Lessons

Lesson Info

Workflow Between Lightroom Classic and Lightroom CC

If you have a portfolio, or a set of images that you want to backup to the cloud, and you don't wanna use LightRoom CC all the time, but you wanna use LightRoom Classic, and you use it to upload smart previews to the cloud so that they're available everywhere and you can see 'em. And I'm telling you guys, when I'm in LightRoom CC, I specifically, let me go to it, I specifically, every time I import files, and we're gonna do this right now, every time I import files, I go to the import dialog box. And inside the import dialog box I go to, hold on, I don't think that I have my, ah, so if I take a disk and I plug it in. And I'm actually gonna take, I think this disk has it on it. So I'm gonna take this disk and I'm gonna plug it in. There's my disk. And I'm gonna go back to LightRoom. And when I'm in LightRoom, I'm gonna click on my disk and I'm gonna import my files. So these are the files that I wanna take. And I'm just going to, I'm gonna check, uncheck all. And I'm just going to take ...

this little portrait session that I have on this disk, with some great friends that I have in Sweden. And every time I go to Sweden now, I try and make sure that I take a picture of them. Because they are the most interesting, beautiful people on the planet. I love these guys. So this couple is fantastic. Anyways so, I'm going to, when I bring them into LightRoom, I'm going to choose to do one-for-one previews because I wanna zoom in and out of 'em. That's just my standard thing. I'm gonna build the smart previews because I want to be able to access it whether or not the photos are actually live on my disk. And then, I'm also going to add it to a collection. So I always add any job that I do to a collection while I'm importing. So then once I'm importing I'm gonna add a collection, and I'm gonna say we're gonna call this, Sweden Portrait. And I'm gonna put it in my working, so I have a folder called working collection. So its just, it's the working folder. So I've got a bunch of collections that I'm working on. So I put it in the working folder. And I'm going to synchronize it with LightRoom mobile. Right now it says synchronize with LightRoom CC because now it's LightRoom CC and not mobile. So I hit create. And that creates the collection. And it also toggles on the sync with LightRoom mobile. So then when I hit import, it's importing those files. I walk away. I go to bed. I go do whatever. And while that's happening, it's putting it into where it's supposed to go. And then it's sending it into a collection. And then it's taking it from that collection and sending those smart previews to the cloud. Which is kind of like a small backup. It's a last resort backup. But more importantly, all of those smart previews are being delivered everywhere else so that I can work from wherever I am. It's gonna be over here in LightRoom CC. It's gonna be inside of my iPad. So that I can work on these files no matter what. Then as soon as I'm don with 'em, I can then take them and send them to my portfolio. And all I have to do is, you can have LightRoom CC and LightRoom Classic working on the same computer. So then all you have to do is send those. Just open up the folder and import them into LightRoom CC and that will send 'em up to the cloud into the portfolio that is automatically already part of this. And so then you'll see it everywhere you are. And you'll have the originals backed up in the cloud. So it is possible to have LightRoom CC be just a backup source that just throws things to the cloud for you to back it up initially. So, but if you wanna backup 10 terabytes worth of stuff there are cheaper ways to do it. Right. I mean Google Drive will backup 10 terabytes for 10 bucks a month. Right? And it'll back up 100 terabytes for 10 bucks a month. Like, it's very inexpensive. Because it's just unlimited. And, Dropbox for, Dropbox ix expensive for that. It's like 60 bucks a month for unlimited space. And then unlimited doesn't really mean unlimited because you have to go beg for space from 'em and stuff. So it's not the greatest system. Whereas Google Drive you can just put all. So if you want unlimited backup space and you just wanna throw everything up there, that's what that's for. But the problem with unlimited backup space on Google Drive is that your access to it is all based in the web portal. If you wanna have like easy access to it, it's not easy. It's challenging and it works. But it's not easy. This is easy. So really this is for stuff you're working on and for your portfolio. Cool. One more question. Steven is asking, "If you already have the CC plan, and you download the new LightRoom version, how do you get the one terabyte of cloud storage? My storage says 20 gigabytes." Okay, so those of you who are currently on the LightRoom CC photography plan have 20 gigabytes. That's what was already in your plan. And you can stay with that plan for nine ninety nine a month for the next year. But if you want the terabyte, you've gotta go to the new version of the plan, which I think is fourteen ninety nine a month. But you might be able