How To Import & Organize Photos In Lightroom Like A Pro

If there is one thing that makes me a huge nerd in this world, is how much I love to organize photos in Lightroom. I know I know, it sounds boring as hell, but I genuinely get satisfaction out of creating systems and putting them into place.

As a professional photographer for the past ten years, you can imagine I have TENS OF THOUSANDS of photos.

If you average 4 to 5 shoots a month, where each shoot you might take up to 1000 (and let’s not even count in the creative shoots, the traveling, etc) that is about 60,000 photos a year!

For me, a big part of staying sane is knowing that my images are properly organized, named, stored, and sorted, so that at any given time, I can go back and find any photo I want. In this post, I’ll teach you how to import & organize photos in Lightroom like a pro!

UNDERSTANDING LIGHTROOM

It is important to understand that Lightroom does not actually store your images, but acts as an interface to help you import, view, store, and organize the images on your computer drive or external drive. Inside Lightroom’s library module you will find the folder structures mirroring your hard drive and computer’s actual folder structure. 

I want you to think of Lightroom through the analogy of a library.

Your computer hard drive and your external hard drives are all a big library with many buildings.

Your photos are the books.

Lightroom is the front desk clerk, your librarian, and she has a catalog listing of where all the books are.

The books are all in this library, but they are spread out on different floors, or even a different building.

Although your librarian doesn’t have all the books inside her catalog, she can look up any book and know where they are so you can go find them.

The books aren’t inside the catalog itself but rather archived somewhere in the building.

It is the same idea with your photos.

They are stored somewhere in your computer or external drives, and all Lightroom does is know where to locate them and easily display them for you. Lightroom is just an interface that you use to view and access all those image files.

Lightroom works in catalogs

Your catalog is just the interface that allows you to view the images you included in it. Your catalog is a master memory of all edits performed on all images within it. You can create many different catalogs within Lightroom, but I would recommend you operate under one catalog only.

Lightroom is divided into modules

Think of each module as a room, or stand-alone program that connects with the other ones. Each module has a specific function, and although you can easily move back and forth through them, certain commands can only be performed in a specific module.  

• The LIBRARY module acts as an organizer and storer or all the digital information and files. It is THE place to organize photos in Lightroom. Here you will organize, rename, sort, and cull your images, it is your hub for organization, storage, and selection.
• The DEVELOP module is where the magic happens. Here is where the processing of the images happens, taking it from raw, through color grading and all post-production, to a final edit.

80% of the power and worth of Lightroom lays in both the Develop and Library modules. That is not to say the other modules aren’t worth looking Into, but they have very specific functions, where the Library and Develop modules are very powerful and contain the majority of what you need to know.

BEING A PROFESSIONAL MEANS BEING ORGANIZED

For those looking to up their photography game, or pursue a career in the field, being a professional photographer is a lot more than just taking beautiful photos. Taking beautiful images is an important aspect, but when it comes to working with clients, it just simply isn’t enough.

It is being able to find a client’s image quickly, or being able to modify edits without much hassle.

It is also assuring your clients and knowing with certainty that you keep a clean archive of every step of your process and knowing that you are delivering images that are of the highest quality.

You have to have a process in place and you need to be able to go back a few months later and find your files if your client lost them, or better yet, what if they want to purchase full resolution or full rights? You could be losing out on a major opportunity by failing to be organized.

You also need to be able to re-edit if they don’t like what you’ve done.

I can have any client from the last ten years of my career reach out to me and request an image, and I am able to find it in a few minutes.

And that is because I developed a system (that I will teach you!) which gives each image a unique name and location that falls under a standard organization process with Lightroom. I can do this automatically and quickly. When you work in a professional way, you can charge professional rates. When you can guarantee a client professionalism when you step into a job, you have the confidence to present yourself as an expert and charge as such.

MY BULLETPROOF PROFESSIONAL WORKFLOW

I have a very simple but effective workflow when it comes to my photography work.

