All the shortcuts

Lightroom is a crazy program allowing one to organise and effectively edit and sync large amounts of photos. It differs from Photoshop in the sense that it offers a more comprehensive workflow and over the past few weeks we have been developing our skills with the program.

The Library Concept

Lightroom essentially makes visual copies of images rather than opening the actual file like Photoshop, meaning that one can work with the preview and make changes that are saved in a catalog.

Importing Files

To add images into your catalog you first must import your files. To add images to the catalogue use ctrl + I or the "Import" button.

Select the folder in your drive with your Camera RAW files in and hit the 'copy' option and wait for your images to load into a new library. From this I can export the library as a new catalogue.

The above window provides an easy preview system which allows one to compare two or more images simultaneously. Below shows how one can begin to organise and categorise images by using star ratings and colour ratings. To enable these features, click the drop down menu (1) next to the Thumbnail slider (as circled) below and select the Star Ratings and Colour Ratings options which will appear on the tool bar under (as circled). For photos that did not pique my interest or were simply poorly composed and/or badly lit I would rate as 1 star and a red colour rating (these photos will not be used or even edited). Yellow ratings would typically be between 2 and 3 stars and would be kept as backups if needed whilst green rated photos would be typically rated 4-5 stars and would go into my collections and eventually be edited as a smart object in camera raw. All of my imported and rated photos are part of my primary catalogue from the portrait studio shoot.

However, Once I did this I needed to create a collection within this catalog of my favourite photographs. Go to the Collections drop down menu and delete the adobe preset Smart Collections. 

I then created a new collection and selected this as my target location.

From this I can select all of my photos labelled green in my primary catalogue and hit the B key . This will send my highlighted images to the target collection that we set earlier. This little trick is incredibly useful for both small and large amounts of photos and is an essential asset in streamlining the overall workflow.

Once I have created the new collection I can right click on it and select 'export as new catalogue'.  In this catalogue I will be able to trim down my selecttion and remove photos I feel don't make the cut. This will not affect my primary catalogue and thus is an incredibly flexible and non-destructive workflow.

Now that I have two catalogues (a primary and secondary), I am able to effectively manage my data without damaging the original images as they are copies.