Organize your-photos

THE
COMPANION
EBOOK TO HELPYOU
GETYOUR DIGITAL LIFE ORGANIZED
ORGANIZEYOUR PHOTOS
THE THREE-LEVEL SYSTEM | TREY RATCLIFF

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AUTHOR & PUBLISHER :
Trey Ratcliff
COPY EDITOR :
Luke Lakatosh
TEMPLATE DESIGNER:
Griffin Stewart
Copyright © Trey Ratcliff & Flatbooks
www.flatbooks.com
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by
any means without the prior written permission of the publisher.
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I’m a warm-hearted, old-school gentleman
explorer with really cool toys.
I’m quite a humble person, really, but I know
that people want to know more about me.
I live a strange, unplanned, and unexpected
life of photography and adventure. I do my
best to balance this with my family, who is
starting to accompany me on more and
more adventures as the kids get older.
If you’d like to learn more about me and
keep up with my ongoing adventures, be
sure to visit my website at
www.StuckInCustoms.com.
Trey Ratcliff
ABOUT TREY RATCLIFF
Trey Ratcliff
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AREYOU PERSON #1 OR #2?
Person
#1
You have a real life. You’re taking a ton of photos. You take
them because you feel like you should be. These may be
important moments that are slipping away. A few months (or
years) ago, you came to the haunting realization that your
photos are hopelessly unorganized. But you are soldiering on,
taking photos. The litany becomes, “Someday, someday, you
will get organized,” and you’d rather have the photos available
when that day comes. That day is now here!
Person #1 or #2? Yes, there is a
system and solution - I’ll describe
it on the next page!
Person
#2
You love taking photos. You may be an enthusiastic amateur
photographer or a full-on pro. You take a wild mix of family
photos and landscape photos (or ﬂowers/birds/girls/etc.). You
use an iPhone/Android, a DSLR, and sometimes a compact
camera that you carry around for convenience. You are a pretty
organized person, but you notice month after month that you
are taking more and more photos. You feel a bit like the Dutch
Boy and the Dyke, plugging your ﬁngers into little holes, but you
can see the ever-rising tide and it is scary. You have a system,
kinda, but it is ripping at the seams. This is a worry that pops up
more often than you want... You just want to be able to take a
lot of photos and not worry that they will forever live in a soup of
“uncategorized.” You think there must be a solution and system
out there for you...
INTRODUCTIONORGANIZEYOUR PHOTOS
5

THE SYSTEM - DIAL TOYOUR OWN LEVEL
This system is amazing because you can dial it up to your level of obsession.
RELAXED
Some people are openly relaxed in their approach - some might even say lazy. That’s cool. You may want to stay at
Level 1 to get just-enough organization to keep your digital-photo life on the rails. The Level 1 system below will help
you enjoy your relaxed lifestyle while maintaining some sense of organization.
MODERATE
Or maybe you’re pretty dang organized and just need a system! Then you’re probably Level 2. You can move to Level 2
of the system and really get your life in order so you’re always on the leading edge, never missing a beat. Level 2 is
perfect if you have time to get things properly organized for the now and the future. You’ll be able to sit back and
observe your organization with pride.
OBSESSIVE
You’re a world-killer. In fact, you’re so damned obsessed with perfection that you haven’t even bothered messing with
your photos because you haven’t had the time to train your Eye of Sauron upon the problem. You COULD come up
with a system of your own, but you’re too busy doing other Type-A things. You rely on good advice and good systems to
get you through life, and you are ready to Fully Understand my system and then Fully Implement my system because
you recognize, wisely, that I’ve spent thousands of hours coming up with something awesome. (By the way, thank you
for trusting me - that is awesome of you... we’ll get your photos organized.)
6
Level
1
Level
2
Level
3

PHILOSOPHY BEHIND THE THREE-LEVEL
SYSTEM
The tools of technology are fungible. Your system will change
now, and will change again. I consider this a lifelong dialog, and
I hope you come to understand this in the next few paragraphs.
This is not like learning to use your new remote control. You
don’t have some throat-bearded geek in a blue shirt telling you,
“Okay ma’am, click here if you want to switch to your DVD
player.” That is a “one-time” system. Learn it once, and you
can do it forever.
When we’re talking about organizing your digital photo life,
we’re not talking about a “one-time” system. I do honestly wish
it was that easy. What we’re talking about is a system that
evolves as technology evolves, okay? You are the reed that
bends. You are the reed that bends.
I will describe a system to you, but be ready for this system to
evolve as the years march on. Time stops for no man, and time
stops for no version of Lightroom. Your photos may be on your
hard drive now and you may have a backup on the cloud, but
maybe this will change in five years. Maybe everything will be
on the cloud. WHO THE HELL KNOWS? But, stay with me as
these years progress. We’ll figure it out together.
MY PROBLEM TOO
This is a problem for me too. I have tens of thousands of
photos. Some are personal, but most are landscape photos.
Some photos are less than average. Some have potential.
Some are really, really, awesome and they bring incalculable
pleasure into my life. I make sure that I have my photos secure
locally and in the cloud.
Since digital photos are a major issue, I’ve worked hard to
come up with a system that works for me. I’m happy to share
this system with you.
THE CLOUD - WHAT IS IT AND IS IT SAFE?
“The Cloud” refers to the Internet. There are many online
websites that offer you backup solutions for your important files,
and it’s a pretty good argument that your photos are among the
most important. I’ll recommend a few cloud solutions herein, but
these are quite interchangeable nowadays. For example, I
recommend Google as a backup solution, but if you have
7

