Configure your default catalog

One of the most important ways of ensuring you’re opening the correct catalog each time you launch Lightroom Classic is to configure a specific catalog as the Default Catalog. Go to Lightroom Classic > Preferences > General (PC: Edit > Preferences > General) and click the Default Catalog drop-down menu to choose the catalog file that is currently open and set that as the default. From that point forward you can rest assured that each time you launch Lightroom Classic that catalog will open regardless of what catalog you previously had open.

Create an import preset

A huge time saver and important method for keeping your import process consistent and efficient is to save all the common settings of the Import dialog as a preset. On your next typical import, configure all general settings as desired (excluding any settings that are too specific, like keywords or collection membership), and then click the Import Preset drop-down menu and choose Save Current Settings as New Preset. Give the preset a meaningful name when prompted and click Create. The next time you import a new batch of photos just confirm your preset is selected (or select it yourself) and know all your core settings are ready to go.

Master zooming in Library and Develop

Some time ago Lightroom Classic got an update that changed some of the zoom functionality for the better. The first thing to note is that it replaced the old zoom ratios (1:1) with zoom percentages that I think are easier for people to understand. Additionally, it added a 100% button above the Navigator panel to make it easy to quickly jump to that zoom level as needed. You can still access a range of zoom levels, from 6% to 1600% from the drop-down menu at the top of the Navigator. We also gained two new ways to zoom; Box Zoom and Scrubby Zoom. Box Zoom works in both the Library (Loupe view) and Develop modules by holding the CMD key (PC: Ctrl) while dragging a rectangle (box) the size you want to zoom into. Scrubby Zoom only works in Develop (with GPU acceleration enabled), and involves holding the Shift key while dragging left to zoom out or right to zoom in. Give them a try!

Mark folders and collections as favorite sources

If you have folders that you want to access quickly from anywhere in Lightroom Classic, you can mark them as a favorite. Simply right click any folder in the Folders panel and choose Mark Favorite from the contextual menu that appears. This adds a star icon to that folder and adds the folder to the Favorite Sources list accessible from the Filmstrip panel in any module. You can add a collection or even collection set to the Favorite Sources list by first selecting it in the Collections panel, then click the breadcrumbs menu in the Filmstrip and choose Add to Favorites at the bottom of the list (you can remove sources from the list the same way).

Mark most used presets and profiles as favorites

A quick way to gather your most used Develop presets into one group is to mark them as a favorite. Simply right click a preset and choose Add to Favorites from the contextual menu. That preset will be added to a special Favorites group at the top of the Preset panel.

Similarly, you can open the Profile Browser in the Basic panel, scroll through profile groups, and click the star icon that appears in the upper-right corner of each profile to mark it as a favorite. Favorite profiles will conveniently appear in the Profile drop-down menu in the Basic panel for easy access.

Manage the Presets panel

Lightroom Classic comes pre-installed with many Develop presets, in various groups, within the Preset panel. Some are good, some are not, but once you’ve explored them and possibly marked some as favorites (see previous tip) you can hide any preset groups in the panel you no longer need to see (presets marked as favorites will still be visible in the Favorites group even if you hide its parent preset group). Click the + sign at the top of the Presets panel and choose Manage Presets to open the Manage Presets dialog box. From there, simply uncheck any preset groups you no longer want to see in the Presets panel and click Save. You can always go back to this dialog box and restore any hidden groups.

Sync LrC catalog to Lr

To expand your Lightroom Classic catalog to your mobile devices it all starts with syncing your catalog. Click the cloud icon in the upper-right corner of the interface and click Start to begin the process. I’ve got an entire article if you want to learn more.

Explore Auto Adding photos in Lightroom for mobile

I like to use the Lightroom app on my iPhone to transfer photos taken on that device to my Lightroom Classic library. I have the Photography plan with 1TB of storage, so I don’t worry about filling up the cloud storage, and I like that this can be automated. If you only have the 20GB storage plan, use this tip with caution (or not at all). To set up Auto Add, tap the 3-dot menu next to the album you want to add the photos to automatically and toggle the Auto add from device photos to the on position. From that point on any newly add photos to your device’s camera roll will automatically import into Lr. You can disable by toggling that same switch to the off position. This will not automatically add photos previously sitting on your camera roll.

