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CameraPorn’s Photoshop Lightroom Workflow Part 1: Importing & Organizing

After a recent discussion with a fellow photographer who is just beginning to use Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, I was inspired to do a quick run-through of my process. I use Lightroom as my organizational tool as well as for most post processing and have since its initial beta. Its hands-down my favorite photography related application. It contains nearly all the tools I need to get my images where they need to be in a very intuitive interface, making the sometimes arduous task of organizing and retouching much simpler.

The following is Part 1 in a 2 parter about my entire Lightroom workflow. I’m using Lightroom 2 Beta, but everything in this post applies to the 1.x version as well, so no worries. Full workflow for organization and tagging after the jump…

1. Importing

I begin by importing my RAW images within Lightroom from the CF card. I personally use a USB 2.0 CF Card reader for the job instead of tethering directly to the camera. The Lightroom importing tool contains several helpful options to begin the organization process:

A. Folder Organization

Choosing a folder name is the first step to your organizational process, and you should do it in a way that makes sense to you. Some people like to do it by date. Becasue I suck at recalling dates, I like to do it by shoot location and/or event. For example the images you will be seeing here are from a wonderful afternoon at the Standard Hotel in Downtown Los Angeles, and it happened to be my birthday so I called the folder ‘Standard Downtown – Birthday.’ I relaize this may seem weird to some, but it works great for me becasue its how I remember different shoots. Choose a folder organization structure that makes sense to you and stick with it.

B. Backups

A great option, which allows you to backup your files to a second location on import…a tool that I do not use as much as I should, partly because I am either traveling when I import or too lazy to go into my office and plugin one of my firewire drives, though I always import directly to my Macbook Pro’s local drive, then move the images to a storage drive after I’m done with all my processing.

A Note on Backups: Ideally you should have at a minimum one backup drive for every storage drive – meaning you backup whatever external drive you use for storage to a separate drive, and store it away, unplugged. Hard drives fail people! Generally its either impossible or cost prohibitive to recover any usable data from a fried drive and I know I would be devastated if I lost my orginal RAWS .

C. File Naming

Personally, I don’t rename my RAW files on import, though sometimes I suppose I should. I kinda like seeing where I was on that specific camera’s shutter count, but I’m weird… Do what makes you happy.

D. Information to Apply

Lightroom allows you to apply any Develop Presets you want on import, though I rarely do. What I use in this section are metadata presets and initial keywording/tagging. Metadata presets are useful because they will automatically apply your choice of metadata to the image. I have a standard preset that attaches Author, Copyright and other basic information to each image on import, which will carry through all the way to exports. Its like a hidden way of signing your work. Keywording is most easily described as tagging for all you flickrites out there. I’ll add initial tags on import such as location, camera, lens and anything else that applies to the whole import. These keywords persist and upon export using the right tool (I use the flickr uploadr) your flickr images will already be tagged on upload.

2. Filter out the crap

So we’ve just imported a whole bevy of shots and to organize them we should be in the ‘Library’ module of Lightroom.

If you’re like me and bracket exposures a lot or shoot in burst mode, there will be a lot of crap to filter through. For me this is a 2-step process.

A. Pick and Reject

Lightroom has a multitude of wonderful filtering tools. I use flags to start – also called Picking and Rejecting. I first do a quick pass through every image, either marking it as a ‘Pick’ or a ‘Reject’. This can be done quickly by pressing the ‘p’ key and the ‘x’ key. Depending on the amount of shots, I can get through this relatively quickly. Picks are usually any properly focused, framed, and exposed non-duplicate shots. Rejects are any shots that don’t meet those requirements, or usually any shots of myself At this point, some people like to delete the rejects to save space. I personally don’t like to delete anything… call me a photo packrat… Besides, storage is cheap and someday I might need that poorly framed, underexposed blurry shot… who knows. You do whatever makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside. At this point I filter the images I’m being shown with Lightroom’s handy dandy filters. Usually only 15-20% make this first cut.

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B. Its Rating Time

Now all I can see are the images I’ve flagged as ‘Picks.’ From here I do my second step of filtering, which consists of applying star ratings to my picks. These range from 1 to 5 stars. I generally only use 4 & 5 leaving everything else starless. Reason being that at this point, I really make an effort to only star the images I plan to use, mostly because the next step after importing/organizing is retouching. Why spend the time retouching an image you won’t use?

So we’re done with filtering… I know this seems like a long and tedious job, but i assure you as you do it and improve as a self-photo-editor, you will quickly blaze through this process. I can generally get through this process for 400+ images in under an hour.

From here, guess what? You use lightrooms filtering tools again! I set my filter to show only images that are 4 stars or higher.

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3. Keyword, Title, Describe.

The final step in my organizational workflow consists of just what the title describes. Why do this? There are a couple really good reasons: Firstly, you will at the end have a wonderfully organized catalog of titled, tagged, and described image that make up your best work. The second, and my favorite reason… when you export and upload to flickr, all the work is already done! No additional tagging or titling is required.

A. Keywording

(aka Tagging) Remember a little bit ago I mentioned adding general keywords on the import of the files? Now’s the time to get specific. Notice below, the shot of dan. I add the specific tags: portrait, dan, sunglasses, skyline and sky.

B. Titling

Come up with a title, the snarkier the better – unless you are all emo or something, then make it something dark, deep and emotional. You are on your own with this one… all depends on how you feel about the image.

C. Describing

Again, on your own here. What’s the story behind the picture?

And guess what, we’re done with the tedious part. Tedious, yes, but its really important to keep an organized collection of images. Create a workflow that works for you, none of this stuff is set in stone. The most important part of the organization of your photos is creating a workflow that feels natural to you. If it doesn’t work for you, you’re not gonna stick to it. So take what I’ve said above with a grain of salt, experiment and build a workflow that works for you.

Stay tuned for part 2 of this series where I’ll talk about the fun part… Retouching in Lightroom. I’ll cover the basic contrast adjustments that are necessary to bring a RAW back to life as well as a few of my favorite adjustments. I’ll also play with the new dodging and burning and brush tools in Lighroom 2 Beta. Until then, share your workflow with us in the comments.