familiarity with Flickr, then, by all means, feel free to use Flickr
instead.
For the purposes of this book, "The Cloud" basically refers to
using the Internet to back up and store your photos. You can
see below several reasons that I use another service called
SmugMug. The method is what matters -- the website services
are mostly interchangeable.
Personally, I use two cloud services: SmugMug and Google. I
use them for different purposes, but I like the extra peace of
mind knowing that I have two cloud backups working in concert.
Is it safe? I think so. I trust many of my most precious photos to
Google’s secure servers. And no, Google does NOT pay me to
say these things.
Why do I trust the cloud? Well, having trust in web services
nowadays is kind of like having trust in real people. Imagine
going through life and never trusting anyone - it would be a
hellish life! Once you choose to make the Internet part of your
life, you might as well choose a few partners in which to place
your trust. As for me, I think Google is going to be around for a
long time, and I don’t think they have any interest whatsoever in
“stealing” my photos. It’s not how Google makes its money.
They make money from selling Adwords, so the idea that they
may steal my photos to make money is absurd. I know there
are many paranoid people out there, but this is largely
unfounded.
I put many of my most important photos in private directories on
Google Drive so that only I can see them. For some of the
family albums, I have it set up so the family can see them too.
In the big picture, it is important to have your photos out on the
Internet somewhere in case of a disaster. These include, but
are not limited to: someone stealing your computer and all
backups, ﬁre, ﬂood, incompetence, losing all backups, etc., etc.
If you also have copies of your most precious photos in the
cloud, you can always get them back later!
Here are some photos of my children when they were younger. I can sleep peacefully
knowing that no matter what happens, they are safely backed up in multiple locations
at home and in the clou
8

THE THREE-LEVEL SYSTEM
In this system, I’m Level 3. I’m pretty OCD about organizing my
photos. I’m so OCD, in fact, that I was able to break my system
into three different levels of “extremeness” to account for the
major personality types.
I appreciate that most people do not consider photography to
be one of the major forces in their life, but I certainly recognize
the need most have in organizing their photos. Each month,
everyone takes more and more photos. It’s all going in one
direction. In a few years, believe it or not, you’ll be taking 10x or
100x as many photos of everything around you! I think a
system is very important. Otherwise your brain will feel
confused and cluttered, and you don’t need that.
With the Three-Level System, you can level up, just like you’re
playing a game.
You can simply begin at Level 1 (Relaxed). You’ll be very, very
happy and feel inﬁnitely more organized than before! I hope this
brings a great happiness and peace to your life.
Once you have that squared away, it moves smoothly into
Level 2 (Moderate). This is a Very Organized digital life. Oh
yes. You will be way above average. You’ll walk around the
streets of your town and know that you have everything in
order. Not only will you feel digitally aware and secure, but
you’ll be excited to take more photos to add to your collections!
You’ll no longer hesitate to take
new photos, wondering if you’ll
ever actually get it organized.
This is the level for you if you and your partner are both taking
photos, because this adds a bit of complexity.
Level 2 is More Than Enough for most people, and you’ll be
very happy if you plateau at Level 2 for the rest of your life.
But maybe you are part of that 5% of the population that wants
Level 3 (OBSESSIVE). If you are this type of person, then you
are this type of person UNAPOLOGETICALLY. You are at
peace with this quirk of your personality that other people ﬁnd
strange and off-putting. If you’re Level 2, then you’re reading
this paragraph and thinking, “Yeah, I know some obsessive
people that are REALLY annoying. Thank you. I’ll just stay at
THE THREE-LEVEL SYSTEMORGANIZEYOUR PHOTOS
10

