It's been great to get emails from those of you successfully importing your supplies into Lightroom. A few have even been so successful with the conversion and import process that you are finally opening supplies from Lightroom into Photoshop {teacher smiles here}.
A few notes for you all.
When you want to open a supply item in Photoshop, Right Click on the item (CTRL Click on Mac) and choose Edit In >Edit In {name of your program here}
Then (and this is the most important part if you want transparency preserved) choose Edit Original.
If you follow these steps your stuff will open up easy-peasy just like you want it! If you don't, well let's just say your converted files will open up flattened with no transparency, causing your heart to drop in your stomach as you wonder what the heck you have just gone through all the trouble for. A few of you might even email me and diplomatically ask if I'm crazy… So save yourself the freak out and heart dropping stomach action by just choosing "Edit Original." 
Have a great day!
P.S. I'm not saying emailing me is a bad thing – quite the contrary – those of you who email me with the problems allow me to post helpful stuff here – saving lots more people from freak outs so thank yoU!
ksharonk
Thanks for that important tip, Kayla … you’ve probably saved me from having my first heart attack!
Incidentally, I’ve been documenting my progress on my blog, if you are interested in seeing how I am going! Loving what I am doing so far … thanks again, Sharon
yekcal
I’m really really new at this and I’m so glad I found your blog before I’d gotten in too deep.
I understand about the transparency with editing original, will that also keep the object from being “flattened”?
I’m near the end of converting my 2400+ png files into tiff files and it just occured to me that some of my quick pages and templates are png files. How will the conversion affect those?
Thanks! I’m really looking forward to keywording in Lightroom.
Kayla Lamoreaux
Great questions – your quick pages and templates will convert with transparency intact. The main thing is opening it with Edit Original. Thats the magic button!
Kayla Lamoreaux
Thank you for sharing and making this system your own – I hope it is ok that I blogged about you (http://www.digiscrap101.com/2011/03/lightroom-organizing-by-you.html) – I love what youve done in making this your own system! Feeling so lucky to have students like you that are running with this and making it your own – BRAVO!
elseepe
I don’t have LR (yet), but have just finished reading through the lessons and watching the videos up to now. I still have a bit more homework to do before switching over, but some great organizing tips so far. I use a script from Speed Scraps when I’m scrapping to copy all my open files into my working layout file. Since I work in tiff, I’ve altered that script to look for the tiff file as the layout file, so not ready to convert all my png’s until I figure a workaround for that.
But, a question: I think I’m missing the benefit of placing all of a designers “stuff” into a single folder with keywords for kit names instead of just leaving the original kit folders in tact; can you explain what the benefit is of doing so? (Perhaps I missed it since I’ve just watched everything in one fell swoop.)
Kayla Lamoreaux
One of the things I love about Lightroom is that it helps me keep track of all the items I work with in a layout. Watch this video on collections and you will understand how I keep track of things:http://www.digiscrap101.com/2011/03/lightroom-class-understanding-collections-sorting-and-more.html You may also want to check out this post that shows screenshots of how to add that information to your layout file in Lightroom:http://www.digiscrap101.com/2011/03/lightroom-flickr-and-online-layout-galleries.html.
The benefit of moving everything to a designer folder is that the main reason you have it in separate folders by kit is so that you can quickly find just the items in that kit by clicking on that folder. Well with Lightroom, you just click the arrow next to the keyword for that kit and voila you have all the items in that kit without the folder. You can even export the kit somewhere else completely intact with only the items that belong. If you wanted to look at your supplies to only show white flowers, you could do that to. Essentially what Lightroom allows you to do is have your cake and eat it to – you arent limited as to how you have to view and group the items in your catalog you can view them in any groups you choose because of keywords and other ways to search.
I understand that sometimes it is a difficult thing to let go of physical file folder structure – especially if you have had issues losing your organization catalog in other software programs. So again this is your system and you can choose to organize your folders in the best way for your workflow!
Hope that helps!
elseepe
Hi again Kayla. I’m not sure how often you might be checking in, but I’m excited since I have finally taken the leap and ordered my LR3. I even installed the trial so I could get started. I’ve started with photos. I’m also happy to say that I just figured out a way to modify the script so that it will also copy tif files into my working layout (as long as I start the script from the LO file, I should be good. I added a stop at the beginning with a reminder message.) So now all I have to do is figure out where I want to start with my digi stash. I’ll probably take a bit slower with imports like ksharon. But, I think I will try to have everything in one catalogue. What I found with my photos, which were all tagged previously in various programs, is that the tags “kind of” came in. They were just not in the same hierarchy as they were previously. It’ll take some time to get those sorted out. Also, it seems that my PSE organizer album tags didn’t come into LR. Not a bit deal because I have all my main people and place tags. Just have to clean up the structure. Anyway, a really big thank you for your class. It really helps to see it in action to truly appreciate the power of LR.
Kayla Lamoreaux
Glad you are enjoying the info!
Rhadonda
I am really trying to do this. Reading and watching over and over. Got lightroom 3 for Christmas and bought a new EHD so i have a lot invested and HAVE to figure this out. It is not you, it is me, i am not well-versed in computer skills. This is stretching me and a few tears here and there won’t hurt. Some of the confusion is from tutorials on Mac and i have PC. That said thank you so much for the free class. I hope to someday send you an e-mail rejoicing at being organized. My question concerns using the organized supplies in PSE which is what i have. The post above says to select “edit original”. Does that mean it changes the original and you can only use it once? My goal once i am all organized is to then use the supplies while making pages in PSE. (I have only done about 6 pages in my whole digi life). Also if i download a trial version of Bridge to convert the PNG do i still convert to PSD for use in PSE or can i go ahead and convert them to Tiff even though i will be using PSE? Clear as mud i am sure.