Editing photos can be a time consuming project, especially if you have hundreds of photos to go through. So anytime there is a shortcut to the process, it’s a blessing.
I found one of these shortcuts the other day while working on some photos. It deals with advancing photos while in the Library Module.
So I made a quick little video to demonstrate how this is done. Enjoy!
It’s been some time since I’ve posted, and for that I’m sorry. School started again, and is a bit tougher than I anticipated. However, I did manage to get into a digital photography class! Which brings me to this post.
If you’ve been doing the “digital thing” for very long, you probably have some sort of process that you take to import and develop your images. (If not, never fear! Just follow along and you’ll be fine!)
Actually, a “Twitter-friend” of mine, @whoisariston, posted his digital workflow and inspired me to do the same. You can view his digital workflow on his blog.
Step 1 – Import
(I’ve bypassed the seamingly obvious step of taking the pictures!)
Importing your images simply means that you’re transferring them from your camera’s memory card to your computer. This can be done a couple different ways. You can use a USB cable, usually supplied with your camera, and just connect the camera to the computer. This may seem like the easiest, but be careful. You need to make sure that you have enough battery juice to last the entire download.
The preferred method, and the one that I use, is to use a memory card reader. Just plug it into your computer, pop the memory card in and you’re set. I use Adobe Lightroom 2 to import my photos, but you can use just about any photo software. Using Lightroom allows me to choose the folder where I want the photo to go, add metadata like my copyright, and any tags I want associated with the images. This will make finding certain pictures easier in the future.
Step 2 – Selecting Images
This next step, once mastered, can litteraly shave hours off your processing time. And the best part is that it only takes a few minutes! Once all the images have been imported, I go through each of them and pick out the obvious bad ones. They’re either way to blurry, or the lighting was wrong, or they just plain suck! In Lightroom, hitting the “x” key will label it as “rejected”. After I’ve rejected all the nasty ones, I just select them all and delete them, even from the disk. I don’t want them, I don’t need them.
Next, I go through again and pick the best ones. I hit the “p” key to “pick” these images. You can even go through and place a “star rating” on them to really narrow it down. And the nice thing about Lightroom is that you can filter your selections based on “Pick”, “Rejected” or the star rating. Pretty slick. The images that I haven’t picked or rejected just get left alone for another time.
Step 3 – Processing
I love digital photography and I love Lightroom and Photoshop! Just thought I’d throw that out there!
Some people may frown upon processing your images to much. These are usually the “old timers” used to having to get it right the first time or risk wasting a lot of money and time. Not so in the digital age. The problem for me is that when I “make” a photo, I am usually in a certain mood or am feeling something specific. And it’s not always possible to portray those feelings through the camera itself. That where my processing come in.
Since I shoot primarily in RAW, I can furthor “develop” my images to suit my taste. I can shoot the same subject on 2 seperate days and convey 2 completely seperate emotions. Some of my work is “traditional” in nature, and other pieces are completely off the grid! It’s whatever I’m feeling at the time, or what the image is saying to me. Ah, the beauty of it all!
Step 4 – Output
Ok, now here’s where it can get out of hand. Do you want to put that image on the web? Or maybe you’re going to print it? Email it? There are so many options, how do you choose?
I usually output to Photoshop so that I can make further enhancements to the image. (We all know Lightroom isn’t Photoshop and Photoshop isn’t Lightroom!) There are some things that I can do more effeciently within Photoshop. Now if I’m going to post it to the web, I’ll adjust the image size and resolution. This can actually vary depending on where you post your images. For instance, DeviantArt will allow a higher resolution image than, say, Flickr. I’ll save a copy at 72 dpi for most sites on the net.
If I know I’m going to be printing the image, I’ll save a copy at full size and 300 dpi. These images are also place in respective folders on my computer. One folder houses my web images and another houses the images for print.
One of these days I’ll do a video and show you exactly what I mean. But for now, I hope this made sense! If there’s one piece of advice that I could give to you, it would be to stay on top of your images. As soon as you say, “I’ll get to it tomorrow!” you’ve lost the battle. Because, my friends, tomorrow never comes!