- [Instructor] So far, we've imported
all of the exercise files using the import add method.
And that's the method I recommend
when importing photos that are already on your computer.
But what about photos that are on a memory card?
There are times you may want to import directly
from a memory card, and there are some benefits
to importing with this method too.
So, let's take a look at how it works.
I have a scientist memory card
mounted to my computer here, If we open this folder
and then open this folder, we'll see the images
that are on that disc.
Let's import these into Lightroom.
If you want to follow along,
you could try this with your own memory card.
I'm going to switch back to Lightroom Classic,
and we'll see that we're already in the import dialogue box.
Lightroom automatically opened this because it detected
the mounted memory card.
We see the Scientist selected here at the top
under source, and the images that are on that drive.
At the top, we have the option copy.
We don't even have the option for add here.
Importing from a memory card is called the copy method
because Lightroom Classic requires that photos
reside on a hard drive, in order for Lightroom
to work with them.
So when importing from a memory card,
the photos first have to get copied to a drive
and then Lightroom imports them.
And it's really easy to get confused by this
if you don't understand what's happening.
Let's take a closer look at all of the options.
For starters, we could choose Copy as DNG
if we wanted to convert our raw files
to DNG during the import, and I don't prefer to do this
so I'm going to leave it on copy.
Now, let's move over to the right hand panels
and we'll see some new options here.
We see the option to make a second copy to
and this is an option that you have
when you're doing an import copy,
you could make a backup copy at the same time.
I'll go ahead and collapse that and work our way down.
The next panel is for file renaming.
You could rename your files during the import,
which could be really beneficial if you shoot
commercial events, I'll go ahead and leave this off
for now, and work our way down.
Apply During Import options are exactly the same
as when we imported with the add method.
I'll go ahead and give these images the keyword local,
because they were all captured in my local neighborhood.
And then we'll collapse this and work our way down
to destination.
This is the one that you really need
to pay close attention to.
By default, Lightroom wants to copy the images
from the memory card to the pictures folder
on the startup drive and I don't recommend doing this.
We see that here in the panel
is showing us the startup drive,
and it has the pictures folder selected.
The startup drive needs plenty of space
to run the operating system and your applications
and if you import all of your large photo files there,
the startup drive will run out of space pretty quick.
All of the mounted drives on my computer are listed here
so I'll collapse the startup drive
and go to the external photos drive where I have my exercise
files, and then open the exercise files.
This is still part of chapter two
so I'll click on chapter two.
And notice in gray here, it's showing us the folders
that are going to be created, in the exercise files folder.
It's going to create a year folder
and it's going to create dated folders inside of that
because these images were captured on different days.
Up here, at the top of the destination panel,
it's showing us that it's going to organize them by date
and what the date format is.
You could play around with changing these,
but I really like the default setting just as it is.
We could get even more organized here
by putting these into a sub folder, for this lesson.
So I'll type in O2 O7,
and see that it's going to create a new folder
inside of chapter two, titled O2 O7
and inside of that, it'll put the year
and the dated folders.
And that's it we'll click import now
and those photos are going to start copying to the hard drive.
This process can take a little bit longer
than the import add method,
because it has to first copy them to the hard drive
before it imports them.
This import copy method trips up
a lot of beginner Lightroom users.
If you've been using Lightroom Classic
and importing photos from memory cards
without understanding the copy process,
your photos are probably in your pictures folder
and your startup drive may be getting full.
If you are a beginner and struggle with file management,
you might want to avoid this import method for now
because it's so easy to lose track
of where Lightroom copies the photos to.
The workflow I recommend for Lightroom Classic users
is first, manually copy photos off of a memory card
to the desired location on your computer.
After the photos are copied eject the memory card,
then open Lightroom Classic and import the photos
with the add method.
Allow yourself time to get really comfortable
importing with the add method from a hard drive
before you start importing directly from a memory card.