Christina Keddie

For the "File > Place" question -- you go to the File menu at the top left of your Photoshop window, and then choose Place (or in PS CC, Place Embedded). No cutting, copying, or pasting -- just File > Place.

Also, only ever judge a file's color in a color-managed program (e.g., any Adobe program). The Windows picture viewer and other system programs are not color-managed. But yes, fix your color space issue, and then look at the files in PS.

Your files are in the wrong color space. Go through this troubleshooter to fix your program defaults, and then this one to fix the color space for any files you've already edited in PS.

I'd use the "Help with editing" subforum, which is where Damien is compiling his featured edits and PSDs anyways. And start your own thread there with your questions -- it'll save us the work of splitting the thread and creating a new thread for you.

Nope. I highly recommend the Print Sharpening class to learn how to sharpen for any type of print, including canvases! http://www.damiensymonds.net/trainingsharp.html

Well, just to knock out the low-hanging fruit first -- can you restart your computer and then see if that fixes your Bridge issues? 4GB of RAM is also lower than the recommended 8GB to run PS, so you're ultimately going to want to look into whether you can upgrade the RAM on your Mac.

Just to make sure Damien has all the info he needs, could you fill this out and paste the results here? Thanks!

Which operating system are you running on your Mac? Generally speaking, unchecking the "Open Photos for this device" checkbox near the top left of the Photos window will stop Photos from auto-playing when you plug in your phone.

Try the solution under Problem #2 in this article.

Worked like a charm! Thanks again!

Ah, that makes sense! I'll give that a whirl and let you know if I run into any problems. Thanks!!

Hi Erin, Could you take a look at the guidelines for asking these "how did they do that" questions, and refine your post? Thanks!

Hi Damo, I'm trying to figure out if and how I can tweak your save for web action to resize images so that they're all 1500px in width, regardless of orientation -- so my portrait orientation photos will be larger than my landscape orientation ones. (I think this is what I want to do for prepping images for a new website template; still working out whether that's really the best way to prep images for this responsive template, and I of course recognize that the sharpening step would have to be turned off given the size differences.) Is this possible? Or is this just a fool's game, and I should just prep them all for 1500px on the long edge? Thanks!

What happens when you get info on the files in question in Finder? Are you sure you've logged into your computer on an admin account? And does this happen with every file or just with some?

Here's a link to instructions on how to include images in a post.

Since you're on a Mac, hopefully you already have Time Machine running and backing everything up to an external hard drive on site. (If not, do set that up! It comes with your Mac, so you just have to plug in an external hard drive and get that up and running.) For cloud-based backups, the most popular services are Crashplan and Backblaze, which have some small differences that may make one better for your needs than another. You could also look into something like Carbonite. I'd recommend googling all of these options to read up on what they offer so you can decide what works best for your needs. (These are the simple, low-effort, comprehensive backup options. I'm sure Brian has more comprehensive recommendations and can walk you through those!)

It varies entirely depending on the photo, so please post one of yours so we can see what you're working with!

Query: gkakin, do you have Photoshop? Just asking since your user info block currently says you have no Adobe software.

What kind of Canon camera(s) are you shooting with? Some have micro-adjustment functionality so you can calibrate your lenses yourself, but not all.

Haha, good, I'm glad you don't have just 8GB on your hard drive!

Happy to help! And just a side note: 8GB of RAM is your working memory, what your computer uses to run programs. Your hard drive space is a different number altogether. In your "About this Mac" window, it's the "Storage" tab that tells you how much space you have on your hard drives. Feel free to come back with other questions! I can help with some of the Mac questions, though the Ask Brian section of this forum is a better place for those questions.

Hi Edie, can you post a screenshot of what it looks like when you try to import into LR? Do you get any kind of error messages, or just the gray boxes? Also, have you checked your LR for any updates? And presumably, you've already tried this (the best hit I can find on Google for this problem)?

Backing up your files is a very important task, and is entirely separate from LR. Repeat after me until it sticks: LIGHTROOM DOES NOT CONTAIN ANY OF YOUR FILES. Here's my uploading/importing/backup workflow, just to give you an idea of where your files live at all times: 1. Plug in my CF card into my card reader. (On El Capitan on a Mac, the Photos program will automatically open. Shut that sucker down right away and never let it see the light of day.) Double-click on the icon on my desktop for the card that pops up when it's inserted (or you can open Finder and navigate to the card manually), and copy the files over onto my hard drive. 2. First level backup: I have a 4TB external hard drive that stays plugged into my computer at all times, and I run Time Machine on it for backups. It automatically backs up all files on my computer. 3. Second level backup: I have Crashplan (a cloud-based backup system) running, that backs up all my files to the cloud. 4. Open Lightroom. In the Library module, click import, then navigate to the folder in the hard drive where I've saved my new raw files. Import the files into my LR catalog. IMPORTANT NOTE: all this is doing is pointing LR to those files where they exist in the folder. You are in no way bringing any files into LR itself. LIGHTROOM DOES NOT CONTAIN ANY OF YOUR FILES. 5. Use LR to do all my raw processing. Right-click a file and choose "edit in" to send it to PS for additional edits; when done with the PS edits, do a simple save (not a "save as") and the edited master file will pop up in my LR filmstrip right next to my original raw file. 6. As I'm editing, I 3-star my keeper master files. (I'm a wedding photographer, so I'm not always bringing every file into PS; so I'll 3-star either the master PSD that comes back after PS editing, or the final LR-processed file.) When I'm done editing the whole session or event, I filter to show just the 3-stars, and then export all the files -- I use LR to batch rename my files sequentially and save the final output JPGs into a new subfolder. 7. I also use LR to 4-star photos for blogging, and 5-star photos I'll want to put in my website portfolio. This makes it really easy for me to pull all my 5-star photos from a year when it comes time to update my portfolio, etc. 8. If I ever want to move files from my internal hard drive to an external hard drive, I would go into my LR Library module, select the folders, and move them to the external hard drive that way. Other important side notes: * You don't keep your *files* in a single catalog -- you keep the record of the LR edits you've made to each file. The files themselves are all on your hard drive. LR just points to those files. This, incidentally, is why it's important to do all your renaming and moving of folders in LR itself -- if you rename a folder or move it directly on your hard drive, you've broken the connection between the file and the LR catalog, and the next time you come back to the file in LR, it will throw you an error saying that the file is missing. * I'm on a desktop with 3TB of space on my internal hard drive, so I really have never felt the need to move files off my internal hard drive. The only real reason to do that is if you don't have enough space on your internal, and the lack of space is starting to impact your computer's performance. * Backing up requires multiple copies of your files -- simply moving them from your internal to an external isn't doing you any good, because the external is just as likely to die on you (and many externals are actually *more* likely to die than the hard drive in your Mac). Follow the 3-2-1 rule: at least three copies of all files, on at least two different types of media, and at least one copy off-site.

Also, and VERY importantly: no files ever exist "in" LR!! I'm not sure what you mean by being "hesitant to save to my hard drive from the get go," but your files necessarily reside on your hard drive from the get go. Your LR catalog simply records the steps you take in processing your files. It does not contain your physical files at all!

Your currently active catalog should remain on your internal hard drive. Any archived catalogs could be exported off your internal if you want to make more space, but again, you should only need to do this exporting business once a year or so. It does make sense to move your *files* off of your internal once you've finished a session. Simply use LR's Library to select the relevant folders and move them to your external hard drive. But keep them all within the current catalog!! And then once you're ready to delete files off of your hard drives, just go into LR's Library again, find the files (on either your internal or external hard drives) and delete the files.