Cataloging -- PSE and LR Compatability

I have been very lazy when it comes to cataloging my photos (I know the rest of you are too at times, so don't look so innocent. Ha!) Anyway, I recently picked up PSE15 and thought that it might be a good time for some "serious" cataloging attempts. My question is, for those who may have also gone this route, if at a later date I decide to go the LR -- CC package, will the catalog from PSE transfer painlessly to the LR way of doing things?

Actually, I have up until getting PSE, been using a photo date organization. It works pretty well, but no tagging so memory (mine) has to come into play at times. Let's see, when did I take that picture? Ha! Thanks

I can't offer a lot of first hand experience. Back when I used elements, I didn't really organize. Just dated folders and maybe some special occasion folders, that's it. So other than file structure, I brought nothing with me to LR. The folders of course remain intact.
But this article looks promising for a smooth move of tags:
https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom/how-to/elements-upgrade-creative-cloud-photography.html

When I got to LR, I started tagging religiously. It only took me a few weeks to catch up. I use a layer approach. I'll bulk tag with something very broad. Then as time permits, I'll get more detailed. First tag might be something like a city name or simply 'lake', moon, etc. I'll do that for the whole roll. Then as I edit, if its a keeper, I'll add more keywords like animal types or people names. There are different ways to tag, including a spray tool. I'm not sure of the tools in PSE, but the tagging goes quickly in LR. Even if you forget to do some detailed tagging, if you tag the whole load as soon as you upload with a basic word or two, at least you have something to search for.

I use the year/month/date construct in LR... on import...

Then, as I use/edit the photos... in Library mode, you can right-click on the date folder in the catalogue, and rename that batch... here's the trick... the rename defaults to month/day... drop your cursor in the field... and just move to passed the day... i.e.

01 02... rename to
01 02 Christmas Pic of Granddaughter

Now you quickly scan down the dates in the catalogue, and see the keywords you identified that batch on that day

OK, my process/work flow has been up until now a simple thing.

!st Import photos from camera to a Main Folder named by camera ie D7100 and into a subfolder by date ie Year-Month-Day
Then delete the junk and process any that I want to.
Save them as a jpg into a folder ie 365n2016 (the original file with the sidecar file stays in the previous main and subfolder)
Any additional processing like adding a watermark and resizing or adjusting/tweaking colors etc then gets saved in another jpg file for internet posting, etc.

Very seldom do I do a complete set of a special occasion. Most of my stuff is random shots from daily walks around my property.

With PSE it looks like it will be a good time to add a tagging step to identify shots with birds, deer, people etc. PSE 15 now has face recognition features for tagging and general parameters too. I will be watching that to see how well it works.

Should work pretty well if you've got the catalog organized.

BackdoorHippie said:

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Should work pretty well if you've got the catalog organized.

Click to expand...

Thanks Jake. That is probably what I was looking for. It is something that one day will probably happen: The transition to PS, LR cloud service.