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Lightroom workflow

I've been using Lightroom for a few years now. I generally like it. I wish some of the features (and even keyboard shortcuts) were more like Photoshop...but that's a bit of a different topic.

Until now I've mostly been using it to handle my digital family pics. File management, basic corrections and upload to Smugmug albums.

My wife has recently started a sewing pattern company as well as some more serious blogging. I've had to do several shoots so that she has pictures for her blog, as well as a separate shoot to get a specific shot of our daughter wearing a sample of the dress for the cover of the pattern. As she releases more patterns, I'm going to be doing a variety of shoots depending on what kind of pattern it is. Could be a woman's dress, kids pants, girls dress etc.

I've yet to find a great way to handle these separate shoots in Lightroom. I usually don't need to do a ton of manipulation. I shoot a gray test card in the lighting of the shoot. Using that method, white balance usually isn't a problem. I've almost found it easier to open each picture in Photoshop, adjust the levels, use the curves for any minor color correction.

Here is a link to her blog. http://gingerhousedesigns.wordpress.com/
I did not shoot the pictures in the first post currently on the site (This Friday: The Emerson Dress). I did shoot the rest of them, except for any that look like cell phone snaps.

From what I can tell, Lightroom just doesn't have these tools. I use Photoshop almost every day at work. Retouching, color correction for items that are on press etc. I've set up some actions, but going through a whole shoot that way is still cumbersome. I do enjoy features in Lightroom like being able to cull out the duds easily.

Also, talk to me about RAW. I've resisted it to this point because it was kind of useless to shoot my family snapshot stuff in RAW. We will not be making any prints from these shoots, I've had a few situtations recently where I've needed a closer crop, or I've noticed some artifacts I just don't care for due to the JPEG compression. Is it as simple as shooting a gray card at the beginning of the shoot, or do I need to get a color checker card?

I'll stop there for now...
 
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Have you tried Adobe Bridge? It is already built into Photoshop. It offers a similar workflow to Lightroom but for me it is easier to use as I can reconfigure the panes any way I like. I also prefer how it handles my image library. You can also do batch processing with presets. It also uses Adobe Camera Raw for raw processing.

Years ago, before Lightroom, I started using Bridge for my RAW editing, web gallery outputs, and proofing. It has never failed me. Over the years I've tried every version of Lightroom, but I always go back to Bridge.
 
absolutely beautiful wife and daughter.
from what i could see, there is no action that Lightroom cannot handle.
it can do group or individual tone corrections quite easily.
photoshop comes in if you have clones, element removals, composite, type additions, detailed retouching.
 
That's what I figured. I know lightroom is it trying to be Photoshop, but I'm confused as to why they don't have things like levels. The curve tool is all messed up and opposite too.

Maybe I should play a bit more with lightroom. I feel the HSL area is very strong. Especially since it allows direct manipulation of CMYK without actually converting the image from RGB. I'm used to thinking in CMYK, but would never convert my own pictures due to the narrower color gamut.
 
Oh wow, I'm thick. The HSL menu/sliders are just the HCL color model. Hue, as the angle around the circle, chroma (saturation) as a value 1-100. Lower is more neutral. L is lightness. Lower number is darker, higher is lighter.

I use this all the time at work, except most people in my industry prefer using LAB for some reason. I think +a/-a stuff is much more confusing than hue angle.

I'm thinking lightroom may be a win after all.

$ImageUploadedByTapatalk1410217347.988467.jpg
 

strop

Now half as wise
I'm just learning Lightroom, but from what I've done so far, I think it can do all of those things, especially if you shoot in RAW. Having seen some of the things I can do, I doubt I'll ever just shoot in jpeg again. Even the family stuff is better, and everything is exported as jpeg anyway.
 

Legion

Staff member
I think lightroom is good if you are shooting a bunch of pictures, and you have to batch, sort, and work them in one go.

Personally, these days, I don't work like that. I go out for the day, shoot some photos, and of those I can choose a few I like to work on in photoshop. I work those few, then save them into whatever folder. That is all I need to do.


If I was shooting a couple of weddings each weekend, then sure, lightroom's workflow would be a valuable thing. But for me, I work like i did in the darkroom, a few images at a time. Photoshop is a better tool for that, I think.
 
Good point. I am going to explore the Bridge/photoshop route for my personal photos as I am going to finally make the plunge to RAW for everything. I agree, for smaller batches, Photoshop just makes more sense to me.
 
I did another small shoot yeaterday for my wife's blog. After doing some research on lightroom presets, editing the shoot was a breeze. I had 2 different places I did the shoot. After getting one picture the way I liked it in that scene, I saved it as a preset and applied it to all the pictures with the same scenery. Then I glanced through them to make sure of any extra tweaks for each image.

I also love the HSL color correction area. I think Photoshop is overall much more powerful, but lightroom puts a lot of the tools for a streamlines photographic shoot workflow at your fingertips.

Here are the pics from the last shoot.
http://gingerhousedesigns.wordpress.com/2014/09/17/80s-inspired-look-care-bears-outfits/
 
Instead of presets, you can just edit one photo, then select all of them with the first photo still selected and click "sync settings".

Raw lets you push the sliders much further before getting noise/artifacts. The starting point is usually rougher than what you get from with jpg though because it isn't pre-processed. Lightroom does have some profiles for certain cameras so you can set the starting point to something you are familiar with. For example, lightroom has the following profiles for my nikon.

$cameraprofile.jpg

With the current lightroom adjustment brush, I really don't even bother with photoshop anymore. I like to artificially limit myself to lightroom. They way I think now is that photoshop is for stuff that you should have gotten right in the camera.

Just some other general tips that made a difference for me
- Organize your shoots into collections. It really is a step up from just using folders
- Instead of star ratings, use the pick/reject (P/X) shortcuts and you can speed through shoots with hundreds of photos in no time.
- You can create a "copywrite preset" and apply it on import. So basically your info gets put on to all photos as they are imported
 
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