When you open an image in the Develop Module, you can see that some sliders have presets. Since they sort of work for me, I have not taken the time to find out if I can change those settings.
My flow is influenced by my habit of just going back in the develop history instead of actually undoing a step. I feel if the log gets too long it becomes cumbersome and it is easy to undo a step that did not work out.
Normally, I start with the spot brush set on healing (not cloning) to clean up spots – sometimes a bird can look like a ‘spot’. You can move the circle from where LR gets its data for replacement, which can allow for some creativity. Then I look at the temperature. In the camera, I have the White Balance set on Automatic and most of the time it is right on. Next, I look at the exposure / brightness of an image as well as shadows and highlights. If there are relatively straight lines bordering the area that needs to be changed (overexposed sky for instance), I use the ND filter otherwise the adjustment brush (check the automask this helps in the transition areas)
ND filter: by having the 3 lines of the filter close together, you work with a hard transition. The more they are apart, the softer the transition becomes. You can tilt the lines of the filter to parallel ‘lines’ in the image. Depending on need, I apply the filter from the top down, from the bottom up (usually to open up a shadow area) or from the sides in.
Adjustment brush: I use it for the same purposes where the ND filter does not work or to play with light in small selective areas. It works great to make white really white.
The next step is the clarity slider and last the color treatment. In about 90% of the time I am done at that point. In rare cases, I will export the image now into Photoshop for more complex editing
I have folders for my images on both the external hard drive and in LR. On the hard drive, the Raw images are sorted under either shoots by year and month, by trip, or subject. The “shoots” folder contains the mix of images taken during that particular month.
In LR any new images are imported into the folder ‘new’ with a subfolder for the month or trip. Once I am done with the selection and editing, the really good images get moved into the appropriate folder, the rest stays for a little while longer in the ‘new’ folder until I decide to have a final look at them and toss what I do not like.
In the LR library, I have many folders that make sense to me and allow me to quickly find images without having to do a search with keywords. (I have to admit that I am often not very good at keywording when I import and it is something I feel I need to to do some catch up work). Here are some folder titles as examples: National Parks (with subfolders for each park I have pictures of), landscapes (subfolders for areas in the US), International Travel (subfolders for countries or larger geographic areas). All local images go into the folder ‘Greater Santa Fe Area’ with subfolders for special local projects.
Since I have more images on my computer than I have on the web sites, I use color coding to denote which image is where. I don’t use the star coding much, except during the selection process.
As I said, my keywording can use some improvement. I am good with it, if I import images after every single outing where I can apply the keywords to all imported images. In catching up with it, I select the images, which get the same keyword(s) and apply them this way. Another option is the spray can symbol at the bottom.
In the beginning, while still learning much about editing photos, I decided to keep an untouched version of the image files. Today, I still do a dual import: one to an external hard drive and the other into LR where I can be ruthless in the selection of images. Knowing I can go back any time and import a photo again, allows me to delete all images that, at this point in time, don’t appeal to me as ‘keepers’.
The selection process has several rounds, the number depending on the number of images. In the first round, I delete all the obvious ones. Normally I have more images of moving objects – wildlife, trains, wave action along the coast – than of stationary ones – landscapes, clouds, trees, etc. I look for good composition. With the landscape images, for instance, I analyze the ones I toss for the mistakes so I can learn.
After the first round, I go through the remaining images again and again until I feel I have the best ones left. In those instances I use the compare feature and begin to mark with a star those that stand out for me. With a larger shoot, I often need to take a break and come back the next day with fresh eyes to finish the selection process. A third round often includes minor editing to be better able to discern if an image truly has potential. The final round is done completely in the develop module of LR with an occasional ‘excursion’ to Photoshop.
In sharing my personal workflow, I want to invite you to think about your current workflow, to analyze it, to experiment a bit and, in the end, decide to either stay with your method or to make adjustments that streamline it for your needs.
I will not go into descriptions of how to import, how to create library folders in LR, to enter key words, to navigate between the different modules. I assume that you know how to do it or how to find it in the help files.
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