Lightroom newbie - Good practices.

Prophet

Prophet

Prophet

Soldato
Joined
5 Oct 2004
Posts
7,395
Location
Notts
I should have my copy of Lightroom soon but have no idea how to correctly set it up or how to taylor my work flow.

I know it's great for editing RAW images but I don't realyl understand how it stores them. Are the RAW altered or are copies made etc?

If someone could explain in simple terms how lightroom 'works' and how to best setup my new install so from now on I have a catalogue etc I'd really appreciate it :)
 
Lightroom does non destructive editing regardless of the source image format. All the edits are stored in its database and then applied to the images when they're exported. It's therefore possible to have all the edits visible in Lightroom but no final image on the PC.

In terms of a workflow I go with the following:

1) Import the images from the card(s) using Downloader Pro to get the images in the source paths that I want and to translate the potentially non unique filenames into unique ones.

2) Import the source images into Lightroom but leaving them in their original location

3) Do all the sorting, filtering, edits, ratings etc in Lightroom

4) Export the final edits, highlights etc to TIFF or JPG as appropriate

5) Burn finished stuff to 2 DVDs

There are other backup steps in amongst that for the Lightroom database itself and the source images.

The one thing I would suggest is if possible keep your images on a separate disk to your Lightroom database and previews. That way when you're importing and creating previews you've got one disk reading the source files and one writing the database and previews, it's far faster than doing it all on one disk.
 
I would also be interested in seeing peoples responses as my current way of working is probably VERY inefficient :(
 
I have a 'Portfolio' folder that stores all the RAW images (as DNG) as well as the catalog metadata.

Workflow is:

1) Plug in CF card
2) Within LR, do "import from folder"
3) Select Copy as DNG and put them in the right folder (Folder structure is Portfolio/year/yyy-mm-dd - eventname/)
4) Edit
5) Exports go to a temporary folder and then either onto printing, or uploading.

By keeping the catalog folder and files in the same Portfolio folder alongside the images, I can just backup the entire folder and know it's all safe, edits and all.
 
Thanks for the replies :)

I'll give it a go as suggested above. I think I need to get a good base established so I can have a clean start with my images.
 
Remember you can drag and drop folders and files in LR so re-organising stuff is pretty easy if you're messy.

Out of interest, what is the advantage in DNGs? I know nothing about them!
 
I think the theory behind DNGs is that it's a consistent open format that should allow continued access to RAW file data long after the original camera has gone out of support.

That's the theory anyway, it does make a couple of fairly major assumptions - 1) you've converted all your old Canon CRW files to DNG while there's still a converter available and 2) DNG itself doesn't go out of support.
 
In my experience it's a more portable and open format than RAW, which tends to be tied very specifically to the camera.
 
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