Hi and welcome to Episode 131 of the Photography Explained podcast.
I’m your host Rick, and in each episode I will try to explain one photographic thing to you in plain English in less than 10 minutes (ish) without the irrelevant details. What I tell you is based on my lifetime of photographic experience. And not Google. Definitely no Google in this episode.
Here is the answery bit
I have been using Lightroom since version 1.0. Yes, I was there when Lightroom was unleashed on the world. And this is my workflow, step by step. I have no idea how long this will take me, but I am going to just go for it ok!
You can listen to the episode here
Or keep on reading. Or do both. Entirely up to you!
You might want to go to the podcast website where you will find this script which you can read, copy, or whatever you want. Just head over to the Photography Explained Podcast website.
Before I go on, I also use
• Photoshop to remove stuff I can’t remove in Lightroom.
• Luminar when I need to change the sky
And that is it. If I can process a set of images without using Photoshop I am happy. Nothing against Photoshop, it is just that I am not a fan. And I only change the sky when I need to, which is more often than I would like as I am here in England where the weather can be, erm, rubbish.
Sorry – one more thing
I am an architectural, construction and real estate photographer. This is how I process my commercial images. For my personal work, travel, and landscape photography, I do much the same but allow myself some freedom and give myself time to play. So things get a little bit funkier, but not too funky.
Right – this is my Lightroom workflow
1 – Import the photos into Lightroom
I insert the SD memory card into the dedicated slot on my PC. Lightroom knows what to do. I have selected New Photos, so only new photos are imported.
If you don’t have all your photos in Lightroom you can import them from a hard drive here. Get them all into Lightroom – you will find it much easier with them all in one place. And don’t worry about having too many photos in your Lightroom Catalogue – I have 80,000 in mine, and there is no upper limit, according to Adobe.
2 – Select new photos
I just select copy and the New Photos option. This means that the photos stay on the memory card just in case there is a problem with the import. Which there never is to be fair but better safe than sorry. This is part of my backup strategy.
3 – Import photos to an external hard drive
This is where the photos are going, and how. My Lightroom Catalogue, and the photos, are stored on an external hard drive. This is how I have made my workflow future-proof, by using external hard drives.
No chance of me running out of drive space, and when I get close I just buy a larger external hard drive and move the files over. And these hard drives cost around $/£75-80, so this is not expensive.
4 – Select Build Previews
Check the box Embedded and Sidecar. This basically makes selecting and culling images faster. I don’t know what it actually means to be honest, but knowing this will not help me. I just do what I am told to do. In this case by Scott Kelby no less!
5 – Build Smart Previews
I do this so Lightroom builds previews which load much quicker and save time.
6 – Don’t import suspected duplicates
Well, I don’t want to import suspected duplicates so I ask Lightroom to check for this. And there is a point I would like to raise here – if you get your memory card management sorted you will never see this dialogue box appear as you will only be shooting with freshly formatted, blank memory cards.
7 – Make a second copy to
Lightroom puts a second copy on my computer hard drive. Now you might remember that the photos in my Lightroom Catalogue are on an external hard drive. This duplicate set goes on my PC hard drive, so if there is a problem with the external hard drive during import I have a duplicate set on my PC, as well as the photos on the memory cards.
8 – Apply develop settings on import
Lovely import presets. Things that I do to all my photos, that I get Lightroom to do automatically on import. By doing this I can end up with photos which are on their way to being finished right after import which is a wonderful thing.
I have created my own import presets, one of which I apply when I import every photo.
9 – Import Presets – Basic Panel
Things that I used to do to every photo that Lightroom does on import. Nice! And it is worth saying here that I don’t do a huge amount of processing on images.
10 – Import Presets – Detail Panel
I am using the same camera and lens, and the detail adjustments are the same for every shoot, so I get this out of the way on import.
11 – Import Presets – Lens Corrections
I have selected my go-to lens here, the Canon 17-40mm F L lens and Lightroom cleverly makes the corrections required by the optics.
12 – Import Presets – Effects Panel
I add a vignette to every photo. What is one of these? Well if you play around with the sliders you will see for yourself, but basically I am darkening the corners and edges to make the middle stand out more.
13 – Tell Lightroom where to put the photos
I get Lightroom to sort the photos into folders by date – this just works for me. And I don’t bother with sub-folders just yet.
My Lightroom Catalogue file structure
Not workflow but something that I want to share with you. I have a very simple file structure. Just ten main folders. Each folder is subdivided by year, and then job name. And this file structure has worked for me for years and can be added to at any time. This is a simple, future-proof file structure.
14 – Create sub-folders and move the photos
I create a folder with the job name, and then sub-folders titled All and Picks. I move the photos to the All folder.
