If you don’t know what I’m talking about, fire up Lightroom. Make sure you’re in the Library module (E), then get yourself in Grid view (G). Select a folder, of course, to make sure you can actually see some photos. Now, press J to cycle through your grid overlay view options. There are three choices, what I like to call “totally not helpful”, “standard”, and “woah”. Your mileage may vary.

Look at all that info!

Each symbol has a specific function – but there are sometimes so many symbols that it can get overwhelming. What the heck is that little arrow at the top corner, and what am I supposed to do with that information? Since I’ve been organizing my library, my files are a little out of whack, and I looked at my library and saw every single possible option in three images. Crazy stuff. I’m going to take you through them, one by one. Enjoy.

A few things to know before we begin :

1. Toggle states (when I talk about clicking to toggle something on or off) will activate the current photo and all other photos you have selected.
2. If you see me refer to a letter or number in parentheses – such as (E) – that is the keyboard shortcut for what I am talking about.
3. No, really, over time you will understand what all of these different options do.  Be patient.

For reference sake, this is “standard” overlay.

File Info

Index Number

The index number is shown in big, light numbers at the top left corner of the tile.  The photos above are index numbers 10713, 10714, and 10715.  I have a lot of photos.

File Name / Other Info

I have this turned off, but at the top of the tile you can choose to have alternate information about the photo.  Go to your View > View Options …, and in the dialogue box, under “Grid View > Compact Cell Extras”, go ahead and turn on Top Label.  Check out the different options!  Depending on what information your photo has in the metadata, you might not see anything for some of the options.  You’ll also see various options for the bottom label.  Leave these as “Rating and Label” for right now.

File Problems

File not Found

If you see a little question mark in the top right corner, that refers to “File not found”.  Click on the mark and a dialogue will pop up that will help you to find your file.

Updated Metadata

You’ll see three lines followed by an arrow or an exclamation mark in the top right corner if your metadata has gone out of sync.  I actually don’t know HOW to make this happen; it happens when the metadata on the file is different than the metadata in Lightroom.  You can save the metadata to your file if you want by clicking this icon and then pressing “save” in the dialogue box that appears.

• Metadata was changed in Lightroom and is unsaved on the file.
• Metadata was changed externally and is not synced in Lightroom.
• Error saving metadata to file.

Loading….

This one isn’t actually shown, because I couldn’t screencap it quickly enough.  If you see three little dots in the top right corner, that means that the file preview is loading.  You don’t have to do anything with this status.

Flags, Ratings, and Colors

Flagged Status

The flagged status of a photo shows up in the top left-hand corner.  Photos flagged as “Pick” (P) will have a white flag, “Reject” (X) will have a black flag with an x on it, and unflagged photos (U) will have no flag.  If you hover over the top-left corner of an unflagged photo, you will see the outline of a flag appear – click to “Pick” the photo, click again to “Reject” the photo, and again to “Unflag” the photo.

Star Rating

Star ratings are shown at the bottom left of the tile, right underneath the photo itself.  Hover to see the various star ratings, and click to select.

5 stars / 0 stars

This can be a tricky way to rate your photos – I find the graphics are often too small to fine tune my ratings.  I prefer to use the number keys (1 – 5 / 0 to remove) to add stars to my photos.

Color Label

Color labels are shown as the tile background (rather than the default gray) as well as the little color label below the photo.  The color labels can be changed by click on the little square, or by selecting a photo and pressing (6 – 9).  Yes, you’re right, not all the colors have a number!  If you are using the number keys to add color labels, you can’t apply purple.

Edit Me!

Photo has adjustments

The presence of this icon in the bottom-right corner of the photo preview is an indicator that your photo has adjustments applied to it. Click to go to the develop panel.

Crop

The presence of this icon in the bottom-right corner of the photo preview is an indicator that your photo has been cropped. Click to go to the develop panel and adjust crop.

