Lightroom Workflow & Import Tutorial
He states that weddings vary, but he can shoot 3-4
thousand images at an event and as all wedding
photographers, needs to get thru them quickly and
effectively in short order.
Read more on his workflow here.
One thing that puzzles me is that
many photographers are hanging on to old-school
ingestion practices (i.e. getting images off the
camera and onto your computer). They use all manner
of stand alone ingestion applications (or even just
use the Finder/Explorer) to do the job, when
Lightroom has a very capable and time-saving import
feature that does most of the heavy lifting
automatically for you.
Lightroom was designed to help you speed up your
photographic workflow. Five years ago, the digital
workflow was immature and required many separate
applications that the happless photographer cobbled
together just to get thier job done and
inefficiencies were inherent in the process. Times
change, and Lightroom is a more holistic, efficient
approach.
Importing with Lightroom
Here is a quick tutorial on Lightroom’s Import feature to get some of you off those shareware solutions and onto something that saves you time/effort.
1. Make sure Lightroom is running and insert your CF or SD cards. Lightroom wil prompt you with the Import dialog automatically. If anything else comes up (i.e. a “helpful” Windows or Mac diaolg - turn that off now - you won’t be needing those anymore). This is what you’ll see. I have the Previews turned off as I generally just do a “dump and go” operation, but sometimes it is nice to see the thumbnails.
2. Decide where to save your files. Don’t panic about this - you are in control here with the Copy to pop up. You can save them on the internal drive (ie. in the Pictures folder) or on an external drive in a Photo Archive folder of your creation. Just pick one and stick with it. I save all my files into a Photo Archive/YYYY/Month hierarchy on an external Raid drive. Lightroom will remember from import to import where you put them, so you don’t thave to change this every time. In fact, most things here are sticky from session to session so you’re doing the hard work only once.
3. The Import dialog is designed to save you time at
the front end of the workflow. Here are some quick
recommendations:
- You should convert to DNG automatically by in the File Handling pop up. DNG is more efficient, smaller and archival. Nuff Said. And be warned, it wil take a bit of extra time to do this.
- You can organize the import by various date formats or into a named folder (ie. Job Name/Number)
- You can check to make sure you are not importing files already in the catalog
- Skip the Backup option - right now its a pretty basic back up of the files from the card - you need a more comprehensive backup strategy.
4. If you choose, you can reame your files using the comprehensive File Naming option. This dialog looks like this and contains a plethora of options.
- You can add custom text, or add any tolkens from any of the areas (numbering, date, file name etc).
- You can save templates for future use - this speeds things up even more.
5. In this step, you’ll want to apply a few things to
the images as they are imported:
- A basic Develop preset - I have one from Matt Kloskowski s LIghtroom Killer Tips page that does a basic adjustment that works well for me.
- A metadata template. I have a basic one that contains my basic contact and copyright info.
- Keywords - a quick way to get a basic set of generic keywords for the shoot into the files.
- Preview genration - most files have a basic jpeg preview built in, but it is small and you’ll need something bigger to rate and develop the file - you can do this by choosing 1:1 here. Note again, this will take extra time.
That is it. Importing takes some time, but done properly, you’ll be ahead of the game when it comes to editing efficiently. And as mentioned above, most of the settings you choose will be remembered from import to import - its automatic until you want to change it. Sweet!.
Have a great day.
Lightroom Smorgasbord
- Can Lightroom 2 Replace Photoshop - the short: depends on who you are and the kind of work you do.
- Recovering Highlights in Lightroom - How to do it and should you worry about it.
- Lightroom Color Management
- Frederick interviewed my good buddy Phil on the approach we take to Lightroom Design.
- Split Toning with Lightroom
Microsoft had its Pro Photo Summit this past week. I’ve gone the past two years because it was free, well attended and well appointed. This year I was off with Ira in Wyoming so I missed out.
Here is a review of the conference...
Free Lightroom Presets & More
Who does not love free stuff? Some of these presets
are pretty good, so head on over and do a bit of
exploring. Lightroom has a great community of users
who provide all kinds of interesting and useful
solutions.
Speaking of assets, the Lightroom team is loosing one
itself this week. George Jardine is off to recharge,
as it were.
I always appreciated George's frankness and
especially found his informative Lightroom podcasts
to be a great addition to the Lightroom team and
community. There are lots of jewels there in case you
have not been listening. I'm not sure how long these
will remain available, so its best to subscribe via
iTunes and get them all now.
