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Finding Photos in Lightroom

Lesson 13 from: Adobe Lightroom Classic CC Workflow for Photographers

Daniel Gregory

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Lesson Info

13. Finding Photos in Lightroom

Tools like stars, flags, and colors help make photos easier to find. With Daniel's tips, adapt Lightroom's tools to suit your specific style of photography, not the default. Work with tools to quickly find photographs, including Smart Collections.

Lesson Info

Finding Photos in Lightroom

another tip that just in terms of like, a quick little feature they got at it in If I'm in the import dialog box and you've got a scroll down and you've got a higher career importing and it's got a bunch of sub folders So in this case, if I come in and I go to say I'm gonna drop bucks come in here and I've got class catalog catalog photos on I'm scrolling now for a long ways. If you just double click on the class catalogue, it will shrink up and make that the top parent folder. So now you're only seen the sub folders underneath there. So if you got a long scroll you're dealing with, you can actually just double click on that, and it will give you the quick little short. Peace is just a little so it's Ah, you just let me expand it back out here so photos. So all you have to do is like, say, I want to look at it, make the 2013 the equivalent of the parent. I just double click on 2013 and it shrinks it up so you could still see it's Dropbox class catalog catalog parents, so it's basically...

just compressing that up and making it smaller. So I'm only looking at that acting folder. If you're in clean up mode, importing from another dry with a bunch of folders, this is a nice little tip to kind of avoid getting frustrated and going nuclear. So that's in folders. Can you do that in collections? Also know this is just during important. All right, any other questions from you all? All right. The other piece around kind of organisational elements is colors star ranking some of those things that you may or may not use. I like to use colors to help me identify when photos were part of something else. So, for example, I used blue for HDR. I use reds or parts of Panos. You can see here these couple pieces here apart, actually part of a panel. Siri's thrust. The panel is not there, but they're part of a panel series. I would tell me not to delete that photograph. That's how use those color pieces. I think they're also interestingly Ah, way to do that is if you have two people who are gonna be calling through photographs. One person gets elect color one person could you stars. So that way you're not undoing somebody's work. So you've got two different options. There is not traditionally what the colors would be used for its not traditionally what the stars, maybe you for, but that's an opportunity to pull things together. So part of figuring out your workflow to is the tool doesn't have to be used for what it was designed for screen. We have thousands of work flows in photo shop. That air, using tools that were never designed to be the high pass filter, was not designed to do mid tone contrast adjustment. But we use it for that. So there's a lot of things like that. So think about what some of these little fields are. Some of these little tools are to help you structure your workflow. So if you're thinking, oh, I'm going to do this But I never would use that you can skip and avoid it. An example for that is, uh, the copy feel is actually an important feel when you make a virtual copy. So if we look at a virtual copy of this image, you could see it, says copy three right there. And then if we look at the metadata and I go to the default meta data here, the copy name says Copy three. So if I built another virtual copy would be called copy four. So that fields actually kind of significant. Because if you're printing and saw proofing, it makes on Epson's 7900 hot press bright version of the file, the print, and it puts that in the copy name, so the copy feels actually used for some hosting, so I wouldn't want overwrite that field. But knowing that stuff goes in there allows me to think about how toe pivot my data approach a little bit. So knowing that that data goes in there, I'm gonna come back over here to smart collections. You can't create a smart collection that says, Show me all of my virtual copies we can do in the library tool bars. That's why that search if there might be interesting. But if I do this Ah, we're gonna call this printed photos. Dobson, I can see where it has copy name. So I choose copy name and contains the word absent because when I print to the Epson printer. It puts into the copy field Epson or Canon, where the printers is a part of the description or, it says, relative perceptual rendering intense. And when we cover printing, you'll see more of how we have that actually gets created. But as soon as I create that, here are the 19 photographs in this collection that have been marked for print or have printed out on my Epson printer because the copy field, when I print it prints off the virtual copy for the edit adjustments. And that's in the copy field. So Copy Field was used to help keep virtual copies organized and different copies organized. But I can also use that field to help me find things that were potentially printed on certain printers. Because if we come look at this image, this is printed on an Epson S P 7900 legacy etching. That's the I. C. C. Profile that's used. If I was printing on a P 800 it would say Epson underscore P 800 so I could change my smart collection to be contains Epson P 800 then I would could narrow that down even more like a search for Canon so I could start our C I. F A is what cancer uses for the start of their. So I could use that to actually find my paper. They were printed on a cancer paper, So I've got some options here. Toe. Find some of those little pieces of data that might be of interest. If you never print. This may not help you, but if you have copies and want and use the copy name and maybe you change the copy name, you create the virtual copy. This is the other thing that is kind of nice about virtual copies. Is if you're not these air for printing. But if I go back to my pieces, let's grab a virtual copy here, describe what? It's not. So this was not the original. Let's just make a virtual copy. Okay? That has copy to in here. That copy, too, is to make it for black and white is copy to very informative. No, but I could come change the copy. Name? Black and white. Now, the copy names changed a black and white. So if your workflow is, if I make a virtual copy to make it black and white. I'm gonna name the virtual copy Black and White because now I could build a smart collection that says Search for Aware copy Name contains black and white. Then I would have all my black and white copy, which is so that's the way to kind of think about what are some of these things and how can I pull the data off of him? It's also why to go back to what I originally said. It's why it's hard for people to adopt somebody else's workflow. Because if my workflow is every virtual copy you create, that's black and white. You have to go change the name of that copy, feel the black and white because that works for me. That makes total sense to me. Why wouldn't you do that? But if you're like we're gonna do that, that's not gonna work for you in the implementations. That's why the path of least resistance, but consistency and repeatability is the most important part. So when you're doing this is an example in the metadata. Is it possible to be able to just, like, make a virtual copy of every single one when it comes in, and then it would also be called black and white. So if, in other words, if you have every photo that you you bring in and you also want a 2nd 1 to be a virtual copy because you know it's give you black and white Anyway, can you do that? I I don't know of a way to do that there if there were a way to do that. So there is one of things that Dobie has created in light room is a plug in interface. So it's one the ways we do some of the editing with, like on one or Skyla more nik software. But there are several people who create some pretty amazing plug in. So, for example, I've got a plug in here, um, from John, um, freedom. And this is a bulk editor. So what it does is it goes in and I can select and make edits across all these images based on some parameters. So I can say, for example, update clarity. If the I s O is between 101,000 very clarity from 0 to 50 so it's Hirai s, so it's gonna get the clarity and dropped down. I like this one because it's used for Ah ah, I use it for sharpening and for a noise reduction. So I know where certain things are coming in. And I wanted to a parameter noise reduction and the images were all shot at different I esos I can just select him and let it run. So it's a plug in and gets out of such year threes. I bring it up is there might be a plug in that does auto import virtual copy work. But light room itself does not do that on import, but the plug, it might be something that does that.

Ratings and Reviews

a Creativelive Student
 

I watched this course live. Really good!. Of course, I like all of Daniel Gregory's classes. It's a real treasure when one finds a really good teacher who thinks like oneself. I thought that I already knew Lr well so I was really surprised about how much I learned from this course. I learned so many ways to improve my workflow efficiency.

Anne Dougherty
 

I was impressed by the amount of information covered in depth, and by Mr Gregory’s teaching style. I’m somewhat new to Lightroom and found his explanations of its capabilities, and why you would use it rather than Photoshop for specific processes, enormously helpful. I especially appreciated his lessons covering printing. This is invaluable information. Great class.

Warren Gedye
 

This was a great course. Daniel certainly explains it well and in terms I can understand! Super worth it and learnt loads of new tricks! Great job!!

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