Access the Lightroom camera faster

I love the camera module within the Lr app on my phone and shoot with it a lot. On iOS (version 9 or later) you can jump right to the camera by doing a long press on the Lr icon to access a contextual menu containing an option for Take Photo or Take Selfie to choose the back or front facing camera respectively. On Android (version 7.1.1 or later) the process is similar. Locate the Lr icon on your home screen and give it a long press to access the Lightroom Camera app shortcut.

Set a Target Collection or Album

A fast way to add photos to a collection in Lightroom Classic or album in Lightroom is to designate a collection or album as the Target. In Lightroom Classic, right-click any regular collection and choose Set as Target Collection from the contextual menu. From that point on, you can select any photo (or group of photos in Grid view) and press the B key to add the selection to the Target Collection. In the Lightroom for desktop app, right-click the desired album and choose Set “[album name]” as the Target Album from the contextual menu. In this app, the T key is the shortcut to add selected photos to that album.

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Above: Here’s the raw image out of the camera. Here’s a link to download the Raw image if you want to follow along:

STEP ONE: The image is a little crooked, so head to the Transform panel (called the Geometry panel in the cloud version of Lightroom), and under ‘Unright,’ click on Auto (as seen here). By the way – you generally get better results from Upright if you first apply a Lens Profile in the Lens Correction panel (called the ‘Optics’ panel in LR cloud), but since the photo was taken with a mirrorless camera, it assigns the proper lens profile automatically for you).

STEP TWO: To get a better starting place, I generally choose the ‘Adobe Landscape’ Raw profile from the Profile pop-up menu at the top of the Basic panel (as shown here).

STEP THREE: Hit the ‘Auto’ button at the top right of the Tone section and it analyzes the photo and tones the image, and it generally does a pretty decent job of at least giving you a decent starting place.

STEP FOUR: The Foreground looks okay, but the sky is kind of washed out. Click on the Mask icon (it’s the gray circle with the white dashed line around it), and when the Add New Mask panel appears, click on the ‘Sky’ button (as shown here) to select just the sky. The sky will appear in a red tint so you can see what it masked.

STEP FIVE: Now that the sky is selected, my go-to sky fix is to (a) lower the Exposure until the sky looks good, (b) Increase the Contrast so the dark parts of the sky get darker and bright parts get brighter, which makes the color looks more saturated, and (c) I increase the Whites amount quite a bit, so the clouds don’t look gray from the exposure being lowered so much.

STEP SIX: I finish things off by raising the Texture to bring out some detail in the foreground and a bump up the Clarity just a hair (more detail), and lastly, I lower the Vibrance amount added by the ‘Auto’ button earlier so the colors don’t look too bright (it’s mostly a problem with greens – they start to look neon-ish, so you could go to the HSR / Color panel and lower the Saturation of the yellows and greens, but this is just quicker and easier – as long as the sky still looks good after you lower the overall Vibrance.

Above: Here’s a before/after (you just press the letter ‘y’ to see this side-by-side view. Press ‘y’ again to return to the normal view.

Well, there you have it. Hope you found that helpful. Have a great weekend, everybody! I’m cringing when I write this, but #GoBucs! (We’re not going to win, but ya know…I still have to say it).

-Scott

P.S. Mark your calendars: October 30-Nov 3, 2023 for the Masters of Nature & Landscape Photography Symposium. I’m honored to be one of the speakers, along with an all-star crew of instructors. Here’s how they describe it: “Jack Graham and Bill Fortney invite you to join them for a memorable experience in the Saguaro National Park and Tucson area. Their immense experience throughout the photographic industry, leading workshops and helping people “see” more creatively, all go in to creating this amazing symposium.” Here’s a link with more details and to grab your ticket. Hope I see you there.

