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Lightroom Workflow: Metadata

Workflow in processing we're going talk about those images we kind of highlighted in the behind the scenes stuff and talk to talk to you a little bit about cataloging organization processing okay and I'm here utilizing adobe photoshopped light room I think that the latest version is five point six cook so here we are and make sure everything's working right here we are and essentially my desktop something that's pretty cool that I kind of discovered over the way that I just highlight here is this uh when we call this thing here the identity identity plate so my identity play as opposed to having my name is actually an image and the cool thing about this image I discovered this from another photographer is it's a black fed to white right? And what do I use this thing for? Kind of a unique feature I can kind of figure out where my laptop screen position needs to go based on looking at this little this little uh j peg or png image here of this of this bar right? If I can see all of the gr...

adations between white and black this being the separator by adjusting my screen I can kind of get my screen in a good position. Best position for editing images you know my at my laptop monitor is calibrated but calibration doesn't work if I take my monitor from this scenario over to that scenario in the room or to a different location right so yes it is still profiled and calibrated based on colors put on brightness it's going to change based on my room background right so this little tab here helps me I don't have this on my mac that's in my office but for traveling it's a great little thing to have in light room uh let's see so let's talk workflow lots I get lots and lots of questions about how I travel with gear and when I get home with all of these images you know how do I get them into the catalogue that I have yeah I just using a laptop do I have it another computer et cetera et cetera so I travel with this mac book air it's kind of old little slow and beat up right now but that's okay I only use this computer want to travel when I get back to my office all of the images that I shoot end up on a brand new I mack five k retina display twenty seven inch desktop attached to that desktop is essentially a thunderbolt to drive and this is I think I listen this out in the gear to in the gear pdf uh so thunderball dr it's a let's see that's twenty four terabytes and I have that thing divided up into two twelve terabyte blocks and the reason I do that is twelve terabytes this photo stores photo slash video storage twelve terabytes of backup so no matter what's going on, I've got copies of everything okay? I travel with a single hard drive but it actually has to physical hard drives in it and I've set that hard drive up in a raid zero I believe which is one I'm only essentially using one of those drives the other drive is a mirror copy of that original drive, so I have dual kind of automatic backup going on that when when I'm traveling and lots of people in like talking about light room create separate catalogs for every time they go out shooting I do not do that I have two hundred fifty some thousand images in a single catalog and the reason I do it that way is aiken search any image for any image in two hundred fifty thousand images by having a single catalog it does not slow down the computers I'm running because I'm typically running completely maxed out machine I have thirty two gigs of ram fastest processor and now using ssd assess the internal storage in the computer itself so keeps everything running really fast for me now uh what else? So two catalogs though I'm running one main catalog in my office I do have a separate catalog that I use when I travel and the way that I transfer everything that I take on a trip like we were taking photos here I would then import that catalog that is created in this mobile environment? I would then imported into my main catalog that I have in the office, so and the reason I do that is if you just import your photos or drag and drop photos from a hard drive over to the hard drive essentially that I'm using the twenty four terrible deal if you just drag and drop things well, the catalog actually has a couple bits and pieces of information that has been created over the course of working and traveling and I would drop those out so bye importing a catalog into the catalogue, the main catalog I keep all of that information specifically, like one to one previews and some of the additional made a data that's attached photos okay now s o two catalogs mean travel meet lr five million catalogs what a name my one in the office lr five travel catalogs the one that I name here and is attached to the hard drive every time I import anything. When I'm traveling, I generate a smart preview, and the cool thing about generating smart preview is notice we don't cj's hard drive here, okay? So I'm sitting on a plane for twenty seven hours, which is what I was flying when I when I went to thailand uh, I don't need to plug in this external hard drive this thing can sit in my bag I can still work in light room as you can see here if we scroll down there's my j g mobile dr notice there's a question mark there light room is telling me that ok you're your hard drive is not connected I need to know where those files are but at the same time here I am in light room notice I can just go right over