Lightroom Collections: How to keep your HD empty being a photographer
I think as photographers we have all been there! “Your startup disk is almost full. To make more space available on your startup disk, delete some files”. Such an annoying message! That will never be a problem to you again after you read this article or watch the video above.
For about three years I worked with a macbook with an HD [startup disk] of 250 gigabytes. First couple of photo sessions, all going good, all going great. Soon enough though: “your disk is almost full” message! Then I transferred my edited files to an external HD and to my Cloud service but after a while, with such little space, even that wasn’t enough. I needed more space!
That’s when I first read about Lightroom Collections. According to my readings, I didn’t even need to keep any photos in my computer at all, even while editing them! I could download them straight to an external HD and edit them in Lightroom straight from the external HD using Collections. Would that work? Would it be fast enough? Would it not slow me down? I have to tell you: I was kind of sceptical about it… just too good to be true, you know? After all, if that really worked, that meant I could simply keep my computer HD empty to run smoothly forever!
I had nothing to loose so I tried it out! And guess what? it worked perfectly.
At that time I had a Dual Core 8GB macbook. I bought myself a Lacie external HD and everytime I came home from a photo shoot, I wouldn’t even transfer the photos to my computer. I would transfer them straight to my external HD, create a Lightroom Collection and edit the photos straight from the external HD.
Was it slow? Most of the time, it ran very smoothly! No wonder I worked three years using that method with a Dual Core 8GB macbook. When I worked with too many layers in Photoshop, though, I had some issues with it being slow or with it simply freezing when trying to save it. Another important thing to point out is that, with my old macbook, I didn’t even have an USB-C input. I used a normal USB cable linking my computer to the external HD, which is not the fastest way to do it at all.
Then this year I started doing videos and I felt the need of a stronger computer. So I got a new macbook with an i9 processor and 32GB that already had the USB-C input to it. Never had a slow down or freezing problem again! I work with collections just as if I was editing my photos straight in my computer’s HD.
Now it's time to show you how this works.
- First you’ll simply transfer your photos to a specific folder in your external HD.
- Go to Lightroom and on the left menu, click "+", by the Collections menu.
3. Click “create collection”.
4. Name the Collection/Folder and click "create".
5. In Library, go to Import.
6. Under "Source", select the folder you want to import the photos from.
7. On the right menu, mark the “add to collection” option and select the folder where you want your photos to be, the one you just created before.
Attention: Make sure you have the “add photos to catalog without moving them” option selected, which means you will edit the photos there, even though they haven’t been transferred to your computer. If you have “move” selected, then you’ll be actually uploading the photos from your external HD to your collection folder in your computer.
Important tip, though: if you ever change the name of your source folder or change its location in your external HD, Lightroom won’t be able to find it, so you’ll have to manually show it where it is in order for it to recognize that folder again. To avoid any problems, what I do is: everytime I get done editing a session, I export the photos both in HD and in Social Media versions and I have the edited versions not only saved to my external HD, but also to my cloud, as a safety measure.
That way, I have my raw files in my HD and the cloud, I have the raw files with the Lightroom adjustments in Collections — to which I can go back to change or improve my editings anytime I want — and I have my exported edited files in JPEG format both to my external HD and to the cloud.
And if you want to know more about that, I’ll leave a link for a video I recently recorded talking specifically about how I export my edits and also for the video I recorded about how I store my photos in the links that you will find up here and also in the description.
That’s it! All safe, no risks, empty HD so that you computer can run smoothly and you can take millions of photos without worrying with having a full HD! Nice, huh?
How to EXPORT YOUR PHOTOS in LIGHTROOM — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWy-g...
The best way to STORE YOUR PHOTOS — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6x_D...
The EXTERNAL HD I use — https://geni.us/oY7WC8
SUPPORT MY CHANNEL — https://www.patreon.com/priscilaelias...
JOIN ME ON INSTAGRAM — https://www.instagram.com/priscilaeli...
