# Migrating from Lightroom & Aperture workflow to only Lightroom



## ahalatsis (Nov 20, 2013)

Hello,
I have been reading a lot but this is my first post!

Up to this point I have been using both Lightroom and Aperture. I do my editing in Lightroom, my raw files are in indexed in Lightroom's catalog. I then export to JPEGs and store them in Aperture for viewing, (internet) export, archiving etc.

The only reason I was keen to using Aperture was the system-wide integration. But I think I had enough of it.

I am familiar with the migration process and have tried it once, no problems so far.

The only issue I cannot seem to work around (and also exists in the current workflow) is that if at some point after the initial JPEG export I reedit a photo, I have to reexport, reimport, add to my stack (different versions of the image), update keywords etc etc.
One obvious solution is not to export to JPEGs and keep the raws always available. But this is not local-space efficient.
Any ideas how to handle this?

Thanks in advance


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## Pi (Nov 20, 2013)

ahalatsis said:


> The only issue I cannot seem to work around (and also exists in the current workflow) is that if at some point after the initial JPEG export I reedit a photo, I have to reexport, reimport, add to my stack (different versions of the image), update keywords etc etc.
> One obvious solution is not to export to JPEGs and keep the raws always available. But this is not local-space efficient.
> Any ideas how to handle this?
> 
> Thanks in advance



I am not sure why would you want to re-import it. I do not use LR for viewing - I find it low quality, unfriendly and complicated for that. You re-export from LR and view the JPEG with a different viewer. AFAIK, the viewer coming with the MACs (iphoto ?) is very good, and fully color managed (?). Use LR just for converting the RAWs, which you backup and/or keep on an external drive.


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## ahalatsis (Nov 20, 2013)

Because I want to minimize the structure maintenance. Right now raws are only in folders according to date and in Aperture images are both in projects chronologically, along with albums, smart albums, keywords etc etc.

I would like to use the full indexing potential (albums, keywords, etc) for both raws and JPEGs, but (!) without maintaining them separately.

Am I asking for too much?


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## Pi (Nov 20, 2013)

ahalatsis said:


> Because I want to minimize the structure maintenance. Right now raws are only in folders according to date and in Aperture images are both in projects chronologically, along with albums, smart albums, keywords etc etc.
> 
> I would like to use the full indexing potential (albums, keywords, etc) for both raws and JPEGs, but (!) without maintaining them separately.
> 
> Am I asking for too much?



I guess so, at least with LR. My advice is to keep a structure independent of the software you are using today. I store them in foldesr by year, then by year and month (and a key word), like \2013\2013_11_Vegas (I wish, it should be \2013\2013_11_too_much_work_no_time_for_photos) I keep the RAWs in a different folder, with the same structure, manually maintained (I just have to create one pair of folders each month). 

I used to have this - keywords, etc., and then I changed the software. All the keywords are gone. Simplicity won in my case. 

The advantage of keeping the RAWs completely separated is to be able to share JPEGs easily between computers, relatives, etc.


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## bratkinson (Nov 20, 2013)

I, too have a similar dilemma between Lightroom and PS Elements. For almost all my editing of RAWs, I first delete the 'obvious losers' before bringing them into LR. That cuts down my LR time. I then do all the editing I can in LR and output as JPGs. But for me, the cloning abilities in PSE are better than LR, so if I have to do some cloning, I'll copy the entire JPG output folder to a 'finished' folder and do whatever adjustments I need in PSE...usually quite limited. Then I simply replace the picture in the 'finished' folder that went into PSE.

One significant departure is how I store my photos. I start with a 'high level' identifier like 'family shots 11-20-13' and put that into a folder titled 'family'...which has perhaps 30-40 other 'shoot dates' in there as well. Then, in the 11-20-13 folder is subfolders: RAW, JPG from LR, JPG Final, and if I want to print some, I'll use the predefined crop sizes in LSE and save those to yet another folder with the suffix 4x6, 5x7, etc. Although Lightroom has a great filing/indexing system, for this amateur, it's overkill. I simply use folder names to get to where I want to view. Trying to remember 'was that August 2 years ago or 3.....' is too hard for this old geezer.


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