 Today, I want to talk about the number one mistake new Lightroom users make when they're importing their photographs. What's up nerds? My name is Adam. Welcome back to another photo nerds university tutorial. Today I want to talk about the number one mistake that most new Lightroom users make when importing their photographs. So the reality is that you're going to import your photos from one of three devices. You're either going to import your photos directly from a camera, you're going to import your photos from an external hard drive or you're going to import your photos from a memory card. And it really doesn't matter which of these three options you use, which one's your preferred method because at the end of the day the importing process is exactly the same no matter which method you use and the mistake that you're going to make is going to be the same no matter which you use as well. So it's not as important as to what method you're using, as to what it is that you're doing when you make your decision to import your photos. So let's jump into Lightroom and show you exactly what it is I'm talking about. So the first thing that you're going to probably go ahead and do is plug in one of those three items, whether it's a camera, an external hard drive or a memory card. And then the next thing that you're going to do is you're going to go up to file and choose import your photos and videos or you're just going to click this import button in the bottom left hand corner of your Lightroom catalog from the library module. I'm going to go ahead and do that option and then what you're going to do is select the method in which you chose, whether you had a memory card or an external hard drive or a camera. In my instance in this example I'm importing from a memory card directly. But here's the mistake that people make. On this point they just hit import. That's it. They go in here, they hit import, they don't make any other changes or make any other decisions. And what happens in this instance is that your photos are going to end up going most likely directly onto your computer's hard drive and they're going to get stored in some random place. Nine times out of ten that's going to be a place where your photos would typically go. On a Mac computer it's probably just going to go into your library and end up in a photos folder somewhere. But this may not necessarily be where you want your photos to go. So what you need to do is choose or specify where you want your photos to go when they get imported into your Lightroom catalog. And for this example what you're going to do is make sure in the middle section here at the top copy is what you'll choose 99% of the time. So just copy your photos. This just means that whatever you are importing they will stay on your hard drive or your memory card and you will create a copy in the new destination wherever these photos are going to go. So I'm going to choose copy. And the number one thing that people forget to do is they forget to go right here where it says destination. Destination is where do you want your photos to go once they're imported. If you don't specify it's just going to automatically put them wherever you want to. If you go in here and you choose a destination then your copy will go where you tell it to go. And this is key. This is critical. So I'm going to choose for these photos to go in 2017. And I can just have them go there. Or I can choose to put them in a sub folder. I'm just going to call this 2017 Christmas Photo. And you'll notice that it's going to create a folder with that name, whatever name you chose. And when I hit import it's going to put those photos exactly into that folder that I told it to. So make sure that you choose the destination. Most people overlook the destination. They don't even know this place exists. But go ahead and choose the destination. Even if it's going somewhere that you wanted to go or you think it wants to go verify that the destination is correct so that when you're looking for these photos later you know exactly how to find them. But here's a little bonus tip for you. Let's say that you forget to do this step and your photos get imported into your Lightroom Catalog and then you can't find them on your hard drive. No worries. All you have to do is select any of the photos that you're looking for. Right click on that photo and choose Show and Finder if you're a Mac user or Show and Explorer if you're a PC user. And when you choose this option it will take you directly to where the photographs live. And from there you can do a deep dive to figure out where they got put and then you can move them to the correct destination after. But make sure if you're doing this after the fact that you actually move your photos from within Lightroom. If you don't know how to do that go ahead and leave us a comment down below and we'll create a video showing you exactly how to move them correctly after the fact. But in the event that you're not doing this make sure you choose the destination because I guarantee you you have or will make this mistake if you're new to Lightroom and it will drive you crazy and I don't want you to go crazy. So do it right the first time. Thank you so much for watching. If you like this video give it a thumbs up that always help the channel. Subscribe if you're not already a subscriber and until the next time thank you so much for watching. Have a great day everybody.