Print editing workflow

[rustyLr]

Lightroom Version Number

9.4

Operating System

1. macOS 10.13 High Sierra

I'm starting on a large collection of photos shot on Kodachrome in the 80s. There's a lot with cyan/magenta casts so there is a lot of trial and error colour correction needed. For key shots there may be three or more variations that I incrementally print as I try to find the best colour for the prints to display. My question is how to organise this work in Lr? I have the raw original work which is good to view as single original images, then there will be virtual copies but I don't want them to clutter up the grid view of originals. I see there is also the print module that might have a similar function for proof tests. So at the moment I browse in grid, create a virtual copy, edit in Develop then do a test print, the create another VC and do more adjustment and print the next test. So I'm looking for organisational ideas before I go to deep into this project.

 

[Califdan]

There are several options and which one you choose is a personal matter as they all can accomplish your goal.

1) (the one you are already using) Created a VC for each varient. Stack those VC's under either the original RAW. Once you land on the best version under delete the other versions or just put that "best" one at the top of the stack. To unclutter, collapse the stacks

2) Use soft proofing to create the variations. If you save the proof copies they bcome a VC's and it's mostly the same as in option 1. In this case the "copy name" of the softproof VC contains the name of the print profile and printing intent (perceptual or realative). Another difference is the LrC really want's the Softproof to be a printing option so if you intend to use the best varient for other sharing not involving prints I'd shy away from this one. In addtions, since you can put whatever "copy name" you want on the VC's in option 1 I would take option 1 over option 2.

3) Use Snapshots instead of VC's. In this model tweak the image the way you want for your 1st test and when you print it, also ctreate a snapshot with a name you like (e.g. "test 1 less Cyan"). Then based on the print results, tweak the image some more and repeat. This method doesn't clutter your grid with multiple versions of the same image but is a bit more cumbersome to do side by side comparisons of different versions - but then again you have the printed paper versions to do those comparisons.

4) Export each variation as a new image and add the exported images back into the catalog, possibly stacking them with the oriignal. I don't suggest this method as you loose the edit history on those exported variants and, you waste lots of disk space for tha variants.

If it were me, I'd go with option 1

Hope that helps.

 

[rustyLr]

There are several options and which one you choose is a personal matter as they all can accomplish your goal.

1) (the one you are already using) Created a VC for each varient. Stack those VC's under either the original RAW. Once you land on the best version under delete the other versions or just put that "best" one at the top of the stack. To unclutter, collapse the stacks

2) Use soft proofing to create the variations. If you save the proof copies they bcome a VC's and it's mostly the same as in option 1. In this case the "copy name" of the softproof VC contains the name of the print profile and printing intent (perceptual or realative). Another difference is the LrC really want's the Softproof to be a printing option so if you intend to use the best varient for other sharing not involving prints I'd shy away from this one. In addtions, since you can put whatever "copy name" you want on the VC's in option 1 I would take option 1 over option 2.

3) Use Snapshots instead of VC's. In this model tweak the image the way you want for your 1st test and when you print it, also ctreate a snapshot with a name you like (e.g. "test 1 less Cyan"). Then based on the print results, tweak the image some more and repeat. This method doesn't clutter your grid with multiple versions of the same image but is a bit more cumbersome to do side by side comparisons of different versions - but then again you have the printed paper versions to do those comparisons.

4) Export each variation as a new image and add the exported images back into the catalog, possibly stacking them with the oriignal. I don't suggest this method as you loose the edit history on those exported variants and, you waste lots of disk space for tha variants.

If it were me, I'd go with option 1

Hope that helps.

Wow - thanks for that info. Its very helpful. I'll look into these things in more detail, but its good to see how they can be practically put to use and their pros and cons. Stacks is one of those things I haven't implemented, and I'll see what snapshots and soft proofing do.
As an aside, one thing I wish Lr had was a post-it note type thing where you can make notes on settings and a keyword field just for sorting and processing for projects.

 

[Roelof Moorlag]

As an aside, one thing I wish Lr had was a post-it note type thing where you can make notes on settings and a keyword field just for sorting and processing for projects.

There is a plug-in which does, i'm using it to keep notes about clients and worfkflow, i don't want to ' abuse' my Keywords for this. It's called Daisynotes and you can annotate folders, collections and smart collections:

https://buggeringabout.com/daisynotes/

Another handy plug-in is 'Big Note', you can make private annotations on individual photo's:

http://lightroomsolutions.com/plug-ins/big-note/