The other day I needed to scan several hundred photographs when I remembered a tip that Kevin Connor suggested. To increase productivity, instead of scanning each image individually (because this can take a long time if you have lots of little photos), place as many images as you can on the scanner and scan them all at once. Then, import those scans into Lightoom, Create Virtual copies for each individual image, and refine as needed.
Occasionally I need to remove IPTC metadata from a file when I demo Photoshop and Lightroom. In order to do this quickly, I’ve created a metadata template which has blank fields AND a check to the right of each field. When applied, Lightroom replaces the metadata that I entered in the previous demo with the “blank” data so that I can demonstrate adding it again.
Be careful with this one – I once wiped out an entire years worth of keywords that I had applied.When using Compare View in Lightroom, holding down the Shift key will unlock the Link Focus which, when zoomed in, allows the repositioning of each panel independently.
In this Quick Tip (The Painter Tool in Lightroom 4), Julieanne will show you a few of her favorite uses for the little-known Painter tool in Lightroom 4.
In this video tutorial (Why Does the Photograph’s Preview Change in Lightroom and Bridge? ), Julieanne explains one of the great mysteries of Lightroom and Bridge – why Lightroom (or Bridge) displays a photograph one way and then changes the way it looks a moment later. It will all become clear with just a little information about how digital camera files are captured and displayed by different applications.
If you’re having problems pointing Lightroom to folders on an external drive because the name of the external drive changed, right click on the highest level folder and select Update Folder Location to relink them. If the name of the external drive keeps changing, you can find additional information about how to name your drive here.
Thank you Pete Marshall!
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.
