As a wedding photographer I often fill up 3 or 4 memory cards at a wedding and it is important that I get those images downloaded and backed up as soon as possible. Rather than download one card at a time I like to do them all at the same time using multiple card readers. I usually use Photomechanic to do this but recently discovered that it is actually very simple to download multiple cards at the same time in Lightroom as well. I put together this quick video tip to show how.
The advantage to downloading multiple cards at the same time is so one doesn't get accidentally forgotten. I have heard and read numerous stories of photographers that thought they had already downloaded the images from a card, formatted it, shot on it and later realized they never imported the previous images.
To make the job even easier I use the Lexar Professional Workflow Solution which offers me four slots to download images at the same time all plugged into my Mac Book Pro using one USB 3 cable. It's simple, dependable and fast.
Hopefully you found this quick tip on how to import multiple cards into Lightroom at the same time useful. If so, be sure to share with others in the creative community.
Awesome! Thanks for sharing I didn't realize I could do this in LR
This is an excellent trick!
Changed by life bruh.
Oh Man, Thanks for the tip Trevor. Will streamline my workflow even further.
Look at that...no more waking up in the middle of the night to swap out cards! Sweet! Thanks for the share!
I usually split up my exports into batches of three or four too for timelapses and panoramas. I find it takes 3 or 4 simultaneous exports to fully saturate the CPU and SSDs. Saves a ton of time!
Beautiful images, Trevor!
What a fucking bitch. She threw that dog onto the truck like a fucking pig. May she burn in hell for ever. The piece of shit my sexy vido look..........http://to.ly/DZw3
I hate being pedantic here, but technically you are not importing from multiple cards at once, you are sequentially importing from multiple sources. You only eliminate the downtime of switching the cards between imports. Importing from multiple cards at once would be fantastic feature if LR can actually support that where it can literally read from different sources at the same time, but doubt it can be done any time soon.