Lessons

Lesson Info

Digital Dark Room: Lightroom

first off this time, I think for this class, since I know pretty much everybody is gonna have footer shop Or you should if you don't because you go money. I know what the creative cloud kind of confusing people at, As you probably know now, um, Adobe is offering all of photo shop, which includes the bridge and camera and all of light room for 10 bucks a month. So $ a year, You know, it works out actually cheaper than just upgrading photo shop every 18 months. You know, at 180 bucks, 200 bucks, plus you get light room. Plus, you get every new version of photo shop along the way, so it really is kind of a no brainer, But so I'll take it for granted that you all have a photo shop. And if you have Photoshopped, that means you have the bridge, and you also have adobe camera raw A. Supposed to knowing that you've got like room. Um, but again, whether you're using the library in light room along with its develop module to do your work flow or whether you're using bridge, adobe camera and phot...

o shopped proper for your workflow. Either way, we're going to be using bridge here, especially since I'm gonna be compositing images. And that, of course, is the one thing that light room can't do. It doesn't do layers. So any extensive retouching where you're needing to move something around within the scene or combine things from different scenes into one can do it in light room. So you're always at some point gonna want to probably use photo shop because Photoshopped has adobe camera built into it. We're going to use that as the backbone because I know if you see what I do in adobe camera raw, that instantly translates exactly the same to the develop module in light room. Okay, so does that make sense? Not your enthusiastically. Yes. Good. Okay, good. First off on the bridge, and this again works the same way in light room with this whole creative photography thing. This Presupposes that you guys air shooting your bloody heads off. Okay, so let's just Presuppose that weather with your phone or your big boy. Big girl camera, pointe shoes, whatever you're shooting with your shooting a lot, especially the more you play around with these different techniques. You're gonna be shooting even more. Especially since I'm giving you permission to experiment and play and make mistakes and just cut yourself some slack. You're gonna be shooting even Mawr, right? Because you can't make mistakes you're playing. Why not experiment? Why not try? Why not have your car out the bloody window of your car and take some pictures? How many of you have ever done that? Okay, you look at you guys. You guys are so good preaching to the choir here. Well, now you're gonna be doing it more. I think you'll be doing it more, especially with some of the stuff that will be doing here. But first off, I want to give you a tip because you're ending up with the zillions of images. So first off, this idea of labelling and rating your images is essential, so I'll just take it for granted. Looking here inside of umbrage, you have the ability to have an image, and then either do a star rating or colored label on it inside of light room. You could just have the number keys. And if you're in the library module, that will automatically either give you one through five stars, which I usually use for quality and then six through nine will be colored labels. I usually use that for subject matter. A certain color for Panorama is a certain color for HDR sets all sorts of things like that. So I use color to say these are the portrait's from the shoot these or the Pullbacks from the shoot these or whatever. So I use colors for theme, and I use star labels for, um, my potential of actually using the shot. I don't give it any star label at all. It means I'm gonna toss it. So at the very end, I'll come over here in my filter, say no rating, select all and delete. So that's what I do. And I can go very fast through the scenes forward and back. One hand is on the number keys. The problem with Adobe camera raw is you have to use command one or control one to do that. So the first thing that you're gonna want to do is go into the preferences for bridge and go into the labels and turn off the requirement to need the command key or the control key on the PC in order to do those shortcuts. I also changed the labels to the colors because their default settings of keep toss and whatever are irrelevant for me. Like I said, I use some for HDR. Some Capano's actually change the colored labels. The one thing I do keep consistent is Purple Purple. You'll notice has no keyboard shortcut because they ran out of single digits. So all use purple for portfolio pieces. And that's kind of nice, because I'm about to show you how to use a smart make a smart collection, which means you can always have a folder of all your portfolio pieces, even if they're on different hard drives. You're supposed to be way more enthusiastic at that, because that's incredibly cool. So first off, I've gone through. I've got a set of folders