I've just started using Lightroom 4 and Photoshop CS6 and I'm having trouble figuring out a good workflow. I import my photos directly into Lightroom, do some quick edits and then go over into Photoshop to do more in-depth editing. I'm having trouble figuring out how and which type of files to save and how to make sure my folders are up to date (with the most current edits) and are nice and orderly. I'm a librarian and the disorganization of my hard drive is killing me. If you have any tips or would like to share your workflow, I would appreciate it. Thanks!
I copy the shots from each day into a daily folder, I do my initial cull with a smaller image viewer called ViewNX, then I import those files into Lightroom(I still use 3) by synchronizing the year folder and do 95% of my edits there without going into Photoshop. The thing to remember with Lightroom is that it doesn't just view the files, you can do quite a bit of editing right there and you can also manage your files. Lightroom uses catalogs to speed up file management. SLR lounge has an excellent series of tutorials on how to use Lightroom and what each menu/tool does.
@laurenjessopphotography The best advice I can give you when it comes to using Lightroom, is to never deal directly with the folders on your computer again. Do everything within Lightroom. Import to the specific location you want it, etc. It will make things so much easier. It sounds like your workflow is fine and standard. When you work on a file in photoshop, are you exporting it directly to photoshop from lightroom? If you are, you can just hit "save" when you are done with your work in photoshop, and in lightroom it will appear alongside the original as a .tif file. To open the lightroom files in photoshop, just right click and click "Open in Photoshop CS6^".
@bradleynovak Lightroom is creating all of these subfolders (one for each day) and it's making my folders messy. I would rather organize by year and month - is there a setting I can change to make that happen? I do edit in Photoshop straight from Lightroom. Thanks.
I keep all the raw files ... I use the canon software to download & upload what I need from those into Lightroom . I edit them in Lightroom keeping the raw files on an external hard drive & save jpegs of anything I upload or need elsewhere to my own filing system . The raws stay in Lightroom in day order files , It works for me , I find uploading direct from camera into Lightroom very slow but my MAC is kinda old, hence the canon software works faster being a smaller program
I guess (:
@laurenjessopphotography Question Lauren , why not edit in Lightroom it seems hard work moving them Into PS what do you use Lightroom for ? I know PS is a more in depth program but for standard edits , Lightroom can cope pretty well . Just wondered ((;
@steveh I use Photoshop to clone out blemishes and other stuff I don't want and I've just started applying some actions to my photos. I do basic edits like WB, exposure, etc. in Lightroom.
I've started using LR recently too. I rename my photos on import with the date- day first- and then keep them in folders by year and month. So I have 2012 with sub folders 01 Jan 2012, 02 Feb 2012.... I import photos from the card with LR and have it put them in the appropriate folder (08 August 2012 for now). You can tell LR where to put the imported files and how to rename them. I had to learn that because the daily folder thing was driving me nuts. I had been using Bridge to import before. But now that I have it worked out in LR, it's easy and everything stays in the same file structure that I started with and am comfortable with using.
Lots of people seem to organise their photos in LR by using collections but I prefer to keep mine in the date folder structure that I created on my hard drive. I use collections a bit if I want to group a specific set of photos but otherwise I don't use collections a lot.
There are all sorts of different ways to organize your photos. At first I tried putting all of my raw files into one folder, but that got completely out of hand, so now I let Lightroom create a folder for each day and the subfolders are all in the year folder. I don't rename the files when I import them - my two of my cameras have the ability to change the first digits, so I changed them to reflect which camera took the picture, then the sequential number tells me approximately when I took it. I keep all of the raw files (assuming the picture isn't one I want to delete entirely) in these folders on an external hard drive, so everything is in chronological order. I actually have a couple of LR catalogs - one for each external hard drive and one that's my "working" catalog - when I'm finished editing and producing what I want, I delete the raw file from this catalog - I once edited some vacation pictures more than once, not realizing I had already completed them! The catalogs for the hard drives include everything on the hard drive (so what file they might be in doesn't matter). I keyword my photos so rather than try to pick out one particular photo in the midst of 40,000, I can search by the appropriate keyword, which makes finding the file much easier.
While I use LR for global adjustments, I also use CS6 for specific things, especially if it requires layers, cloning, etc. And I like the way Photoshop resizes files better than LR. Since most of my pictures end up as my screen saver, I always have a version of the photo that is sized for a monitor.
What I do is export the photo from LR into an intermediate tiff file, and automatically open it in CS6. I have a separate folder where all the tiff files go, I don't particularly care if I keep them, though I've found them extremely useful on occasion (they sort-of act as a back-up as they are on a different drive than the raw files) and have been very glad I kept them. I make whatever adjustments I want in Photoshop, with the last thing being resizing for the monitor and saving as a jpg. I keep those files in another folder, this time on my computer (and backed up on the hard drive with the raw files). When I name the jpg I include the original number of the file - if for some reason I want to go back to the original raw file, I can easily do it. From the edited file I know what the original file name was and the exif information will give me the date (I always leave the exif information in the edited file) I took the picture, which will tell me which folder to find the file. Otherwise I'd be looking through a thousand or more files trying to find the one I want (a couple hundred in a folder is no big deal).
I keep CD or DVD back-ups for my files, but have found over the years they aren't reliable. In one case, a person wanted one of my older pictures to publish in a book - the original raw file on the CD was corrupted, but luckily the tiff file was not. So I was able to go back and re-edit the photo, leaving it large enough to work on a full page in a coffee-table sized book (the version the author had seen was a monitor sized version on my screen-saver, only about 1064 pixels on the long side).
I'm sure all that would drive many nuts, but it works well for me.
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Lots of people seem to organise their photos in LR by using collections but I prefer to keep mine in the date folder structure that I created on my hard drive. I use collections a bit if I want to group a specific set of photos but otherwise I don't use collections a lot.
While I use LR for global adjustments, I also use CS6 for specific things, especially if it requires layers, cloning, etc. And I like the way Photoshop resizes files better than LR. Since most of my pictures end up as my screen saver, I always have a version of the photo that is sized for a monitor.
What I do is export the photo from LR into an intermediate tiff file, and automatically open it in CS6. I have a separate folder where all the tiff files go, I don't particularly care if I keep them, though I've found them extremely useful on occasion (they sort-of act as a back-up as they are on a different drive than the raw files) and have been very glad I kept them. I make whatever adjustments I want in Photoshop, with the last thing being resizing for the monitor and saving as a jpg. I keep those files in another folder, this time on my computer (and backed up on the hard drive with the raw files). When I name the jpg I include the original number of the file - if for some reason I want to go back to the original raw file, I can easily do it. From the edited file I know what the original file name was and the exif information will give me the date (I always leave the exif information in the edited file) I took the picture, which will tell me which folder to find the file. Otherwise I'd be looking through a thousand or more files trying to find the one I want (a couple hundred in a folder is no big deal).
I keep CD or DVD back-ups for my files, but have found over the years they aren't reliable. In one case, a person wanted one of my older pictures to publish in a book - the original raw file on the CD was corrupted, but luckily the tiff file was not. So I was able to go back and re-edit the photo, leaving it large enough to work on a full page in a coffee-table sized book (the version the author had seen was a monitor sized version on my screen-saver, only about 1064 pixels on the long side).
I'm sure all that would drive many nuts, but it works well for me.