The post “Seven Clicks To Done” (Lightroom Before and After Step-by-Step) appeared first on Lightroom Killer Tips.

[These tips first appeared in the October issue of Photoshop User Magazine – Rob]

Find Exactly Where Your Catalog is Stored (LrC)

Right after knowing where your photos are stored you need to know where the Lightroom Classic catalog file is stored. By default it is in a folder named Lightroom within the Pictures folder on your primary drive. However, the default preference setting is to Load most recent catalog, which means that if you have ever opened a different catalog file (like an old backup copy or maybe a small catalog you exported) and then closed out of LrC, the next time you launched LrC it would have opened that other catalog without you even realizing it. I’ve seen people work for months out of an old backup catalog and not realize it until they delete all their old backup catalogs, and their work disappears. With LrC open, go to Lightroom Classic > Catalog Settings > General (PC: Edit > Catalog Settings > General), and you’ll find the location and file name of the open catalog. Then, if you need to, you can move it to a better location.

Apply Color Labels to Folders and Collections (LrC)

In addition to meaningfully naming your folders and collections you may also find it helpful to assign color labels to them as a way to help you more quickly visualize their contents. Just like with our photos, we can assign a red, yellow, green, blue, or purple color label to any folder, collection, smart collection, or collection set. To apply a color label, right-click the folder/collection and choose Add color label to folder/collection, then choose the desired color.

Mark a Folder as a Favorite (LrC)

Beyond color labels and names you can also mark folders as favorites. For example, you might use color labels to establish a workflow (red = work in progress, green = ready to deliver) or maybe to indicate something about the contents (blue = HDR, purple = portraits), but above those things you might also have certain folders containing important work, favorite locations, important family members, or have some special meaning you want to denote. To mark a folder as a favorite, just right-click the desired folder and choose Mark Favorite from the contextual menu. A little white star icon appears on all folders marked as a favorite.

Mark a Collection as a Favorite (LrC)

Everything I said about folders containing photos with special meaning can also apply to collections, however there is not a contextual menu for Mark Favorite in the Collections panel. Instead, select the collection you want to mark as a favorite, then click the collection’s name that appears above the thumbnails in the Filmstrip and choose Add to Favorites. Collections marked as favorites don’t get a special star icon like folders do, but all folders and collections marked as favorites will appear in the special Favorite Sources group accessible from this menu in the Filmstrip.

Filter the Folders and Collections Panels (LrC)

At the top of both the Folders and Collections panel is a small field, and if you type into that field, it will filter the contents of that panel to only show folders or collections that match what you’ve typed. For example, I start all my folder names with a date, so I can type in a year and only see all folders from that year. If you click the small magnifying glass icon in the field, you’ll find you can also filter each respective panel by color label, so maybe you label all collections for a given client in one color, then filter the panel by that color label so only their work is displayed. The Folders panel also provides the option to filter by Favorite (not possible in Collections panel), and the Collections panel also provides the option to filter Synced Collections (meaning collections synced with Lightroom cloud).

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[These tips first appeared in the October issue of Photoshop User Magazine – Rob]

Set a custom Mask overlay color

With most of the attention being focused on the improved tools for masking, and rightly so, the tools for displaying the overlay of where the mask is located were also completely overhauled and upgraded. You may remember that previously you could press the O key to show/hide the overlay, and press Shift+O to cycle the overlay through the default red, green, white, and black colors, which is all still true. However, now we can click the overlay color swatch to open the Mask Overlay panel that includes a color picker we can use to select any color we desire.

Change the Mask Overlay Mode

Speaking of the Mask Overlay panel, beyond changing the overlay color we can also choose from several different overlay modes. Click the Overlay Mode drop-down menu at the top to switch from Color Overlay to Color Overlay on B&W (affected area with color overlay and unaffected area in B&W), Image on B&W (affected area appears in color and unaffected area appears in B&W), Image on Black (affected area appears in color and the unaffected area appears all black), Image on White (affected area appears in color and the unaffected area appears all white), or White on Black (affected area appears in white and the unaffected area appears all black). You can also access these overlay modes from the Toolbar below the image or the three-dot menu at the bottom or the Masks panel.

