Importing photos from a camera part 2

- In the last movie, I started showing you how to import photos from a camera's memory card into Lightroom. Here in Lightroom's import dialogue, I covered choosing the import method and setting the destination for the photos that Lightroom is going to copy from your memory card into your computer or onto a drive. In this case, I'm importing just these four photos that I shot on the same day and importing them to this custom subfolder that I created in the last movie. In this movie, I'll go over some other options to be aware of when you're importing photos from a camera's memory card.

I'll scroll up to the top of the column on the right of the import dialogue box, and here, in the file handling panel, all the actions are the same as when you're importing photos from a drive. The subject that I covered in an earlier movie about importing photos from a drive, so I won't repeat all that, but there is one thing that I do differently in this panel when I'm importing a new shoot from my camera's memory card. And that is, to make a second copy and navigate to a separate drive that I've attached to this computer. I consider that my archive drive, so I'm going to check Make a Second Copy To.

I'll click this arrow. I'll choose a folder and I'll navigate to this drive, which is my archive drive where I keep my archive of photos that I import to Lightroom and I'll click Choose. As I mentioned in an earlier movie on making a storage and backup plan, this gives me an un-touched copy of each new photo that I use as a fail safe in addition to my other backups of my working Lightroom photos. I'll close the file handling panel, so you can see the file renaming panel. Now this is a panel that we didn't see when importing photos from a drive into Lightroom.

The file renaming panel offers the opportunity to rename your photos at the same time you import them from your camera's memory card. Professional photographers like to do this because if they have the right file naming system and they follow it consistently, this is a way to make sure that every photo has a separate identifier; a different and separate name from every other photo, but one of the dangers of doing this is potentially ending up with duplicate photos. So if you're a Lightroom novice, my suggestion is that you not rename your files during import.

If you really want to rename your files later, you can do that from inside Lightroom. But just to show you how this panel works, I'm going to check Rename Files, and from the template menu, I can choose a file renaming scheme. If I leave it at its default of date and file name, down here you can see a sample of what the imported photos will look like. Each will have the date and then the unique name of that photo. Lightroom takes that information from the EXIF data that comes from your digital camera. Some of the template options allow you to customize file names, for example, if I choose Custom Name - Original File Number, I could type some custom text in this field that would apply to all the photos that I import.

So I could type the date the photos were shot and I could type some identifying text like of a location, or if it's for a client, the client's name, or my own name as photographer. And here, you can see a sample of what each file name will look like. That custom information followed by the file name from the EXIF data. You can even choose whether the file extensions will be lowercase or uppercase in the file names. And if you want to, you can create your own custom file naming template by choosing any of these templates that come with the program and then choosing Edit.

And that will open this big file name template, Editor. I'm gonna cancel out of there for now. But I don't want to rename these files and I don't recommend you do that either if you're a novice, so I'm gonna uncheck Rename Files and I'll close the file renaming panel. The options in the Apply during Import panel are the same as what we saw in the movie on importing files from a drive, except that when I'm importing from a camera's memory card, there are two things that I often add in this panel. One of those is key words because when I'm importing photos from a single shoot, there's usually a keyword or two that will apply to all the photos.

For example, all of these photos are of masks, so I'll type the subject masks in the keyword field and press enter or return and that will create that keyword and add it to all the photos that I'm importing. And I also go to the meta data field and add my annual copyright notice to all the photos from the shoot that I'm importing. To do that, I'll click on the meta data field and I'll choose New. In the new meta data preset window that opens, I'll call this Jan Kabili 2015 and then I'll go down to the IPTC copyright area and in the copyright field, I'll enter the copyright symbol by tapping the option key and the g key on my Mac keyboard.

On a PC, I would hold the alt key as I type 0-1-6-9 on the numeric keypad. And then I'll type my name and the year. And I have a separate one for each year, of course. I'll go to the copyright status field and I'll change that from unknown to copyrighted and in the Rights Usage Terms field, I can type any rights that I want to apply to all these photos like All rights reserved. Then I'll scroll down to the IPTC creator section of this dialogue and here I'll type my name in the Creator field.

I could type in my email and there's lots of other information that I could add to all these files, but I'll just leave it at that and click Create. And now, in the meta data field, in the Apply During Import panel, I have a copyright that I can quickly access and apply to any photos that I import. So now I finished choosing all my import settings for importing from a camera or a camera's memory card. I'll save these settings as an import preset, so that I can quickly access them next time that I'm importing from a camera's memory card to avoid having to set all these options separately.

So I'll click this menu and I'll choose Save Current Settings As New Preset. I'll call this import from camera and I'll click Create. And finally, I'm going to click the Import button. That closes the import window and takes me back to Lightroom's Library module, where here we can see the progress bar keeping track of where Lightroom is importing the photos and creating previews for them. By default, Previous Import is selected in the catalog panel and so here in the Lightroom Library module, we see only the photos that I just imported.

If I want to see all the photos in the catalog, I can choose All Photographs here in the catalog panel. So that's how to import photos from your camera's memory card into Lightroom. And don't forget to check out part one of this import process in the preceding movie, if you haven't done that already.