A (very) basic RAW workflow in Lightroom 2

The plan here is to describe how to start on the right foot in Lightroom 2. This article is directed towards people who use Lightroom for the first time, or who find themselves confused between folders/collections, RAW/JPEGs, import/export, to name a few.

We will see how to create a new catalog, import some pictures, put them into collections and finally export them in a suitable size for Facebook.

Pre-requisites

• You are shooting in RAW or RAW+JPEG. To understand the difference between RAW and JPEGs you can have a read here and here.
• You are using Lightroom 2. There is a version 3 available in beta on the Adobe website but I find it buggy so I will focus on Lightroom 2. You could use the beta and follow this tutorial but the screenshots will be somehow different from what you will encounter, especially the Import function.

1. Creating a new catalog

Open Lightroom and create a new catalog to start from fresh (File/New Catalog).
NB: You can skip directly to 2. if you are happy with your current catalog.

Lightroom will create a folder and place the new catalog file inside. No need to create a folder yourself (cf screenshot below). After you press create, Lightroom will create your new catalog and restart with this catalog.

2. Importing your photographs

We will now import the content of a memory card. We will copy the photos on an external hard-drive and at the same time on a backup drive.

If you plug your card in, Lightroom should detect it automatically. You can also go to File/Import Photos from Device. Whichever method, you will see the window below:

Every section is detailed below:

2.1 Copy

This will simply copy the photos to the designated location. Harajuku is my external drive. It has a RAWs folder, and inside a Demo Workflow folder where the photos will be copied. Let’s choose how the files are going to be organized in the Demo Workflow folder.

2.2 Organize

You can select various options to organize your photos in the folder, all based on the date of the photos. In don’t like to have too many levels of sub-folders, hence why I choose a main folder for the year, and then one folder by day.

2.3 Backup

This step is very important… do not under-estimate the emotional and/or financial value of your pictures! Here, I save the photos on another drive, in a similar location to the main drive:

Lightroom will organize the photos in the same way as for the main copy folder.

2.4 File naming

I like to keep the original file name, as I have set up my camera (Nikon D700) to numerotate them sequentially.

2.5 Various

• Develop Settings: You can pre-apply one of the settings of the Development module during the import. I usually do not use this feature as I want to do a quick selection of my pictures first.
• Metadata: You can pre-apply a metadata preset. For example, you could create a preset named ‘Paris’ that will have Paris as a city, France as a country and your name in the copyright field. It will be applied to all the pictures.
• Keywords: Here, I’m importing pictures from various Christmas festivities in France so I’m pretty sure ‘Christmas’ and ‘France’ will apply to all the pictures.
• Initial Previews: You are importing RAW files, and Lightroom needs to generate a JPG file to display each of your photo. Depending on the size of the display, the JPG file will be bigger in size and take a longer time to be created. I like to use ‘Standard’ as this is what is used in the Library and Develop module.

Press import!

3. Organizing your photos in collections

Now that your photos are copied on your drive and safely backed-up, you can and you should forget where the files are. Since we are going to organize everything using the collections, the location of the files does not really matter, as long as your drive is plugged in!
You can now create one or several collections, and drag your photos into them. You will end up with something like this:

4. Editing your pictures

You can now select one of your brand new collections and edit your pictures using the Quick Develop sidebar in the Library module, or in the Develop Module.

Once you’re happy with your photos, it’s time to export.

5. Exporting your pictures

Select one or several pictures and go to File/Export…. Let’s assume here that you want to export your photos to Facebook. Lightroom offers a few export presets by default, but we will create our own, that we will use everytime we export pictures to Facebook.

5.1 Export Location

I like to have a generic folder for all my Facebook exports, that I choose as the Export Folder. I can then enter a name for the subfolder that Lightroom will create. If I use the preset again for a different export, all I have to do is to change the subfolder name.

5.2 File Naming

Different options are available here. You can keep the original file name or do some fancy numbering. I like to use a combo custom name + sequence:

Note that you can save this naming combo as a preset too.

5.3 File Settings

Since we are exporting for the web, no need to keep the quality at the highest level. I wouldn’t worry about the Color Space either as Facebook won’t do much with it.

5.4 Image Sizing

For the same reasons as above, we do not need to have a very big image, 800×800 max will be fine. Note that Lightroom will not crop your picture to a 800×800 square, it will just ensure that the largest dimension of your photo will be 800 pixels, and resize the other side accordingly.

Several other options are available, like adding a copyright watermark, but for now let’s keep it simple. On the left side of the Export window, press Add and name your preset with something like ‘Facebook’, so that the settings can be used the next time. Now press export!

A few seconds/minutes later, your photos are exported to the chosen location. Because of the output image size and the quality, you’ll notice that your files are much smaller than the original RAW files. It is now very easy to upload them to Facebook or use them in emails etc…

Voila! I hope this tutorial was useful, please don’t hesitate to ask any questions or add remarks in the comments.

This entry was posted on Friday, December 25th, 2009 at 11:16 pm and is filed under All, Tutorials and tagged with adobe, catalog, exporting, files, folder, importing, jpg, lightroom, raw, technical, tutorial, workflow. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.