Manage your Develop presets

Develop presets can be incredibly helpful as a learning tool, a way to save some combination of settings for reuse, a productivity booster, and a means to maintain a consistent look across your edits. However, that panel can quickly become unwieldy and overwhelming due to the sheer volume of presets we can collect and create. One quick tip for reducing the clutter in that panel is to invoke the Manage Presets dialog box and hide all of the preset groups you do not use. Click the + icon at the top of the Presets panel and choose Manage Presets to open the panel. Then uncheck the box next to any preset group you no longer want to see in the panel (you can always check the box later to bring them back).

Mark a Develop Preset as Favorite

Another way to help gain some control over preset clutter is to mark your go-to presets as a Favorite. Once you mark a single preset as a favorite a special Favorites group will appear at the top of the panel to save you from scrolling up and down looking for the preset group it belongs to when you need it. To mark a preset as a favorite, simply right-click the preset and choose Add to Favorites. This works for both custom presets you create or import as well as the presets provided by Adobe. Bonus, if you mark a preset as a favorite you can hide its parent preset group using the Manage Presets panel I mentioned previously, and the preset remains in the Favorites group.

Find Exactly where a Photo is Stored

One of the most important things anyone using Lightroom Classic should know is where exactly a given photo is stored on their system. This is often the source of self-inflicted injury or general confusion because the Folders panel has a way of simplifying the folder structure displayed, so just looking at the folders shown may not be enough. In addition, we also often work from within collections, and a collection can contain photos stored across any number of different folders. So, if at any point in your workflow you find yourself wondering, where exactly is this photo stored on my system, just right-click its thumbnail (either in Grid view or the Filmstrip) and choose Show in Finder (PC: Show in Explorer) from the contextual menu to open the file browser on your system with that photo selected.

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Target Collection in LrC

Starting in LrC, since it was around first, there is a special collection configured as the Target collection, which is the Quick collection found in the Catalog panel.

Note the + symbol next to the Quick Collection that indicates it is currently configured as the Target collection. You can add a photo from anywhere in your catalog a few ways:

• Select a photo and press the B key
• Move the cursor over the photo in Grid view and click the round button that appears
• Drag and drop a photo to the Quick collection

You can remove photos from the Target collection in a similar few ways:

• Select a photo and press the B key
• Click the round button on the photo
• Select the photo and press Delete

Setting a Collection as the Target

Beyond the Quick collection, you can designate any regular collection (as opposed to a smart collection or collection set) as the Target collection. You can only have one collection as the Target at a time though. This can be very useful when you are first creating a collection and you want another way to easily add photos to it.

There are two ways to designate a collection as the Target. One option is right when you are creating the collection within the Create Collection dialog box. Simply check the Set as target collection box as part of creating the collection.

If you’ve already created the collection, then just right-click the existing collection in the Collections panel and choose Set as Target Collection from the contextual menu. Once set, you’ll see the + symbol appear next to the collection to indicate it has been set.

To stop a collection being set as the Target you can either set a different collection as the Target or you can right-click the exiting Target collection and uncheck the Set as Target Collection option in the contextual menu.

Target Album in Lr

There isn’t a similar Quick Album in Lr as there is in LrC, so by default there isn’t any one album ready for receiving photos in this way. An album in Lr is functionally the same as a collection in that it can hold photos (as opposed to a folder in Lr that can hold other albums or folders for structural organization). To designate an album as the Target album, simply right-click the album and choose Set “[albumname]” as the Target Album from the contextual menu.

This will mark that album with a (hard to see) dark gray box around the album name.

To add photos to the Target album you can select a photo and press the T key (not B like in LrC) or drag and drop the photo onto the album itself. You can likewise remove a photo from the Target album by selecting it and pressing T or pressing Delete.

And no, setting an collection in LrC as the Target does not set that corresponding Album in Lr as the Target.