I find that doing things the same way every time, minimizes errors, missing files, and accidental deletes files. For my post-shoot work flow, I work in the following order:

1. Importing files
2. Culling
3. Editing

Importing

The import process is one of my favourite ways to use Lightroom. Using the software to ingest images into your computer is not only the easiest but the safest way. It not only assures you aren’t accidentally leaving photos behind, or even leaving the money shot unselected once you get into culling, but it helps you create an automated process that can free up your time while importing, as well as when sitting down to work with the images later. I truly urge you to organize photos in Lightroom, as it is a life-changing process when it comes to photography workflow!

Lightroom facilitates your workflow creating easy ways to do repeated tasks in a few clicks. When you open your Lightroom catalogue, in your library module, you will find your import button. Once you click it, a new window will appear.

I always ingest photos from a fresh shoot directly through Lightroom.

Instead of copying and pasting the photos from your camera into your computer, and then only adding to Lightroom the ones you want to edit, I import EVERYTHING I SHOT straight into Lightroom. 

Why do I want to import all of my thousands of photos to then delete them later?

There are quite a few reasons, but simply put, you want to keep your different stages of the process separate, importing comes first, selecting comes after. You want to do things in order, to be able to scale up automatization, speed up your processes, and rest assure knowing that no images are accidentally being left behind.

I’ve heard the arguments of “well I don’t have space” or “I don’t wanna clutter”… my only answer to that is buy a hard drive. They are less than 100$ for 1tb, and they will make your life easier. (Check out my full list of photography gear for beginners!)

After the whole process, you will delete the images you don’t want, and save lots of room, but until that happens, it’s important to keep a clean process. It goes without saying that your selection process should never take place on camera. Not only it is way easier and better to look at your files on the big screen of your computer, but deleting files individually from your camera can affect your file integrity and damage the card or images along the way.

Once you are on your importing screen, you will want to go from left to right. On the left, selecting where your images are coming from, in the middle choosing how to treat the files (I always use the “convert do DNG option), and on the right, how you are handling your file.

The most important three aspects of importing your images for good organization and good workflow are these three:

1. BUILD PREVIEW:

You want to make sure you are creating standard previews for your files. A standard preview is big enough to allow you to go through photos quickly while the thumbnails fully load. Avoid Smart previews as they are very heavy files, and unnecessary if your images are stored on your computer, or on a hard drive that is often plugged in. What these options will do, is speed up the culling process for later with a fast thumbnail (it might take a little longer on the importing process, but once its done, your time will be literally cut in half). 

2. FILE NAMING:

I suggest coming up with a naming system and using this EVERY SINGLE time. You can create a naming system and save it as a preset, so every time you import new photos, your Lightroom will automatically rename all the files. I like to include the date the image was shot, my initials, and a sequence number. This way, every single photo I take forever and ever, will only have one name!

3. DESTINATION FOLDER:

One of the messiest things that can happen when you organize photos in Lightroom is creating unnecessary folders and getting your photos lost inside endless locations. Lightroom, by default, sets up your destination folder as a structure by date and even time.

I recommend the following: On the right panel, the last option is called destination. Under destination, you have the “organize” option. Make sure you select “into one folder”, and on the option above, click “into subfolder” and name the folder according to the shoot.

Then, below these two options, you can point to where you want the folder to go. I have all my photos under my “images” folder, and I have a folder for each year. So let’s say I just finished a headshot session for my friend Lauren, I would call the folder “Lauren” and I will put it inside the 2020 folder already existing in my hard drive. This way, with the name being specific to the date, and the folder structure specific to the shoot, you will always be able to find your images

Once you are done with your import options, click Import at the bottom right, and let your computer do all the work. Once all the tasks are done (this might take a while if you are importing raw files, converting to DNG, and creating standard previews) you are ready to sit down and cull without anything slowing you down!

Culling

One of my favourite Lightroom uses is the culling process.

