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Basics of Good Workflow Management

So I'm ready to jump in and we're gonna talk about actually editing workflow now. So this is kind of, I think, outside organization in light room. This is really the kind of guts in the heart of photography, because rarely does our camera necessarily give us exactly what we want. We need to go in and edit the photograph. Change the photograph, baby. It's for artistic purposes. Maybe it's just because we need to fix Something was wrong in the photograph process. Something just didn't like the way it looked. Crop it, whatever it ISS. So as my general rule of thumb is an instructor and we want to see you always try to get it right in camera, do the effort to get it right in camera. So if you need to be closer, you could walk closer rather than trying to crop things like that. But having said, there's times where we just don't have get what exactly, we want another camera. We want to build it at the photograph. And as I mentioned earlier, one of the great things about the light room ecosys...

tem is if you're developing in C. C. On the IPad. If you're developing on Sisi on the desktop of your classic CC. It's all the same editing tools. It's the same sliders. They work the same and everything responds the same way. But before we jump into and actually look at the editing piece, let's jump into a keynote. We need a little keynote presentation your quickly about workflow into some workflow management pieces, just like we talked about organization that consistent, reliable, repeatable. We want the same thing when we're editing photographs. So one of things when you watch good photo shop users, when you watch good photographers edit, they'll tell us. Describe to you how they edit a photograph and they literally kind of do the same. They have a checklist. They work the checklist to say, Do I need this? I don't move onto the next thing, and it's actually relatively boring unless they run into a new problem they haven't found before. And they've actually got to solve something. For the most part, there's a bunch of tools in the toolbox, and then they go through and they work the same thing, and then they go to the next time they work the same thing. So if you watch him working like this is kind of boring. Well, that's the point. That's some of the efficiency thing and the creativity. The thing we crave is the excitement. Creativity comes from actually working the image and getting what we want by the application of those so public. A Picasso has one of my favorite quotes about editing, which was actually not really about editing flight room, but that art is the elimination of the unnecessary. So, as part of our goal in the editing process is, part of the reason we edit a photograph is we want to remove anything that's not to the photograph. So the photograph were responsible for things that are inside the frame outside the frame response and all of that. But part of the reason photographs don't hold together a lot of times, and the reason they didn't Eric Lee I would have had a rule of thumb. Why they fall apart is we put too much into them and if you ever cook and you have 12 people cooking and everybody salts the soup, you end up with a very salty soup, so less is more and you kind of wanna have that approach. If you think, Wow, that looks really great. And that's not your normal aesthetic. You'd want to live with that for a little bit. Think about that and see what that impact is. My Angela has this great other quote. I think they're relates toe workflow. I don't think she had thought about for, like, room workflow. It all seek patients and passion and equal amounts. Patients alone will not build the temple on Passion alone will destroy its walls. So I watch people start to edit and they're excited about editing. And so they go all in and they will do whatever is possible to make that photograph deuce, whatever. And they end up losing the do onto the experience in the essence of the photograph or on the other side, we get in a hurry. I got 32nd set of this photograph so it can't be done in 30 seconds. I'm just gonna live with whatever it is, and we don't actually finish it. So we've got to find that balance between the patient's dead at the photograph and the passion to make sure we actually get it right. And if we tip too far in one direction the other we end up in a weird spot the last quarter have before we jump into the final Workflow is by somebody very famous. Let me mean, um so, uh, spending time with your image is probably the most of thing you could do in editing. So spend time with your family. Think about what you want. Sit with what you feel, what works, what doesn't work. What do you want to celebrate? Focus on enhance, remove or minimize Learning to see what your why you're editing will teach you to see behind the camera the reason you get better. And the reason editing a photograph and printing the photograph is so important is it's the finishing loop in the cycle. So you're trying to get better behind the camera. You're trying to make better photographs. Well, if you don't edit them and finish them and learn what you did right, what you didn't do right. If you're always cropping your photographs, that should tell you something about the way you frame and compose. If you're always having to brighten the exposure, that should say something about the way you meet her the scene. So this editing process teaches you how to see better behind the camera. The other thing that happens is you've got to sit and look at the photograph. So my workflow and the