Tip #15: Use Export Presets

One of the main reasons we bring photos into Lightroom Classic is so that we can send them out (looking better than they came in) in a variety of file formats, color spaces, and sizes. I don’t generally keep my exported copies and prefer instead to re-export new copies as needed on a case by case basis. Depending on your workflow, you may have certain regular types of exports that you do, such as the way you deliver files to clients or post on social media. You may even have a few outliers that you don’t do regularly, but you also don’t do often enough to remember all of the settings you used the last time. All of these cases (and more) are good candidates for being saved as an export preset.

Export presets are created and managed right on the Export dialog itself. To create one, simply configure the settings in each panel based on your needs for that export purpose, and then click the Add button to open the New Preset dialog box, where you can enter a meaningful name and place the preset in a preset folder to keep them organized (highly recommend).

If your needs change around the specifications of a given export (or if you make a mistake), you can always update a preset by re-configuring the Export dialog, then right-click your desired preset and choose Update with Current Settings. Notice there are other options in that contextual menu for managing your presets as well.

Once you have a set of Export presets created, be sure to leverage the File > Export with Preset menu, which will let you drill down to your desired preset, select it, and export the selected photos without even having to see the Export dialog, which can be a real timesaver. I’ve got a deeper dive into Export presets post if you want to learn more.

I hope new and veteran users of Lightroom Classic find these 15 tips helpful, and I look forward to following up on my backpacking trip next week.

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Tip #14: Leverage Collections in Your Workflow

When using Lightroom Classic, your photos are always (and only) stored in folders on some local drive (even if it is a network drive). Those folders show up in the Folders panel, and there’s nothing wrong with looking in a folder to find your photos. In fact, that is the place to do various types of file management. Folders are important, and you need to treat them with care to avoid losing photos or creating problems in the catalog, but they have limitations too. The Folders panel is only found in the Library module, and that’s fine for those file management tasks I mentioned, but there are six other modules you could be working in any any given time. Guess what panel is visible in all modules? Yep, the Collections panel! Wherever you are working in Lightroom Classic, you will find the Collections panel, so why not take advantage of it?

Here are some of the other benefits of using collections in your workflow:

• You can group photos together based on your needs without moving or duplicating them on disk.
• You can use smart collections, which are basically saved searches, to automatically gather photos based on rules you define.
• You can organize your collections and smart collections using collection sets, which can hold other collection sets or collections.
• If you sync your catalog to the Lightroom cloud you use collections as the vehicle to sync photos to the cloud.
• When you are done with a collection, you can delete it without fear of deleting your photos on disk.
• You can designate one collection as the Target Collection, which makes it really easy to add photos to it with a keyboard shortcut.

There may be other benefits as well, but as you can see they are really powerful and open up new workflow possibilities. If you want to dive deeper into collections, be sure to check out my series on mastering collections to learn more. Also, be sure to check out all previous tips for new users.

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I had hoped that three years after Lightroom became Lightroom Classic and the new version of Lightroom appeared that the confusion around the product names would have gone away. Alas, that has not been my experience. Every new Lightroom Classic/Lightroom user needs to understand the difference between the two versions of Lightroom. It really shouldn’t be this hard, but here we are. Once you’ve got your brain wrapped around the different versions and how they are used, there really isn’t a better solution for managing your photos locally (Lightroom Classic) and even extending it into the cloud (Lightroom).

Now, it is completely true that anyone using Lightroom Classic can do so without ever needing to upload a single photo to the Lightroom cloud storage. So if that troubles you, just don’t ever enable your catalog to sync to the cloud, and keep doing what you’re doing. However, if you want to be able to extend your photo library from your computer to your mobile device(s) and even a web browser, then you might want to get started with syncing your catalog to the cloud.

If you only ever sync from Lightroom Classic to the cloud (and never import new photos into a Lightroom app directly) then you will not use up any of your 20-100GB of cloud storage (based on the Creative Cloud subscription package you have). Lightroom Classic has no way to upload a full resolution photo to the cloud, so instead it uploads a smart preview (basically a lossy-compressed DNG of the original limited to less than 3000 pixels on the long side). Smart previews allow for full editing of the photo in the Lightroom (cloud) environment, are plenty large enough to share to social media, and do not count against cloud storage limits. They are as close to having your cake and eating it too as you can get, short of going out and buying cake and then eating it (I never understood that saying). Seriously though, they are the key to making the Lightroom Classic sync to cloud workflow work, and it all happens automatically, so all we need to do is decide which photos we want to sync, and the rest takes care of itself.