Especially recommended
(in no particular order):
- Subjective Color Correction
- Gregory Heisler Interview
- The Lightroom Catlaog - Part 1
- Jay Maisel, Greg Gorman and Seth Resnick
- Adobe Raw Sharpening Controls
- Develop Module Baics for Color Correction
- Eric Meola
Remote Backups
Once you have your onsite redundancy thing nailed, then its time to address the second part of the backup problem: remote backups. It isn't good enough to have backups on a hard drive next to your computer if your studio or house burns down. Or if it sinks into a swamp. Or if it burns down, falls over and then sinks into the swamp.
My friends over at SmugMug (a rocking photo sharing/printing site) have just released a new feature that solves your problem.
Its called "SmugVault"
and its a way of backing up all your valuable Raw
files to Amazon's distributed data centers. No more
earthquake, flood or the appocalypse to take out your
collection of digital files.
Read more...
Making Lightroom Faster
Sure, as software developers we always make improvements and talk in terms of seconds, milliseconds and even X times faster. And we mean well.
Sometimes, it depends on a myriad of factors beyond our control. Have a slow drive? An old computer? Lacking reasonable Ram (and whatever you have, its probably not reasonable enough). Take good care of your computer?
Well, there are lots of
things you can do, and the guys over at shootsmarter.com have a nice article by Michael Clark
on tips to speed up Lightrooom (you may need to
sign up to view the article).
Link-O-Rama
1. The Inside Lightroom blog has a great tip for how to speed up your editing process in Lightroom - and this is one that I inadvertently discovered recently - and now use all the time.
2. Strobist has a set of DVDs now
available - everyone is talking about this. Great
idea. $140 isn't a bad price for what you get.
3. Zack Arias (a blog I've been
pretty into lately) also has a lighting DVD for
sale. Looks good as well - not priced yet though.
4. Scott Kelby has an interesting
proposal for Lightroom and Photoshop development.
And now for something
complete different...
1. DIYBike. I'm building one.
Yeah, with all my spare time. Ugh.
2. Weezer has a new single from an upcoming album.
Its been on a "one song" rotation all afternoon.
Pork and Beans. Sweet. Man, I
love Weezer. Geek Rock, uh, Rocks.
3. I'm getting old. I missed an internet thing. I
finally learned what a Rickroll is - someone inserts
this into an email link or
other public event. Funny! Love the dancing in the
prision-chique denim Rick. I wonder if he knows
about this phenomenon. Yes, I just Rick Rolled
you, but in a very obvious and non-threatening
way. Baaaaam!
As an aside, its been an interesting week. I've
gotten the flu and wasted a whole sunny Memorial Day,
my 8 year old nephew was diagnosed
with Leukemia and I finally managed to get out on
the road bike for a 63 mile jaunt up to Snoqualmie Pass and
back in less than 4 hours. It was cooooooold up
there in the fog and it took awhile to get feeling
back in my toes. And I flat with less than 5
minutes to home. Ugh.
I'll leave you with a picture...
Cheers!
Memorial Day
For our team, the tournament was a tough slog. We were in the top division, up against all A teams - including the state champions. We did manage to one win and two were fairly well contested, but it is obvious that this season is early in its making.
I shot a bunch of pictures of the game and posted them on my Smugmug account for the parents. What I actually enjoy more than that is the out-takes from the sidelines.
Here are a few from the weekend...
I'm going to be starting
up a new project soon, so stay tuned.
In the LIghtroom world, fellow Adobeite Rick Miller
is doing an online seminar for Lightroom 2.0 this
Friday.
More info here...
Cheers.
On a Roll
Had some kids visit, so we stuck up the seamless and shot a few pictures.
Julianne Kost has some
great new tutorials on her website for Lightroom
(both 1.4.1 and the 2.0 beta):
For those of you have have not attended any of
Julianne's sessions at the various conferences, she's
highly entertaining and does a great job of getting
the info across in a way that people seem to just
love. Highly recommended. Go Julianne!
Also, the Lightroom 2 Beta has two expiration dates.
If you are a current 1.0 owner, its longer. There is
a chance to extend it if you know a 1.0 owner.
Read more here on how to extend it
on the Lightroom Journal
Have a good day.
Lightroom Round-Up
- L7Foto has a short video tutorial that talks the basic Pick/Reject/Rating editing task. This is something that every photographer needs to hone - and it takes years.
- Bridge/ACR/Photoshop or Lightroom? Scott Kelby covers this in his blog post on The Photoshop Insider. I worked on Bridge/ACR and then moved to the Lightroom team a year ago. There was a reason why I jumped ship - Lightroom is a much more focused, organized, efficient tool for 90% of the raw processing task. Period.