Level 2 and be happy.” If you’re Level 3 OBSESSIVE, then
you’re reading this and thinking,
OH MY GOD GIVE ME A SYSTEM
THAT WILL MAKE THE DIGITAL
ANGELS CRY.
I will.
REGARDING FAMILIES
In some ways, the problem is more complex because you have
multiple people in the family taking photos on multiple devices.
Each person probably already has different syncing habits too.
For example, I’m always syncing all the time. As soon as I am
in range of power or wifi, my cameras and phones are getting
charged up and everything is right in the world again. My wife,
on the other hand, is constantly below 30% charge on all her
devices. I don’t know how she can live like this, but it’s her way.
So it is what it is. And so I have to be the reed that bends and
have a workflow that fits the whole family. We’ll talk more about
this case as well.
PHOTOS AND VIDEOS
I talk all about how to organize your photos in here. But
everything is applicable to videos as well. So, rather than me
always saying “photos (or videos),” I’ll just be referring to
photos or images from here on out. It’s the same system.
Here is a close up of my Lightroom Catalog. You can see all my photos & videos
stored there on the drive named Lightroom Peg.
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Get The Video Today .
VIDEO COMPANION TO ORGANIZEYOUR PHOTOS!
Do you also have the “Organize Your Photos!” video? I recommend it!
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REQUIRED SOFTWARE: ADOBE LIGHTROOM (OR
APPLE’S APERTURE).
The bulk of this tutorial will focus on Adobe Lightroom. Pretty
much everything in Lightroom can be done in Aperture as well.
Maybe for your whole life you’ve just used File Manager or
Finder or whatever to organize your ﬁles in a hierarchy of
folders. You understand that and it is safe for you. Lightroom
goes way beyond that. Yes, your photos will still be in
hierarchical folders, but you’ll never have to deal with them in
that way again after the initial import.
You don’t want to organize your photos by a hierarchy of
folders.
You want to organize your photos
by their importance in your life
and their quality.
Thus, you need Lightroom.
Why I use Lightroom:
I prefer Lightroom instead of Aperture because there
appear to be more updates on a regular basis. (One
time Apple went well over a year without an update,
and that scared a lot of users.)
I use other Adobe products, and I think there is a
good integration between them. I expect this
integration to get stronger as the years march on.
Lightroom is not only good for organizing photos, but
it is also good for processing photos.
By the way, I have some Lightroom Presets that are
extremely popular for processing photos that you
may enjoy.
12
OR
Get Trey’s Lightroom Presets .
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REQUIRED HARDWARE:ENOUGH HARD DRIVE SPACE!
This is a tricky one! I can’t tell you exactly how much space you
need, because I don’t know how many photos you have. You
probably have your photos currently spread across many
different locations. One of the first things to do is to get them all
into one spot.
I’ll provide some hardware recommendations below if you need
more hard drive space.
First, let me tell you why I think a single drive is important. Yes,
it is possible (and many people do this) to spread your photos
across multiple drives. But I think that particular method isn’t
very good because it is confusing. You have to remember (and
constantly remind yourself of) what photos are on what drive.
You have to label things and worry, and then your backup
system becomes even more complex. I have enough things to
think about without stacks of drives in my home and my brain
trying to remember what drive is what!
There is no need to have multiple drives when your current
needs can be met with a single drive. Even me, yours truly, with
about 4 terabytes of files can fit it all on one drive.
For the top-end hardware recommendation, I prefer the
Promise Pegasus drive with a Thunderbolt connection. Note
this is only on the Mac. The Thunderbolt connection is so
insanely fast that it is like having an SSD! Another suggestion
along these lines would be a Drobo with a Thunderbolt
connection. A third suggestion is the LaCie drives which go
beyond 1 TB.
Otherwise, I’d recommend getting whatever your budget can
safely afford that is about 50% bigger than your current library.
If, for example, you realize you have about 300GB of photos,
go ahead and make sure the hard drive you’re putting them on
has at least 500GB so you can grow into it.
If you don’t have enough internal hard drive space, you’ll have
to get an external drive, like a USB drive. But here’s the thing.
Don’t just get one. You’ll have to get two. Part of this system
requires a backup that will be stored in another location. This
may be an expense you were not expecting, but this is your
data, your photos, your family, your life. If you lose it all, you will
feel a horrible sense of loss... so let’s not let that happen, okay?
13
See Trey’s Home Office Tools
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Level
1

