Lessons
Getting Started: Folder Strategy & Workflow in Lightroom
09:27 2Import New Photos
24:47 3Ratings, Labels & Reviewing Photos
05:03 4Add Keywords
06:39 5Tips for Optimizing Workflow
04:07 6Use Develop Presets & Basic Adjustments
15:59 7Add Impact with Clarity and Vibrance
03:31 8Tips for Finding Your Photos
09:55Lesson Info
Tips for Finding Your Photos
I mean, I don't know about you, but I love getting likes on Facebook. And so when you've got an image that I'm working with, let's go back to our Seattle images, for example, May we're going to share this image, but I need to be able to find the photo first. Now, the first recommendation for being able to find your image is very, very easily is to only have images in your entire light room catalog, because then you can pretty much find anything just by scrolling through piece of cake. But for me, that's not an option. Because, as I mentioned, I've got about 330,000 photos in my light room catalogue, none of which I'm willing to delete. So I've got a lot of pictures to go through if I want to just scroll through. So what is that process look like for me personally? Well, generally, it involves a folder structure plus a starving, so someone says, Hey, do you have any great skyline photos being modest? I would say maybe not great, but they're decent. And one of my favorites is from Seatt...
le from Kerry Park great view. Had a good evening with a nice clear skies, really beautiful. And I got a good shot. How do I find it easy. I've already established essentially all I need to know about that picture Number one. I took it in Seattle and number two I like it, and in many cases, that's all the information that I need to be able to find a picture because then I go into my folder list. Now I might have multiple Seattle folders and maybe I have to go through multiple folders. For example, I get select multiple folders and then I've got star ratings. Remember? Identified my favorite pictures based on star ratings. Well, I can go down on the filmstrip at the top, right of the filmstrip. First off, we have this little toggle switch at the far right. The top right of the filmstrip itself kind of looks like a light switch. I can flip that on to enable a filter. Then I can specify my criteria. So we have the pick flags, which I don't general use the color labels, which I only used for certain purposes, and we have the star ratings, which is my primary method of identifying favorite photos. So, for example, I might say, Show me all of the images with a three star or greater rating or show me all the Four Star or greater or Onley. Show me the five star rated images done. There's my picture now. It does make it a lot easier when you only have what we 40 images in my entire full there. But even when I have taken a lot of images, so I mentioned whales in Alaska, my best whale shots in Alaska. I spent about eight days on a boat in Alaska and took about 10,000 photos after I've done all my star ratings. That took me down to about 400 photos. A lot of bad images, apparently, but I've gotten down now to 400 images. If I had the key word whale. Now I'm down to maybe a couple dozen photos, and so the idea is really just to narrow down the field. So I'm going from every single picture I've ever taken to a particular in my case trip or essentially a folder, and then filtering by my favorites based on star ratings. And now I've usually narrowed the field down to a manageable number. Usually sometimes need a little more help. So I'm gonna set the filter option to none here just real quickly. And I'm gonna goto all photographs because I want to look for a particular picture. Now, whenever I'm looking for a picture, what I'm really trying to do is think about what do I remember about that picture? Maybe I remember where I took it and go to a folder. I know it's one of my favorites. I can filter by star rating. Maybe I know that I used a 500 millimeter lens. Sound crazy? No, because if it was a bird photograph, there's a really good chance that I did use the millimeter lens. My best bird photos were captured with 500 millimeter lenses. And so the question then becomes What can I remember? So let's use an example. I'm looking for an image. I remember this scene. It was at night. I don't know where it waas. I remember the key subject of the photo. The reason I was taking the picture was this, like metallic structure. It was lit up at night. It was really beautiful. Ah, a lot of people gather around, have a look at it. It's like there's almost like a tall pyramid, but made of metal. But I can't remember where I was when I took the picture. But then the question is, what sort of details can I actually remember? Well, I'm gonna go to the filter library. So I've gone toe all photographs in the catalogue section of the left panel once again in the library module because we're thinking about organization. I've gone to every single picture I've ever taken. Now I'm trying to filter things down, and I can't remember where I took the picture. So I can't just go to a folder. Gotta look across everything. Well, now, what sort of attributes can I remember? If I go to the library filter bar that is available in the grid view, we could go up into the menu and choose view show filter bar in order to enable it If it's not there. I can also just press the backslash key on the keyboard to hide it or reveal it, and they're weaken search by text. So let's search for 500. Why? Because it's just what I thought of in terms of random text I might search for. Why would you be searching for 500? I don't really know. Maybe you're looking for millimeter lens. Or maybe you're looking for 1 5/ of a second shutter speed. Or maybe you were photographing meaning Indianapolis 500 0 wait, the Daytona 500. And so we could just type in those days. In this case, I suspect the 500 is mostly related to shutter speeds in some cases maybe focal wings. But we can use text. I can search specifically for keywords. Show me all of my whale photos. I can combine this with