Lightroom Importer

[dbvirago]

I've worked with a small directory structure as I test things. This brought all of my ratings, flags, colors and keywords over from Lightroom as expected. Now I want to work with a much larger set (not everything, but enough to get a real feel). I am creating a new database since I did so much experimenting before. I am at the point where it wants to know whether to use the LR importer.

I'm not sure of the pros/cons. My inclination is to start fresh, but I don't want to lose out on anything. FYI, in my current LR catalog, I have few collections.

Thanks again

[Mario]

The Lr Importer App is just a convenience feature. It basically tries to figure out which folders you have in your Lr catalog and then adds the same folders to your IMatch database.

You can do the same yourself, just add the same folders you managed in Lr to IMatch via drag & drop from Windows Explorer or via the "Add Folder" command from the toolbar in the Media & Folders view.
This gives you more control over the process.

The Lr importer app can import the proprietary flags, many collections and also your keyword list from your Lr catalog. This data is not available in the metadata of your files and hence has to be pulled manually from your catalog. This can save some effort, depending on how much of these you have used in Lr.

Tip: You can run the Lr Importer only to import flags or collections or your keyword list at any time, after adding your files to IMatch in the normal way.

Note that Adobe does not document all of this and the Lr importer app is based on me analyzing catalogs I have created myself or which have been sent to me by other users. The app generally works great, but might not for every catalog created by the various Lr versions over the years. Adobe naturally has no intention to make it easy to switch from Lr to other applications. Quite the opposite, actually.

[dbvirago]

Thanks. I went ahead and added the folders, thinking that, if anything, this would give me a cleaner set. I don't think I am missing anything important from LR.

fyi, I just posted over on DPReview about the much better search iMatch did than LR. Also impressed with the speed of cataloging 47K images.

[Mario]

Thanks for reporting back at {url=https://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/62747600]dpreview.com[/url]

Your experiences (and my answers to your questions) may help others to learn about IMatch and if it may be a software than can help them to organize their images and other files better and easier.