15
LEVEL 1ORGANIZEYOUR PHOTOS
LEVEL 1: RELAXED.
Okay I’ll get you started with the bare minimum. Since you
openly admit you’re somewhat lazy about these things (hey no
shame in that), then I just get straight to business. If you want to
read more about the reasoning, philosophy, and evolving
practice of organization, see the introductory material in Level 2.
UNDERSTAND THE FUNNEL.
You have a lot of pictures that go into the funnel, but
only the most important and highest quality photos
will come out of the funnel. This is the system we will work on.
In the beginning you’ll have a ton of photos, and then as we go
through the workﬂow, more and more will be whittled away until
you are left with the best. You’ll never delete a single photo, but
you’ll end up with the cream of the crop.
ALL THE PHOTOSYOU’VE
EVER TAKEN
Your best Photos
Ready to share!
THE FUNNEL
FILL THE FUNNEL.
Get all your photos into one place on your computer.
Don’t open up Lightroom yet. We’re just trying to get
all your photos in one place, preparing them to import into
Lightroom.
Now, make a folder on your desktop called “To Import.”
Put everything in there. Don’t worry about directories. If
there happen to be directories already, then that is ﬁne.
That folder will be one huge mess of all kinds of images.
You can have some stuff in the root, some buried in
folders that you tried to organize before, etc.
Right click on that To Import folder and check the size. Do
you have enough space on your current drive (or perhaps
you have already realized this while trying to copy it all
into a certain spot)? If you don’t, you need more hard
drive space so you can store the whole library in a certain
STEP
1
STEP
2

16
location. See the hard drive recommendations in the
previous section to see what to get so that you can store
the entire library in a single location.
Make sure you have 50% extra space on the hard drive.
For example, if your “To Import Folder” is 200GB, and you
only have 30GB free space, then that won’t cut it. Your
final resting place will need to have at least 300GB so you
have room to grow for a bit.
 Note:
This isn’t a How-To-Use Lightroom tutorial, so I will forgo
every little detail - if you have any questions, feel free to ask
in our Stuck In Customs Community on G+
10,000+ members
IMPORT EVERYTHING INTO
LIGHTROOM.
Open up Lightroom
When creating your Library, make sure it is on the hard
drive with all the extra room described above. The
“Library” file is a .LRCAT file that contains a directory of all
your photos. The photos themselves will go to the same
hard drive. So, these things live together and that keeps it
nice and organized. Give it a name you like such as “My
Library”
Go to File > Import Photos and Videos
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STEP
3

ORGANIZEYOUR PHOTOS LEVEL 1
LIGHTROOM IMPORT SCREEN
You can use this as reference while going through this next part.
1
2
3
1
2
3
This is where you can select your source - where the
photos are importing from.
There are a few different import options. I recommend
using the “Move” option for this step of the system.
This is the destination selection. Make sure this is 30%+
bigger than all of your ﬁles put together.
Here is how I got to the the folder on my
desktop. Yours may be slightly different.
Here I have chosen “Macintosh HD 2” as the destination. I have
left the Organize drop-down on its default of By date and the
default date format as well so it will automatically folder my
image by date.
Here in the top menu, I have selected “Move” so that new
photos are moved from the old location to the new one.
KEY

18
Use the menu on the left to navigate to the place on your
hard drive where you collected all the photos and click on
that directory. 1
Now you must choose the destination. That area is over on
the right. You can choose the default settings, but make
sure that it is going to the hard drive with all the extra
space from above. I would recommend you choose
“Move” from the top of the menu so that the photos are
moved from the old location to the new location. 2 , 3
Click Import and wait while everything is imported!
As we move forward in this tutorial we will use the below
image to indicate where in the Lightroom interface we are
referencing.
Top Bar
Left Bar Right Bar
Bottom Bar
Main Viewer
MAKE TWO COLLECTIONS: BEST
FAMILY PHOTOS, BEST PERSONAL
PHOTOS
Over on the left, you’ll have all your photos under “Folders”
- and you can click around in there some to familiarize
yourself with the locations of everything.
There is an area below called “Collections” - click on the
little “+” sign to add a collection.
Make a collection called “Best Family Photos” then
another called “Best Personal Photos”.
NOTE:
It’s important that from now on when you want to MOVE ﬁles
from one place to another that you use Lightroom! Don’t use
Explorer/Finder outside of Lightroom. This is your catalog,
and it needs to keep track of the location of everything inside
Lightroom. You are free to re-organize the folders and ﬁles for
your photos -- just be sure to remember to do it in Lightroom.
STEP
4