star ratings. Show me all images with a whale keyword with a star rating of three or greater. So we've got those attributes once again this star ratings that we saw earlier. But most importantly, we can choose metadata. All of this information that your camera remembered about your picture or that you've added to your picture in the way of keywords, GPS coordinates or whatever it might be we can filter are images based on these values. So now the question is what can remember. Well, let's take a look. Date my first column. No idea whatsoever. I rarely know what day it is today. I'm not gonna member what year it was when I took a picture that I'm sure was at least a few years ago. Do I remember what camera I used? It was probably the 20 day. I think let's go with that lens is well, this I know because my standard walkabout lens when I'm walking around the city and taking pictures is the 24 to 105 That's what I use most of the time. Is the 24 to 105 And I just remember is a 20 d because I know that this picture while I can't remember where I was, it's been a little while. It's been a while back, not 100% positive, but I'm pretty sure label I have no idea. So that's not gonna help me, And I've run out of columns, except I haven't because I can change these columns. So the fourth column here happens to be labeled. I don't remember the label, but I do remember the aperture was set. The F seem unbelievable. No, remember I mentioned I took this picture at night at night, I usually stopped my lens down the F 16 or F 22 depending on the lens, so that I could get a lovely and very cliche starburst effect in my image, which I happen to like, even though it's cliche. And so I can choose to set my aperture as my SEC of my fourth. Call him in this case and I can go choose that aperture F 22 Boom. There is the picture that I could not remember, what the name of the subject was or where I was when I took the picture. But by remembering the details that I could remember even actually member, there was a 32nd exposure, really only because I had maxed out normally. Unless using the cable release, you could only set 32nd exposure on your camera misusing bull mode. That was the maximum exposure duration, and that's what I said. You can see it. I've got some blurred cars down in the background. In the reflection will get a little more Ripley looking kind of more smeared around as it were, to use a technical term. So whatever details. I can remember about that photo I can probably use to locate that image, which could be tremendously valuable. And it seems a little silly to think. Oh, of F 22. And you know what focal length was it always 23 millimeters. You know what, But you might be surprised just how often you remember little details. I remember I stopped down because of the Starburst. Not because I really remember F 22 but that's just one of my standard settings. I could have used F 16 and F 22. Maybe I remember the date, or at least the year. Whatever particular details I can remember, Light Room gives me access to that metadata as a filter mechanism so that I can actually locate a particular image or set of images. Because once I've used whatever random methods to locate an image here, I've gotten down to just two images that met those criteria. Yeah, but I want to see all the other photos from that trip, and I still don't remember where it was taken. But fortunately I don't have to. I can right click on the image, and I can tell light room to go to that folder in my library module. So I found this image by some wacky set of metadata values that I was able to remember. And now you can tell. Like room. Yeah, that's what I want. Can you show me all the others from around that same time? That same trip? What have you so will choose that. Go to photo in library option. Go, Go to folder. I should say, in library that takes me to In this case, it is a Paris 2009 folder. I can then turn off by filters. So go back to my library filter again. Backslash key on the keyboard is a keyboard shortcut to toggle that honor off and I can just set none. And now I can see all of my images from Paris Very, very easy. So I know it seems crazy, but sometimes you remember a bunch of random little details and that enables you to get to the particular photo that you were looking for
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Ratings and Reviews
Pamela Richardson
I enjoyed Tim's friendly and professional style of presentation. I appreciated that he was methodical in his approach, and was very clear in his explanations of every step that he was taking. It is quite clear that he has extensive experience in teaching. He presented at a good pace so that I was able to make notes and absorb the information. I have used Photoshop since August 2015, but I have steered clear of Lightroom. I had been afraid to use Lightroom because I was confused about the process of switching back and forth among Bridge, Lightroom and Photoshop. I have been doing extensive photo editing using other software since 2002, but am new to the Adobe products. After watching Tim's class, I have gained enough confidence to start using Lightroom, because I now understand that it is very powerful, can be used to process raw files, and has excellent tools for creating both panoramas and HDR photos (that are still raw which is great!), and more. I learned a great deal from this course, and would highly recommend it! I am very grateful to Creative Live for providing Photoshop Week 2016, and also grateful to the many amazingly talented and knowledgeable presenters for graciously sharing their knowledge and experience.
Brenda
This is a great class to help get you started. Tim is a great presenter. Would love Creative Live to have Tim back to teach.
user-58ff4e
Thank you so much for your straight forward and comprehensive lessons. I am new to LR and have been waiting to import my photos until I watched this lesson. Now, I feel like I can move ahead with confidence.
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