the files.. lol. So, I purchased a fairly large external hard drive, and thought I would move a bunch of the pictures onto it so that I would have more room. But I found it difficult to figure out how to move all the files out of lightroom and onto the external hard drive, and Im also not sure how I could access them in lightroom again unless I re-import them… do you have any ideas as to how to deal with this/managing all the files? I’d rather not delete the files if possible.
Great question.
And good news. Lightroom makes it easy. You can have your files live anywhere you like, anywhere at all – and you can move the files. Anywhere, any times.
Now for moving files.
- When you move files using Lightroom, that is the end of the job. Lightroom knows where they now live since it moved them.
- When you move files outside Lightroom, using your PC or Mac, then you are not moving anything “out of Lightroom”. You are just moving them, and now need to tell Lightroom where they now live. Lightroom will now show them with a question mark. Meaning, it does not know where they are. Simply right-click and “find missing files”.
As for where files live: I recommend files on an external drive; and the catalog file on that drive als (and everything backed up!). You may find this a useful post also in that regard.
Does that help? If not, a short coaching session will help sort it all out. Stick with Lightroom, sort it out – it is worth it!