19
MOVE THE BEST PHOTOS FROM THE
LIBRARY INTO THESE COLLECTIONS
Look, you have a lot of photos. I can’t even see how many you
have, and I know you have a lot.
Let’s agree with this idea:
Not all photos are equal.
What we’re going to do is make sure the best ones rise to the
top while the others are safely archived. Sound good? You
might have 50 photos of a birthday party, but let’s focus on
picking the 2 or 3 best that will stand the test of time. If you
keep all 50 at the same level of importance, then this is no
longer interesting and your life-in-photos will become a blur of
randomness.
We’re going to go through ALL your photos and separate the
wheat from the chaff. Remember, nothing will be deleted --
we’re just going to pluck out the favorites and put them into
those two collections we just made: “Best Family Photos” and
“Best Personal Photos”.
A. Select the top level directory on the left under the
Folders.
In this example, mine is called 2013, but yours may be different.
What is a “Collection” anyway?
What is a “Collection” anyway? A Collection is a way to organize your photos independent of the ﬁle structure. It does not
make a copy of your photo - it merely is a pointer to the actual photo. Think of it as a “Playlist” in iTunes. You can put a
song in many playlists, but you are not copying it around to multiple places.
STEP
5

20
B. Down at the bottom, make sure you are in Grid View
and the Sort is on “Capture Time.” If you’re not in Grid
View, just press G or click on that little Grid icon at the
bottom.
C. Now we need to promote your favorite photos to 5
Stars while leaving the others at 0 stars. Note this
doesn’t mean the 0 star is a terrible photo - it’s just not
a highlight. So, go ﬁnd the ﬁrst photo that ranks
among the best and click on it. Press 5 on the
keyboard, and it will become a 5-star photo. Easy!
Now, take your time and go through all the photos in
your library and mark your favorite ones with the 5-
star rating. This step will take a while! In fact, it is the
most time-consuming step of them all! But look -- you
gotta go through your photos and organize them
right? This means pulling out the best photos, and this
is the time when you do that.
D. Okay now that you are done with that monster step
(good job!!), go down to the bottom and change the
Sort to “Rating”. All of the 5 stars should be up at the
top.
E. Now, you will drag the 5 star family photos into the
collection called “Best Family Photos” and the others
into “Best Personal Photos”. In fact, at this point, you
may have realized those two categories are not right
for your particular life. That’s okay. Maybe you only
have one collection, or maybe you have three or more
collections.

21
F. Click on one of your collections and behold - the best
of the best!
IMPORTANT
Remember that you will do something very similar to this
next time you import new photos into Lightroom. I make a
habit of importing new photos, then going through and
giving the best ﬁve stars before dragging them into
collections. Remember that at the top under “Catalog” is
Last Import, which allows you just to look at the most
recently imported images.
BACK UPYOUR PHOTOS LOCALLY
Your eggs are now organized, but they are all in
one basket! We need to make a copy of those
eggs.
Note:
You should rinse and repeat this six step process every two
months or so.
1. Get your second hard drive ready. If you remember,
you need to make sure that second drive has enough
room on it and is just used for backups. After you
complete the backup, you will be moving this hard
drive to another room, or even better, another
location entirely, so don’t pick a drive that you are
using for other things.
2. On that hard drive, create a directory called
“Lightroom Backup”
STEP
6

22
3. Go to Lightroom and right-click (on a Mac two-finger-
click) on the top level of your directory structure under
folder and choose the option that shows the location
of the files. On the Mac, for example, the option is
“Show in Finder”
4. Select that folder then choose Copy from the menu.
5. Navigate to your backup drive, open the folder, then
click Paste from the menu.
6. Now you need to make a copy of your directory file -
the .LRCAT file. Go find it under Lightroom >
Catalog Settings. Inside there, click the “Show”
button and it will take you right to that
location. Copy the .LRCAT file over to
your backup drive.
Lightroom > Catalog Settings
Catalog Settings window

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BACK UPYOUR PHOTOS
TO THE CLOUD
This step might take a long time the first
time you do it because there are so many
photos. In the future, it will be incremental
and faster.
Now, I hesitate to give you an exact step-
by-step sequence here because
depending upon the “cloud” service you
choose, you will have different
experiences. However, I will recommend
two different services, depending upon
your needs:
SmugMug because it is a great
place to put up your portfolio
(monthly cost but unlimited
storage)
Google Drive because it is free (or
relatively inexpensive) and easy.
REGARDING SMUGMUG
SmugMug is great for me because I can
take all my favorite photos and display
them in a beautiful way. There are many
other side-benefits too, such as:
Unlimited uploads
Ability for me or others to order
prints
Easy web interface for
uploading and organizing my
photos
I know many photographers who also use
the site to make a bit of extra money on
the side. For example, if you take photos
at your kid’s soccer game, you can put
them all on here and have them available
to sell to the other parents. It is a very
inexpensive (and fun!) way to open a little
storefront for your new photography
hobby.
REGARDING GOOGLE DRIVE
The cost of Google Drive changes based
on how much space you are using.
These specs are always changing, so I
will not put the cost structure here.
However, you will get quite a lot for free.
If you have more photos than that will
hold, there will be a monthly fee required.
All of this is available on the Google Drive
website.
Open up a web browser and log into
your Google Drive.
On Google Drive, make a directory
called “Photos Backup”.
Click Upload and then navigate to
your directory that has all of your
Lightroom Photos and your .LRCAT
file.
Choose everything and click
Upload.
Read SmugMug Review Visit Google Drive Site
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STEP
7