15 – Put the photos into stacks
I shoot using auto exposure bracketing, meaning that there are three photos of each shot. I merge them together using the HDR Merge tool in Lightroom later. But for now, I put them into stacks, meaning that the first image of each set of three images is on top of a stack.
16 – Choose the photos to edit
I go through the photos one by one, using P for pick and X for reject. Once I am happy with the images I move them to the folder called Picks. I also add this folder to a collection so I can see them on my iPad/ iPhone (a word on Collections later).
All nice, simple, and straightforward and helps me work more efficiently.
17 – Edit the photos – transform/ crop
I start editing with the transform and crop tools. I use crop and transform at the same time. Now I tend not to crop images so this is more about how the Transform adjustments change the photo. A large correction to the image means it will get cropped.
What I want to get over here is that I sort out the horizontals and verticals first, and then the crop after. If I need to.
This is what I do. I go to the first image, select the Transform panel, and check that the verticals are vertical and the horizontals are horizontal. This is a visual thing that I cannot explain in a blog post, to be honest, but I can tell you this.
Get the horizontals correct first. And then do the verticals. Do it the other way round and you will be fiddling around forever and a day to get things right. This for me is normally a check and maybe a slight adjustment as I get this right when I take the photo.
And now for the unusual bit.
Well, I think it is. When I have got the first photo straight and vertical I move on to the next photo and do the same. Yes, I do these adjustments to every photo before moving on to the next panel.
And here is another top tip.
Click on the blob in the middle of the slider, and rather than dragging it hit the right arrow key, and you get +5. Left and you get -5. This is how I do my transform adjustments.
And you can do this with any slider.
Why do I work this way?
I get more consistent results doing this. I get the content of an image sorted first, which makes sense. Why spend a load of time editing a photo and then do a transform adjustment that takes out a load of the photo?
18 – Edit the photos – basic panel
The beauty of Lightroom is that you work through the panels in a logical order. The Basic Panel is far from that, it is the main editing panel for me.
19 – Treatment
Colour or black and white – is what it is.
20 – Profile
I use Adobe Colour – click on this and see what the other profiles look like.
21 – WB – White Balance.
There are two ways of getting the right white balance, which is an important starting point, as this defines the colours going forwards.
- Eye dropper tool – click on this (under the word profile), then move the eye dropper to something neutral – grey is ideal. I use a grey card which I include in the photos.
And the beauty of this is that you can copy and paste the white balance to every other image where the light was the same.
The other way is to select a white balance preset.
And that is white balance done.
22 – The wonderful Auto button
Next is a button to the right of Tone called Auto. Go on, try it, don’t be scared. It very often gives me something close to a final edit and shows what is possible in a photo very quickly.
23 – Exposure
This is the exposure obviously! Try one thing here – slide the exposure to +2, and then to -2. These are the three exposures that I get with bracketing – you have just recreated what they look like in Lightroom!
24 – Shadows and highlights
Visual adjustments, but if you hold down the shift key and double-click on the bit in the middle Lightroom will try to set these for you. And if you double-click on the white blob it resets the slider.
25 – Whites and Blacks
Another visual adjustment, but as for shadows and highlights, double click on the white blob and Lightroom sets the white point for you, and of course also the black point.
26 – Texture
I use this to bring out textures on exterior photos but not as much with interior photos.
27 – Clarity
Now this is an interesting one – I start at 25 then move to the right and see what happens. This is actually increasing the mid-tone contrast and sharpness – I tend to stick within 15-35 myself but have a play.
28 – Dehaze
Play with it. It removes haze in a scene. And go all the way to the ends to see what it does, which is quite funky.
29 – Vibrance
My favourite slider. Subtle, the vibrance slider increases the intensity of the less obvious colours in a photo. Skin tones are protected.
I start with fifteen and on the first image and slide left and right and pick what works for me, which I use for the rest of the photos.
Again, have a play and see what it can do, like I say it is subtle but very effective.
30 – Saturation
I do not use this – it is too clumsy for my liking.
31 – Tone Curve Panel
I tend not to use this. You can adjust the tones and also colour channels, and it also introduces curves. To be honest I don’t like this so I stay away from it!!
32 – HSL/ Colour Panel
I love this panel and use it subtly for real estate photography work. I use it much more though for travel and landscape work, and higher-end architectural photography.
This is how you use it – have a play around, I love it.
Highlight Luminance, then click the white circle and then move the mouse pointer over the photo, find a colour, click on it, and move the mouse pointer up and down and see what happens. Magical things can be created.
33 – And let’s save a whole heap of time
Once I have done the first photo, if the rest are similar I can add the adjustments to all the other photos.
I can do this by copying the adjustments on the first photo and pasting them to the next, and the next.