to get it for nine ninety nine a month for one year. So you're just on the old version of that plan, which is 20 gigabytes. And you're just king of a holdover from that. So just update that plan and you'll be at a terabyte. Cool. Alright. What I'm gonna do now is I've got all these photos here that I've imported. I'm gonna highlight all those photos. And right now, I actually forgot when I was importing them, I actually forgot to put them in a specific location. Sp usually when you're importing you would then say, "Oh, I wanna put them in a specific location." So, LightRoom just put these in a location. I'm not actually sure where it put them. So if I right-click it, and I ask it to show it in the folder in the library, it'll show me where they are. It put 'em in the pictures folder. So if you don't tell it where to put it, it's gonna put it there. I should have put them in a job folder. So I'm just gonna go back down here. I'm gonna right-click this jobs folder. And I'm gonna create a folder. Just like I did before. 2017 10, actually it was oh nine, and I think it was around the 17th, so we'll just say that. And then it was, plat cause it's my own personal stuff. And portrait. In Sweden. And then I'm gonna include those photos. And now I'm organized the way I should be. They're right there. But remember that the synchronized version of these photos are inside of my working collection. Right, here is Sweden portrait. And those are virtual. So it doesn't matter where the photos move. As long as they're in LightRoom they're still in that collection and they're still on the cloud and they're still inside of my mobile collections here. So now I can go to my iPad and I can just look for my Sweden portraits here. Let's see. Where are you Sweden portraits? Do you see it? Oh, there it is. Okay. So I can look at these and there's, there's my friends. They're awesome. (laughing) They're so cool. They're like the coolest people I've ever seen. So now I'm going to click on this. And I, so I'm on the road and I wanna play with these. So I'm just going to play with 'em. And, so I'm looking for his face. That's what I'm looking for right now because he's the, got the darkest, 'cause all my lights coming from the left hand side of the room. And so I want to brighten up his face a little bit. So I'm gonna start with his face and his body and make sure that he's correctly exposed the way I want him exposed. I'm gonna go into the effects, and I'm gonna grab clarity and bring it up, just to kind of sharpen it a little bit and make it pop. Because I really want them to just pop. All that gold and the candlesticks. And all that kind of stuff. So I'm gonna go into the color and make sure that it's the correct color. Now remember I'm on the road right now and I'm playing with this. So I can't judge the color 100 percent right now. Ill do that when I finally get back to my computer in Chandler, Arizona, where I have a calibrated monitor. An that's when ill finalize it and then send it to print. Or send it to him. You know, like that kind of thing. So, then once I'm done with that, now I'm gonna come in and start working on the rest of the file. So I'm gonna go in and grab a gradient. Because now I want this whole area here to go back down dark 'cause that's where all that light's coming from, and I've gotta tone her down a little bit. Not too much 'cause she's very pale skinned. And so she's brighter than he is to begin with. Not mentally. They're both very smart. Just skin wise. So I'm gonna go here. I mean, she is very bright. I'm saying that both of 'em are bright. They're both like doctor people, so. So I'm gonna take the highlights down. Do you see how I'm working now on her skin. Her skin tone. And all of her here in the corner. Right around her. So I'm just playing around with that to make sure that the entire image is fairly neutral and looks similar to itself. So now, I like that. So then I'm gonna go click a new one. And I'm gonna make new gradient. And I'm gonna pull it up like this. All the way to about there. And I'm going to bring that exposure down. Like that. And add a little contrast to it. And so I'm getting close to where I wanna be. So now I'm just gonna do a brush. So the brush is so that I can burn. So, when I'm doing a brush, see how I'm looking at what the brush is going to do before I brush. So I'm kind of just brushing like that until I see exactly what that brush is gonna do. But see when I let go, it goes back to normal. So now I'm gonna take my brush. Make sure that it's the right size. And it's the right feathering. And it's the right opacity. And now I'm just gonna go in and kind of paint in here. In the walls. And by the way, you can actually click on this pen and hold it. And then you can tell it to not show the overlay. So that way you're just seeing what you're painting. Instead of that red overlay while you're painting. And we would actually see better if I was turning off this red dot. Because that red dot is showing you where I'm clicking. So you can, I coulda turned that off, but then you wouldn't know where my pen was. So I'm just kinda going around this floor. And see how I'm