Ok, I’ve avoided putting this in the discussion forum too long. First disclosure: I have not sat through many videos nor have I read any books that would probably help on this discussion.
Here is my problem….I am holding off starting my Year Two until I can get my system of importing, editing, and storing down right. In year one, my process for half the year was to import photos to my desktop in Windows folders by date and I’d edit them with Windows media. I didn’t label, tag, star, nothing.
Then, mid-way through the year, I bought LR5. I started directly importing into the program (and it also imported things by dates). By the end of the year, my desire to make a video of my favorite shots started to become a nightmare, and I realized I am not taking advantage of LR’s ability to catalogue my shots in efficient ways. I also don’t have a video and may never get it. So Year Two, I want to strategize ahead of time.
I want:
1) a system of importing that makes good sense for 365 and for other photography projects (Using LR5)—note, I do have PSE 10 too, but I haven’t used it yet, but would like to start. I’m also interested this year in shooting in RAW—something I decided was a “Year 2 Thing”—will using RAW make a difference?
2) a system of tagging for imports and in post-editing that allows for easy retrieval of photos in case I want to create a collage, a photo review, a video from different dates.
3) any tricks that save time or headaches with LR5 (yes, I will buy a book, but hey! Someone may have a quick (haha) answer!).
My hope is to be back in the 365 biz by my birthday next week (or the day after). That way, I can end year two when I turn 50. Sure would be nice to have a video without a headache by then!
Thanks everyone. And my hope from posting this discussion is to give an early head’s up to those starting 365 to establish a good import-edit-store system before falling in love with photography and taking thousands and thousands of shots every day because you just can’t get enough. I’m smitten, but I’m a mess.
Oh, and for Newbies (because I hated people using weird photography alien lingo like "LR5" and "PSE10" when I started), translation: LR5= Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 5 and PSE= Adobe Photoshop Elements 10
And RAW? I still the heck don't know, but it's the rage--something to do with being able to manipulate your images to perfection. Hehe. I'm in.
Hi Daryl. I'm willing to bet you're going to get a ton of expert opinions so I'm not going to even go there. But I will mention that I adopted my workflow by watching the videos on Adobe and lynda.com about PS and LR and from them determined what I felt would be best for me. Recommend both.
Thanks so much for posting this question! I am a newbie, and was lucky enough to get LR5 as a birthday gift last week. So, I'm not too far down the rabbit hole in terms of # of photos collected (unsorted, and untagged!) I will be following this thread closely, and eagerly await the arrival of the "expert opinions" that Joe assures us will show up!
@darylo Oh Daryl if only I had asked this question before I started using LR4, you have no idea what a mess I am in, it is total and utter chaos, and sadly trying to sort it out now is proving to be a nightmare, so if you can find a way out of this mess.......let me know!!!
@jennifwa Welcome to 365! I never intended to really get into photography the way I have and I really like to use my technology well if I can. I'm a bit of a self-learner in so many things, but I want to approach year two with some firm control over my wandering habits. :) Good luck, and we can muddle through together when I officially launch my second year. You're going to love this place.
@jo13 Yes, the sort-after process is turning into a nightmare for me too. I just want to admit I'm a failure and get on with my addiction in a much better way. I hope we can both gain some insights. I suspect I'll have to hunker down and read, view, read, view.
Oh Daryl, I could have written this word for word! I am in the exact same fix. Thank you for asking these questions. I will be watching the replies closely.
@darylo Hi again. I'll just add the highlights of my workflow - I'm not in any way advocating its the best and I'm sure someone is willing to shoot if full of holes but it works well for me so far:
1. Shooting RAW & Importing: I actually shoot RAW + small JPG. Having the small JPG is handy for quickly proofing or for situations where an SOOC (i.e. loading vacation photos to Facebook) is all that is needed. In which case you don't have to waste time messing with post-processing and converting the RAW. For the import into LR, I have the LR import preferences set up to bring in the raw file as a DNG. DNG stands for Digital Negative Graphic. It is still a raw camera exposure file but in a more open and potentially more compatible format. I also have LR build standard previews for each photo. LR unless otherwise configured will put the photos in folders by date taken. I elected to stick with that, but it's certainly capable of supporting import to custom folder system of your devising. But there is enough power within LR to search by tag and attributes that I left the folders by date.
2. After importing I rate the photos which are from one to four stars. Four stars it's a photo I might consider as portfolio worthy, one star is "just good enough to not be deleted". Photos which I consider to be "no hope" or "unredeemable" I delete.
