Lightroom Day One - Setting up for success

Your guide to setting up and getting started with Adobe Lightroom

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Hi, my name is Rich Dyson from Edinburgh Photography Workshop, and this is Coffee Break Photography.

I can still remember the first time I used Adobe Lightroom. I didn’t understand why it was different from Photoshop, but it appeared to have a simpler interface. I would click on a picture to edit it in Lightroom and then export a JPEG so I could post it on the social media platform of the time, probably MySpace! I truly didn’t grasp that Lightroom is much more than merely an editing tool. Today, I am going to demonstrate what you should do on your first day using Lightroom.

Before I start using Lightroom, I believe it is worthwhile to discuss the different versions included in the Creative Cloud package. In fact, there are five versions available, and some of them work well together.

Let’s start with the original: Lightroom Classic. This is my preferred version and the one I will demonstrate later. All your photos are stored on your computer’s hard drive. If you wish, you can make copies of the pictures available in the cloud space provided by Adobe.

Next, we have Lightroom – confusing, I know. This version of Lightroom is cloud-based, which means you store your pictures in the cloud rather than on your hard drive. It offers almost the same capabilities as Lightroom Classic, but if you intend to take many pictures in the future, the cost of cloud storage may become restrictive. You purchase one terabyte of storage with your subscription, but my catalogue is closer to seven terabytes! It also becomes prohibitive if your internet connection is slow. Lightroom needs to download the photo from the cloud before you can start editing, and then re-upload it once you have finished. I’ve recently been helping someone set up their editing process, and we waited for ages while the photos synchronised in both directions.

Thirdly, we have Lightroom for Web. It’s almost an exact copy of the cloud-based Lightroom, but instead of having the program on your computer, you access it through a browser interface. As a result, all the issues I’ve just talked about are still valid.

Finally, there are two versions available for different mobile devices: Lightroom Mobile for phones and Lightroom for iPad. Both versions are compatible with any of the desktop-based Lightroom options and can also be used as standalone applications.

Let’s return to Lightroom Classic and explore in a bit more detail. This version features a series of modules that are visible at the top of the screen. The Library module does what a library does. It’s the place where you can store your photos, catalogue them to make it easier to find in the future and then retrieve them so you can work on a specific image.

The Develop module is our darkroom. Here, we can edit our pictures to hopefully make them look better. 

Next, we have the Map module. If your camera captures the GPS location while you take photos, you can view where the pictures were taken on a map. This is excellent if you’ve been on holiday and wish to be reminded of where you were for a particular shot. 

The Book module allows you to create a photo book. There is a self-publishing service called Blurb, and all of their templates are available within Lightroom. You can also design your own layouts. Once you have created your book, you can send it off to be printed by Blurb. Additionally, you can export your design to a PDF file, which you can then have printed through any other service.

Our Slideshow module lets you choose multiple photos and combine them into a video file.  You can add music and be creative with how each image transitions from one to the next.

Next up is the Print module – can you guess what it does? You can set up either a single image or multiple images to be printed directly to a printer or saved as a PDF file. I have used this to create contact sheets, which I could then share with clients, allowing them to decide which photos they would like to use from a shoot. Generally, I tend to use external print services, so it’s not a module I utilise very often.

That’s also true for the Web module. I believe this was included in the very early versions of Lightroom. Once you have selected the photos to be used and arranged their layout, it would generate all the HTML files for you to upload to a web space. There are now much easier ways to do this with Squarespace, Wix, and WordPress.

Finally, the cloud symbol indicates the status of any images being synchronised with the Adobe Cloud. The two modules you will use most frequently are Library and Develop, so the remainder of this video will focus on these two.

Let’s delve into how the underlying infrastructure of Lightroom operates. As I mentioned, the photos are stored on your computer and can also be accessed through external hard drives. Lightroom creates a series of files that contain, among other things, the details of the location where the file is stored, any edits you have applied to images, and various previews of the photos that can speed up the editing process. To generate the files, we need to import the photos into Lightroom. We do this by selecting the Import Photos and Videos option from the File menu.

I went for a wander this afternoon to take pictures in the local area. We have some images to add to a new catalogue, so let’s get into this screen. On the left side, we have the 'From' section of the import process; I can select the memory card, and you can see all the pictures taken today. We are going to copy the photos, and on the left, it displays the 'To' side of the import.

There are several options available to us on this side. Let’s begin at the top and work our way down. If you select an option on this screen, Lightroom will remember your choice and apply the same settings the next time. 

