Kickstart Your Lightroom Workflow

Attention, Lightroom lovers! Today we have a great post by one of our friends, Matt Kloskowski, full-time Education Director for Kelby Media Group and a Tampa-based photographer. He's the Editor of Lightroom Magazine, author of several best-selling Photoshop books and teaches Photoshop, Lightroom and photography seminars around the world. So we're flattered that he hand-picked a few favorite ways for Lightroom-armed Smuggers like you to get their photos finished faster. After all, we'd rather be outdoors shooting in the sunshine than stuck at our desks. Wouldn't you?

Hey everyone, Matt Kloskowski here with some tips on speeding up your Lightroom workflow. We've all heard the phrase "time is money." Well, if you're shooting weddings or events, you need to get through your photos and get them organized as fast as possible. Then you can get on to the good stuff of editing and getting out there to shoot more photos. So to help out, I've compiled 5 of my favorite tips to kickstart your workflow and keep you moving through Lightroom as quickly as possible.

Tip #1. Use Flags Instead of Stars

A big part of speeding up your workflow is identifying your favorite photos in some way. That way you can do something with them. Well, if you look under the photo menu you'll see Lightroom has 3 ways of picking out your favorites. First there's Set Flag. next, there's Set Rating and finally there's Set Color Label.

Here's my thoughts. Ratings and Color Labels are really difficult to work with. Most people are familiar with the 1-5 star rating system but the main drawback is that it has too many choices. 5 stars is a keeper right? 4 stars probably means the photo is pretty good. 3 means it's decent. 2 would be bad. and 1 star would be a reject that you throw away. Well what happens as you go through your photos and you come across something that isn't a throw away or isn't an absolute favorite keeper? You sit there and debate with yourself whether it's a 2,3 or 4 star photo. Either way, it's not your favorite so you'll probably never do anything with it. But yet, you're giving it too much time in the rating process. And inevitably, when something takes too long, we stop doing it.

So try this. Instead of using ratings, use the flagging system. This way, you get two choices:

* Flagged means you like it.

* Reject means you don't and you want to delete it.

Go through your photos quickly and hit "P" to flag or "X" to reject. If you don't flag it or reject it, then it stays unflagged which is that gray area that you're just not sure about. But you don't have to press a key to be indecisive - Lightroom just assumes you're indecisive about the photo by leaving it unflagged. So your job becomes really easy! Flag it if you like it and think there's a remote chance you'll do something with it again one day. Reject it if you don't. Then hit the right arrow key and move on.

Tip #2. Delete the Bad Stuff (and an easy way to do it)

Another way to speed things up is to keep your library as clean as possible and get rid of the bad stuff. If you followed the previous step and are using the Flag system, you should have some rejects that were marked with an X. A really simple way to delete them is to go up to the Photo menu and choose "Delete Rejected Photos." Lightroom will delete all the rejects all at once so you don't have to go back and get rid of them later.

Tip: When you try to delete a photo Lightroom will ask you if you want to delete it from the hard drive or just from the Lightroom library. Personally, I want my rejects gone forever so I delete them from the hard drive rather than just removing them from Lightroom.

Tip #3. Use Collections

Using Collections in Lightroom is more important than ever and probably one of the fastest and best ways for you to speed up your workflow. Photos that go into a collection are the photos that should be one click away and the photos that you'll want to see most often.

To put it simply, think of a Collection as a photo album. Let's say you have 2000 images from a wedding. You want to quickly show them to the bride/groom or family. Do you go through and show them all 2000 photos? No way. Instead, you'd create an album. Well that's what a collection is. It's a way for you to get to your favorite photos in just one click no matter where you are in Lightroom because the Collections panel is everywhere.

Typically, I'll look at my photos in the Folders panel and go through them one by one. I'll hit the letter P (for Pick) to flag photos as a favorite when I come across them. Then I can quickly sort to just see my picks by clicking the little flagged icon in the Filter strip just above the filmstrip:

Once I've figured out what my favorites are I select them all (Edit > Select All), go to the Collections panel and create a new Collection with a descriptive name (usually the last name of the bride/groom). Now, no matter what I do in the Folders panel and no matter what folder I'm looking at, I have a one-click way to get to my favorite photos from that event.

Tip #4. Use Collection Sets

Collections have an extra level of organization called Collection Sets that are key for events like weddings. Think of a Collection Set as a group of nested folders. If you put your picks from a wedding/event into a Collection, you'd have all the best photos from all parts of the wedding in one place (the Collection you created). The problem is that this Collection could be huge, so this is where Collection Sets come in.

You'd create a Collection Set (example: the top level folder with the bride/groom name) and then create Collections within the set for each part of the wedding (example: formals, church, reception, etc…). Here's what a Collection Set could look like in Lightroom:

Tip #5. Use Smart Collections for the Long View

Collections are also smart: They can organize themselves automatically as you import photos into Lightroom. One example of this could be a Smart Collection to help organize your portfolio photos. These are photos that help get you new business as you update your website, so you'll want to keep them close, easy to get to, and - most importantly - easily updated.

For example, anytime you edit a show-worthy image, put the word "portfolio" in the image title or give it a certain color flag or label. Because Lightroom's Smart Collections are "smart", you can set up a rule to detect that this photo meets certain criteria and have it placed directly into a "Portfolio" collection for you.

The best part about it is that once you set up your Smart Collection, Lightroom automatically does the rest.

Bonus Smug Tip: Get Them Uploaded Safely

Once your photos are all cleaned up and ready to go, you're just a few clicks away from uploading them safely into your SmugMug website. The publish plugin is free, gets your photos seamlessly into SmugMug, and also lets you sync, make galleries and keep your online presence as clean and organized as your Lightroom library. You can also see and adjust your customer's Event Favorites, republish, and even proof your orders all right within the SmugMug Publish module. Get it now!

What Lightroom tricks have shaved seconds off of your photo editing workflow? We'd love to know!