3. I then tag the photo by keyword. The keyword strategy I feel would be up to the individual...for what its worth I use ones like indoor, outdoor, winter, spring, fall, animal, dog, cat, bird, person, portrait, landscape, abstract, vacation...you get the idea. I apply as many keywords that can possibly reference the photo in order to promote finding it on a keyword search or filter in the future. On occasion I think of a new keyword and create it. The hard part is going back through and applying the new one I just came up with to thousands of previous images. It's kinda like eating cold vegetables while cleaning toilets. Ugh... So I am usually lazy in that regard and don't do it.
4. I then post-process the photo as needed - usually only the four stars, sometimes the three stars. I have a couple user presets for that which I try first and tweak from there because almost every raw needs contrast, clarity, vibrance, saturation and sharpness adjustments. I infrequently update these user presets (or add a new one) if/as I find myself making similar edits over and over to photos. I can usually do almost everything needed in LR in regard to post-processing, but occasionally when really doing some heavy lifting I utilize the Photoshop integration to edit in PS. It is possible to configure other external editors for integration in addition to or in place of PS.
5. If I need to upload to a site not supported by a plugin (e.g. 365project), then I export the processed photo as JPG. I personally use a quality of 77 when exporting JPG out of LR - it seems to be a nice balance between quality and file size. I try to use TIFF format whenever possible as it is a lossless compression format, but some sites such as this one don't accept TIFF format.
6. I've only put together a collage once in LR, it's a little interesting - essentially you use the printing capabilities to get the photos arranged on the page then output to a file which you import back in as an image. I personally found it a little cumbersome so went back to doing it in Photoshop.
Well, I don't know if this was what you were looking for, but hope that's a "start" which you can salt and pepper to your liking, or even discard. But there are a few short FREE videos on Adobe TV that are really good about LR workflow and I highly recommend them. They run you through the preferences screens with some recommendations and I adopted most of them.
Hi Daryl!
I have already described my experience with LR in another post, however I never addressed the the RAW issue. Yes...you really need to shoot in RAW! When you shoot it RAW, there are so many ways to enhance or improve the image. RAW captures so much more information than JPG. It enables you to, for instance, manipulate the exposure after the fact by plus or minus 2. Or, are the shadows too dark?....then you can use the adjustment brush to bring out the detail to some extent. And even if you don't know how to take advantage of the RAW format at this point, once you learn LR or Adobe camera raw, you will be able to go back and practice what you've learned.
RAW files are much larger, so, you will need much more storage. It's worth it as far as I'm concerned :)
@rellimdj Oh Joe, wow, thanks! Huge help here. Quick followup question, so you import both the jpeg and RAW files to LR and does it make separate folders for them? Sorry, I was planning on shooting in RAW + Jpg to see what the diff was, but I was worried that I would just have two files and then not know diff. I'll have to study the step about saving them as a DNG (thanks for explaining that too!!!). I will definitely be watching the videos too. I have to say, I'm tempted to erase everything I did half a year and start over (after exporting to the hard drive and backup the ones I absolutely can't live without), but I suspect that is going to take too much time.
@vskolnik thanks for the info about RAW. I'm going to really try to step up my game with birds this year, but I do have one limitation (my lens is just not that good), so I'm hoping my processing can really help. I have on the birthday list a new zoom lens, but I think I'll end up with the other item I really wanted (a new camera bag!). Either way, this year is the new learning curve year. I get manual, I get creative, but I need to get organized and working the editing programs to my advantage! Thanks so much!
@darylo By default, the JPG comes into same folder on the PC as the raw file, but the JPG does not show up in LR - only the raw. And, this behavior worked for me so I haven't ever looked into options regarding changing it. I've only ever viewed the JPG outside of LR. Yes there ends up being two files with the same name in the folder on your PC, but it hasn't been an issue for me to tell them apart as the icon is different. Plus when I double-click a DNG, it opens LR. When I double-click a JPG, it opens Windows Picture Viewer.
I hear you on starting over. I did a major sort like that once so far when I switched to shooting RAW+JPG. I archived off all personal photos (like vacations, family events, etc) to separate folders / thumb drives, then deleted all my "snapshots" that really weren't worth hanging on to. What was left I re-imported back into Lightroom into a new catalog. Because I had only been using LR a few months it was only about 1000-1200 photos I worked with and it took a couple of days to revamp them. Not sure what quantity you have but maybe that metric helps in deciding if its worth it.
@rellimdj Last question, and hopefully I can return the favor of a detailed reply when you need something :). When you import, are you importing to the PC first and then into LR or are you importing directly to LR and it saves a copy on the PC?