The first box allows you to select the type of preview used when opening a photo. The minimal preview displays a low-quality embedded version of the image and subsequently accesses the original file to retrieve additional information. I am using the latest MacBook Pro, which features a fast processor, so I tend to opt for this option. The other options consist of progressively larger preview versions. Embed and sidecar utilise the preview that appears on the back of your camera. Standard size is defined in the settings of your catalogue and is often regarded as a good compromise between speed and storage space. Finally, a 1:1 preview creates an image the same size as your original file. It is important to note that the preview file is stored in your Lightroom catalogue, so the larger the preview, the more space your catalogue will occupy. While using a 1:1 preview is quick, it will also double the size of every image you include in your catalogue 

Build Smart Previews enables you to create a file that you can edit, even if the actual image isn’t on your hard drive. For instance, if you store it on an external drive that you don’t have with you, there is sufficient information to edit the file. When you reconnect to the original file, any edits you have made will be updated. Generally, I don’t require access to pictures that are not on my computer, so I leave this unchecked.

I tick the next box, “Don’t import suspected duplicates." If you are the person who takes photographs, imports them into your computer, and then puts the memory card back into your camera to take more photos, you will not import images that are already in your catalogue.

If you wish to create a backup of the photos to a secondary location, you can specify this in the next box. I use a backup service called Backblaze, which automatically saves every time I make a change on my computer, provided there is an active internet connection. I never delete a photo from a memory card until I can confirm that it has been successfully backed up through Backblaze. For me, I leave this unchecked.

We’ll talk about Collections later on, but for now, I will skip over this next box.

The next section relates to renaming your photos as they are imported onto your computer. You can see that the Canon default naming convention uses the letters IMG followed by a number. This does not indicate what is in the pictures we are uploading. Therefore, you can create a template that renames the files to make them more relevant to us. Tick the box for Rename File, and in the Template dropdown, select the Edit option. We have a blank template to start building from. The first element I would like in the filename is the date when the photograph was taken. We can select different date formats by clicking on this dropdown. I prefer the YYYYMMDD format, as it ensures that all our files are stored in numerical order. By selecting it, you will see it gets added to the template at the top.

Next, we can add some free text. I want the file to feature my brand, so I will insert an underscore followed by CBP for Coffee Break Photography. Next, we’ll add something in the filename that will inform us of what is in the pictures we are about to upload. However, I don’t want to create a new template every time I do something different. I’ll add a custom text field by clicking on this insert button. Once we finish creating the template, a box will become active, allowing us to type in text that will be added to this field.

Finally, I know that I will take more than one photo in a day, but I likely won’t exceed 1,000 pictures. I’ll select this option to add a sequence number that consists of three digits. Should you take more than a thousand pictures, Lightroom will go from 999 to 001a and then commence numbering again.

We can save this renaming preset by clicking on the dropdown box and selecting the option “Save Current Settings as a New Preset”. Type in the name you wish to assign to the preset, for instance, “CBP Rename", and then click on "Create". Click ‘Done’ and we are now using this preset. The Custom Text box has now become active, allowing us to add some text here, let’s say “CBP Lightroom Demo”, which will be included in the filename. You can see a full preview by hovering over this.

I’ll come back to Develop settings later on in this demo.

The next box is Metadata. This is where we can assert our copyright on a photograph in a very transparent manner. You do own the copyright the moment you press the shutter button, but this will help to make it more accessible. I have created a template already, which we can access by selecting the option “Edit Presets."

The preset I have created is called EPW Metadata. You can see that I have added information to a few of the boxes. This includes a copyright statement, a link to the URL where I have more information about my copyright, and my contact details. This isn’t a watermark and isn’t visible on the picture, but it is embedded in the data within your image. If someone wishes to, they can view this information and understand how you are permitting your picture to be used. However, you do need to be aware that some social media sites, such as Facebook and Instagram, wrongly in my opinion, will strip out this data; they claim it helps improve the speed of their sites.

Keywords will allow us to provide information about the content of the pictures we are going to include in the catalogue. This will make it easier to find photographs in the future. Every photo I have taken today has been taken in Edinburgh, so I shall add this as a keyword. It’s also in an area of Edinburgh called Leith, I will add that as well. At this stage, the keywords we include should be relevant to all the pictures in the import. We do not want to include keywords that apply to only a few of the images. We can do this later on.

At present, all the photos are being placed into the Pictures folder on my hard drive. My professional catalogue contains thousands of images. If all of these were stored on my hard drive, my computer would become unusable. Each month, I transfer images from the hard drive to an external drive. I want to streamline this process, so within the Pictures folder, I shall organise the photos by the date they were taken. I can also select different formats here. I prefer the seventh option down, which will create a folder for the year the photo was taken; within the year folder, it will create a month folder, and within the month folder, it will create a day folder. If the folders already exist, Lightroom will add to the existing ones.

