Lightroom: Import Select Source Solution

My number one Lightroom pet peeve is how slow Lightroom deals with selecting the import source when it’s on a network drive.

My workflow is:

1. Take the memory card out of the camera.
2. Insert the memory card into the memory card reader attached to the USB port on the computer.
3. Move the photos from the memory card to the network server. That’s because I want the photos to be backed up during the regular backup cycle.
4. Import the photos into Lightroom.

The catalog must on the local drive but the photos can be anywhere on the computer or on the network. The problem with having the photos on the network is that Lightroom is taking a huge amount of time to find them. Even when deselecting the including subfolders, it takes forever and ever. For testing purposes, I selected the correct root directory, and left for lunch. 40 minutes later, Lightroom still didn’t display the sub-directories.

It’s not the network being slow, the network is almost instantaneous. It’s a Lightroom’s problem.

My solution?

After months of frustrations, I finally realized that Lightroom offers to use the Explorer to select the correct directory.

The Other Source opens the Explorer. Then I use the Explorer to select the directory to import from.