Lightroom Workflow Part 1: Import and organize

This is a series of tutorials on how I use Adobe Lightroom to streamline my photography workflow, from importing and organizing to processing and final delivery.

I have tried several workflows and this one suits me the best for the time being. It might not fit 100%  your style but I hope this series will help you improve your workflow, and give you an insight on how Lightpulse handles a session from scratch to finish.

So here we go with the first chapter which is Import ad Organize.

Once a session is done I return to the studio, launch Lightroom and go to the import dialog. From there I select my SD card  and wait a bit for all the thumbnails to appear in the main section of the import dialog. If there is a single session / subject in the SD card I leave all the photos selected. If not I click “Deselect all” and select only the photos which belong to a specific session. 

The Lightroom 3 Import Dialog

At the top of the Import Dialog I select the COPY option. I always COPY the files form the SD card to my hard drive so I can have a backup on the card if something goes wrong during the import procedure.

Select the COPY option from the top menu of the Import Dialog

Then I go to the rightmost column of the import dialog and do the following:

Under the “File Handling” tab (#1) I click on the "Render Previews" option menu and choose "Standard". This tells Lightroom to create all the preview jpeg files right after the import is complete. By doing so I speed up my workflow because once the previews are ready I don’t have to wait for them to render each time I move from one photo to another. I’ll get into more detail in this once we hit the next chapter of this tutorial series.

I also make sure I check the “Don’t import Suspected Duplicates “ for obvious reasons.

Next I move into the "File Renaming" tab (#2).

There I use the following format for the filenames:

YYYYMMDD_session_name where

• YYYY: The full year the session took place ( 2011 )
• MM: The month in a two digit format the session took place ( 01-12 )
• DD: The month day in a two digit format the session took place ( 01-31 )
• _session_name: The title  of the session. Note that instead of the space character I use the underscore.

This will make Lightroom to create a series of files that will look something like this:

• 20110812_session_name_01
• 20110812_session_name_02 etch

( The increment numbers are added automatically by Lightroom )

Why all these? Because this helps me recognize when a session was shot and what the subject was, even if I loose my Lightroom catalogue and have to depend on my file system only. 

Plus by putting the date first, in such format , it allows me to use the “short by name” view in Windows Explorer in order to automatically list and search my sessions in chronologically ascending or descending order.

Previews and Renaming sections

After I am done with the naming template I move on to keywords (#3).

When I first import a set I only use a few general keywords like the name of the session, the type ( for example portraits ) and a special keyword of mine called “tocheck” ( there is no space between the to words intentionally).

The last keyword allows me to do a text / keyword search in the Library module so I can filter and bring up easily the photos that need to be checked by me. Plus I can close Lightroom after the import procedure and come back another day, find immediately which photos need to be checked / processed etch and move on from there. This is crucial if you have a large catalogue with thousand of images and you import more than one sessions per day.

Once I finish with keywording I move on to the last step during which I select where the imported files will be stored on my hard drive (#4).

I go to the "Destination" folder and check the option "Into Subfolder". Then I type the folder name which is based on the same formula that I use for renaming my files ( YYYYMMDD_session_name ).

Finally I choose the destination folder in which the subfolder for this session will be created with all the imported photos in it .

Tip: I have a basic folder structure for organizing my photos. For example People, Portraits, Street Photography etch. When I choose a basic folder from the "Destination" section and follow the steps I described in the previous lines, I tell Lightroom to create for me a subfolder into the main basic folder that will have a name like 20110822_session_name.

Hard to follow ? Let me give you an example:

Lets say I had a portrait session today which is August 24 2011 with John. If I follow the instructions above, ( I check the "Into Subfolder" option,  type "20110824_johns_portraits" for the session's folder name the and I select as a destination folder my " Portraits" folder) Lightroom will create a new folder into "Portraits" called "20110824_johns_portraits" that will contal all the session's photos. This helps keeps things in order at  least for me.

Keywords and Destination Folder panels
After this final step is done I hit "Import" and leave Lightroom do it's thing.

The next part of the tutorial will deal with the Review, Ratting and Selection of the photos that will be processed. 

If you have any questions feel free to post them in the comments section. I'd be more than happy to answer them.

Also feel free to subscribe to the RSS feed or follow me at Twitter in order to be informed when Part Two is online.

Edit: The second part is available allready here: http://www.lightpulse.gr/blog/2011/11/3/lightroom-workflow-tutorial-part-2-edit-select-and-rate.html

Until next time happy shooting.