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Chapter 3: Importing photos
Importing photos into the Adobe® Photoshop® Lightroom™ library is the first step in working with your photos. You
can import photos directly from a camera, memory card reader, or other storage device.
Getting photos into your library
Import photos into Lightroom: Basic workflow
You must import photos into the Lightroom library to begin working with them. During import, you can choose
either to move or copy the photo files into a specific folder, or reference the photo files in their current location.
Importing tells Lightroom what photos you want to work with, whether they are imported directly from a camera,
hard drive, memory card reader, or other storage devices. As photos are imported, you can rename them, apply
Develop adjustments to them, embed metadata and keywords, and even simultaneously back up the photos to a
different folder.
Note:
Lightroom 1.1 currently supports photos up to 10,000 pixels long or wide for a maximum image size of 100 million
pixels.
After they are imported, Lightroom adds the photos to the library and starts building previews and cataloging
metadata. Unless manually removed, the previews and metadata stay in the library, even if you move the corre-
sponding photos off of your computer to archive them in a different storage location. Thumbnail previews appear in
the Grid view and Filmstrip, and folders containing the imported photos appear in the Folders panel of the Library
module. You can’t import the same photo into Lightroom multiple times unless you first delete the photo from the
library. See “Browsing the catalog” on page 34 and “Create virtual copies” on page 43.
Note:
Lightroom also offers an auto-import feature for automatically importing photos into the library from a specified
folder. See “Importing automatically” on page 25.
Lightroom has an Import Photos dialog box for previewing, selecting, and adding information about the photos you
want to import. The dialog box includes the following options:
File Handling
Specifies how to import photos into the library.
Organize
Specifies what folder hierarchy to use when copying or moving photos into the library.
File Naming
Specifies how to name photos being copied or moved into the library.
Information To Apply
Specifies what Develop preset, metadata, and keywords to apply while importing photos.
Show Preview
Displays the Preview window for viewing and selecting specific photos to import.
1. Connect the camera or memory card reader to your computer.
In addition to cameras and memory card readers, Lightroom imports photos from any folder on the hard drive, CDs
or DVDs, and other storage devices. You can also import photos from another catalog or from Photoshop Elements
and Photoshop Album 2.0.
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