How to Edit Your Images Faster: 6 RAW Processing Tips

When you’re editing thousands of photos for clients every single week, time is quite literally money. This helpful video offers a few key tips that may help you speed up your workflow and save precious minutes every time you sit down to process your RAW files.

The tips were put together by Pye at SLR Lounge, and all but one apply whether you’re using a keyboard and mouse, or trying out an editing console like the Loupedeck, which Pye uses throughout his demonstration.

Here’s a list so you can see all six tips at-a-glance:

1. Shoot in Manual – This allows you to keep exposure consistent for every scene, making batch processing much easier.
2. Batch Process By Scene Or Lighting – Basic tip, but important: there’s no need to edit each photo individually when you can batch scenes or lighting conditions together.
3. Create Presets Based On Common Lighting – Depending on your genre, chances are you run into similar lighting conditions regularly. Create presets for each of these to speed up your workflow.
4. Assign Shortcuts to Frequently Used Presets – Only applicable if you have an editing console, but hopefully Adobe adds this to Lightroom soon.
5. Don’t Rely on Your Mouse – The more you can rely on keyboard shortcuts, the faster you’ll work.
6. Create Presets from Local Adjustments – If you use certain local adjustments a lot, try popping them into a preset so you can drop them in (and adjust accordingly) at the click of a button.

Check out the full video to hear more about these tips, find out how to set some of these presets up, and see the tips in action. And if you have more RAW processing tips that have helped speed up your workflow, share the min the comments below.