Over the past two months, many people have asked about my super-fast workflow. I have to process a minimum of 100 images per hour to make money, and I like to be doing about 300 an hour, which is kinda easy once you practice and perfect my five-step workflow. Of course, if you have a different system that you think works better or more efficiently, by all means, DO IT. Try my ideas or incorporate them into your current workflow. It's not "my way or the highway" (don't tell my kids) but rather I'm here to give you ideas you just might find useful.
Next week, I will list my five-step super-fast Lightroom workflow for both Lightroom 3 and 4. For this week's post, I'll list the steps leading up to the five-step workflow, since many students find this part of the editing process the most difficult. Importing, naming, backing up, organizing and culling is actually the easiest part, and here's my take on it, along with a review of what you'll find in Lightroom 4:
Once you
learn Lightroom,
a typical job—wedding or portrait;
seniors, headshots, maternity,
boudoir, baby,
or family session—will be a snap to edit
to proof and even
print stage. Remember--SHOOT
RAW~! Don’t waste
your time shooting jpgs--that’s
like letting someone else
choose where you live and what you
wear.
What’s New With the just-released LR4, besides
the increased
dynamic range,
the new processing engine offers
more
targeted post-processing adjustments, so you'll see tons more details
in your images. Shadows that were muddy will now have detail.
Highlights that were blasted
away will
also have detail.
And that's just when you first
open
it!
What’s New There are two
new modules (Map and
Book) and other changes, especially to video file
handling, that make this software a must-have. But the main improvements
are
in the new and
enhanced Develop module. The results you
achieve in 4 will be so superior, you won’t
have to go into Photoshop or use third-party plug-ins. Adjustments will be faster and better due to the
improved algorithms.
Even the sliders with the same names from LR3
are
improved (Clarity and
Vibrance, for example).
Content
aware algorithms
were built to find and
retain
detail
in the shadows and highlights, taking
advantage of the entire dynamic range of your image.
And you
can adjust
them separately. Another huge change in 4 is that
the sliders have “0” in the middle instead of at the
left. Now we can
make negative adjustments as
well as positive adjustments on
each control. Remember, darker to
the left; brighter to
the
right. You’ll have to
keep
the old slider behaviors in mind when you play with the
new ones, but soon you’ll be flipping
them like a pro.
IMPORTANT NOTE: Even if your image was processed in Lightoom 3 and you open it in Lightroom 4, it will have all the controls from 3! Don't update the image unless you really want to--you can leave it as is.
And the workflow remains
the same. Here’s
my
suggestion for a fast
and easy process:
IMPORT into Lightroom
from a card reader, your hard
drive or external hard drive. You can also apply copyright,
contact info and
keywords
at this point. If you have time to
wait, ask for 1:1 previews—that
way it won’t
have to resample the image if you zoom
in. Otherwise, minimal or standard previews
are quick and
take up less space.
You can always change to a larger preview
later
in your editing process. Make sure to pre-set your preferences so that
those memory-hogging
previews don’t stick around
for
too long. To set,
go to Edit>Catalog Settings>File
Handling>Automatically
Discard 1:1 Previews (after 30
days is ideal
for
me).
NAMING TEMPLATES: I use the year-month-day (reverse-date) bride-groom naming structure,
i.e. 2012-04-05-Smith-Jones. Whatever you decide to
use, stay consistent so you can always find your precious
images. Use dates
and names, not casual
phrases that are easily forgotten.
BACK UP images! Always
make a second
copy of the imported files. If you’re on the
road, copy them
to an external
hard drive and keep them
far away from your laptop.
At home, copy them
not only to a logical folder hierarchy, then
into LR, but
also to at least one external
hard drive that
can be taken offsite or traded with
a friend once a month or so.
Only
when you have the second copy should you clear your CF card. I only reformat when I really need to just in case I’ve lost
the original files. Whatever system you end up devising and
using, it will only be effective
if you maintain it. Online backup services
like Carbonite are good,
but super slow on the upload and download,
at least for photographers.
Best backup practices: store data locally
AND offsite.
ORGANIZE: Keep
it simple. One catalog is
just fine. Once you’ve imported a job,
select all
images (Ctl/Cmd
+ A),
click
on the + sign next to “Collections”, choose “Create Collection,” name it (I
recommend using the same name as
the folder or the client’s last
name,
maybe the month
and date of the wedding or shoot,
something that
will be easy for you to find
later),
then
click
on CREATE.
Adobe.com says that
unless you're working with thousands of photos and performance is
a concern,
try
not to use multiple
catalogs. Multiple catalogs can
become complicated to
manage. Lightroom
offers many ways to sort, filter, and
otherwise organize and
find photos within one catalog.
You can
use folders, collections,
keywords,
labels, and
ratings. With
a little thought and practice, you
can
probably find
ways
to organize and manage all of your photos
successfully in one catalog.
CULLING:
How to do this easily: Turn
on CAPS LOCK key for Auto
Advance, go through
images with fingers
over number keys to get
star ratings,
sit back and work without
thinking too hard. Be spontaneous, and
it will go faster. I use the number 3 and
4 keys to rank:
*** = not
that great, don’t want
to see it again
**** = good enough
to consider keeping
Then I filter to catch
only
the images with four stars.
Keeping the final
number of images desired
in mind, I go through
one more time,
finger over the 3 key. The instant you give an image a 3 rating,
it will fall out of your filtered collection, and
to keep track, the total number of images
in the collection is on the breadcrumb
bar
above the filmstrip on the bottom. To undo, use Ctl/Cmd
+ Z.
SEPARATE BY SERIAL NUMBER: Most wedding togs use more than one camera, and
may
even
have more than
one
second shooter. There could
be five or more cameras covering a wedding, each
one
with its own color and exposure quirks.
I find that my image-by-image editing
technique goes even faster if I separate the cameras during the
editing process.
This is because I can
much more easily COPY and
PASTE settings from
image to image if they were shot with
the same camera and not mixed
in with images from other cameras.
Here's
how to separate cameras by serial
number: Get into the Library module (G
key). Make sure the Filter bar at
the top is visible (if it
isn’t, press the backslash
key or go to the View
> Show Filter
Bar).
You will see four labels: Text, Attribute, Metadata and None.
Go to Metadata. Four columns
will open up. Mine by default show date, camera, lens and
label.
You can change the criteria to anything on
the drop down list, which is a
really useful thing to know. Press
on the title of any column
and select Camera Serial
Number. (You can
also save your choices as
a preset—click
on “Custom Filter” to
the top right, and on the drop down,
select
“Save Current
Settings as
a New
Preset”.
Name it, then you’ll
always have that group of metadata available.
Click on a
serial number, and
only
the images shot with that specific camera will show. I color
code each serial
number group for ease of use (and
even editing
capture time—see my previous blog post on how to do that). To assign colors,
select
all in that group (Ctl/Cmd + A) and press a
color number (6=Red, 7=Yellow, 8=Green,
9=Blue…for Purple you’ll have to go to the
menu bar to Photo>Set Color
Label>Purple). Then
to edit this group, press D to
go into the Develop
module. It's actually easier than it sounds, and will save you
hours of time. You can
easily remove the color labels
later.