Now, you may find that once you’ve synced Lightroom Classic to the cloud that it makes a great workflow for getting your photos from your phone to your computer, and if you go that route, those photos will count against your cloud storage. Luckily, I have an article that explains how to manage that cloud storage over time if you import photos into a Lightroom app.

So, have a great weekend, and look for the blog to return to normal next week with a super refreshed Scott.

The post Tip Number 13 for People New to Lightroom Classic appeared first on Lightroom Killer Tips.

• Consistency in workflow
• You can look in one place to confirm all your settings are just the way you want them
• You can create as many as your workflow requires
• Saves you time

Scott goes into the details of creating these step by step, so I won’t re-create that wheel, but the gist of it is to configure the entire Import window the way you want it for a given workflow, then click the Import Preset drop-down menu (skillfully hidden) at the bottom, and choose Save Current Settings as New Preset, give it a meaningful name, and away you go.

If you have more than one way of importing photos, such as if you choose different destination folders based on subject matter, you can create a new Import preset for each workflow. Then, in the future, just make sure the correct source is selected in the Source panel, select your desired Import preset (if it is not selected already), and you’re done! I want to get through that Import window as fast as I possibly can to get on with the rest of workflow, and this is the fastest way to do just that.

Side note, that capture above shows the Import window in its condensed mode, which is triggered by that button on the bottom-left of the screen. Once you have your preset made, you don’t even need to see the full size Import window anymore either.

Hope you found that helpful! Back tomorrow for one more bonus tip before the weekend. See you then!

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I looked back to my very first series of posts I made here in 2015, which were 10 More Things I Would Tell a New Lightroom (now Classic) User, done in a series of, well yes, 10 posts. I looked back over them, and six years later I think they still stand:

1. Set default catalog
2. Use Built-in catalog backup function
3. Know how to restore from a catalog backup
4. Know how to find your folders and photos on disk
5. Ctrl-click/right-click is your friend
6. Use Lightroom (Classic) to move photos between folders
7. Know your screen modes
8. Customize Grid view to your needs
9. Learn how to use smart collections
10. Don’t sell Quick Develop short

So, today, Thursday, and Friday, I will share three more things I would tell a new user, and then we’ll check back in 6 years and see if they still hold up. I’m very grateful for having the opportunity to share tips with you all over the years, so these extra posts are just a little thank you from me.

#11: Customize Raw Defaults

I have written about how to set your Raw Defaults in the past, but it definitely needs to be on this list. 

The Raw Default setting determines how your raw photos will look the moment Lightroom Classic updates the preview (post-import) or when it lands in Develop for the first time (like if you are shooting tethered right into Develop).

If there are settings you always apply to all photos, then why not include them in your Raw Default, and just set it and forget it? For example, these days I love having my photos come in with lens profile correction already applied, chromatic aberration removed, a slight tweak to the default sharpening settings, and the camera profile matching the picture style I chose in-camera. For me, that is my preferred starting place, so I created a preset with those settings, and then set it as my Raw Default. Easy.

Now, there are a couple of things to keep in mind with the Raw Default:

• It only applies to raw photos (duh)
• It determines the behavior of the Reset button (as in, when you click Reset, your Raw Defaults determine the default/reset state)
• It doesn’t change previously imported photos (unless you click the Reset button on them)
• It can be changed/updated over time as your workflow evolves

So, give it some thought, and see if it saves you a few clicks for every raw photo imported from this point forward. Stay tuned tomorrow for the second part of my Plug-in Workflows with Lightroom Classic post.

The post While Scott’s away the mice will play! (and Tip #11) appeared first on Lightroom Killer Tips.

#10: Don’t sell Quick Develop short

It’s easy to never take the time to expand the Quick Develop panel as the allure of the entire Develop module is just too strong, and that’s fine. After all, we want to be able to play with all the toys in the toy box. That said, when you think about Lightroom as a workflow tool I wouldn’t be so quick to rule out the power of the Quick Develop panel.

The first mistake a lot of people make is that they don’t realize all of those (low contrast) triangle icons are buttons that when clicked expand additional tools for you to use. So let’s open all of those up to see the full suite of tools at our disposal in this one panel.

As a bonus, hold down the (Mac) Option / (Win) Alt key to see that Clarity changes to Sharpening and Vibrance changes to Saturation. If you hover your cursor over each button you’ll see a tooltip that shows what it applies when clicked. The double arrows make larger moves than the inner single arrow buttons. New in Lightroom CC/6, if you hold the Shift key the inner buttons shrink a little to indicate they provide an even finer level of adjustment.