24
(BONUS): MAKE THE PHOTOS PRETTIER!
See the end of the last section in this eBooks for the
Bonus area entitled Make Your Photos Prettier to
learn more.
LEVEL 1: MOVING FORWARD AND
MAINTENANCE
Don’t worry. It gets easier from here on out! :)
Now comes the part where you adopt new processes into your
lifestyle to ensure that things remain moderately organized and
backed up as your weeks, months, and years continue onward.
Having this system will really help you achieve a more zen
mindset than you have achieved hitherto.
I fully expect you to have a slightly different situation in your
environment. I invite you to mix and match the methods below
to fit your specific needs. For example, your mate may take
photos with their tablet and their phone, so you will need to
adjust the backup system as necessary. However, the steps
below include all the important foundational steps to get you
there.
Also, this method again assumes you are using Google as your
backup solution. Because Cloud Backup is an important part of
the process, I have to include steps in this way, so I will
continue to use Google as an example. You will have to make
slight changes if you want to use Apple or Flickr or Amazon S3.
1. Take photos with multiple devices. This is part of life
now, yes? Yes. I assume you are already doing this
step, so I didn’t really need to include it. But it feels
good to complete step 1 without even trying, yes?
2. If you have Android or iOS device, make sure that all
your devices have “Auto-backup” enabled through
Google+ app. In most cases, this means that once
your devices are within range of wifi, it will start
uploading all your images to the cloud.
STEP
9

25
• One very cool thing about the Google+ Photo auto-
backup is that it will automatically choose
“Highlights” for you. For example, if you have
multiple photos of people, the “Highlight” will be the
one where everyone is smiling. Or if you take
multiple photos of a landscape, it will try to select the
best for you. This is nice because it is the Cloud with
a layer of machine-learning intelligence that will just
get better over time.
3. You have a decision to make now! It is likely that your
mobile devices are mostly taking “casual” photos that
are important to you but not that important. This is the
case for me. I take photos with a bigger camera (a
Sony system as of the time of writing this), but I also
take photos with many mobile devices. For me, Cloud
backup on Google+ is enough for me, and I have no
need to ALSO copy this to my local Lightroom. So,
this is a decision you need to make. If you also want
a copy of your mobile ﬁles locally, you can simply use
Google+ to Download All back to your local computer
then import them into Lightroom. This step is entirely
up to you. Again, personally, I do not do that.
4. This step has to do with your more “serious” photos -
or at least those that come out of your DSLR or
compact camera that is not automatically uploading
to the Cloud. These may be much more interesting
photos of the landscape or family, for example. These
are the kind of photos you want to import into
Lightroom. So, get in the habit of going out to shoot
photos then importing them into Lightroom. Right
after you import into Lightroom, do the same process
as before where you go through and mark your
favorites with 5 Stars. Then, select all the 5 Stars and
drag them into the appropriate collections.
Simple, yes? Yes! If you have any questions, you are invited to
join the Stuck In Customs Community where you can ask
questions to fellow members, compare notes and experiences,
and more!

Level
2

27
LEVEL 2: MODERATE.
You want to be extra-organized and are ready to take a few
extra steps to ensure your system is complete. This is a system
that is “good enough” without being obsessive. I would
recommend Level 2 to the advanced amateur that wants to
have a complete system with a fully-realized organizational
system.
This level has a defined workflow. If you that want to keep track
of what you are currently processing and have a fully-functional
funnel system, there are important steps below.
If you are a professional that also travels a lot, I would
recommend moving to Level 3.
STEP
1 - STEP
8
See previous section. Everything remains the same for the first
8 steps.
CREATE SOME NEW COLLECTIONS TO
HELPYOU PROCESS THE PHOTOS
Now we’re really getting into the workflow.
The idea here is that you will have three states of your photo if
you plan on processing them. What do I mean by
“Processing”? I mean that you can take your photo that just
comes right out of your camera and you can just leave it alone,
or you can use Lightroom to “Process” it and make it look
better! It’s very easy and fun to do. If you do want to process
your photos, then this requires a few steps, or a “workflow” so
that photos go through a state of being unprocessed to
processed.
We’ll keep track of them in collections. A photo will either be
awaiting processing one day and be “Unprocessed.” A photo
that you are currently processing we will say is “Currently
Processing.” And a photo that has completed processing can
then be moved into a final collection. Below, I have envisioned
two possible collections for your final photos such as “Best
Family Photos” or “Best Personal Photos.”
STEP
9

