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Lightroom CC : Keywords and Tracking Images

So, I'll keyword things so that I can find them later. Oops, I don't want to be here. The other thing that I want to do then is I want to take these images that I like and I want to grab them and I want to put them somewhere. So, they're gonna stay wherever they are especially if you're using Lightroom CC they're gonna stay in the folder of the date they were shot. That's just where they're gonna be, and you're gonna organize them by albums. You're gonna come and say okay, portfolios, I wanna grab this and let's make a new portfolio. Let's call this portfolio, or album, let's call it Portfolio and then I'm gonna say Landscapes and Buildings, right? So, I'm gonna hit Create and it's just put that image that I was on in to that portfolio that says Portfolios and Landscapes" and I should've put it in my portfolios. One of the reasons that I put portfolio and then whatever it was is because here on Lightroom Mobile, if I wanna find my portfolios; so, if I go into my portfolios you'll see t...

hat I've got, in here, portfolios. If I double click it you can see that Portfolio Landscapes and Buildings. They're organized by alphabetical order so if I want all of my portfolios to show up in one place it's easier to find them if I just put portfolio this, portfolio that portfolio this, portfolio that. Or you could just put P- whatever it is so that they kind of organize themselves. Because if you organize portfolio Iceland and then portfolio Hawaii and then portfolio whatever. If you don't have portfolio in front of it then Iceland is gonna be here, Hawaii is gonna be here. They're gonna be all over the place, but if you put the P in front of it or portfolio, then they'll be organized because they're alphabetical. Fortunately, Lightroom Mobile now has folders that you can nest stuff in to, so that's really useful and helpful because now we can organize a little bit better and find our portfolios. You can see that that's the easiest way to find that image. Between putting things inside of albums and key wording them you'll be able to find them using the intelligent search through Adobe Sensei you'll be able to find images wherever you happen to be, whenever you want them, whatever you want, you'll just be able to find it. Now, in Lightroom CC it shows you, so if you click on an image like this one and then you go over to the info area you can see where it is based on if it's capturing the information, so if its a GPS-enabled camera then you can actually see the original location information inside of Lightroom. But it's just a little map right here, I'm looking to see if I can find, there we go. In this photo in Iceland you can see where it actually was in Iceland, right here. I'm not sure exactly when it will, maybe there's no real map information there, or maybe google is just waiting to show it to me. There will be a map there and you can see the pin location. If you go to Lightroom CC with this photo there's an actual map module that will literally show you everywhere you are and every photo you've ever taken and where it was on the planet. So, that's one of my favorite features in Lightroom Classic is the map module. I will constantly use the map module to find things. I do a lot of location scouting. In fact, as a professional photographer, 30% of what I do is find locations for photo shoots that I'm gonna do. And when I go to a wedding, what do I do? I run around for about two hours before the wedding doing location scouting. I just shot a wedding in the San Jose area about two or three weeks ago and I showed up a day early, which I always do if I haven't been at a location before, and I location scout to figure out where the sun's gonna be when I'm shooting and how am I gonna shoot this shot, where are the best shots to shoot, things like that. So that I'm not wandering around aimlessly looking for a shot. So anyway, that's another way that you can search for things and if you have GPS enabled then you could literally search for the place because not only would you be able to, so, if I went up here in to the search, I could search for show me photos of buildings in Iceland. And it would find those based on intelligent searches for building, 'cause Sensei can see that it's a building and it knows it's in Iceland because of the GPS location and it knows what was my other search criteria? Buildings in Iceland something. Anyway, whatever criteria, people next to buildings it would know there's a person, a building, and it's in Iceland because of that location. And if you put in some keywords like reminiscent or something like that you could say show me reminiscent buildings in Iceland or whatever, it would show you that one picture. So, to answer your question, you don't need to put them in a specific location because the search capabilities you can find anything as long as you leave it there, and then if you find out when you get there two years later and you find that image and you want to use it and it's too dark you can just readjust it. It's RAW so it's just there, because everybody's sensibility changes over time. Picasso has his blue period, maybe I'm in my blue period right now and that's why I did this photograph the way I did it because I'm in my blue period. But later on maybe I'll be in some other method and that will become completely different image for me. If it's good enough for me to draw up and work on it again. I think what we're gonna do now is, oh there it is, see how it just pulled it up this is exactly where that was. So, you see that there's photos tagged here from Google. I found the place that I wanted to shoot based on looking around on Google, and Google has the photos, and people tag their photos. So, there were some photos over here, and I knew that thing was out here somewhere on this little cape right here. So, I just walked