I recently purchased a new PC and decided to move my entire Lightroom catalog over to the new computer. I attempted to use the Export catalog function, but it kept failing over and over again (wonder if it had to do with volume of pictures) either way I decided to this manually, so I copied all of the files over to the new PC and opened the catalog – it seemed that everything was fine until I opened one of the pictures. The previews loaded, but the original file could not be found (I changed the relative directory of the files) I did a little digging in Adobe’s help online and discovered that you can tell Lightroom where to look for your missing files. The guide below will walk you through the process of locating individual files as well as folders and hopefully save you the time of trying to figure this out.. If you have any comments or questions please post them below.

Note: I used Lightroom 2 for this tutorial.

Locating Missing Files in Lightroom

1. With Lightroom open, click on the picture that is missing (when a picture is missing the icon highlighted above will appear on the top right corner of the picture), click on this small icon to bring up the Locate dialog box below.

2. Click on the Locate button to find your picture.

3. Browse to the directory that your file is located, select it and click the Select button.

Note: Add a checkmark to the Find nearby missing photos checkbox to locate missing pictures within that same directory.

Locating Missing Folders in Lightroom

1. When a folder is missing in Lightroom, the folder will be grayed out and a question mark will appear next to the folder.

2. Right-click on the missing folder and click on Find Missing Folder… from the menu

3. Browse to locate the missing folder, select it and click OK.

Your files should now be in order.

So you’ve spent countless hours adding keywords to all of your pictures in Lightroom and now you want to be able to share these keywords with friends or would like to transfer them to another catalog in your computer or would like to back them up. The guide below will walk you through the process of exporting and importing Lightroom keywords. If you have any comments or questions please post them below.

Note: I used Lightroom 2 for this tutorial.

Exporting Keywords

1. With Lightroom open, click on Metadata > Export Keywords… [The Export Keywords window will open]

2. Browse to the directory that you would like to save the keywords to, name the file, and click Save.

Note: The file is saved as text file, .txt

Importing Keywords

Now that you’ve obtained a keyword file from a friend or from another catalog, follow the steps below to import the keywords to your catalog.

1. With Lightroom open, click on Metadata > Import Keywords… [This will open the Import Keywords window]

2. Locate and select the keyword file you wish to import, click on the Open button to import

Your Keywords should now be imported.

Note: I used Lightroom 2 for this tutorial, some of the features discussed below are not available in Lightroom 1

1. The Quick Develop panel is located on the panels to the right, underneath the Histogram Panel.

Note: If the panel is not displayed, just click on the arrow to the right of the words Quick Develop and it will expand.

2. If you’re interested in quickly developing the picture you can use one of the default presets by clicking on the Saved Preset drop-down (the default selected is Custom). Here you can chose to develop the photograph using presets like; Sepia, Aged Photo, Antique Grayscale, and many more. In this tutorial we’ll focus on the Custom preset, for now leave it set at Custom.

Note: You can also change the picture from color to grayscale and vice versa by clicking on the arrow to the right of the Saved Preset drop-down and changing the option for Treatment. We will discuss the Crop Ratio in future tutorials.

3. Depending on the adjustments you want to make to the photograph you’ve taken, you can start by either adjusting the white balance or adjusting exposure. In order to maintain the order in which the tools are located in this panel, I will cover the next tool beneath the Saved Preset, White Balance. When you click on the White Balance drop-down you are given several options to alter the white balance on your picture, you can maintain the As Shot selection, which will keep the picture with its original white balance setting or you can select one of the options available (Daylight, Auto, Cloudy, and others) this of course depends on the conditions which your original photograph was taken and the adjustments you would like to make.

Note: You can also adjust Temperature and Tint by clicking on the arrow to the right of the White Balance drop-down box.

4. If you don’t like the idea of messing around with exposure levels, brightness/contrast, and other settings, you can push the Auto Tone button (located next to Tone Control)which will automatically adjust settings for you. Sometimes you may get the result you’re looking for, other times you may not, this is why Adobe allows you to manually adjust these settings.

5. The default adjustments available to you are Exposure, Clarity, and Vibrance, if you click on the arrow to the right of the Auto Tone button, Recovery, Fill Light, Blacks, Brightness, and Contrast will be displayed. Each of these adjustments have a set of arrows to their right . When adjusting Exposure a single arrow represents 1/3 stop more/less depending on the direction of the arrow, a double arrow is for full stop either way. The same concept applies for the other adjustments.

While playing with these adjustments there will come a time when you would like to reset a specific change, you can do so in two ways;

A. To reset a specific adjustment, click on the adjustment name, for example to reset adjustments made to exposure, click on Exposure

B. To reset all adjustments made to a photograph, click on the Reset All button located at the bottom of the Quick Develop panel.

C. You can always select As Shot from the drop-down menus (this will take you back to the original file).

Applying Settings to Multiple Pictures

If you’ve got 100 pictures with similar characteristics, same subject, colors, exposure, etc. You can apply the settings to all at the same time or you can synchronize settings. I’ll explain more below.

Multiple Pictures at a Time

To make adjustments to multiple pictures at the same time, begin by selecting the pictures. You can do this by Ctrl + Left Click (add multiple pictures to a selection) and select the pictures you would like to adjust or you can Shift + Left Click and select multiple pictures from one picture to another (this selects the first picture and all pictures in between your second selection). Once you’ve selected your pictures make adjustments to the items discussed above, Exposure, White Balance, etc. All pictures should now have the same adjustments.

Modify One Picture and Synchronize Settings to Others (Synchronize Settings = Copy Settings)

1. Once you’ve made the necessary adjustments to your picture, select (using the method described above)the pictures you would like to change (apply same settings as adjusted pictures), and click on the Sync Settings button.

2. You will be prompted to select the settings you wish to Sync, check or uncheck the settings you wish to sync and click Synchronize.

As you can see the Quick Develop panel offers a myriad of options to adjust your photographs, I forewarn you this is only the beginning, there is far more editing capability in the Develop module. We will discuss this and other features in subsequent tutorials.

1. With Lightroom open, click on View > Sort > Select your prefferred sort method