28
A. Create a collection called “Unprocessed.”
B. Create a collection called “Currently Processing/”
C. Move all of your unprocessed ﬁles into the collection
called “Unprocessed”. If you have a bunch of family
photos, you may wish to separate those into a new
collection that is called “Family Unprocessed”.
Personally, I do this because I have so many
Unprocessed other photos that I don’t want them to
be confused with the family photos.
Now, moving forward, here is the procedure for processing
photos:
A. Choose some photos in “Unprocessed” that you want
to work on.
B. Select the photos, then drag them into “Currently
Processing.”
C. Delete them from “Unprocessed”. Remember, you
are not deleting the actual photo -- you’re just
removing them from the Unprocessed collection.
D. Process the photos. When you are complete, remove
them from the “Currently Processing” folder.
E. Put the completed photos into either “Best Family
Photos” then another called “Best Personal Photos” -
depending on the situation.
F. Delete the photos from the “Currently Processing”
collection.

29
ORGANIZEYOUR PHOTOS IN
LIGHTROOM BY HIERARCHY
Because you want to have extra organization, you’ll
need to have a system that enables you to ﬁnd photos after the
fact.
You can do this in two ways. One is by giving the imported
folder a name that makes sense for the actual event. The other
is via tagging. We’ll do both. First, let’s start with the folder
hierarchy.
A. You’ll notice that when you imported the photos in Step
3 in the first section, they simply went into folders
where the name is a date. For example, you may have
a folder under 2014 that is “2014-07-07”. Well that is
great, but it doesn’t tell you what happened on that
day. Go into each date, right-click on it and choose
“Rename”.
B. Keep the date, but give it a name that makes sense
like, “2013-04-05 Ethan’s Birthday” or “2014-09-05
Family Trip to Vegas”
Note:
I’ve noticed something interesting about time and human
memory. I notice that whenever I import something that I just
photographed, I know exactly what the event is. I can also look
a few days or weeks prior and generally remember the event
around it. But this system falls apart after a few years. For
example, if I want to go pull out a photo from a trip to Florida a
few years ago, I realize I have no idea what month it even
happened in. Step C will help you remember.
C. Do you have a trip that spans multiple days? Make a
folder at the top level and then drag each sub-folder
into it. For example, if I was in Vegas for multiple
days in September of 2014, I would make a new
folder under “2014” called “2014-09-05 Family Trip to
Vegas”. Inside of there, I might drag 3 or 4 folders,
each of which contains images from that trip. So
organized!
Note:
The date is important to keep because this is how it will
alphabetize in the listing.
STEP
10

30
STEP 11: ORGANIZEYOUR PHOTOS IN
LIGHTROOM BY TAGS
Tags are a good way to keep track of photos independant of
folders. For example, you might have a “Beach” tag for photos
that are in two different directories. Then, searching for the
word “Beach” will bring back multiple photos from multiple
directories. This is handy when you want to find something
without having to dig down into every directory.
A. To tag a photo or a series of photos, first select one
or more photos.
B. Over on the right, look for the “Keywording” area.
Open it up, and type in the tags that you want.
MAKE A GLOBAL FOLDER CALLED
“LIGHTROOM PHOTOS”
Why do you want to have a global folder? There are many
reasons. First, it’s cleaner and more organized to have your
entire Lightroom Library under a single folder. Second, it is very
easy to move the folder and create a backup. Third, if
Lightroom ever has trouble finding your photos (which is rare,
but you may click on something accidently and the Lightroom
catalog can no longer find the photos), then you can just point
the master folder to this “Lightroom Photos” directory, and then
it will automagically find all your folders!
1. Under the “Folders” area on the left, click the little “+”
2. Choose “Add Folder...”
3. Type in the new folder name “Lightroom Photos”
4. Under there, drag each of your Year Photos, such as
2011, 2012, 2013, etc.
STEP
11
STEP
12

31
MAINTENANCE
See Level 1 in the ﬁrst section for details on Moving Forward
and Maintenance. The only exception is now you are putting
ﬁles that you want to work on in the future into the
“Unprocessed” folder
Alone, In Iceland