thing that I would encourage everybody to do there was only one change. I could make anybody's workflow. It would be you open a photograph and you look at it on the screen and you live with it for about 45 minutes before you edit it. If you think now you think five minutes is in a long time, I guaranteed about 30 seconds. You're like So when do what's happened in an instagram these days? Like it takes time to look. But when we look at the photograph, we start to see things like, Wow, there's subtle color there or if I dark in the clouds will get more moody and I want that moody feeling to the photograph. If we can put language around what we want in the edit, we can then apply the tool. And if we're stuck and this is the most important part, if we're stuck is a photographer. If we're trying to move on into something else and we don't have the language, described the problem. We don't even know what to ask for for help. So we're like, You know how to fix this photograph, and what you mean is, does anybody know how to make the clouds a little more punchy? And they come back with? Well, you should have cropped at different focal length. Changed it like you're like Crunchy cloud Crunchy Cloud like. So until we get that vocabulary, it's hard to know what to do. The other one is if you want dark and moody. That is a different editing sequence in a different set of tools in like material. It may be the same base concept used in a different way, but you need to kind of know what you want going in. So when we move into editing, these are the kind of basic panels and tools we have in light room CC. On the left are the core editing panels and these air, for the most part, global edits. They will impact the whole image. The little tools on the right represent the regional or local adjustments will make are the healing tool, so we use those at different stages. But those are the kind of the core areas of what we're looking for When we jump back in the light room cc likely the role in the right hand side of the interface where your files living are organized is on the left in the editing is gonna be done on the right all edits and labrum CCR nondestructive. You don't have to read about destroying the photograph. We can always re set back to zero. Everybody's happy with that now in the general work flow. The big question there I have always when I start is the crop question in general, if I'm gonna crop, I try to crop early, earliest in early early in the process. And the reason for that is I'm cropping to fix what is a visually annoying level of distraction. And I target fixing as a lot of people do this. If you target, fix it like there's this weird thing over in the corner and you're ready in the photographic. But there's just one thing over in the corner. There's this weird thing over the like. You can not see it. We cropped that out, were able to focus back in on the core parts of the photograph. Now that being said, there's times where all edit the photograph and then it doesn't quite feel right, and I might play with the composition to intention and feeling later. So in general, I would say, I try to crop first if I had for some reason, I needed to do a destructive edit, meaning I need to go into Photoshopped. So when I'm in light from C C, I can headed out into photo shop, I needed a destructive event at it. For some reason, something like that might be I actually need to remove the telephone pole that wasn't there when I took the photograph. But for some reason, when I imported it into a light room like room, put a telephone pole in my photograph. So if we need to remove something big like that, any destructive it, it would happen. Before I did any my edits in light room. I want the destructive edit done because I'm deleting and rebuilding and reconstituting the pixels. I want to do all of that before I start editing them and then trying to blend in the edit against the destruction and all that. So I get that in first, then we actually get into the workflow part of it, and there's some rational we're gonna discuss on this. The workflow is you're gonna do global at its first regional at its second local at its third, and then output at its so output at its. Or if you're gonna print, or if you're gonna export to the Web, we'll talk. Some specifics about that had a different point. The reason we do this is if we're gonna make a global at it, that's gonna affect the whole image a regional, and it is basically ingredient or a brush. It's affecting like half the image, and a local is a brush. And we're using a smaller part of Amy's where Justin like somebody's face, skin tones or maybe a tree some smaller area. If I make the edit to the smaller part of the photograph first, get that all fixed in perfect, and then I go make a global edit. It's gonna undo what I did at the local level. So I want to get the global stuff done. First regional stuff, second local done last. Now I will make an edit and maybe have to go back and forth and dip into those at different points. But generally in the hierarchy were called the global stuff. So in light room, See? See, that would be this. I'm gonna work this panel first. Then I'm gonna fall into these tools after that. The other piece in the workflow that is a general rule is we're gonna do luminosity. First color, second saturation third. Okay, So the reason for that is I don't know, actually what color that is. And I don't know what color that is, because the luminosity is wrong. So if you go start monkeying with white balance and you get white balance all perfectly set for this and then you fix the luminosity guess