Keywords

The presence of this icon in the bottom-right corner of the photo preview is an indicator that your photo has keywords applied to it. Click to show the Keywords pane.

Rotate

Hover over the bottom right and left corners to show the rotate handles.  Use these to rotate your photo.

Stack and Copies

Stack Handle

Two lines (let’s call them drawer handles) on the left or right of a tile indicate that the photo is the top or bottom of a stack.  All the photos that are in between these two marks are also in the stack.  If you have one photo that has a drawer handle on either side, that is a closed stack.  Go ahead and click on the drawer handle to open or close the stack.

Number in the Stack

The top photo of the stack will always have a number on it – if you are hovering over that photo, it will say “1 of x” with x being the number of photos in the stack; if you are not hovering over it, it will just say the number of photos in the stack.  As you hover over the various photos in the stack, you will see their numbers.  If you click on the numbers, the photo will move to the top of the stack.

Virtual Copy

Virtual copies of an original photo will have a little folded corner on their bottom left.  They will be next to the photo they are copies of / grouped with the other virtual copies of that photo.

Quick Collection

The circle at the top right corner of the photo is the toggle for adding a photo to the quick collection.

Don’t Like What You See?

If you want some alternate view options, go to View > View Options.  Play around with the various options in the Grid View option tab to see what works best for you and your workflow.

If you have any questions, or want to share how YOU keep your grid view and why, feel free to leave a comment!  I’d love to hear from you!

One of the nice things about Lightroom is that Adobe has built into the program the ability to customize the look of the workspace, right down to the logo that appears at the top.

Open up Lightroom and go to the file menu. Choose “Preferences”.

The last tab in preferences is “Interface”. Click on this tab, and explore the different options. My Lightroom changes as I make alterations, so you can preview what each option does. The default options is always marked, so don’t be afraid to play around!

These are all visual tweaks – the only one that I find useful to my editing process is the background. Here you can pick a texture and a default color – white, shades of grey, or black. I like to keep mine dark grey, so the default is fine. You can also add a texture, such as stripes.

One of the fun options is panel end mark. Lightroom has a few built-in options from which you can choose. See all of them below.

Or you can create your own – the program supports PNGs, so toss some transparency in there. I’ve created a panel end mark that is text which reads “Panel End Mark”. Choose “Go to Panel End Marks Folder” from the drop down box, and when you have decided on a file to use for your mark, simply drag it to that folder. You will need to close the preferences dialogue box and reopen it to get your custom mark to show.

Make your changes, and then close out the Preferences dialogue box. Now, go back to the File menu and choose “Identity Plate Setup”. Here you can choose what the top row of module buttons looks like, as well as the Identity plate (where it says “Lightroom” in the top left corner of the program).

If you can’t see the second set of options for the module buttons, click “Show Details” in the bottom left corner.

In the top left corner, make sure to pick “Enable Identity Plate”. In the drop down box immediately next to that, you can save your Identity Plate after you’ve fixed it to your liking, so you can have multiple ones to choose from in the future.

Again, play with the options as you wish here. I’ve chosen to use a graphical identity plate (again, use a PNG to get some transparency) – Lightroom tells you the default height (57px) and allows you to simply drag and drop into the box. Shiny.

Change the font and color of your module buttons next. Pick a font you want; you can pick from two different colors, the first one for the active module and the second for the inactive modules.

The final effect looks something like this -

And that’s how you can customize Lightroom. Enjoy, and see you next week for another blog!

One of the benefits to using a quick collection is the ability to add photos from multiple folders.  Want to send your aunt some of the best photos from your trip, but also want to add a nice one of your family from Thanksgiving?  Quick Collections will allow you to select just the photos you want.

Thanks for watching, and to get more lightroom tips, follow the Lightroom Tip of the Day on twitter at @lightroomtips.