Level
3

33
LEVEL 3: OBSESSIVE.
You are a professional who occasionally has to travel. You
process photos on the road, but do not have access to your full
library while traveling. You want to process a few photos on the
road, but when you get back home, you need a system to make
sure everything is synced up.
Personally, I am Level 3. I will tell you the exact steps I follow.
Another important thing to remember is that I personally have
multiple terabytes of data in my mother-lode catalog. This
makes it impractical to travel with all my photos. All of my
terabytes are on a Promise Pegasus drive, which weighs about
20 pounds and is quite unwieldy. It is silly for me to travel with
it, so I end up having a travel-solution that is light and flexible.
STEP
1 - STEP
12
See previous sections. Everything remains the same. You’ll
notice that Level 1 has steps 1-8, and Level 2 has steps 9-12
added on top of that.
PREPARE FOR TRAVEL
1. Make sure your laptop has enough room to hold all
the photos you’ll be taking, or make sure your
external hard drive has extra room.
Note:
There are so many exceptions. If you are indeed able to fit
your entire Lightroom Library on a single external drive and
it’s not too cumbersome to carry, then, by all means, just
take your external drive and ignore the rest of this! Of
course, if you’ve been following all the backup steps in the
previous sections, then you have a copy of everything at
your home-base anyway. You’ll be fine.
2. Open up Lightroom on your laptop. You should have
an empty directory structure if this is a new computer.
If it is the same computer, no matter.
3. Go to File > New Catalog. Name your new catalog
“Travel Lightroom Catalog”
STEP
13

34
4. Create a new master directory using “Create
Folder...” inside the Folders panel on the left. Call it
“Travel Lightroom Photos”. This is the directory that
will contain all your ﬁles and folders for your trip.
5. Create some new collections. You’ll have “Laptop
Unprocessed”, “Laptop Currently Processing,”
“Laptop Best Personal Photos,” and “Laptop Best
Family Photos.” (Feel free to not use the “Family” one
if you don’t need it!)
PREPARE FOR TRAVEL
Travel and take photos. When you import, import
them all into the folders above. Also take time to go
through and star the best ones. Drag those into Unprocessed.
As you process photos on the road, go ahead and complete
them and drag them into “Laptop Best Personal Photos” and
“Laptop Best Family Photos” then remove them from
Unprocessed. Watch the video for more information on this.
Note:
This will help a lot on the road! If you are like me, you
sometimes end up processing photos on the road. This will
help keep those organized for the later step of integrating
this catalog back into the main trunk at home.
SYNC UP AFTER TRAVEL
Now you are back home and you need to complete
the circle of syncing.
1. Get on your main computer (or use your laptop) and
open up your main catalog.
2. Choose File > Import from Another Catalog
STEP
13
STEP
14

35
3. Go and find and choose your “Travel Lightroom
Catalog” -- which may be on an external drive or on a
laptop. Personally, I prefer to keep it on a Thunderbolt
drive, so this import process is speedy.
4. Everything will be imported, and you’ll see some new
collections there -- they look the same as your
current collections, but they’ll be preceded by the
word “Laptop”.
5. Drag all the photos from the “Laptop” collections into
their counterparts inside the above catalog. For
example, drag all the photos from “Laptop
Unprocessed” to “Unprocessed”.
Ta-da! Now you are done. This is exactly what I do. Feel free to
watch the video I made to see the same thing as above in
action!
MAINTENANCE
See Level 1 in the first section for moving forward and
maintenance. The only exception is now you are putting files
that you want to work on in the future into the “Unprocessed”
folder.
MAKEYOUR PHOTOS PRETTIER!
First, I recommend my Lightroom Presets! These are a great
way to get your photos to look awesome with just one click.
before after
Get Trey’s Lightroom Presets .
________________________________
________________________________
________________________________

SOFTWARE REVIEWS
Check out Trey’s favorite software, how he uses and
save some money on the purchase using discount
codes where possible!
PHOTO EDITING TOOLS
See the photo editing tools and presets Trey ﬁnds
invaluable.
ONLINE PHOTOGRAPHY TUTORIALS
For more information about Trey’s post-processing
“process”, please check out his tutorials.
EBOOKS ON TIPS & TECHNIQUES
Trey has written a lot of books on how to get started
and improve your photography.
CAMERA REVIEWS
Trey hosts some of the foremost photographers,
artists and just generally cool people from all over
the world.
PHOTOGRAPHY WORKSHOPS
You can join Trey for one of his photography
workshops at unique locations around the world!
FURTHER LEARNINGORGANIZEYOUR PHOTOS
37
See Trey’s Software Reviews
________________________________
________________________________
________________________________
See Trey’s Editing Tools
________________________________
________________________________
________________________________
See Trey’s Video Tutorials
________________________________
________________________________
________________________________
Check Out Trey’s eBooks
________________________________
________________________________
________________________________
See Trey’s Camera Reviews
Check Out Trey’s Workshops
________________________________
________________________________
________________________________
________________________________
________________________________
________________________________

LEARN MORE
TAKEYOUR PHOTOGRAPHY TO THE NEXT LEVEL
www.stuckincustoms.com
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