just kind of, gettin' around the areas that I don't, I don't wanna touch certain areas so I'm getting that chair over here. Hold on. There we go. And I wanna do this chair right over here. There. So now, there's the photo so far. And I like the way it looks. It's very cool looking. And so, I can play around with this more and more. One of the things I always like to do is brighten up things that are, should be, so I can do this. And then I'm gonna create another brush. And I like to brighten up lamps and stuff that aren't glowing enough. And so I'll take the exposure up quite a bit so that that lampshade is gonna glow. And then I'll make sure that my, the size of my brush is nice and small. The feathering is a little bit less. Gotta keep going smaller with that brush. And then I'll do, a little bit lighter on that. And then I'm just gonna go here, and just brighten up those, so that they glow a little bit. But notice how they're spilling outside. It's okay 'cause it's just a sketch. Right? I'm just sketching. And so now I can take that and say, "I wanna erase." and I could go in and erase outside of the lines. So I'm gonna go like this. And I'm just gonna come in here. I wish I could see 'cause that red dot is so, difficult to see around. But. So I've got that pretty well done. And then when I get home, I can just finesse that thing and change it and work on it and make sure that it's perfect. But I like to glow those things up. I might try and fabricate some little, some lights here inside of the, right here inside of my candles. I might fabricate some little lights in there. Who knows. We'll see. But I love the shot. But now it's done. And as long as I switch away from that shot, now it's going to upload. So it's uploading right now and saying, "I'm sending." But notice that it's a smart preview. So it's just sending the changes for the smart preview. And then when I come back over to LightRoom when I get home that change is gonna come in here. Just give it a little bit and it'll pop in there. And all my changes from LightRoom mobile end up coming into my main editing station. Okay. So. You can see then that when we, we have two options. We can go from LightRoom Classic, directly. And that is a bit of a slower method because it's slower to work in LightRoom CC right now. Because it doesn't have all the bells and whistles. It doesn't have the synchronization methods. It doesn't even have survey mode so that I can look at multiple images at one time. I have to look at it in the grid. Stuff like that. There's just certain things that it doesn't have. But it backs everything up. And so it's a really great place to start and back things up if you have time to wait for it to go to the cloud and come back there. You are literally backing yourself up as you're putting it into the system. Then when you get over here, to LightRoom Classic, you're gonna just organize it to where you want it organize. And then, not only are you backed up but you also have full access to work on that photo, those photos inside of your fast system that can churn through a lot of files a lot faster. And it has more capabilities. I can design a proof book. All that kind of stuff can be done here inside of LightRoom Classic. Or, you can go the opposite direction. You just saw that I imported images into LightRoom Classic here, and I, they went up as a smart preview so that they're available to work everywhere else. But it's not 100 percent secure in the cloud. It depends on you having a backup system of your own. I have a backup system of my that's no problem. So the, my backup system on my own is, I have a RAID one system so everything that goes into LightRoom goes directly into my RAID one. So I have multiple copies on hard drives. And then that RAID one disk is also synchronized to Google Drive. So everything I'm working on, constantly is backed up in a cloud. So that's already set. You could use Carbonite. You could use Backblaze. You could use iDisk. Or I think that's what it was called is iDisk. Or something like that. There's a whole bunch of backup solutions that are very inexpensive that can back you up if that's the way you wanna work. What's that? iDrive. iDrive. That's what it's called. Not iDisk. iDrive. So iDrive. So those kind of things can back up this system. And then Adobe becomes this amazing place where you can work. Not necessarily backing you up all the way. So, but it's faster to start working immediately if you go through LightRoom Classic it that's what you're using already. But don't forget that there's power in those smart previews being in the cloud and working here. 