34 – Detail panel
This is already set on import. I do check this though and move the Amount slider just to check with the first image.
35 – Removing stuff
At the top there is the spot removal tool – it used to be a circle but has changed I guess to a rubber symbol.
Hit that, and then Visualise Spots at the bottom, and you can get rid of dust spots caused by dust on the sensor. Zoom in to 100% and this is quick and easy to do.
And if there is anything that I want to remove that is bigger than a dust spot I do this in Photoshop. And this is all I use Photoshop for. Removing stuff.
36 – Changing the sky
If I need to change the sky I don’t faff around in Photoshop. No, I go to Luminar which has a splendid AI Sky Replacement tool.
37 – Edit the photos – finishing touches
OK – here is another top tip. To the right of the Spot Removal tool (after Red Eye Correction) is the new mask tool. I used to use the radial filter tool to highlight the façade of a building, making it a little bit lighter. This is my secret finishing touch. And I use the mask tool for this now.
38 – Dodge and burn
I love dodge and burn. Dodge lightens, burn darkens. This is old-school processing brought into the digital age. You can find this under the mask tool, which I am going to write about in a future episode as it is all shiny and new.
Dodge and burn is where you brush over parts of a photo to make them lighter or darker. This can subtly increase the contrast in the areas where you paint, giving photos depth.
I do this to selective bits of photos, especially with higher-end work.
39 – Apply metadata to the edited images
Boring but important. Only now do I add metadata to the images that I have edited. If I haven’t edited an image it is not going anywhere, no one else will see it.
All I add are a few keywords, and I rename the file to suit the shoot, like this.
Building X Shoot, 31.12.2000.001.
40 – Export the photos out of Lightroom
More presets. I have a few export presents, depending on what I am doing with the photos and who I am giving them to.
One of them is 75% quality, 1 MB maximum file size, JPEG – this is for general stuff.
For client work, I use 92% quality JPEG 5 MB max file size.
41 – The second copy
I export a second copy, using the Lightroom export preset “For email (hard drive)”. Yes, Lightroom even gives you some presets. This gives me a duplicate set of images with seriously small file sizes.
42 – Issue the photos
A happy time. I love doing this. I issue them electronically – there are lots of ways of doing this.
43 – Sort out the digital files/ housekeeping
Well to be honest this is already done with my filing system.
Other things that I might do include.
- Deleting rubbish
- Deleting duplicates
- Deleting the photos that I did not edit – if I am feeling brave!
What do I do?
What I have just told you….
The talky bit
No need for that is there?
No all I want to say here is that what I have told you is exactly how I edit my photos. This workflow has evolved over many years and many hours working in Lightroom and is the most refined I can get my workflow.
Take my workflow, use it, experiment with it and come up with your own workflow, one that works for you.
Next episode
Yes really, a serious question with a serious answer…..
Ask me a question.
If you have a photography question you would like me to answer in plain English in less than 10 minutes (ish) without the irrelevant details, just head over to PhotographyExplainedPodcast.com/ start.
This is a great place to go to find out more about me and my podcast, and also find ways that you can help me.
I would love to hear from you, even if you just want to say hi.
This episode was powered by, wait for it, a banana smoothie. Yep two bananas in some milk which have given me an excellent start to today (don’t worry – I had a proper fry-up yesterday!). And it is too early for a cheese sandwich. As I record this I am drinking a nice coffee sitting here in my homemade acoustically cushioned recording emporium.
Right, I am up to 38 minutes, so after editing, yes I edit this stuff, I think I will be down to 31 ish minutes. This is a shocking admission of how much rubbish I can create in 38 minutes but be reassured that I am sparing you listening to the terrible bits.
OK – I’m done
I’ve been Rick McEvoy, thanks again very much for listening to my small but perfectly formed podcast (it says here), and for giving me 10 (ish) minutes of your valuable time. I really hope that you have enjoyed this episode, and I look forward to hearing from you.
Take care, stay safe
Cheers from me Rick”
OK – that was the podcast episode.
Want to know more?
Head over to the Start page on the Photography Explained Podcast website to find out more.
And here is the list of episodes published to date – you can listen to any episode straight from this page which is nice.
Let me know if there is a photography thing that you want me to explain and I will add it to my list. Just head over to the This is my list of things to explain page of this website to see what is on there already.
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And finally a little bit about me
Finally, yes this paragraph is all about me – check out my Rick McEvoy Photography website to find out more about me and my architectural, construction, real estate and travel photography work. I also write about general photography stuff, all in plain English without the irrelevant detail.
Thank you
Thanks for listening to my podcast (if you did) and reading this blog post (which I assume you have done as you are reading this).
Cheers from me Rick