[vimeo width="440" height="330"]http://www.vimeo.com/3003894[/vimeo]

For my old readers, welcome back.  Lightroom is a photo organization and editing software produced by Adobe systems (you know, the guys who do Photoshop?).  Over the past two years, it has taken the photography world by storm.

I’ve used Lightroom since it was first released, and find that as the program gets more sophisticated, I am going to photoshop less and less for photo editing.  Lightroom is a fantastic RAW editor – the nondestructive editing properties mean that I can revisit and re-edit a photo even after making significant changes – I can even export the photo, decide I want a brand new look, and reset the image to the import settings and start again, all with a few clicks of the mouse.

Lightroom Tip of the Day is a Twitter account I have created to give photographers one Lightroom tip every (week)day.  The twitter account is @lightroomtips.

Interested?  Read more below.

Step-by-step walkthrough

Step 1 – Library->Rename Photo

I didn’t bother to rename my photos on import, but now my photo titles are boring and non-descriptive

I can select a photo or group of photos, and then go to the Library menu and choose Rename Photo (shortcut is F2 or fn-F2 on mac)

The dialogue box that pops up gives you a few different options. My own custom settings include a formatted date, custom text, and a sequence number.

Step 2 – Select the drop-down box and try out the installed prests

By selecting the dropdown box, you can see the different options that come installed in Lightroom.

Each option works differently. This option puts the datestamp, a hyphen, and the image name.  You can see that the “Custom Text” and “Start Number” boxes are greyed out, as this preset doesn’t use those options.  Below you can see an example of what the name will look like when you’re done.

Another option is Filename – Sequence. You can see that you can choose the start number for your sequence – so, if you know you’ve already taken 50 wedding photos, you can put “51″ as your start number.  I very rarely change this from 1.

Step 3 – Choose “Edit…” from the drop-down box

To create a new preset, or change an existing one, simply choose “Edit” from the drop-down box.  You’ll notice that the Filename Template Editor will come up, with your last picked preset automatically selected.

The drop-down box at the top of this dialogue matches the one in the previous dialogue, with additional options of “Save Current Settings as New Preset”, “Delete preset [name]“, and “Rename preset [name]“

There are a few different options you might see as well – change one of your custom presets, and you’ll get “Update preset [name]“

Step 4 – Clear the box, and start at the top, creating your preset.

Choose something from a drop down box below the editing field.  If your choice is already the one next to the “insert” button, hit the insert button, or if you want to choose something different, simply click on the one you want to add and it will be inserted automatically.

You can also click on any of the blue boxes in the composer and change the option.  The change is limited to options within that menu.

You’ll notice that as you add things, your example text will change.  This is helpful.

You can add sequence numbers, image numbers, or total numbers with any number of leading 0′s (I always choose three digits, because… that’s what I do).

But what’s the difference between Image, Total, and Sequence

• • “Image #” is the image number (shocking), based on the order in your selection.
  • “Total #” is the total number of photos you have selected.
  • “Sequence #” is kind of like image number, except you can change where to begin this.  Remember back where we could pick a number to begin?
  • If I selected 8 images, and made a naming template of :
    Image# of Total# – Sequence#, and chose to start my numbering at 15, my names would be:

Make sense?

1 of 8 – 15
2 of 8 – 16
3 of 8 – 17
4 of 8 – 18
etc

I usually use sequence, for what it’s worth.

You then can choose if you want to include the date, and how you want to include it.  I typically do “YYYY”, then put a hyphen, then “MM”, then another hyphen”, then “DD”, but feel free to do whatever you like.

The last two options are for different metadata.  I would use these only after you put all your metadata in – if you import your files with specific metadata (another topic, another Thursday), you can use these in your naming presets; if you don’t have anything filled in, they will remain blank.

My Preset

My favorite preset is called “Kelly Standard”.  It looks something like this -

When I do go to rename my photos, all I do is change the text to match the scene (Brian Headshots, Christmas).  One thing that annoys me is that the presets do not recognize spaces (although they used to!!!), so I have to remember to put spaces before and after my text in order to get the name as I like it.  Notice the stars in this example – I would replace the stars with spaces.