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Shots From The Twin Cities

A little before the pandemic hit, I got a chance to spend a day with my buddy Jay up in Minneapolis where I shot some of the classic interior architecture in the area, and I gotta tell ya — I was pretty surprised (delighted, tickled, shocked, etc.) at some of the amazing shooting opportunities up there.

I posted some of my favorite shots from the day in an Adobe Spark page at this link (if you’ve got a quick sec).

11-Days Until The Portrait Photography Conference Kicks Off

It’s coming up Nov. 2-3, 2021 and everyone’s invited (that means you!), and it’s going to be awesome! I’m teaching four sessions during the conference:

(1) What Makes a Great Portrait (a free pre-conference session the day before, on Nov. 1st, for all registered attendees)

(2) Mastering the One-Light Portrait

(3) Introduction to Portrait Compositing

(4) My Top 20 Portrait Photography Tips

Those are my sessions, but there are plenty more, including session from portrait masters like Joe McNally, Frank Doorhof, and many more! Hope you can make it – here’s the link for tickets and details. If you can’t make it but you have friends or co-workers that would get a lot out of it, please let them know for me).

Have a great weekend, everybody! #GoBucs and #RollTide!

–Scott

The post Tips For Better Black & White in Lightroom appeared first on Lightroom Killer Tips.

STEP ONE: We have start over in Photoshop. Open a new document, and then use the Place command (under the File menu) to bring in your logo, so it appears on its own layer above the background layer (as shown here).

STEP TWO: Now, go to the Layers panel and drag the Background layer into the trash can at the bottom of the Layers panel. That leaves your logo sitting on a transparent background (as seen here).

If you do this, and you still see a white background behind your logo, that means your logo has a white background embedded into the logo image itself, and you’ll have to remove it manually. In many cases, that’s as simple as clicking the Magic Wand tool on a white area of the background to select most, if not all, of the white areas. To make sure you get them all, go under the Select Menu and choose Similar to select all the white areas in your entire layer, then hit the Delete (Windows: Backspace) key, and now, if all goes well, your logo will be on a transparent background like the one you see above.

NOTE: If you want to have your logo appear reversed in white (so you can place it over any color background), press Command-I (Windows: Ctrl-I) to invert the image. If that didn’t do the trick, try this — put a rectangular selection around your entire logo. Hold the Command-key (Windows: Ctrl-key) and hit the up-arrow key once on your keyboard, and then hit the down arrow key once. You’ll see selection perfectly snap-to your logo. Now, press the letter “d” on your keyboard to set your Foreground/Background colors to their defaults. Now press “x” to make white your foreground color. Now, while your logo is still selected, press Option-Delete (Windows: Alt-Backspace) to fill your logo with solid white. Didn’t except to be learning so much Photoshop today now, did ya?

STEP THREE: The key to keeping the transparency in your file, as it comes into Lightroom, is to save it in the right format. Go to Save As, and when the Save As window appears, down at the bottom where you choose the file format, choose PNG (as shown here), then click Save.

STEP FOUR: Go to any of the Identity Plate editors (in the Print Module, Slideshow, etc.) and when the Editor appears, click on “Use a graphical identity plate” (as seen above). A locate file button will appear in the lower left. Click on it and find the logo you just saved in PNG format. Then click OK.

STEP FIVE: Now when you choose that logo you imported as your Identity Plate, it appears with a transparent background behind it (as seen here, where I brought in my logo, and placed it over a black background. I did that “reverse white logo” trick so it would appear in white over any background color I chose).

Well, that’s really quite a few steps, but that’s it — a transparent logo in Lightroom. By the way, when you’re in that Identity Plate Editor window, don’t forget to click on the “Custom” pop-up menu lower left side and save your logo in Lightroom, so you don’t have to go through this process again — you can just choose it from the Identity Plate pop-up menu.

OK, that one should keep your busy for the weekend. Hope you have a good one.

-Scott

The post Bringing Your Logo into Lightroom (with a transparent background behind it) appeared first on Lightroom Killer Tips.

Thanks, Terry!

The Outdoor Photography Conference is just two weeks away!