the develop module and start working on a photo because I generated what's called a smart preview when I imported the file. Now if you forget to import smart previews at any given moment you can do it as long as the main hard drives attached you can't generate a smart preview when the hard drive is not attached right? So there's this kind of sinking thing that's going on between light room and where the photos are being stored so generate I generates more previous on imports that's kind of important because that allows me to do anything with the laptop without the hard drive connected and still get things done now cool thing is when I get back I just plug that hard drive back in it sinks all that made a data information across the boards and everything that I've done with smart previews is connected to the original file okay, let me sense all right cool um so let's see talked about catalog folder structure for may I categorize things by location in date so if I'm in a location let's just out of folder here for posterity stick uh we're gonna add a sub folder and I'm gonna well I can't go to my drive so I'm just gonna go to my desktop here and the way that I gonna choose or create your folder ok so new folder we're going to create a new folder that by the way I work is location and date so if I'm shooting here in seattle it's very simple seattle and the date is the twenty first right so eleven dash two one dash fourteen I do that every day I go out shooting every photo shoot for that day goes into that folder main computer in the office has seattle eleven twenty one will get imported to it dash fourteen it may have seattle eleven twenty one dash thirteen right who knows that could have shot the same day in the same location but then by breaking out by date I know which year we're working with I know the location as I get if I have fifteen folders from shooting in seattle I will make an overall folder that just says seattle and all of the seattle folders will reside in that folder and this for me is just kind of the easiest way to figure out locations right? We remember locations at least I remember locations more so than I remember anything else if I can remember a location like grand teton national park then I can go to that grand teton national park folder and I can look at dates well this one was shot and you know twenty eleven that's really old but I just shot there in twenty fourteen so what did I shoot in twenty fourteen can we look at that really quick yes. Okay, so that's my basic organizational platform for every photo I have two hundred fifty thousand images okay makes sense he was gonna cancel this slap so here you see the j g mobile and if we were actually shooting photos you would see some folders here that would say seattle eleven dash twenty one days fourteen seattle eleven dash twenty two dash fourteen and so on. Okay, now uh I'm going to go from here smart collections okay? So collections a lot of people kind of start dragging and dropping images and things like that into collections I don't use collections that way. Um I take, uh, collections and if I do a project for somebody that becomes a collection so shooting a mountain biking article in thailand for specific client would be the name of that client mountain biking thailand that would become a collection all of the keeper images that are part of the thailand day one folder thailand day to folder will get selected and rated and they will get put into that smart collection that's mark collection then gets finalized from at its key words made it out of all that kind of stuff and get sent to the client and I want to get sent to the client all of then I know all of those images that were in that collection are the ones that I sent to the client do I have ones that I don't send? Yes, and if they say, well, we don't really like the body position and this one do you have another shot in that scene? Well, you just saw how many shots I'm shooting, right? And any given scenario, so probably we've got a better body position if that body position doesn't doesn't work for them, ok, that makes sense, okay, good questions and questions out there. Okay, um, so I use smart collections that way in the and by organizing my smart collections that way, I know who has what photos there are clients that have photos of mine that they're holding on to been holding on to for three years, and they're like, we're just gonna hold on to it because, you know, we like the work we like having things, and if we're doing a story on you or we want to highlight something, we can go into your folder, right? So I highlight that in those collections, and I know who has what and I know who has what from when and if somebody sees a photo online that they like of line and they're like, you know, we would really like to use this I can easily go into a collection find that folder find that photo in my file right? And then I know if it's at somebody being held because they possibly want to publish it and I can call them and say, listen, they want to use it too is are you going to use it number one and if you're not, then I would like to let them use it because that's money in the bank obviously right? But if you're not ok, if you're still planning on using it and you don't want them to use it, then you have first right kind of essentially of refusal, right? So I'm tracking everything that's going in and out of my office because the worst case scenario