Infratech Civil

Product:  Adobe Lightroom Classic  |   Subject: Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Classic

In this exercise, we will learn about managing photos with Adobe Lightroom Classic 

A 3 Step Process To Manage Photos

In this lecture, I want to take a few minutes to describe to you a little bit more about what Adobe Photoshop Lightroom can do for you. In an earlier lecture, you found out that Lightroom was a Photo Management Suite. It allowed you to work with the photos, develop them and then finally export them. So let's take a look at what that means. So I find that Lightroom speeds up my workflow. 

Alternatively, you can say that I have adjusted my workflow to work with Adobe Photoshop Lightroom's application strings. This is what I mean; I look at photography in a three-step process. I work with all of my photos, in I like to ingest all of my photos. That is to say; when I go out on a photo shoot, I want to collect as many photos as I can and then put them all together to have them organized. That's what I mean by ingesting. And Adobe Photoshop Lightroom does that well. Once I've ingested all of my photos, I like to work on them very quickly. That is to say, perhaps I went on a wedding photoshoot, and sometimes I get up to 3000, maybe even 4000 different photos. Now that's a lot of photos that I have to go through to ensure that they're correct, that the exposure is correct, and lighting is correct, that I have the most important people in the photos. So that's the second part of the workflow. 

After I've taken all those photos after I've cataloged them, then I'm going to quote, unquote, digest the photos. When I say digest, I mean, I'm going to organize them, I'm going to flag them, I'm going to give them ratings so that that subset of three or 4000 photos, it's narrowed down into maybe 1000, maybe at most even 2000 different images that I can work with that I can show to my clients. Finally, after I have worked with all of the develop module settings after I've gone back and forth to the client, I've organized all the photos, and I will render all those photos. That's the third step in my workflow. 

The fourth step is to export the photos into whatever format works well for the client. It could be a photo book. It could be just a slideshow. It could even be printed photos, whatever it is; Lightroom is there for me. 

So essentially, Lightroom has a three-step process for me. 

1. It is going to ingest all of the photos. It's going to take all the photos that I have taken from the recent shoot. For example, a wedding photography shoot, which is about three to 4000 different photos, could be a portrait shoot, which is maybe around 500 to 1000 photos, depending on how many costume changes there are. And then I'm going to ingest all those photos. I'm going to catalog them. 
2. Once that's all done, then I'm going to go through all those photos in a very rapid way and flag all of the ones that I don't like, flag all the rejects, give a few ratings, maybe add a few labels, and so on so that I know which kind of photos I want to work with. This step is the digesting process of the photo photography. During this step, I will go through the photos, work with the client back and forth and make a few edits in the develop settings to have pictures that I like or even that the client wants. 
3. Finally, the third step is what I'm going to do to export all of these photos that I like or that the client desires to ensure that the client is happy with the end product. And this is the export side of the workflow. Once again, just to quickly recap, ingest, digest and export. These are the three areas of my workflow that I've adjusted to and even my processes to work with the strengths of Lightroom. Let me take a few moments to show you what I mean by that. So essentially, Lightroom has a series of modules. And they are the library module, the develop module, the map, the book, the slideshow, print, and the web.

Most of the time, when I work with the ingest phase of my photography, I work with the library module, and I add all of my photos to the libraries and the catalog so that I can work with them very quickly. In the second phase, I'll mostly work with the library module and add ratings; I'll add flags, I'll add colors even. And I'll add certain kinds of labels. So this is what I mean when I talk about working with the develop side with the digesting side. Then I will go to the develop module and work with the presets to adjust the contrast. I will perhaps adjust the highlights and do all sorts of adjustments to ensure that the photo that I'm working on meets my standards of quality, my standards of artistic perfection, and the clients' requirements. 

But these two are the modules that I'm going to be working with mainly. And then finally, I'm going to export all of these photos that I've worked with. And I'll do that in a different process. And that's usually in the file export setting here. 

Then after that these other modules, I don't work with them too much. The map module just gives you a few ideas of where your photos have been taken. So if you've got a phone that has GPS locations enabled, it'll attach those as metadata to your photos. So you can see where you've taken your photos. The book module allows you to create a photo book. The slideshow is the module that allows you to create a slideshow from the selected photos. The print is when it outputs all the photos into a PDF format or something for print quality type of exports. The web module, of course, is going to create an online presence for you. And it's going to be a series of HTML files with images that you can showcase on your website. 

So these are all the different ways that you can use Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. As I said, my three-step process of ingest, digest, and export focuses mostly around the library and the develop modules to get through the workflow to get through the 1000s of different photos that I've cataloged at a photoshoot or that I've cataloged in my entire existing library, or whatever it is that I want to work with. 

So I hope this lecture has been helpful. It gives you an idea of how you can use Adobe Photoshop Lightroom in a three-step workflow. The first step is ingesting all the photos.  This entails adding all of the photos to your catalog. Then you will go ahead ad work with the photos, cataloging them, giving ratings, flags and labels, and all sorts of things. You can work with the pictures more easily. And then finally, doing a little more of the digesting of the photos. That is to say, adding your coloring, adding your retouching to make sure that it meets your artistic quality standards and the clients, and then finally exporting those photos. But if you do have any questions about the steps, please don't hesitate to reach out. I'll be there as a source of support for your continued learning.