If you skip ahead in this video to @ 4:38 (Questions about Lightroom and Photo Management), I talk about how to archive or move your images from your internal drive to an external one. As you will see, it is easiest to move the files to the new drive from within Lightroom.
In this video (Share Images Online) you will learn to use the Web module to publish to the popular online photo sharing sites with Lightroom’s new Publish Services option in the Library module.
In this video tutorial (Moving Between Lightroom 4 and Photoshop), you will learn how to take a single image or multiple images for editing seamlessly between Lightroom and Photoshop. Also, see how to use Photoshop tools like Photomerge, HDR pro, and the export dialog in Lightroom for exporting multiple files.
In this video tutorial (Select, Rate and Prioritize Your Images), you’ll find out which method of tagging images works best for the photography you do in order to simplify the creation of collections of images.
In my first video of the Getting Started series for Lightroom 4 (Importing and Organizing Your Images), you’ll discover the most efficient method for downloading images into Lightroom and organizing them. Quickly import and manage your photo collection in a library that makes organizing, finding and editing your photos easy.
If you’re new to Lightroom (or just have questions about workflow), this link will take you to the Getting Started Series main page. It’s the perfect place to start as it’s designed to get you up and running as quickly as possible!
In this video tutorial (Working with DSLR Video in Lightroom 4), Julieanne will demonstrate the new features for editing, adjusting, rendering, and sharing video clips in Lightroom 4.
It’s a personal preference whether you use folders, collections or a combination of both to organize your workflow. Most of the photographers that I talk to have some type of folder structure to help them organize their images. Some common example are naming folders by date, client names, location or events – with all related files stored in that folder.
Then, to combine images into groups (without moving the originals from their folders), they create collections. For example, they might have a collection of their best of the portraits for 2011 for your marketing pieces, or a collection of the best bird photographs from across North America – these images are still in the original folders, but can now also appear in a collection(s).
Last week, I had a series of 600 images in a time-lapse series of some clouds moving over a mountain, but I only wanted to use 300 of them to turn into a short video clip in Photoshop. My dilemma was that I needed a quick way to select every other image. I adjusted the thumbnail view so that I could see as many thumbnail icons at one time, and made sure that there were an even number showing in the rows. Then I selected the Painter tool, loaded it with the Flag attribute and swiped from top to bottom along every other column. Once I had flagged every other image, I filtered by flag, chose select all, and then put the 300 images into a collection. Voila!
• The difference between a Smart Collection and a regular Collection is that the Smart Collection is based on the search criteria you specify in the Smart Collection dialog. Once you set up the criteria, Smart Collections constantly monitor your entire catalog looking for any photograph that meets the criteria set in the Smart Collection – which is why they are smart – they can add and delete images dynamically if you make changes to an image.
• In order to organize your collections, use the plus icon on the Collections panel and select Create Collection Set, name it and then drag and drop your Collections and Smart Collections into the Set.
• In order to target a collection (as oppose to the Quick Collection), Control (Mac) / Right Mouse (Win) -click a regular collection. And choose “Set as Target Collection”. Then, tapping the “B” key will add the selected images(s) into your targeted collection instead of the default Quick Collection. Caps Lock (or add the Shift key) will auto advance to the next image while adding to the Quick/Target Collection.
When you create a file naming template, inserting tokens (such as Date, Image Name and Metadata), tells Lightroom to use that information (on a file-by-file basis) from the metadata of each individual file. If you prefer to enter your own information, either type it directly into the text entree box (this embeds it as part of the template), or add the Custom Text token (which will allow you to create a template which gives you the opportunity to enter custom text like a client name without having to edit the template).
In order to reorder images in the Library, view them in Grid view and then drag (in the thumbnail) and drop in order to reposition. This creates what’s called a Custom Sort order. However, Custom Sort orders depend on folder hierarchy. If a folder contains subfolders a custom sort order is not possible unless the option to “Include Items from Subfolders” is disabled (in which case you will only be able to see the photos in the targeted folder).
And don’t worry, you can still use the Sort option in the tool bar to sort by other means (like Capture Time and File Type) and when you return to the User Order, Lightroom will remember your Custom Sort Order.
If you want to reorder images that have subfolders (without moving them from their original folders), then select all of the images and create a Collection (not a Smart Collection – Custom Sort orders are not available for Smart Collections) and then reorder them in the collection.
• In the Lightroom 4 Beta, only the Facebook and Flickr plug-ins are installed in the Publish Services panel by default. However, a button has been added directly underneath them to easily “Find More Services Online”. Although it might seem like added work to have to install a plug-in, there is an advantage – if a plug-in is not baked into the application, it can be updated by the developer at any time.
• Publish Services (collections) can now include video.
• After making small changes to images (such as adding a keyword etc.) in Publish Services (collections), you may not want to republish the images, If you do not want to republish, simply select the images and Control -click (Mac) / Right Mouse -click (Win) and select “Mark as Up-To-Date”.
In the External Editing Preferences, you can now choose to “Stack with Original”. Or not. : )
To deselect all images and only select the one clicked on, click in the gray slidemount area around the photo’s thumbnail in Grid view. Click here for more information about Mastering the Mysterious Multi Select in Lightroom. This video was first published on 2011-02-08.
Command + R (Mac) | Control + R (Win) will display the selected image in the Finder (Mac) | Explorer (Win). Note, this will only work when a single image is selected.
