A Confused Newbie

[rayashton01]

Lightroom Version Number

Lightroom Classic

Operating System

1. Windows 10

HI,
I am trying to decide if Lightroom is for me. After watching videos and reading books, my poor 70 year old brain is becoming more confused. I hope you can help me. If I give you a brief description of how I currently work maybe you can advise me. At the moment after a shoot i create a folder on a hard drive for that project and inside that folder will be sub folders with different names i.e landscape, buildings HDR etc. there will also e a folder called Working and one called Finished. I then copy a Raw file into the Working folder and then use 3 or 4 different Editors to work on that file. So, there are a lot of files being made and deleted in the Working folder. Once I'm happy with a photo I then transfer it to the Finished folder where there maybe several versions of the same photo. That Finished folder is then transfered to another hard drive for storage. My question is, can Lightroom do all this for me, these is a lot of activity in the folders, and any advise as to how to set up would be great? Does Lightroom keep up with the movement of files easily? I know that Lightroom is basically a database so maybe I'm barking up the wrong tree? Sorry to be long winded, but I'm just trying to work out if I can use Lightroom or not. Many thanks.

 

[Johan Elzenga]

If you would want to use Lightroom primairily as a database in your current workflow, then I would advice against using it. Bridge would suit your current workflow much better. Lightroom is an non-destructive editor. That means that the strenght of Lightroom is that you do not make all kinds of edited copies. You would have to change your workflow considerably.

 

[clee01l]

As this 74 year old mind can attest, Lightroom is probably the ONE tool to manage all of your images.
Since Lightroom is a non destructive editor it can work with your RAW master image file and not create edited versions ad infinitum. A simplified work flow would be to Import and catalog the RAW file. Basic edits (sufficient for 95% of all images) can be handled within Lightroom Classic. Final derivative edited image files are only created for a destination (website, email a file to a friend etc. These are derivate files that you don't need to keep but send on to some destination. Since you can Print from Lightroom Classic, you don't even need a finished file to print. Lightroom Classic will create a final image by merging the original RAW file with the Lightroom adjustments. Once done this can be printed without creating a permanent file or exported as a new permanent file.
Everything is managed inside Lightroom Classic and tied back to the original RAW file which can be the only file saved on your disk drive. Need another new exported permanent file? Just export again.

Instead of trying to fit image files into compartmentalized folder, you can use the keyword feature of Lightroom to assign category names like Landscape, Buildings, Vacation etc. You can also assign these images to Collections which are virtual folders. The same image can go into several collections with out making copies. Something that you can not do if the collections are real folders

An Alternative to Lightroom Classic is Lightroom (that we call Lightroom Cloudy for disambiguation). In Lightroom (cloudy), all of the image files are stored in the Adobe Cloud and all of your organization is handled with (virtual) Albums which behave like the Lightroom Classic collections do in your Lightroom Classic catalog.

No matter which Lightroom approach you choose, there are plenty of knowledgable folks here (some like me that are older than dirt) and others younger and sharper that will be willing to help you on your journey.

 

[BarrySchwartz]

HI,
I am trying to decide if Lightroom is for me. After watching videos and reading books, my poor 70 year old brain is becoming more confused. I hope you can help me. If I give you a brief description of how I currently work maybe you can advise me. At the moment after a shoot i create a folder on a hard drive for that project and inside that folder will be sub folders with different names i.e landscape, buildings HDR etc. there will also e a folder called Working and one called Finished. I then copy a Raw file into the Working folder and then use 3 or 4 different Editors to work on that file. So, there are a lot of files being made and deleted in the Working folder. Once I'm happy with a photo I then transfer it to the Finished folder where there maybe several versions of the same photo. That Finished folder is then transfered to another hard drive for storage. My question is, can Lightroom do all this for me, these is a lot of activity in the folders, and any advise as to how to set up would be great? Does Lightroom keep up with the movement of files easily? I know that Lightroom is basically a database so maybe I'm barking up the wrong tree? Sorry to be long winded, but I'm just trying to work out if I can use Lightroom or not. Many thanks.

Your description of your workflow in many ways matches my own. As a professional photographer, I often have several versions of final photos; for instance, for social media; for my clients (for whom I deliver both web and print ready images); my own printing needs; and on and on. My workflow has always been folder-based, which pre-dates Lightroom. When LR was first in beta, the engineers recognized this as a standard organizational method and built LR to easily enable and accommodate a folder workflow.

If I work on an image in Photoshop (typically a TIF or PSD), I simply click on the image in Lightroom to open it up in Photoshop, and after working on the image and saving, those changes are instantly reflected in Lightroom. If I have not done what I just described, I simply import the image - or group of images - into Lightroom without putting any adjustment presets ("none") or metadata and, voila, I've got the image (s) in my catalog. I use Lightroom exclusively for my cataloging, and it has never failed me yet; it's adjustable to your workflow, rather than the other way around.

 

[John Little]

One way to help you decide whether Lightroom works for you would be to start small. Make a small catalog and work/play with it a bit. Learn something about the power of keywords--they help you find photos without a highly elaborate folder system. I'd start doing this on something that's not work-related, so as to remove any concerns about messing up your work, missing deadlines, etc. Good luck!

 

[Califdan]

I don't think you specified what those 3 or 4 different editors are that you use and what you use them for. I suspect that some of what you get from them is replicated in LrC and in other cases the vender may have a LR plugin version of their product. In these cases, LrC will pass the image to the other product where you'd do whatever you do there. When done, the other product hands the updated image back to LrC and Lightroom Classic adds the edited version to its catalog. To help keep things straight you can assign a copy name to the returned image such as "Siver Efx conversion to B&W". In the case where you need a 3rd party editor that does not have a LR plugin, many times you can still envoke it from LR as an "external editor", but even if you can't you can export the image, use the other editor on it and then import the updated version back into Lr.

The value is that you have all the iterations in one database where you can organize and manage them. Another value is that by using keywords and or collections (as Cletus suggested) you can forgo the various folders you use for workflow and just have all the images from a single shoot in one folder. In this case you'd use collections or keywords to indicate which Workflow state they are in rather than looking at which sub-folder they are in.

 

[rayashton01]

Many thanks for all your advice. I am going to continue practicing with Lightroom until I can understand it better, already with your help I think I'm getting somewhere. As suggested, I shall start small with a small amount of images, and work my way up. So many photographers rave about Lightroom and Photoshop and now, being retired, I hope to have the time to dedicate myself to learning these programs. I like to do a lot of HDR and ICM photography and I am hoping both Lightroom and Photoshop will lend themselves to this. Again, many thanks and I guess I will have a lot more questions as I explore!

 

[clee01l]

Many thanks for all your advice. I am going to continue practicing with Lightroom until I can understand it better, already with your help I think I'm getting somewhere. As suggested, I shall start small with a small amount of images, and work my way up. So many photographers rave about Lightroom and Photoshop and now, being retired, I hope to have the time to dedicate myself to learning these programs. I like to do a lot of HDR and ICM photography and I am hoping both Lightroom and Photoshop will lend themselves to this. Again, many thanks and I guess I will have a lot more questions as I explore!

We will always be here and remember no question is to petty to ask.