'Cause, the way I have things set up, is that LightRoom Classic is where I go. That's where things get put. That's where I start working. But I want those smart previews to be everywhere else so that when I'm on the road I can work on stuff that's back at the studio. When I'm at my son's baseball game, and nothing's going on, I can be selecting through images. I can just be flipping through images and choosing 'em, so that when I get back to the studio all I have to do is adjust images. I don't necessarily have to do any selection because it's done. Yeah. How quickly can you flag and, color code and star through on CC and mobile? CC and mobile are one at a time type of operations. Or you can look at a grid and just go, "Oh I like that one." And click on it. And then you have to zoom in and see it. So it's slower. But, here's the deal, it's slower to flag and, but it's just a flick. All you do is flick. So if I'm looking at these images here. Let's go back to, here we are in LightRoom mobile, if I'm in LightRoom mobile and I'm looking at an image and I'm looking, all I have to do is flick up, and I can star, see how I'm staring those just by flicking up? And then I can flick up like that, and I flagged it. So if I go to the right. Flag. If I go to the left. Stars. They don't have color labels here. Okay. So flags and stars. I can do that really quickly. And then I just flip through. And I just keep flipping through, looking for the photo that I want. And then flag and star it. And now it's gonna be over in LightRoom Classic and it's also gonna be in LightRoom CC. So adjusting and, quite frankly, I actually enjoy the process of playing with a photo on my iPad more than any other place. But it's a slower way to work. So it's me enjoying the process of working on a photograph. Which is not always the best way to get something done. When we're running a business, we gotta churn those things out the door. Otherwise, we're just wasting our time and money. And so we wanna do as much as we can here, on the, on LightRoom Classic. However, the question whether it's faster to work on your iPad or LightRoom CC. Or whether it's faster to work on Classic. I'll tell you this much. It's faster to work on my iPad, than it is to not do anything and wait 'til I go to the studio. So like if I have an hour of downtime, while I'm waiting at the school for my kid's whatever, I'm gonna get some work done. Right. My dad used to bring a briefcase with him everywhere he went. 'Cause he's a lawyer and every time he had some downtime he'd open up his briefcase, pull out a brief, and start reading it and marking it. And he'd have a Dictaphone with him. And he was like, "Ingrid, take a note for so and so. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah ,blah." And he would just work while he was there. And that was his tools. This is my tool. This is my briefcase to bring my brief work along with me. So that when I have some downtime I'm not wasting that time doing nothing. I'm getting it done. So, it's an opportunity to work when you otherwise wouldn't be able to because your home system is big and doesn't port around. And so this is the perfect way to get that done. You work here as much as you can inside of LightRoom Classic. But because you're synchronized out with those collections you can work anywhere you want to be. Then when you're on the road and you're out there making images and you're shooting weddings or you're doing editorial work, or you're just traveling and having fun, you can back that stuff up by putting it into either a computer laptop or your iPad and you can play with 'em while you're on the road. And you can share 'em to social media. And let people know what you're doing. But, it's a dual purpose. I'm sharing and I'm playing with the photos while I'm out. But I'm also backing 'em up. And then when you get back here, they're ready for you to actually go into production. So LightRoom Classic is a production workhorse. LightRoom CC and LightRoom mobile are pretty much the same thing. They are mobile stations that allow you to back stuff up and allow you to play with stuff that's somewhere else that you don't even have access to the original files but they're up there in the cloud. The brilliance of the cloud-based system now, between LightRoom mobile and LightRoom CC, is that because it's parked in the cloud, you now also have access through other points. So when we get back I'll show you those other points as to where you have access to them. Not just inside of LightRoom CC and in your mobile application. But you also have access in other points, like Photoshop and other tools that are out there as well. So we'll talk about that right when we get back. But, hopefully that gives you a good indication of how, and I hope you've been thinking about how could I use this. There's a lot of tools waiting for you to find a way to use them. And I've just showed you how I use them. But there's gonna be a thousand ways for you to use 'em. Don't discount it. Those of you who are out there and worried about what Adobe has just done and whether they're killing LightRoom Classic. And whether they're trying to dumb-down LightRoom CC, stop thinking about it that way. And start thinking about what are the tools that I've just been put in my tool kit. And they're pretty incredible tools. You now have the ability to backup on location. You have the ability to work from anywhere you are. Share photos back and forth in full resolution to anybody you like and to yourself. It's an amazing tool set that we have now. And it hasn't changed anything for people who want to use Classic. In fact, it's just made your life better. So, keep that in mind.