Lightroom Tricks for Organizing Photos and Optimizing Workflow

Need to improve your photo management in Lightroom? Here’s a 19-minute video from Nigel Danson that looks at how you can improve your Lightroom workflow by properly organizing photos and adopting a whole host of useful tips.

When organizing his photos on his hard drive, Danson has a hierarchical system that sorts his images by date. First off, he has main folders that indicate the year images were taken. After that, he has Q1, Q2, Q3, and Q4 folders. Within those folders he has separated things by location.

The video is full of tips for Lightroom workflows that Danson has come across through trial and error. For example, by building 1:1 previews when importing your photos into Lightroom for the first time, you will find that processing them and zooming in to check details is much quicker.

Danson also adds appropriate keywords to all of the images on import, allowing him to add only a few keywords later on that are specific to a particular photo.

By right-clicking the background in Lightroom, you can change the color that frames your photos in the edit window. This is a particularly useful tool if you’re editing shots with high contrast. When editing snow images, for example, Danson ensures he has a white background so that he has a true white reference point.

When cropping images, you can actually hit the “O” key on your keyboard to adopt different overlays for compositional aids. Once you’ve cropped your images to perfection, try using a flagging and rating system, like Danson does, so that you can find your best images from a shoot quickly and easily.

Check out the full video above for an insight into a proper Lightroom workflow and see how you can adapt your own habits for the better.

(via Nigel Danson via Fstoppers)

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