- Peachpit Press has revamped their Lightroom Resource Center. You can even get access to Martin Evening's LR 2 book before it is printed.
- Matt Kloskowski has revealed some of his deepest, darkets confessions in "Confessions of a Lightroom Addict"
Portraits
A discussion on the Leica mailing list inspired me to get out a vintage Canon 1.2 lens I use periodically for low-light shooting and repurpose it as a portrait lens. Makes sense - a 50mm lens on the M8 approaches a portrait focal lenght. But try using it with a very shallow DOF instead of the typical f8.
Here are some examples...
I'm very happy with the results. Square format (doing
a fair amount of this recently) with a slightly toned
B/W look. Nice.
On the Lightroom front, a few great things over the
past few weeks:
CameraPorn (yes, I know) has a
good tutorial on importing and organizing images
in Lightroom.
Inside Lightroom has a series
of things on the new LR2 beta as well:
Thats all for today. Cheers!
Lightroom 2.0 Beta Q&A
Most of the feedback I've seen is very positive and the potential is getting many excited for the full release later this year (note how I'm being very vague).
Matt Kloskowski has posted a nice Q&A on the Photoshop Lightroom Killer Tips website that covers many of the questions I'm hearing.
On a related front, I've
given up on the Canon 40D.
I've had this camera and several reputable pieces of
L glass for about 5 months now and I've never really
been very happy with it. Why? Lots of issues with
sharpness, detail, focus and noise. Every time I look
at images from that camera I am not as happy with it
as I should be. What is weird, performance aside, I
was much happier with the images from an old NIkon
D40 than I've been with the Canon 40D. Go figure.
So I'm done as of today. I just ordered a D300 and
some nice Nikon glass, and hopefully it will live up
to my expectations. It arrives tomorrow and I'll put
it thru the ringer in short order. I realize I'm
somewhat spoiled by the Leica gear I own, but
disappointment just got the best of me. With no 5D
replacement on the horizon yet, it looks like I'm
jumping ship again.
I expect that means my 40D and its assorted
paraphernalia will go on Ebay in the near term as
well. I feel I really gave it a go and it has become
clear to me that I need the speed and flexibility a
good DSLR delivers.
So its Nikon's turn. I hear spectacular things about
the new Nikons, so lets see what happens. I'll
probably pick up an SB-800 and the battery grip as
well as I've become quite fond of them on the 40d.
That said, here is
another few images from my desert vacation. These are
all square formats of the local flora and I'm quite
happy with them.
I was also in the studio
yesterday with some dancers, so I'll be posting some
non-desert stuff soon.
Thats all. Have a great day.
A Few Pictures
The public beta of
Lightroom 2.0 is still in the news and getting an
awesome response.
Here are a few things:
- Photonovice - a brief overview of how the new local corrections feature works.
- Lightroom 2008 Adventure: Tasmania - like they did with 1.0, there is a big group of photographers out putting the beta thru its paces. Several team members are with them and they are blogging their experiences.
- Another Lightroom 2.0 Overview
Thanks for all the great feedback.
Also, I'm going to be out of the office and off the grid next week - taking my son backpacking in the desert southwest and won't be back until late next week.
Enjoy yourselves while I'm gone, and keep the feedback coming.
Lightroom 2.0 Beta Now Available
We did it. Finally.
Its been a long time in coming, but the public beta of Lightroom 2.0 is now available from Adobe Labs.
First, read the Lightroom Blog about the release, that details the fine print...
Primary Known
Issues
- Lightroom 2.0 beta will not upgrade Lightroom 1.x libraries. The beta is intended to be used for testing and feedback purposes. Lightroom 1.x and 2.0 beta libraries will be migrated to the finished version of Lightroom 2.0.
- While data loss is not expected, this is a very early ‘beta’ quality build and you should always work on duplicates of files that are securely backed up.
- Lightroom 2 beta will not overwrite or interfere with a machine that currently has Lightroom 1.3.1 installed.
- Develop settings applied in Lightroom 2.0 beta are not guaranteed to transfer correctly to the final version of 2.0. This is particularly true for localized corrections.
- The new Photoshop integration functionality is only available with Photoshop CS3 (10.0.1) and should only be used for testing purposes. Metadata associated with the original file may not carry over to the subsequent file saved from Photoshop
The Top Drawer Enhancements
- Localized Corrections - Retouch portions of the image (Dodge, Burn, Saturate, Sharpen etc) in Raw - non-destructive local corrections for your images - smack-down to the posers!