And now you can rename your photos, using presets!

Do you have any presets that you especially like to use?  Feel free to share them.  You can use your naming presets not only in “Rename” but also in photo import and export dialogues.  Have fun!

First, start out with an empty catalog.  Save your catalog where-ever it makes sense for you to do so – I keep mine in the “Pictures” folder on my mac, under a folder called “Lightroom”.

Next, pop in your memory card or plug in your camera.  I don’t have my memory card or camera handy, so I will be importing files from a folder on my computer.  I actually have lightroom set up so that when I insert my memory card, the “Import” dialogue launches – so, know that you CAN set it up to do this.

Choose “Import files from disk” if you’re importing from your hard drive, or “Import files from device” if you’re importing from a camera or memory card.

After choosing your folder, the import dialogue will show.  Play around with the different options till you get something that works for you – you’ll see that there is a list of dates (or, in this case, one date) in a check-list – this makes it easy if you have some old photos on a card that you know you’ve already imported, you can just uncheck that date.

From here you can choose to put in some develop settings which will be applied to every photo, or some keywords or a metadata set.  You can also choose the size of the initial previews – the larger the preview (going full-size, 1:1) will mean a longer import and a larger cache size of previews, but less time to load each photo if you’re needing to go full size instead of smaller previews for editing.  I would suggest sticking with minimal and if you notice an annoying lag when you’re trying to proof your photos, you can change it from there.  I typically only go 1:1 (full size) if I’m doing a batch of photos from a client shoot, where I’ll proof them at full size to see if they are sharp – saves me a little bit of time.

You can also select “show previews”, so if you know that you took seven pictures with your lens cap on and don’t want to import them at all, you can see little thumbnails and check the ones you do / don’t want to import.  This is a cool feature.

After the photos are imported, you will see them in the library.  You’ll start to see photos right away – from here you can do any editing you want, or go into the Develop tab to do some more in-depth editing.  Edits in Lightroom are non-destructive, so you can always go back to the import version of the photo as long as you don’t delete it.

Right click on any photos / group of photos you would like to export, and choose “export”.  You can also do this from the “File” menu.

Like the import dialogue, the export dialogue has lots of different options.  Most are pretty self-explainatory – you can choose a folder to export to, as well as options to “Add to this Catalog” and “Stack with the Original”.  You can do whatever you would like, here – depends on your own methods and what works best for you.

This weekend I will create a short video tutorial that goes a little more in-depth on this topic.  I hope this serves as a basic introduction – enjoy!-

I haven’t reached the point where I can save a badly lit photo, but I thought I would share with you my current process for editing a photo.

The first photo is “SOOC” – I shoot in RAW so technically this is straight from RAW… but close enough. RAW allows for more flexibility in editing, so I try to always shoot in RAW; however, there is some altering of the photo in the processing to JPG that is inherent in RAW. At least, I think there is.

Top left photo is the SOOC+crop – this step comes first, typically, and then tweaked before export. For headshots, I grab every photo in lightroom and adjust the aspect ratio to 8×10 before I do anything else. Then, I’ll go through and individually edit each photo’s crop and straightning.

Top right photo is SOOC+crop+lightroom adjustments. This varys wildly depending on the photo. I either use my own tweaking or I’ll use a preset and go from there. For this photo I used a preset and tweaked from there.

The bottom two photos are after final photoshop tweaking. Sharpening the eyes, dodge the eye whites, brush out stray hairs, tweak the levels, and then convert to b/w for a b/w version (I use a setting for this, because I am lazy and the person who made the setting is amazingly talented and really, I don’t need to reinvent the wheel).

So, that’s kind of how I go through processing a photo. Not every photo makes it to the photoshop step; not every photo even makes it to the cropping step. But for all my final photos, this is pretty much the process.