That’s the import screen set up, and we just need to press “Import” to create all those entries in the files within Lightroom.

Lightroom will always open photos in the Library module. While the images are being imported, let’s take a little tour of the Library to see what is available.

We can see a large view of a picture by clicking on it. If we want to go back to seeing the Grid view, just press the G button.

The Navigator enables us to look at a picture in greater detail. Currently, we see the image adjusted to fit our screen. By selecting 100%, a box appears in the Navigator window. We also have a zoomed-in view of our picture. The box indicates what is visible in the zoomed view. We can move the box within the Navigator, revealing different elements of the image. If we wish to zoom in further, increase the percentage to a higher value, and the preview enlarges. I’m not a pixel-peeper, so I rarely exceed a 300% view. To see the entire image, click on “Fit.”

The folders section shows us where the photos are stored on the hard drive. We told Lightroom to organise the folders by year, month, and day, which you can see here.

The next section is Collections. Collections are a fantastic way to organise your photographs in various ways. I have taken quite a few photographs of boats during this walk, so I will create a Collection for them. To do this, I click on the plus sign and select the option to Create Collection. A dialog box opens up. The first thing we can do is give the Collection a name, let’s say Boats. I will include the selected photograph and press the “Create” button. You can see there’s now a folder under Collections containing one picture. If I want to add more pictures, I just need to drag them into the folder, and they will be added to the Collection.

You can add a single picture to multiple collections and include images from different days within a collection. One important thing to note is that Lightroom does not create a copy of the picture to place it in the collection; essentially, a collection is a virtual folder. Therefore, any edits made to the photograph in a collection will also update the photograph in the folders section, and vice versa.

They are a great way to bring together images. One example of how I use Collections is that I create a calendar each year around August. If I believe a photo is worthy of being in the calendar, I add it to a Collection. When August arrives, I only need to look at the pictures in the Collection rather than browsing through thousands of photos taken over the year.

The Publish Services section is another feature that I seldom use. If you are still using Flickr, you might consider taking advantage of it, as Lightroom has an integrated interface that allows you to send your photos directly from your Lightroom catalogue to Flickr without needing to export a JPEG file. I won’t delve into this too much.

On the other side of the screen, there is further information about the image. At the top of the screen is the histogram, which is similar to the one you’ll see on the back of your camera. Additionally, there is a note detailing the settings used to capture the photograph.

The keywording section displays the keywords we added during the import process, and we’ll return to this shortly. Next is the Metadata section, which offers various options, and I prefer to use the EXIF and IPTC settings as they provide the most information that I want to see and utilise. I’ll allow you to browse through the different options to determine which one meets your needs. However, you will notice it includes both the original filename and the one we created during the import process. Additionally, there are more detailed settings captured by the camera, such as the file type, the number of pixels, the metering mode, and even the camera's serial number used to take the picture. At the bottom of the section is the metadata we added to protect our copyright during the import process.

The first thing I want to do now that all the photos have been imported is to eliminate my ‘bad’ photos. Rather than deleting each one individually, I find the following process to be a better way to conduct an initial review of the pictures. Flick from picture to picture using the cursor keys. If you think an image isn’t good, press the “X” key. You can see a message appeared to say the image has been rejected and there is also a black flag in the filmstrip at the button. If you make a mistake and want to unreject a picture, press the “U” button. I’ll go through the remaining pictures to flag the rejected ones.

Now that all our bad pictures are flagged as rejected, we can select the option in the Photo menu to Delete Rejected Photos. A dialog box appears with three options. The first is to remove the photos from the Lightroom catalogue. If we choose this option, all the rejected photos will be removed from the catalogue but will remain on your hard drive. If these are our bad photos, we’ll take the option to Delete from Disk. This will remove them from the Catalogue and also move them to the recycle bin on your computer. The final option is the cancel option, just in case you have arrived here by mistake.

We now have the photos we want to keep, so the next step is to add more keywords. Let’s return to the Keyword section at the top of the right-hand panel. We can add keywords specific to each photo individually, or select multiple images and assign a keyword to all of them simultaneously. I’ll quickly go through the imported pictures to add more specific keywords to each one.

Right, the keywords have been added. If I wish to find all the pictures I’ve taken that feature boats in the future, I simply need to press the backslash key while I am in the Library module. These filters enable us to select groups of images that meet certain criteria. For keywords, we’ll enter the Text filter to search within Keywords. We’ll select images that contain the word boats. Very quickly, Lightroom displays all the pictures that meet these criteria. If you spend your time keywording your images, this feature makes it very easy to locate them later. 

