I have thousands of photos unorganized and duplicated. Help on organizing please!

[smoke665]

Wouldn't he have to pay Adobe a monthly charge for life to be able to access anything he may do with Lightroom? If that's the case, LR would not seem the way to go. He could buy Photoshop Elements as a program you don't have to rent. It may have a sufficient DAM for his needs.

All editing done in LR are stored as commands in the catalog. To continue to access the catalog you would need to have LR. However it is possible to write the image commands in the XMP of the image and there are some other softwares out there that might be able to read it. Since most of my final picks end up in PS, saving as a tiff with layers let's other software open them.

As to the structure used with my filing method on images, it is not specific to LR, any file mgt app can open and maintain

 

[WackfordSqueers]

I'm sort of in the same place. I want to pick out the best pictures I've taken to put in a tabletop photo book. So I'm going through every picture I have and copying out the ones I may use into a separate folder. I really don't care about identifying every picture I have.

So that might be an easier solution for you. Just pull out the ones that you consider keepers. After all, how many pictures of Uncle Louie do you need?

Thanks, Alan
Uncle Louie has had his op. I must take more photos....