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Lesson Info

Using Collections in Lightroom CC to Build a Story

We just finished selecting images, we talked a lot about the the basis for storytelling and now we're going to go to a documentary story on trade and we talked a little bit about trades and for what we're going to design a book inside of the book module with the document your story of trey jin's year battling bone cancer and so in order to do that, the first thing and we talked a little bit about that just a minute ago, but I'm going to show it to you again in order to find those images we go to wherever they happen to be in we sort by star rating, so I have already sorted by star rating and found a number of images that I want to collect, and so I've grabbed those images of highlighted him there are one hundred forty seven of them, so now I'm going to create a collection just of those images. So once you've selected your image is you really want to make a collection especially if those images come from different sources because a collection can bring images in from various folders so ...

some of these images may be in one folder some of them may be another folder, but we can create a collection that khun merge all of those folders, but it does it in a virtual way, so by doing in a virtual way, that means I could have I could I could be shooting over the course of the year the life of my children or you know, whatever and as I do that I congratulate images from, you know, october you know, from the, you know, film festival or something, grab those images and pull him into the collection, and then I could go over to a different folder in november from thanksgiving thing and grab those and pull him in, and then I could go over to another folder and grab images, implement so collection it is not a real place, you're not moving photos around you're just making references to the fault to the images so you can come from any folder anywhere as long as there inside of light room and so I am going to right click uh, this collection folder so you can make you can make different collections you can if you come up to the collections area and you hit the plus button, you can create a collection you can create a smart collection, which is a smart collection allows you to determine the criteria on which it collects, and it constantly is collecting those things. So view did a smart collection based on the keyword children than any time you tagged something as a children shot, it would go into the smart collection automatic klay onda created collection set is like it's a box so that's what these things are right here they're they're collection sets there a folder that you can put collection's inside so I'm going to right click this collection set and create a collection site it and we're going to call that collection trey jin's book and then I'm gonna hit I'm gonna I want to hit create but I first want to do this if you think there's any chance that you might returning images to black and white or color adjusting him for the book but not for other things he's kind of want to keep them separated you don't want to change if you change the image in the book you don't necessarily want to change the image the way you originally intended it to look if you're going to do that, then it's a good idea to make new virtual copies of all of the images that way whatever you do to them on ly happens to the virtual copy doesn't happen to the original copy because if you collect images into a into a collection and they're not virtual copies they are the same images so the image in the folder is the same as the image in the collection. And so if you change the collection image to black and white the image in the folders black because it's the same image it's just a reference of it if you make a virtual copy it's actually making a virtual copy of it, and so now if you change it, it doesn't change the original. It just changes the reference copy of it, which doesn't actually exist, but it is a reference to it, and it shows what it would look like if it were this instead, and so we're going to make virtual copies that way. Anything we do to these images doesn't actually change the original intent of the original images simon hit create, and it creates a what looks like a folder, but it is a, uh it is a collection inside of here, so there we are. See so trey jin's book is now collected in here for some reason only brought fifty two, and I must not a selected all my images hold on, let me go back down to the original place where I grab them, highlight all of them, and let's, do it again and let's say we should have yeah, one hundred forty seven collected now I could if I wasn't going to make virtual copies of them, I could just grab them and drag them in there, and it would put them all in there, but it would put the it would put the original versions of them in there, and so I want to make sure that they're all uh I want to make sure that they're all virtual copies and so I'm actually just do the whole thing again, which is good because then you can see it be done again so I'm in hit created collection and I'm going to go and say I want this to be trey jin's book two on dh then I'm going to tell to make virtual collections of all those and create and it should be done momentarily because it has to create the virtual copies first and then it puts him in there so there you go one hundred forty seven so I'm just going to go into this one and right click it and, uh delete it if I delete a collection it's not deleting the images it's just deleting the reference to all the images so it just kind of deletes that referenced collection okay? Just askyou logistics question about light room when you're making these collections especially if you've done this series of shoots over time are you making the collections from your portfolio catalog or from the working catalog? In other words, do you need to add things to the collection as you're shooting along the year first and second when you're done with the shoot and you put it in the archive, is it going to remove these from the collection? Okay, so for those of you watching the question relates to total workflow andi, if you want information about that, go to my light ultimate light room cc workflow class here on creative live for more information about it. But for those of you understand the concept of white room and working in various different light room catalogs, if you are working on a book, you're going to need to have all of the images that you're working on in whatever current catalog you're in doesn't matter which one you're in, you could make a book from your portfolio and typically, if I'm making a retrospective type book it's going to be all made from my portfolio catalog, which has all of my favorite images over time over the last, you know, twenty years or whatever, but in this case, we're working from my working catalog, assuming that this project has stayed in the working catalog throughout the entire year because it was constantly being shot and that's how that works. When I'm shooting a a ongoing project, I will either have a catalog that is specifically for that project, or I will have that catalog or that I'll have that job inside of my working catalog. Depending on you know how big and how often I'm going to it, I'm going to it all the time, like ended with trey jin this literally was in my working catalogue the entire year because I kept me. You can see if I go to this job. You can see that. Uh oh. Here we are. See there's, all of the and then inside of these there's even more. And so that it's it's a very long job full of lots of different times where I brought images in some. So I'm making it from one catalog from one collection of images inside it. And you notice that my the actual name of the catalog is two thousand fourteen. Oh, for zero zero. Meaning that sometime in april of that year, we started. Okay, so we now have a collection called trading to trade jin's book too. And you can see that these have virtual copies because they have this little peel coming up here that peeled tells you that it is a virtual copy, not riel. Its virtual so is not taking a penny. Extra space on your hard drive is just simply a version of