That’s everything I need to do in the Library module. We have transferred the pictures onto the hard drive, renamed them for clarity, added information to protect our copyright, and included details to make it easier to locate our pictures later. This can be done either by the date the picture was taken or through the keywords we added during import, with more detail added once the pictures were in Lightroom. Now it’s time to edit, which we will do in the Develop module. As I click into Develop, you can see that the panels on either side change, so let’s have another tour of the new screen.

We have the Navigator again, which operates in the same way as in the Library module. Below that, we have Presets, and I’ll show you how to create and use a preset shortly. Further down, we find the History panel. I believe this is one of the strongest elements of Lightroom. Every edit you make to a picture is listed here, and you can return to any point in your editing process by clicking on the individual step. It’s called non-destructive editing, which means you can never destroy a picture in the catalogue unless you delete the entire file.

The final section of this panel is the Collections, which function in the same way as the Library module. On the right-hand panels, we have the Histogram, but this is slightly different from the one in the Library module. These two triangles at the top will indicate whether the picture contains clipped shadows when the left triangle is lit, or clipped highlights when the right triangle is illuminated.

Below this, there are a few different tools. There’s a crop tool, a spot removal tool, a red-eye removal tool, and a mask tool that allows you to apply edits to specific areas of the image. Below this are several other menus. I won’t go into each one in detail during this video, but instead, I’ll cover a very simple editing process to get you started, which will use one or two sections. 

I shoot in RAW format, which, as the name suggests, is the raw data before any alterations are made. If you use the JPEG format, your camera will apply edits to the picture without your knowledge before it compresses the file to reduce its size. The camera enhances blue skies to appear bluer and green grass to seem greener. It also adds contrast. Before I begin my editing process, I apply certain settings to mimic a JPEG file while retaining all the data.

First, let’s make blue skies blue by changing the vibrance value to 35. You can see over in the History section that this change is recorded over here. If I click on the step below, you can see the before state and then click back to the top and we see the change added. I’ll increase the contrast by setting the Clarity slider to 25. Again the step gets recorded in the History section.

You probably can’t see this right now, but this image has a bulge in the middle. This is because every lens is convex. When the light hits the lens, the convex shape of the glass is recorded on the sensor. Lightroom has a database of most lens and camera combinations and by clicking on Enable Profile Corrections, it will adjust the image to what we saw rather than what was recorded on the sensor. Finally, I am going to check this box to Remove Chromatic Aberration. No lens is perfect, and the optics can lead to blue-yellow, red-green, or magenta-purple fringing, particularly where there is a contrast between a building’s walls and a blue sky. When this box is checked, it will eliminate the chromatic aberration and help to improve the quality of the image.

I want to apply these four adjustments to every picture, but I’d rather not press each button repeatedly. This is where we can create a preset to help speed up the process. Click on the plus sign next to the presets and a new dialog box will appear. When we select the Clarity, Vibrance, Lens Corrections, and Chromatic Aberration options, Lightroom will record the settings of the selected image. It operates dynamically with the Lens Corrections, automatically adjusting for different camera and lens combinations. Let’s rename the preset to something like CBP preset and then click the “Create” button.

You can see that the preset is now listed, and we can select another image. By clicking the preset, all our settings are applied at once! That’s great, but we can be even more efficient. Remember in the Import module, I mentioned I would come back to the develop settings dropdown? Now that we have created the preset, we can select it, and every future import will include these settings as they are added to the library. Quite clever! 

Let’s return to the Develop module, and I’ll quickly edit this picture of the Shore area in Leith. If I hover over the Shadows slider, you can see a lighter grey area in the histogram. Moving the slider to the right lightens any data in this area, while moving it to the left darkens it. I can adjust the slider until I reach the desired position. Similarly, I can adjust the highlights slider, which can either darken or lighten the brighter parts of the image. I could continue to whizz each of these sliders until I achieve my preferred edit. However, often I can simply click the auto button, and Lightroom will determine what it considers the best combination of values to use. I can then make minor adjustments to one or two of the sliders to create the image I want. Even with this simple edit, you can see how Lightroom can help transform your pictures.

I’m not going to cover an entire editing class in this video, and I’m sure I’ll revisit different tools in future videos. If this video has motivated you to purchase Lightroom, I would greatly appreciate it if you could use the affiliate link below the video to subscribe to the Photography Plan. You won’t pay any extra, but I’ll earn a small commission to help support this channel.

If you’ve enjoyed this video, it would be great if you could like it and share it by clicking on the thumbs-up button below the video. That way, a few more people will get to see it. You can also subscribe to the channel by clicking on this button here. I send out a monthly newsletter to my subscribers with news about photography, as well as exclusive offers. Scan this QR code to sign up. My name is Rich Dyson, from Edinburgh Photography Workshop, and this has been Coffee Break Photography. See you next time.