@darylo The latter. Importing directly via LR which puts copies from the SD card into the target folder(s) on the PC. (You can also tell it to "move" the files rather than copy, but I feel safer with copy). As mentioned previously, by default it creates folders on the PC by the date the photo was taken. So if I took a picture today and imported it, the raw and jpg will be located in Pictures->2014->2014-01-16. After verifying the import was successful I have gotten into the habit of immediately putting the SD card back into the camera and formatting it. Keeps me from getting the "No memory card inserted" or "Memory card full" error messages at inopportune times. I'm glad the information has been useful. :-)
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And RAW? I still the heck don't know, but it's the rage--something to do with being able to manipulate your images to perfection. Hehe. I'm in.
1. Shooting RAW & Importing: I actually shoot RAW + small JPG. Having the small JPG is handy for quickly proofing or for situations where an SOOC (i.e. loading vacation photos to Facebook) is all that is needed. In which case you don't have to waste time messing with post-processing and converting the RAW. For the import into LR, I have the LR import preferences set up to bring in the raw file as a DNG. DNG stands for Digital Negative Graphic. It is still a raw camera exposure file but in a more open and potentially more compatible format. I also have LR build standard previews for each photo. LR unless otherwise configured will put the photos in folders by date taken. I elected to stick with that, but it's certainly capable of supporting import to custom folder system of your devising. But there is enough power within LR to search by tag and attributes that I left the folders by date.
2. After importing I rate the photos which are from one to four stars. Four stars it's a photo I might consider as portfolio worthy, one star is "just good enough to not be deleted". Photos which I consider to be "no hope" or "unredeemable" I delete.
3. I then tag the photo by keyword. The keyword strategy I feel would be up to the individual...for what its worth I use ones like indoor, outdoor, winter, spring, fall, animal, dog, cat, bird, person, portrait, landscape, abstract, vacation...you get the idea. I apply as many keywords that can possibly reference the photo in order to promote finding it on a keyword search or filter in the future. On occasion I think of a new keyword and create it. The hard part is going back through and applying the new one I just came up with to thousands of previous images. It's kinda like eating cold vegetables while cleaning toilets. Ugh... So I am usually lazy in that regard and don't do it.
4. I then post-process the photo as needed - usually only the four stars, sometimes the three stars. I have a couple user presets for that which I try first and tweak from there because almost every raw needs contrast, clarity, vibrance, saturation and sharpness adjustments. I infrequently update these user presets (or add a new one) if/as I find myself making similar edits over and over to photos. I can usually do almost everything needed in LR in regard to post-processing, but occasionally when really doing some heavy lifting I utilize the Photoshop integration to edit in PS. It is possible to configure other external editors for integration in addition to or in place of PS.
5. If I need to upload to a site not supported by a plugin (e.g. 365project), then I export the processed photo as JPG. I personally use a quality of 77 when exporting JPG out of LR - it seems to be a nice balance between quality and file size. I try to use TIFF format whenever possible as it is a lossless compression format, but some sites such as this one don't accept TIFF format.
6. I've only put together a collage once in LR, it's a little interesting - essentially you use the printing capabilities to get the photos arranged on the page then output to a file which you import back in as an image. I personally found it a little cumbersome so went back to doing it in Photoshop.
Well, I don't know if this was what you were looking for, but hope that's a "start" which you can salt and pepper to your liking, or even discard. But there are a few short FREE videos on Adobe TV that are really good about LR workflow and I highly recommend them. They run you through the preferences screens with some recommendations and I adopted most of them.
I have already described my experience with LR in another post, however I never addressed the the RAW issue. Yes...you really need to shoot in RAW! When you shoot it RAW, there are so many ways to enhance or improve the image. RAW captures so much more information than JPG. It enables you to, for instance, manipulate the exposure after the fact by plus or minus 2. Or, are the shadows too dark?....then you can use the adjustment brush to bring out the detail to some extent. And even if you don't know how to take advantage of the RAW format at this point, once you learn LR or Adobe camera raw, you will be able to go back and practice what you've learned.
RAW files are much larger, so, you will need much more storage. It's worth it as far as I'm concerned :)
@vskolnik thanks for the info about RAW. I'm going to really try to step up my game with birds this year, but I do have one limitation (my lens is just not that good), so I'm hoping my processing can really help. I have on the birthday list a new zoom lens, but I think I'll end up with the other item I really wanted (a new camera bag!). Either way, this year is the new learning curve year. I get manual, I get creative, but I need to get organized and working the editing programs to my advantage! Thanks so much!
I hear you on starting over. I did a major sort like that once so far when I switched to shooting RAW+JPG. I archived off all personal photos (like vacations, family events, etc) to separate folders / thumb drives, then deleted all my "snapshots" that really weren't worth hanging on to. What was left I re-imported back into Lightroom into a new catalog. Because I had only been using LR a few months it was only about 1000-1200 photos I worked with and it took a couple of days to revamp them. Not sure what quantity you have but maybe that metric helps in deciding if its worth it.