all the way down here so that I could get the shot that I wanted. I knew exactly where those things were but I couldn't see them because it was so foggy. I just had to keep walking, walking and finally I was like I think I see them. I think they're right there and so then I sat up and shot and it was only after exposing for a long time that the camera could see those but I couldn't see them because it was too dark, it was really dark. You had made a black and white and then of course went back to the color. Let's say you really kinda like that black and white but you really like the color one too. I would be really nervous about making those changes and then not being able to save the black and white along with the color. Very good. I want both of the images You want it all. accessible. You want to have your cake and eat it too. I know I could go back and recreate it, but I don't wanna do that work. Right, of course not. So, we're all intensely lazy and that's perfect. In Lightroom Classic, the original Lightroom program that we were all using, there was something called a virtual copy. A virtual copy is simply and to do it in Lightroom Classic you right-click the image and say make a virtual copy and it makes a copy of whatever you're looking at and then it would say okay, you can do this one in black and white and this one in color and you could make 30 virtual copies. The brilliance of a virtual copy was that it didn't add space so you didn't take up any additional space for the virtual copy because you're still only looking at one original copy. But because Lightroom is completely non-destructive, it simply said what if I did something different to this photo, what would it look like? You could have 30 images and there's only one original image that takes up the 20 megabytes of space on your hard drive and then the other ones take up a kilobyte or two. Maybe this one takes eight kilobytes extra and so it's like nothing. It virtually doesn't exist but it shows you what it would look like if it were black and white. So, that's a really great way to do it. Also, in Lightroom Classic there was the ability to do snap shots, so you could work on image and then make a snap shot of it. Within that same image you could go back-and-forth in the history of your work and do snap shots. Lightroom CC, that we're looking at right now, is a very early version of what we're going to get later. So, virtual copies don't actually exist here yet, and I assume that they will be shortly. Because, a virtual copy is a very important, good thing for everybody to have. But, there is a way to do it. What it does is copy the image, very different than a virtual copy. A virtual copy is a non-existent copy, it just shows you what it would look like but it doesn't take any extra space. Whereas, the copy that you're gonna make here is an actual copy of the file. It literally duplicates it, so if the name of the file is number0001iceland, it'll be number0001iceland2. It'll make a second copy, but it'll allow you to do the exactly same thing it just starts increasing space on your hard drive. At one point, I imagine that there will be virtual copies and then you will have the same kinda situation that you have in Lightroom. Let's show you how to do that. Lets say that I wanted to do a copy of say, this image here because I like it and I think I might do a color and a black and white version of it. All I need to do is click on that image and then I'm gonna go up to the Edit menu and I'm gonna Make a Copy of that. So, when I make a copy, it's physically making another copy. So, this is number one and that's number two. If I go to the info, you'll see that this one down here, the file name is 1155cr2. If I go to the copy it has the same file name but if you go to the actual files in the hard drive there will be a secondary copy that's called -2. I'm not sure why it doesn't report that, that might be just a glitch. But, this one, here, if I go find it in the hard drive it is -2, so it's a physical copy of it. Now, what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna go into my adjustments and this one I can play with the exposure, notice I use the contrast because I wanted to do it quickly. I've got that image and I'm gonna go in to the color and just add a little bit more saturation to that. Actually, I could do a better job with the vibrance, because vibrance is gonna really do a good job with that blue. So, I'm really intensifying that. Then, this one here if I click on it, I wanna take the same settings so I'm gonna go over to the little ellipses here and I'm gonna say copy, oh wait, I need to copy the settings here. So, I'm gonna click here and copy the settings, then I'm gonna go here and I'll paste those settings, so I have the same settings, but now I'm gonna go in and do something black and white with this one and when I'm in black and white I wanna play around with these colors so I'm gonna darken up the blue. Let's take the blue down so we get a little contrast out of it. Actually, maybe we'll do, let's do bright. Let's brighten up the blue and the purple and then we'll take the yellow and stuff like that down. The problem is, that all of this stuff is blue-ish so I'm just brightening up all of it. So, there's not a lot, I think in this instance in order to get a lot of contrast out of it, I'm gonna have to go in to my effects and play with the clarity, see how the clarity gives me a lot more contrast there? Then, I'll probably also want to go in and do some burning and dodging and stuff like that. It could be a very beautiful black and white but I think it makes a better color. Now I have two and I can go back and forth between the two of them and decide which one is my favorite. That was a great question. In Lightroom CC you only have the ability to make a copy right now not necessarily a virtual copy but the same purpose is essentially covered as a result of that.