is to get a cover of a magazine like powder and have that same shot on the cover of that country magazine competitors in a marketplace they don't like that kind of stuff makes sense, right? They want to be original in their own right? Well, so they so if they both get the same image what's gonna happen to me I'm not going to get used by either of them ever again so these are things I think about right it's very important stuff. How do we organize all that information? Okay, perfect program platform right here. It's called the library module so there's some things that I use that other people may or may not use in the same way. And I'm going to highlight a couple of those. So we're talking about these smart collections where we would put folders in a collection of things. They're going to go out when I initially important, eh? Set of full of when I import a set of images into a folder and I start editing, essentially go into a larger view, or now by hitting a shortcut called the ft in light room, I can start scrolling through images, right? So what's cool about scrolling here. I've got a bigger screen, you know, thirteen inch mac book air it's not a very huge editing platform. I used to have a seventeen inch, but you know what? The problem with the seventeen inches or now they don't even make announced fifteen, but he can't open it on an airplane anymore, right? The seats are so tight he thinks his hits and you got person people next to you like you can even use it, so I found that the thirteen very light easy to travel with and I can use it on airplane, too. So that's why I chose a smaller computer okay? And this is not my main editing computers, so thus it doesn't need to be the fifteen et cetera if you're choices did use use a laptop and I have a monitor in the office or in your house when get back that's another way to do things to ok, I do get more power out of having the desktop is well, then a laptop, right? We get more ram and there we get more stores basics, although I don't think you get more storage space anymore. Okay, so I'm looking at this thing in full frame mode and I just start scrolling through images right now we've got this thing called stars right star rating an image people freak out about this they start that's a one storm in childhood I decide between one star image to service three years, three star image I don't use the stars that way all of my images all of mice elects are going to be five star images. I am not sending crap to anybody right there's a reason I don't not going to send him a three star image even an image rated three stars right? Why mentally they're going to go what the hell is he doing he's sending me a three star image? Why do I want a three star image from this guy? No, they want a five star image, and they want to pick right? So that's a big key to my work flow is I don't use the stars to highlight the quality of the photo. I use the stars to highlight a progression of an image through my catalogue. Does that make sense? Okay, so, uh, go through just gonna skip ahead here for a second. So for the star ratings one star in my file, one star marking means that that image gets accepted into the initial catalog. Now two stars changes things. If an image has one star, the next thing I'm going to do is actually add process into the image. I'm going to go in the developed module, and I'm going to throw some kind of color scheme on it. I'm going to turn into black and white, etcetera ad contrast start doing so, maybe minor dodging and burning. Now, when I start doing that stuff, if the image doesn't hold up, it doesn't get the two star rating, it just gets the one start rating, or possibly even gets deleted. Ok, once it's processed and I like it, then from two stars, three stars is going his when I'm going to add key words to the image he soon in building here, so one star accepted two stars has some initial processing to the image to give me the look is the look going toe work I'm going to be able to sell this thing based on everything that's happening transpiring with processing the image and then three stars. What happens at three stars? We add key words so that image then gets brought up to three stars. Now, after three stars, what do we have more mated at it? We're going to add headlines, we're going to add descriptions to a photo this all works with my ex ceo. It also works with stock agencies. It also works with magazines. They have hundreds of thousands of photographs that had probably millions of photographs that a company like national geographic how did they find anything? They find it via meta data if you add really good quality made a data and they're searching for mountain biking shot in bellingham, washington. If you have good made a data, you could potentially come to the top of their database and thus they use the shot if they're holding it right ok, so made it that is really important not only for the for the internet, but it's. Also important from a business aspect has beck for may the other way it's important too is if you have two hundred fifty thousand images, how do you find an image in five minutes made a data all right, I can you drill down there looking for something from grand teton national park I could go to the grand teton national park folder is fifteen thousand images okay, we'll just knocked out two hundred forty some thousand images but now I still got fifteen thousand to go through what I'm going to