it on dh. So now we can do whatever you want to these and it's not gonna change the original. So if we see him on a page together and we think they both need to be black and white, we can do that, all right, so we have these images ready. And now it's time to pore through him, and obviously we're not going to put video into our books on a shift, click those on delete them when I delete him, it doesn't actually delete the originals. Itjust removes the copy from my from my collection. I mean, just scan through and see if there's any more video that I need to remove because of the video is not going to come in to a book at least not going to come into their some more video right there, and you can sort very quickly for video by going to the attributes and click on this little thing right here that looks like a film and I'm say, I only want to see movies so then when I zoom out, I should see check none and then goto attributes click on movies. I should see that, but see how that's a movie some reason it's not seen that movie, but let's, just get rid of those movies. Ok, so now we've got all of our photos in here, and the thing that I want to go through now is I want to organize stuff and make sure that's in the right order, make sure that there's not there's another video I need to get rid of on there's another one. So I have lots of little videos throughout this job but I'm going through looking for you know, things that air superfluous things that I don't need but I'm seeing this story unfold throughout you know the his tie entire experience so I keep going there's you can see these videos because as you scrub over him they move so they're like little harry potter photos so keep going there's another little one right there you can see him taking pictures dutilleux duty on dh keep going through keep going through there's another video and you know, this is an interesting thing here because it's hard to determine which photos to take s o this is one where you look at it and you have to decide between photos because the three photos is too much it doesn't tell the story fast and it's not brief and so you have to decide what's the story is the story them smiling at him this is before he went into surgery to actually they surgeon that they're going to do they're going to remove one of the bones in his leg you know how the the bottom portion of your leg has two bones they're going to remove one of those bones they're going to completely remove this bone and then they're going to replace it with the bone from his leg and put it here so that his bone will grow with him because they have to take out that whole section of bone and so it's a pretty drastic surgery for the kid but it's it's absolutely necessary because otherwise it's either that or take the arm off and so you know that they chose to do that and it was the right call because it worked out but the question is do you take the picture where they're smiling at him do that this right here is the picture that I think is most telling of of the mom and trey gin you know, like he's smiling her she's looking at him he's all drugged up so he's he's making everybody laugh because he's just like you know but or do you take this one where they're praying over him? So this one I think khun go so I'm going to delete this one but then the question is do you do this one or do you do that one because probably both of them don't need to be there and I'm going to say I mean I love that I love that look but I think in the end the this tells the story more than this one does so then I'll delete that one and now that's the see that's I can co both directions if I if I go this direction and I use this image I'm saying something completely different than if I use this one and I am saying something completely different and so I'm going to go with the prayer over him because then the next scene is him being taken out so it's maybe a more dramatic way to go about it but I think there's you know, there's enough laughing and smiling that occasionally and trade ins a pretty upbeat kid and so with his much smiling and laughing is in this book you occasionally needs something that somber otherwise it just looks like he was having a blast and he wasn't um ok, so we just kind of scan through and we're looking for, you know, moments that we don't need moments that we do need making sure that everything's an organization so that it works and then a tw the yeah that's pretty much how we want to see it I don't necessarily need this shot get rid of that so I'm just kind of getting rid of stuff that I don't need once I've got a good look at all of these pictures and I think that they're all correct I don't notice I'm not adjusting them according teo I think these should all be black and white they should be color I've done that while I was working on the images to begin with I was adjusting them in order to to show them to the family, but at this point I don't need to do any kind of comparison between them and working on them and adjusting him in comparison to each other because I'm going to do that after I designed the book, so a really professional design on a book is always going to first lay out the images, and then they're going to decide what to do with the images if you're doing a story on a magazine, if you're doing everything determine is determined after the lay office determined, so we have to determine the layout first, and then we will determine what the images should look like it's kind of reverse most people, you know, fuss over the images, and then they lay him out, and then they find out, oh, that didn't work out, and he did just this, and he did just this, so don't fuss over the images, get him so that the client can see him and choose him stuff like that, but wait and do the fussing after you have put them in. Another interesting thing for weddings, by the way, is if I am taking an image, let's, just open a wedding book really quickly azan example, but if I'm taking an image and let's say, you know, this is the image I'm taking and I'm going to put it on a page and this one and this one, even s so all of these images do I need to do any retouching no I don't think any retouching on any of these images and yet people will go in and do a lot of retouching thinking I'm gonna lay put this in an album so they'll open up all their images and their retouch all their images and then they'll design their album it's totally the backwards don't do it that way you designed the book and the book will tell you what needs to be retouched I don't need to retouch this image because it's so he's so small you can't tell whether or not he's retouched and even on these it's small enough this is really only a four by six print and so it's small enough that there's no necessary there's no need for any retouching so don't retouch your images if they don't need to be retouched based on the size of the print you know you might need to retouch uh you know a portrait so then want to get into the portrait area here you know then okay I did a little retouching here on her skin on her back and stuff like that just to make it perfect because it was all about her and it's close enough that we could see like a little bit of a skin thing here and whatever side to a little retouching there but that's it um most of this stuff doesn't need retouching I mean do I really need to retouch this? Absolutely not because it's so small and then the only reason I would ever need to retouch that images if she decided printed as a sixteen by twenty. So why would I ever retouch that image is absolutely no reason to all I need to his adjust it, burn it, dodge it, do whatever you know, to make it look nice. So that fits into the layout and notice that I need this stone and this stone and this don't all feel the same, because really, this is a continuation of that stone. And so the idea behind doing the proper workflow or critical path for designing an album is put the layout down first. Then you know what you have to adjust, then you know what has to match. You don't know. It needs to match until you've laid it out. And you know that these three are going to be on the same page that's the only time you know that it needs to match so retouch on lee when it's necessary based on your design.