After a shoot, you might come home with thousands of images, and after ingesting them through Lightroom into your computer, it is time to start making your selection. You almost never keep all the images you shoot, so you’ll want to go through all your images and get rid of anything you don’t want. Doing this through Lightroom is much more efficient, accurate, and fun, than doing it on your computer.

I like to do my culling in stages.

1. Stage one: Keepers vs definite no-nos
2. Stage two: Favourites vs the rest
3. Stage three: Cream of the crop

1. STAGE ONE: KEEPERS VS DEFINITE NO-NOs

To me, this step is so crucial when you organize photos in Lightroom. The very first step is to identify your keepers from the images you want to delete forever because you will never use them. This will clean up your computer, your workspace, and keep you organized making your process a lot easier. 

As always, it’s important to remember that any image you chose to delete, you want to make sure you are deleting from your computer, and not just removing from Lightroom.

So for this first step, I go through all the images, and I give a rejected flag to any photos I want to delete. The shortcut for this is the letter X. Once you are done, you can click command+delete and this will get rid of all your rejected images.

Make sure to DELETE FROM DISK, this will avoid getting rid of the photos just virtually on Lightroom, and keep them in your drive:

Deleting from Disk guarantees you wont have any unwanted files floating around your computer even though they are deleted from Lightroom.

2. STAGE TWO: FAVOURITES VS THE REST

The second step, is to make a distinction between your best photos, the keepers that aren’t the best but you don’t want to part with, and everything in between.

You might chose to keep 100 images from a shoot, but only select 20 for your blog, or client and only 2 for portfolio or as your best images from the shoot.

Each shoot might have a different purpose or use for your images, but it is a good idea to come up with the system that you will always use for labeling. Lightroom allows us to categorize images by number rating, color, and even keywords. If you have a system in place, you can always go back to older folders and know exactly how to find your top images, your client selections, and any other category you might create.

I love to use my starring system, using 1 through 5 stars, making the 5stars the best images. You can use the starring system by clicking your actual numbers 1 through 5 on your keyboard. You can also use color labels with numbers 6 through 9.

To see your categorizing, click under attribute in your library filter, and select what you want to see:

Here I asked the filter to show me images that are 5 star or higher.

Editing

Once you are done selecting your best images, you are ready to move onto your editing and then exporting.

I like to keep my library filter on, so I go into my develop module, only seeing the images I want to work on, which are usually my 5 stars, but you can select whatever you want.

In terms of editing workflow, I always recommend starting with your preset/or your base editing first and then moving through your editing options from basic to more localized editing. If you are curious to see one of my favourite editing techniques, you can watch my FREE Color Grading Class!

BACKING UP YOUR WORK!

I get asked a lot about my personal standard for backups.

I’ll keep it simple.

As a rule of thumb, all my files should always be in two places.

I usually keep my cards with the shoot until I have gone through the selection process, deleted all the images that won’t be used, and then do a full backup of the reduced lot.

I usually backup my entire computer once a week, so any folder stored on my computer gets backed up automatically. For images stored on an external drive, I make a second copy onto another drive.

Generally, I would have one external drive exclusively dedicated to both computer and external drive back ups.

So in summary, I would always encourage you to import and organize photos in Lightroom, and later on, decide what you want to keep and what you want to delete. This will guarantee that everything you see in Lightroom is exactly what you have. There are no other images floating around on your computer, and that way you have one system, one process, and one way of doing things.

Trust me when I say that in the long run this will save you so much time, and there will never be a doubt of images getting lost or things being misplaced.

Want to learn more about the importing process? Want videos showing you the step-by-step process of how to organize photos in Lightroom PLUS every single other Lightroom tool you need to know how to use? Check out my Lightroom Masterclass and you could become a Lightroom Pro within a week!

Some links in this post are affiliate links, meaning at no cost you, I will receive a small commission if you make a purchase using the links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. This helps cover some of the operational costs associated with this blog, so I’d appreciate the support!