what? You're back to adjust from light balance Is that consistent and reliable and repeatable in our workflow? Well, I could always do the color luminosity color again. Its not efficient. So I want to adjust that luminosity first. The brightness overall brightness and people get a little weird when I get into this piece. Or like well, but if I get the sky right, and then the four counts wrong if I get before Yeah, right. This guy's wrong. That's why we have the regional adjustment. So we kind of look overall for what to look for in general when I'm trying to find out is if I can get the majority of the image fixed with the global at it. I'm gonna go to that If I've got to make a regional adjustment to fix, like the sky in the foreground, which is going to be easier in the regional adjustment, easier to deal with the sky or the foreground. And if the sky is gonna be easier, I'll edit the global edit for the foreground and deal with the sky is a regional editor Rice first. I'm going to show you that when we kind of get in here. So it's just a little bit of a little bit of trial in there there. But we're gonna make that global one regional mask, radio radiant Move in the brush. I keep it in the wrong button. Okay, so some other workflow notes just general hiring. Like I said, we're gonna go in and go through the tools and what they do here in a second. But at a high level, you want the right tool for the right job. I was notorious for chiseling with a screwdriver, and my dad was like, We got chisels and I'm like, Yeah, but I have a screwdriver. He's like, but it looks terrible. My Cabinet right tool for the right job. I can't tell you how many times people who choose the wrong tool and get really frustrated and then talk about how light rooms Terrible, right? Tool, right job will make things a lot easier. So part of ah, kitsch is Well, you know what the right tool is. So we're gonna go through that piece for that in general. Most of the time, you can get by editing with the base tools like, well, read technique will go on to the big Internet, and we'll watch some cool technique and really go. Well, I got to apply clarity, inverted double with super filter. I got into that, and then I have to fix all this stuff. Well, maybe if you just adjust the exposure slider, You got what you wanted in the first place. A lot times. The easier fix is the correct fix. When in doubt, work top down. So Adobe did a good job of actually designing the tool that if you start at the top and work your way down luminosity color. Okay, so we kind of work from the top down. If you get stuck like Cameron, what to do? Worked top down. Exceptional. Be over here and I'd say Work bottom up. These are the radiance. That's the adjustment brush so but yet, But in the general interface we worked top down. If you don't know what a slider does, this goes back to what I said earlier about adults. You won't click on anything that you don't know what it does, and you won't move it out of fear of something terrible happening. The best way to learn what a slider does is to go makes it brighter. Makes a darker, brighter makes a darker that slider makes things brighter and darker. That slider makes things fuzzy or a sharper, fuzzy sharper. And instead of calling it the clarity, Slider called it the fuzzy slider for yourself. Whatever you need to tell yourself that that tool does but move the slider aggressively, the other. When I tell people, let's make it edit there, let's see what it does, and they're like, OK and they move it up like 0. Can you see 0.1 They're like, Well, it doesn't look like does anything like move it like, really get aggressive with the slider movement? The altar key on a PC and the option key on a Mac are powerful little keys in the light room world. They will give you an alternate view of a lot of the tools to help you understand what the tools actually doing in seeing the data in the file just a little bit differently. So, on any slider when you're getting started and you haven't used before, hold on that all care. The option can move the slider and see what happens if that changes. You're like, OK, I have a secondary view into this not all sliders habit, but the majority of them do avoid using a new edit to fix the mistake of an old in it. Okay, I will open some people's files in photo shop. It's even worse because they have layers. And you like to look at somebody's Photoshopped file and there's little like 900 layers. And you're like, What is all this like? Well, I have this halo thing. I can't get rid of your like they have that second layer down there. Let's just like, not have that. And then the halos gun don't fix something by adding something. Go back and fix the original air and then work forward off of that. So one of the pieces and will reiterate this over and over again. We can use more than one Grady int. We can use more than one brush, so sometimes the solution is use a little bit less with one brush and then use a second brush for the other effect you want instead of trying to combine everything into one. But you don't want to create an effect and then compound it. Most of the nearly almost all of our edits are additive in light room. So if you make the mistake early on and you just keep hammering on it, it's gonna just slowly add and compound. The problem sharpening and a few other ones are multiplication. Even the issue gets even worse faster. But for the most part, you're gonna inch your way up, and then you're just gonna start doing random stuff to try to get rid of something, and you can't get rid of it because you baked it in earlier in the process