Oh crap.

Every photographer who has ever seen file cannot be located on lightroom

We've all been there.


You had your shoot, got home, popped your SD card into your computer, loaded the shots to Lightroom, edited your heart out, exported those bad boys, pulled out your SD and moved on to your next shoot. Only to find out that the images in Lightroom can no longer be edited. UGH!

Let's not do that again.


Here are my 9 steps to go from Card to Client.

  1. As soon as you get home start a new folder on your external hard drive with the year, family name, and shoot type - ex. 2021 Winters Lifestyle.
  2. Move all of the RAW files from your SD card into that main folder in a subfolder called RAW.
  3. Remove your SD card.
  4. Open Lightroom.
  5. Upload all of your RAW files from your external hard drive - 2021 Winters Lifestyle - RAW.
  6. Edit like usual.
  7. Export to 2021 Winters Lifestyle in a subfolder called Edited.
  8. I usually take a day off and then revisit my session with fresh eyes. Make final adjustments, and export one more time.
  9. Now upload to your Client Gallery - I use Pixieset.


But why so many steps??


Easy - with this process I immediately move my images to my external hard drive and import from there. That means that even if the SD card gets burned in a fire I still have my images. It also means that as long as I have my hard drive I can re-edit my pictures.

I have dozens of client galleries and even Lightroom Collections that I can't go back and re-edit because I don't have the original RAW files anymore. I edited the galleries straight from the card, and once the card was formatted all my re-editing abilities left with it.


Using the 9 steps above I know I can get images from Card to Client and have them readily available in case I need to re-edit anything.


Hope this helps! If you have any questions reach out to me on insta (@jesswintersphotography).


Cheers,

Jess