sit there and scroll the whole time I know I'm going to type in specific keywords based on the request ok, that doesn't get me what I'm looking for I'm going to type in specific meta data via the headline and description of the image you know bull moose in bull moose in fall color in meadow near oxbow bent ok there's a description for you headline would be bold moves grand teton national park sunrise sunset cloudy brilliance color et cetera, et cetera those air going into my headline kind of additional key word descriptions to that image ok in addition, in addition to uh utilizing the keyword area of the minute data section two okay then the other thing I add city state all of those locations now at city state etcetera way get five stars and at that point he comes the pick okay, make sense get next thing is color ratings let me just get out of here for a second so we can kind of go back so here's our star ratings now if you question how many key words are you adding to you come back and talk about them or you oh yes so let's let's kind of look at an image here okay so you can see right here uh we're looking at the first scenario we show behind the scenes the shot we picked ok black and white two different black and white versions of it why notice I cropped in a little bit rotated it just a tiny that it felt better to me to do that but so I have two different version of it ok but here's skewers here all the key words I have in there ok this is kind of cool stuff okay we'll see this word released to have model release yes I put it in there the key word is released ok so it's a released photo who are the people what crew are the people writing well I know the guy I know that the guy in the back I know his name is it of the warship there he is and I don't remember the guy who's in the front susan is there another name in here other than jake and rich right um I'm hoping so maybe not when dudley okay so we put these things in there so you know days years months later we can figure things out are there specific keyword conventions or used words that air you specifically for this type of adventure sports photography uh no you mean like from a client is that is that the perspective or from my perspective I guess yeah, just just any like little pieces of magic that your words that you might add in there that you know that editors art directors that are out there searching my type in long initiate a little key words all right, something we can going to show you a little plug in you can get for about thirty five bucks that's going to change your world when it comes to key wording I see that your key words are alphabetized well that's automatic here in light room I believe okay, right. Okay, so ok, so since we're on the keyword topic let's just jump right to that let's uh go into where is it? Library plug in extras okay here's a little plug in is called keyword master was developed by a photographer in england I believe and, um we could just click it here and you gather some key words so we have this kind of search bar going on right here, okay? And if you type in keywords mastering google, you'll get the website and you can download the software for free for a trial edition for thirty five dollars you can transfer the money via paypal they'll give you the license and you can run the plug in, you know, unrestricted okay so we turn on this puppy now see this little open way web pages thing here. I don't have an internet connection right now, so I'm not going to do it, but essentially, the way I start key wording is I type in, uh, you know, something like mountain biking washington and then I click open web pages, let's see what happens if it's going to just open it, but one show me connection, okay, so it goes through, it goes and opens the search areas of multiple stock agencies, so I'm actually key wording based on what is already up on the web. Now, if I don't find anything, I kind of type in a very broad based search terms like mountain biking, bellingham or mountain biking washington state and that kind of starts, mikey road progression. Ok, they come up here and this plug in taps into getty a taps in the jupiter images taps in the alami all these different ones, even photo shelter into this the main overall search bar, and it will bring up images that look like my images, ok? A lot of times it pulls up my images, we have repeat stuff, you know, repeat offenders to different locations, and it allows you to copy the key words that are on those images already so we would pick a bunch of keywords in here. We would copy them. They would end up showing up here. And if I clicked a little gather up button, they get rid of all the extraneous like letters, numbers, commas, words like the that mean absolutely nothing to anybody searching for an image, right? We don't need the word done there. It deletes all of that, organizes them alphabetically, and then you click um, after we gather it up, can I it's not letting me do it? Because I didn't. I didn't go through the process, but, uh, it will then comedians pure. Perfect. Thank you very much in, uh, okay, so we would click. Add the key words. It would put all those key words right here. Bam! I'm done moving on. Okay, so I don't have to sit there and think of what's out there. Now, I do read through the key words that I select from the image that looks similar to mine, but yet different, you know, I will go out there. I will select, uh, I think