- Skin Retouching - This deserves a call out - you can do some awesome skin retouching with the Negative Clarity brush.
- Multiple Monitors - Grid and Develop together in da house.
- Smart Collections - Collections keep'in current
- Picture Package - Simple layout tools for picture package goodness
- Output Sharpening - Sharpening done, juuuuust right
- Post Crop Vignette - Special effects love
Here are a few resources to learn more:
- Terry White's Creative Suite Podcast covers Lightroom 2.0's major new features
- NAPP has a LIghtroom 2.0 Learning Center up already. Check out this great visual overview.
April Fools? That was last Friday.
So grab a copy and start providing feedback - we still got work to do.
Free Lightroom Tutorials
They refer to slightly earlier versions of the
application, but remain topical and authoritative on
the ability to apply presets and converting color
images to black and white.
I've been spending a lot of time in my archive lately
- here are some more images that I'm quite happy
with...
I'm off to do a customer site visit today.
Password Protect a Web Gallery
Pete Marshall covers this in his Blog (AKA Visual Journal):
Self-Portraits
Some very fun images
here. I'm not much for self-portraits myself - I
prefer to be behind the sensor - but here is my
humble submission that wasn't submitted.
On the Lightroom front:
- Lightroom Considerations BEFORE You Shoot - a nice article with tips on what to do before you bring those images into Lightroom (Registration Required)
- Mikhail Baryshnikov is shooting dance photography these days - a nice write-up in the New York Times. Personally I'm not that hot on them, being a dance photographer, but to each his own. Can't argue the man knows a thing or two about dance.
Hangin' with Da Kost
We'd met before, but I've never spent much time with her until today. The booth was booming - lots of questions about Lightroom and one thing that people asked was where they could get a bit more information on how to warm up to Lightroom's way of working. I've always recommended the NAPP tutorials and the stuff that George Jardine (our pro photog evangelist) does on his podcast. Well, I should have probably put 2 and 2 together knowing what Julianne does, but she has a plethora of great resources on her website as well.
She has some great
tutorials for "quick starting" with lightroom,
quick editing and a host of
individual tutorials on specific features. If you
are looking for more great Lightroom resources,
please browse to her site and get some popcorn.
There are also some short PDFs that cover even
more.
I'd also recomend checking out her portfolio of images.
Thanks Julieanne.
So far WPPI is going great. We have a nice booth and
I was non-stop Mr. Answer for almost 5 hours. I
really enjoy booth duty, and while its exhausting,
its a lot of fun to chat up working photographers who
live and die on your software.
So thanks to you guys too. Lightroom is a great
product because you help us build it. Go team!
@ WPPI
A few things from around
the web:
- Your Camera Matters - Michael Reichmann's take on the old adage "Its the photographer, not the camera".
- Photoshop Disasters - Image editing faux-pas or "how not to use Photoshop"
- LRG's Complete - LRG's gallery of galleries web template (how many times can I put Gallery in this sentence)
Lightroom 1.4 Now Available
An minor update for Lightroom (1.4) is now available. this is mostly a camera support release, with a Leopard printing bug fix.
Download it here:
http://www.adobe.com/downloads/
- Previous camera profiles identified in the Calibrate panel of the Develop module may have displayed poor results at extreme ends of the temperature and tint ranges. A new camera profile identified as Camera Raw 4.4 is now available and will be applied by default to all images without existing Camera Raw or Lightroom settings. The creation of new default profiles will also include the updated Camera Raw 4.4 profile. Images edited in Camera Raw or Lightroom with earlier profiles will retain the earlier profile value and visual appearance.
- In previous grayscale conversions the Color Noise setting was disabled and this could result in an image with excessive noise when grayscale channel mixing is applied. Both the tool and effect have been enabled in Lightroom 1.4 and Camera Raw 4.4 providing the ability to reduce noise in grayscale conversions. In order to return to the prior visual appearance, Color Noise reduction can be set to zero.
- Compatibility with legacy printer drivers on OS X 10.5 (Leopard) has been updated.
Soccer Season is Coming!
I've been wanting to shoot a specific picture based on something I saw a few months back, but its either been raining or I've ben out of town. So today it cleared up enough, so we quickly headed down to the soccer fields by our place for a quick shoot. Of course, I forgot my ladder, so the picture I had envisioned was not possible, so I jettisoned that idea and focused on something else. At least it didn't rain.
Go EFC!
In the Lightroom Front, here is a series on using
Lightroom in remote locations.
http://blogs.oreilly.com/lightroom/2008/03/quicksand-turva-and-working-wi.html
I'm Home!