What is important to keep in mind about the controls in the Quick Develop panel is that the adjustments you make with them are relative to any existing adjustments your photos may have. This is one of the real super powers of the Quick Develop panel. Let me explain. Over in the Develop module, when you move the Exposure slider to + 1 stop it is an absolute setting, and the selected photo gets its Exposure amount set to +1 stop no matter what it was set at before. Imagine a photo that starts out with a – 1 Exposure setting and you move the Exposure slider to +1. That action actually added 2 stops of positive exposure to the starting point, but the photo ends up with a setting of +1 Exposure.

Starts a -1 stop Exposure setting.

Ends at +1 stop Exposure setting.

Now take that same photo with -1 Exposure back to Library and click the +1 stop Exposure button in the Quick Develop panel, and the photo’s Exposure setting just goes to 0, because it just added 1 stop of Exposure to the current setting. The adjustment is relative to whatever the photo’s setting was before.

Starting at -1 stop Exposure setting.

Ends at 0 Exposure setting.

Why is that so powerful? OK, imagine you just processed several hundred photos, you are feeling good, but a little voice in the back of your mind says, “Hmm … I wish they all were just a tiny little bit brighter.” Then you remember Quick Develop and think no problem, and proceed to select them all in Grid view, expand the Quick Develop panel, hold down the Shift key and click the small positive Exposure button to add a 1/6 Exposure bump to all photos in one smooth motion. Every photo gets a +1/6 exposure bump relative to what ever Exposure setting it already had. You couldn’t do that in Develop without having to nudge the Exposure slider for each photo one at a time, because Develop settings are absolute. Give it a test and you’ll see what I mean.

Another real handy way I use Quick Develop is if I need to crop a large number of photos to a given aspect ratio. Just select all photos in Grid view, and choose the desired aspect from the Crop Ratio drop-down menu in Quick Develop. Done. From there press the R key to jump to the Crop tool and tweak each photo for composition only as the aspect ratio is already set. There’s a lot more to explore in the Quick Develop panel, but I hope I’ve got you thinking about ways it can help you in your workflow. See you on the Help Desk!

The post 10 More Things I Would Tell a New Lightroom User: #10 appeared first on Lightroom Killer Tips.

Scott already spoke about the benefits of using regular collections, so I want to tempt you into taking that up a notch by learning about Smart Collections. Smart Collections are essentially saved searches. You get to define the criteria for the search and Lightroom does the heavy lifting of automatically gathering all of the photos (and videos) that match that criteria for you. Lightroom is built on a database after all, and the more work you do in Lightroom the more data is sitting there waiting to be used. So why not use it to make your life simpler? Let’s look at some examples of what Smart Collections are and how I use them.

If you expand the Collections panel you should have a collection set called Smart Collections that comes pre-loaded with Lightroom. Think of these as a starter set to show you what is possible. Notice the gear on the folder icon designates these as Smart Collections as opposed to regular collections.

Default smart collections.

Double-click any Smart Collection to open the Edit Smart Collection dialog box to see its rules, and to change them if desired. I double-clicked the Colored Red Smart Collection, and you can see its single rule is Label Color is red. This tells Lightroom to gather any photo in the entire catalog that has a red color label applied to it. Not much too it.

Edit a smart collection’s rules.

If you click the drop-down arrow on the top rule (Label Color in this example) you’ll see that you have a lot of criteria to choose from, and this is where it gets interesting. You can cast a really wide net like “Label color is red,” or you can drill down with laser precision to focus on just photos taken within a certain range of dates, that have a certain keyword, and have a certain star rating, and on and on you can go.

Changing the rules.

For example, I have a collection set I call Catalog Dashboard, and within that collection set I have other collection sets that contain a variety of Smart Collections that help me find files based on a range of criteria.

My catalog dashboard.

One of those collection sets is named File Type, and within that collection set I have a whole bunch of Smart Collections that let me see at a glance how many files of each type I have in my library, and gives me quick access to any of them. I also include a Smart Collection for all photos with Smart Previews in that bunch. This is really useful for helping me manage disk space. Similarly one for 32 bit TIF files as those files can get huge! Each of those Smart Collections has a simple rule for finding all files that match that type.

Smart collections based on file type.

I’m only scratching the surface for how these Smart Collections can serve you in your workflow, but I hope it got you thinking. I’d love to hear some other ways people use Smart Collections too. Find all of my 10 More Things posts.

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We end up spending a lot of time in Grid view of the Library module, so you may as well make it suit your needs, and know how to change things when your needs change. The Grid view cells can display a lot of very useful information, but the way to customize that info isn’t immediately obvious.

The first thing to know how to do is to resize the thumbnails. You might start out using the Thumbnails slider in the Toolbar, but you’ll quickly switch over to using the – and + keys to reduce and enlarge them once you learn that shortcut. The larger the thumbnail the easier it can be to read some of the data you might choose to display there.