those I will select those cures and delete them out. That don't correspond, right? If there's something about sunrise or sunset and it's, not a sunrise or sunset shot, we delete that information. You know, different types of bikes, things like that anything that's doesn't have to do with the photo I pull out and that's a good starting point and then there's sometimes I'll just add in a few, you know, something like circular or how's the shot taken or, you know, things like that. Okay, so key word, master, that thing saves me a ton of time. Now the cool thing about light room that a lot of people also don't realize is you can create keyword sets, right? So people that I shoot with on a regular basis, I put their sponsors into my preset made a data, I build them their own key words set so any time I'm not liking with andrew whiteford. I know andrew whiteford, mtbe sponsor keywords air going to go up into the photo just by clicking this little icahn here okay, I got the j g copyright one that also applies my copyright. I have a pre set that on import of all my photos, this gets attached to every photo I take don't even think about it so you know, work work smarter, not harder, right that's kind of the goal so light room truly allows me to be a one man editing machine, you know, I can edit thousands of images very fast very, very fast and pick the ones that I'm going to work on notice in this scenario. Okay, the first scenario we looked at one, two, three. So here's four, eight, twelve, sixteen, twenty, twenty four, twenty eight you know, huge huge sequence. Right. Okay, out of that sequence. What got shows one image? Ok, that's just the way it goes sometimes. And that's the one I think is the best for me. The's will eventually get deleted. Uh, but and some of them may even stay even without star rating but though then get this one star just in case somebody's like, yeah, that position I really wish at this position, you know? So I do think about it in those kind of so you have two hundred fifty images in your whole library two hundred fifty thousand to fifty thousand. How many do you delete? Everything else you talked about twenty for your two hundred fifty thousand are one star and above yes, but that's over the course of five, six, seven, eight years now I don't remember when I started with light room. I don't remember one one came out, but I I was using amateur and switch to light room when they created it because had better color integration with photo shop and I was using photo shop at the time okay so yeah so they're all in there as keepers there are right now there's a ton of folders fromthe stuff I've shot over the last nine months that hasn't been edited that's going to be the next six months of my life while trying to run a business before you start traveling again and start creating more of this stuff and do you use the flag for deletion when you initially import the photos or do you do that later hitting the ex the ex key shortcut thing and actually putting a flag on there that you can then come up here in the library and hit yeah I actually do that okay so after you import you sort of go through real quickly and say this is no no no no what I do is truly first here's how I do it truly first is you know one star goes through the keepers getsem processing on them see if they work ok these guys their keepers and I could have multiple photos in multiple different streams right? If there and that's the other cool thing about collections you can create a smart collection so it shows you all of the folders that have or all of the files that have a three star rating attached to them so I don't know if I have fifteen thousand three star images right there not three star rated they're at the keyword stage I need to admit to data and finalize those images before it can do anything else with them so I don't have to finish every single image right off the bat and that's kind of the way the reason I do it this way so I can go into those cues of were different so it's kind of quickly you said it's either images warns that you like we'll get that one star ready and then you will process each of those if they do not pass the process do you delete those that's when I'll tag him with an ex? Ok, ok typically that's what I'm like yes isn't working okay, so I can't sometimes there I try to process something and I'm like the colors are really off sensors are not perfect I mean it doesn't happen all the time but it happens every once in a while question jim yeah so you had it in you don't get it out so you're basically everything's not a keeper until you make it a keeper yes, thank you. Yes, some cover start with everything is good and then they take stuff out. Yeah, yeah, I start with I go through and if I like it you get the one star you get to hang out for a little bit and I don't know if you covered this and I missed it but you have a single catalog yes, correct. So you've always used that in some way have two types of people single catalogs and multiple common memory project just really quickly. Why you like the single capital s so here's the deal? I'm not. I'm not like shooting ah, wedding scenario, where every wedding client has their own name and in scenario attached to it, if you think about it, if I'm shooting a core subject like mountain biking well, there's like fifty different mountain biking magazines out there. And even though that story may have been shot for one specific