It’s coming up May 18 & 19, 2021 and we’ve put together one of the greatest teams of instructors we’ve ever assembled. It’s going to an incredible event — two full days, two simultaneous training tracks, all online, and super affordable. Here’s the link for tickets and info.

Here’s wishing you an absolutely kick-butt week!

-Scott

The post 10 Lightroom Tools You Never Knew About appeared first on Lightroom Killer Tips.

OK, now that you know what we’re shooting for, let’s do this:

STEP ONE: On a Mac, you’d go under the “Lightroom Classic menu” ( as seen above) and choose ‘Identity Plate Setup…’ or on a Windows PC this would be under the Edit menu.

STEP TWO: This brings up the Identity Plate Editor window you see above. In the top left corner, from the pop-up menu choose Personalized (as seen here).

Then below that, you have two choices for replacing the Lightroom logo with your own custom logo. One is to just type in the name of your studio (this the default choice), but if you click the button to the right of that choice, the one called “Use a graphical identity plate” (as seen here), then you can either click the “Locate File” button and navigate to wherever you keep your logo on your computer, or just drag and drop that image into the black rectangle on the left side (right under the two buttons). That’s it. Click OK — boom — you’re done. Now your logo will appear in that upper left corner.

TIP: Lightroom’s interface is solid black up there, so if you want your logo to blend in, you need to either:

(a) Put your logo on a black background before you bring it in to Lightroom this way, or

(b) Put your logo on a transparent background in Photoshop (put your logo on a transparent layer, then delete the background layer in Photoshop and save the file in .png format, which is a format that maintains transparency when you import it into Lightroom). I did a tutorial a few years back on how to do this transparent logo – here’s the link.

NOTE: What size should you make your graphic? No more than 41 pixels high, and I made my 200 pixels wide, but if your logo looks good in a wide format, you can go wider, as long as you don’t go deeper than 41 pixels.

Hope you found that little tip helpful. Have a great weekend, y’all. Stay safe.

-Scott

P.S. Over on my other blog today I did a post on where I go to shoot travel photography if suddenly all this COVID stuff was completely behind us. Here’s the link if you’ve got a sec.

The post How to replace the words “Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Classic” with your own logo (or text) appeared first on Lightroom Killer Tips.

So, here’s how and where you update it:

STEP ONE: Go to the Library Module; go under the Metadata menu and choose “Edit Metadata Presets” as shown here (by the way — even if you don’t have a Copyright template in place, you can use this same menu to create one, so still choose Edit Metadata Presets to get started).

STEP TWO: When the Edit Metadata Presets window appears (shown above), choose the name of the preset you want to Edit, and it displays your copyright template info (as seen).

STEP THREE: Go to the IPTC Copyright section, and click on the field to the right of Copyright (as shown here), then just type in 2021 right over where it previously said 2020. If you’re creating your first Copyright template, just go ahead and type in the IPTC Copyright and Creator Fields info (as seen here).

STEP FOUR: Once you’ve updated the date, it’s time to save you new preset by going to the pop-up menu at the top of the window and choosing “Save Current Settings as New Preset.”

STEP FIVE: This brings up a small dialog where you can enter the name for your New Preset (as seen above).

STEP SIX: If you don’t have any old 2020 images you haven’t imported into Lightroom yet, then you can delete last year’s preset if you want (you won’t be using it again if you’ve already imported all your images from last year), so if you want to delete it (totally up to you  — you don’t have to), just choose the 2020 Preset from the pop-up menu; then go to the same pop-up menu and choose Delete Preset “2020 Copyright” (or whatever you named it), then click the Done button.

Hope you found that helpful.

-Scott

P.S. We’re less than 10-days from our first online conference of the year — the “Travel Photography Conference” and the day before I’m doing a pre-conference session for anyone registered for the conference on, “What makes a great travel photo” — that kicks off a week from Tuesday, and I hope you can join us. Tickets and more info here.  

The post How To Update Your Lightroom Copyright Info For 2021 appeared first on Lightroom Killer Tips.