Change thumbnail size.

From there head up to the View > View Options menu and click the Grid View tab of the Library View Options dialog box. It is here that you can configure how much or how little info you want to display on the Grid view cells, and you’ll also discover that there are a few different Grid View Styles. There’s Compact Cells, which is all about the thumbnail only.

Compact cells.

There’s Compact Cells with Extras, which adds a little data to the thumbnails.

Compact cells with extras.

And then there’s Expanded Cell with extras you can customize.

Expanded cells.

You’ll notice that as you configure the Library View Options dialog box the cells update in real time in the background. This is really helpful for seeing what you are choosing. Once you’ve configured each style to suit your needs you can use the J key to quickly cycle through the different styles as needed. A somewhat hidden feature is the fact that when you are in Expanded Cell with extras you can click right on any data point and get a popup list of the other options to quickly change up the data being displayed without having to go back to the Library View Options dialog box.

Change the data displayed on the fly.

Find all of my 10 More Things posts.

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Lightroom has a few ways to help you get the most out of your screen real estate. One of the most important is your choice of screen mode. Most people start out in what is called Normal screen mode, which is when you can see the Menubar up at the top and the buttons for minimizing/maximizing the window. I’ve encountered many people who only use that mode, and are quickly lost without those buttons at the top of the window for closing the program.

Normal screen mode.

To get more screen real estate for Lightroom you can cycle to the next screen mode, which is Full Screen with Menubar. You lose the minimize/maximize buttons to gain more interface space, but you still have the comfort of seeing the Menubar at the top. If you go to the Window > Screen Mode menu you can see all of the screen mode options, switch between the modes, and note their keyboard shortcuts.

Find all screen modes under the Window menu.

My favorite and most used screen mode is Full Screen. This devotes the most space to the Lightroom interface and your photos. Over the years a lot of people have stumbled into this screen mode accidentally via keyboard shortcut only to end up writing to the Help Desk in a panic because they can’t see a way to exit out of Lightroom anymore. The shortcut used to be just the F key, but this changed with Lightroom 5 and now you need Shift+F to cycle through the modes. So the easiest answer if you ever find yourself stuck in an unwanted screen mode is to cycle yourself back out with the keyboard shortcut (now that you know it). However, if you just move your cursor to the top of the screen in Full Screen mode the Menubar will appear in a couple of seconds, so you really don’t lose anything by going full screen.

The Menubar revealed in full screen mode.

A related screen mode is Full Screen Preview, which is awesome when you just want to look at a single photo all alone without the distraction of the interface. The easiest way to invoke this is to hit the F key (which is why the Shift key was added for cycling through the other modes). Press F again to go back to the interface. Find all of my 10 More Things posts.

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In my previous tip I mentioned the occasional need to create a subfolder and move photos into it, and this is the type of fundamental task that many Lightroom users struggle to come to grips with when first starting out. As a new Lightroom user it can seem easier sometimes to resort to old ways of doing things, such as using your operating system’s file browser to move photos managed by Lightroom into new folders. Unfortunately, this often leads to self-inflicted wounds the next time the user opens the Lightroom catalog to find question marks on folders or exclamation marks on thumbnails with the dreaded Photo is missing message.

Photos are missing.

Lightroom stores the complete path to where a photo is stored on your drive in the catalog. On Mac, this goes from the volume name, through all the folders and subfolders, right down to the individual file name of each photo. On Windows the concept is the same except it starts from the drive letter. If anything in that path changes outside of Lightroom (such as by using your file browser to move photos around) then the path stored in the catalog is no longer accurate and Lightroom sends up the SOS messages about missing and offline files.

The way to avoid this is to do all of your moving, file renaming, and file deleting from inside of Lightroom itself. This way the task gets completed AND the catalog gets updated accordingly and everything is copacetic. Capisce?

The how of using Lightroom to move folders and photos is simple once you know how. For folders, just click and drag a folder (or selection of folders) to a new destination folder. Use that right-click menu I told you about to create new subfolders if needed. To move photos, start in Grid view of the Library menu and drag and drop the photos into new folders in the Folders panel.

Moving is as easy as drag and drop.

Lightroom will open a prompt to make sure you really want to move those photos, so click Move to continue. There is a Don’t show again checkbox on that dialog, but I recommend leaving that unchecked as it can save you from accidentally moving photos due to a case of fumble-fingers.

If you (intentionally) end up moving (or deleting) all of the photos out of a folder you can remove that folder by, you guessed it, ctrl-clicking / right-clicking the empty folder and choosing Remove from the menu. Everything’s easy once you know how. Find all of my 10 More Things posts.

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