magazine and not the other forty nine well, what happens when they're kind of rights on that article, which is typically a six month period? They want six months in the front and six months on the back end of what you're creating before you can let it get published elsewhere. Okay, so I have multiple clients that will end up coming to me going. You have any shots from thailand? Well, I do, but you have to wait six months. And, uh, if I need to search, then for thailand mountain waking shots if I just shot that story for bike magazine or just shot that story for dirt rag magazine, well, then it's in its own catalog called dirt rag magazine, right? Thailand dirtbag magazine I can't just search for a specific image within that I have to go into that catalog so by having one catalog I could type in a search term and search every single image cool that's the way the reason I do it that way I know a lot of people commercial photographers keep a shot kind of shot list or shot project for each catalog, but that is a very, very specific thing, you know, they're those those clients are only going to get to use those photos they're not selling them in additional markets beyond a mountain biking scenario, right? So this way I get to search throughout and quickly find something in two hundred fifty thousand images great thank you and of light room the earlier versions of light room only had like a ninety nine thousand limit. Teo on the couch that's different now you have no limit, so they're really the only thing that slows down your catalog is the connection speed to where your photos are being held and your processor relationship. Did you ever consider getting like the best of both worlds, doing like skiing catalog and then like a mountain biking catalog? So, like you've been still like search through both be half the size, the catalog? Um yes, but the reason I decided it wouldn't work because on a location basis if somebody says we need we need kind of we need promo shots for jackson wyoming we'll promo shots for jackson wyoming could be wildlife they could be mountain biking that could be hiking that could be skiing right? Because there's all those different activities going on there and now ok, well now I have to look for the skiing one I have to look through the mountain biking one because you can't you can only have one catalog opens up at a time right? That makes sense so that that's why it shows in just the one with one scenario anybody else questions to engage in? Ok, we'll give you moving yeah um okay, so we've chosen these two images you know they've got the one star rating looking through my made a data well, they're actually more like five star rated because look what's happened here we're already to the five star rating stage but they only have one star rating so what we do oh there's five stars and here's five stars too. Okay, so now actually the's images of the shot a while ago I kind of changed the way I add information so I just updated the information in that file okay, so we have city shot billing him it's in washington united states that's the final five star stuff okay and then from here looking at this thing full frame well that's a pick right cool thing in the full frame mode you can still add numbers are star ratings colors and if you know the short cut so I had to pee and I get a picture okay? So speed and efficiency ok, like I said when I import I have uh so let's backtrack a second light room is kind of a preset monster and a lot of people don't utilize the preset monster uh on import I'm just gonna see if we can pull up the import dialogue here. I've got presets for import, okay, one touch is one touch and I'm importing okay, I've got presets for made a data as you saw based on my writers I've got presets that I have formed for places I shoot a lot like just, you know tetons teton ski basic keywords teton mountain bike basic ewers so if I went out shooting that morning mountain biking on import I'm going to select that key words set to be added on import to the file comes in the keyword jury there that stuff right don't think about it can move on way can add the other stuff. If I shoot multiple people, I go into the all the images with the people with the skewers and I can spray this keepers on to show you that here, so if I'm in a great mood and I have a scene where? There's. Just one writer, maybe. Yeah. So, there's, just one person in this. But then we get down over here now, there's two people in it. Okay, I can well see where's my grade. My spray paint can. So this is kind of a cool tool. Spray paint can notice it's going to show me settings right now. What happens if I want to put words to somebody? Ok, key words. I can add key words in there and spray those on just the specific, uh, photos so I can quickly go through and add key words. Right? Can I use different metadata? Yeah, but look there, stagy copyright. What if we needed andrew white for sponsorship keywords on specific voters that he was in? But then heather goodrich, her mountain bike sponsor keywords. She was in photos, too, but they weren't in the same water here in the library will. Then I could just click one and I can click the other and spray the ones that they're connected and not the ones that they're not pre trick. Right? So fast. I'm always looking for faster ways to add information to photos kind of cool. Okay, um got to turn that thing back off, we spray painting everything.