This past week was work-a-thon. We worked all day and thru the weekend trying to get some important things done. I'm glad to be back home as I'll have some time again to focus on a few new projects.
Here is a round up of things heard/seen lately on the web:
- New Inkjet Paper Options Abound - there are a lot of great paper choices out there now. Hallelujah! Lots of great fiber-based solutions that finally got me out of the darkroom. Here is a look at the latest. I'm really happy with the new Ilford Gold paper...
- The Image-Space is offering a free "Lightroom Tips eBook" (free) from their website.
- Lightroom Keyboard Shortcut Tutorial - keyboard shortcuts make you *much* faster in Lightroom. Learn these KBSC and be happier (and here's hoping that guy gets a website redesign soon - I'm having a 90's flashback...)
- Lightroom & Time Machine - an update by JDD on compatibility between this Leopard feature and Lightroom.
- LR/Enfuse - Source-Blending (whatever that is) in Lightroom just got easier. Kinda like HDR I hear. I'll be looking into this.
- Slideshow Pro for Lightroom Updated
- Sharpening in Lightroom - a tutorial on sharpening
- Andy Rouse - Photog and LR user. Interview here.
I have some images coming today.
Shooting Tethered
A
few weeks ago, I ran across a blog by Joe McNally
that showed his setup for shooting tethered...
http://www.joemcnally.com/blog/2008/01/28/the-mcnally-tripod-rig/
I've been doing some tethered shooting recently, and
this setup makes it so much easier to see what is
going on. I'm pretty excited about this and hope to
employ it at the studio soon. The small LCD on the
back of the camera isn't big enough for the client
(especially picky ones, like dancers) to see the end
result.
Sweet.
I had to reshave Liam's mohawk Sunday. Here are some
pictures from a few weeks back...
BTW, I'm in San Jose this week (again). More work for the next version of Lightroom.
Printing
I found a nice tutorial on printing in Lightroom from
Matt at the APLRKT blog...
I use Lightroom to print most of my personal and client work to an Epson inkjet. At times, however, its nice to have a lab to print your stuff to. I've used WHCC and had mixed results - output has been great, but they did nail me with a 5 day delay before Christmas that really hurt my deliver before Christmas goal.
Lightroom Freebies
Here are a few Lightroom things I've run across in
the past few days:
-
Adobe Lightroom - Getting Started (PDF) - Available in Low (5.4 MB) and High (64 MB) resoultion files
-
Free Develop Presets - a selection of links to various free Lightroom develop presets (I have not looked at all of these yet, so YMMV)
-
Web Galleries - a Horizontal Scroll web gallery from Sean McCormack. These are quite the rage...
Edit in Photoshop
Lightroom is an 80-95% solution for photographers.
Most of the time, you can import, tag, edit and
output your images right from Lightroom and forgo the
multi-app shuffle that was so prevalent before 2007.
However, there are times when you need to do some
heavier lifting (read: compositing, local corrections
such as dodge/burn, HDR, Panoramas etc.). Most
realize that Photoshop CS3 is an indispensable tool
for this type of work, and many photographers who
have Lightroom also have Photoshop (and many came
from Bridge/Photoshop to Lightroom).
Photoshop CS3 gives you an extra set of tools that I
find sometimes useful in a small percentage of my
work. Thankfully, Lightroom has a few options for
round-tripping your images from Lightroom to
Photoshop and back and it looks like George Jardine
(our pro evangelist and podcaster extraordinaire) has
posted another tutorial that covers the "Edit in
Photoshop" workflow. Highly recommended.
This tutorial can be downloaded from his iDisk
at:
http://idisk.mac.com/george_jardine-Public?view=web
You can also subscribe to it in iTunes. Just search for Lightroom in Apple's podcast directory.
Lightroom Podcast
George Jardine has posted another in his excellent
series of Adobe Lightroom podcasts - this time in a
very though provoking interview with Gregory Heisler.
Its a highly recommended listen. Gregory, who I have
the pleasure of meeting a few years back at a
Seth Resnick
workshop,
discusses a broad range of topics (from gaining
one's own style to his digital conversion) and I'm
sure it will resonate highly with working
photographers who have had to face this
reshuffling of the deck.
You can subscribe to the podcast or by searching for it in iTune's podcast directory. George's podcast is a wealth of knowledge - containing information on Lightroom techniques, discussions with industry insiders, Lightroom team members and working photographers as they talk of their art. It is a great, free resource for getting to know your craft.
DNG & Lightroom News
Happy Birthday Lightroom!
One year ago we shipped version 1.0 of Lightroom.