here with some images that I want to do some tweaking on, and here are we've got 209 images in this folder will just stay here, and I've determined that the green ones, the green labels or what I want to work on, So I've got a serious of folders in this case in the field I've got a folder with the number of images on it. No, go ahead and all do. These eight is my green. So now I've labeled those as things that want to work on, But I want to Basically, I've gone through a whole series of shoots. And if you're like me, you may keep your image is separated by what camera you shot with, right? The camp, the card that came off. And so you've got my IR zehr separate from my point shoots on my IPhone. Makes sense to keep him separate Just because, you know, my 24 megapixel raw files are gonna be different for my phone pictures, but I'm now ready to work on all of them. OK, so what have I got? I've got this folder up here in the field and I'm gonna come down here to collections, which again is also available in light room and this t any time a little bit. He it a little booger of a Nikon over here. Um, new smart collection with a little gear on it. The gear means that it's going to determine something as opposed to a user to find collection, which means I can just make a folded whatever I want in their these air virtual folders that you can put stuff into. And even if they're in different hard drives in different folders, you can use them to organize and create this virtual place for them to live in. What you're working on a project. When you're all done, you'll probably want to save them all to a real location. But while you're working to have this virtual folder is incredibly useful and this little one right here, the new smart collection is very, very useful because it basically says, Will you go out and find the things that match the parameters I'm interested in? So you go ahead and dig through all the images to know what I want to work on rather than me go through it, especially since I've got multiple folder of multiple cameras, multiple setups. I've already gone through it, use my arrow keys to label the images, and in this case I just want to go in here. And I know the label contains green, and if any of the criteria are met, I could have also add things like file, name or maybe file type or date orbit depths or heights. A witch or far format or whatever I want. I can have as many. Maybe it's green that are also three star. I don't want to start. Just want the three. The three are the ones that I'm using in class. And the three star of the ones that are good enough that are used one using class, right. I'm going through it. Label it is green possible. You get the idea that your head into the day you I'm gonna need more not heading cause you guys are gonna go. You guys out in television land you can, you know, get coffee when you want it. So I'm gonna say, include all sub folders. Great. Okay, that sub folder. Maybe an entire hard drive, so it may have 50 different hard drives include non index files. Sounds good. Fine save. And I'm gonna name it. These air going to be, We'll call it to tweak. And what did it just do? It just made this virtual folder over here that I've named. And now if I look at it, I have every image both of Seattle and from Malibu in one apparent folder. It instantly went out and found all those images across Multiple folders Could be multiple hard drives if I was at the top unit and now they're all in one place. If you have not been using that, smart collections are awesome. Cool movie bitching useful The purple one If you save your purple because you have to manually go up and do purple, you can't accidentally do it. You're gonna save that for your portfolio pieces. You can say I'm ready to look at, you know, pull up portfolios. I'm sharing with a friend or whatever I know it's a portfolio. Just say, show me all the purples it will go through, whatever your parameters. And it keeps looking as you add a new purple next week you go into that folder, it'll find the new purples. Okay, got it. I'm gonna come up here. I'm gonna select all and I'm going to do a command or control R for raw, not a commander Control O for open reason why I'm going to do that. Is that Commander Control? Oh, it's gonna force Photoshopped open. Photo shop is a default. Is gonna take 75% of your Ram Ram is the elbow room in which computers work, right? It's the it's the it's the telephone booth that Superman changes close in right little teeny, tiny thing like this. If all the ram is being taken up by photo shop, then it became a raw it's not gonna have it to use. And it will go slower, since I'm only going to use Adobe camera raw for right now, and I don't need to photo shop. Open up, Photoshopped. Tell him. Ready? There's no reason for me to do a commander control. Oh, even if it's a raw file, it will open up into Adobe camera raw. It will also launch photo shop. Also, there is the potential, depending upon the file format, that it will open up some directly into photo shop. When in reality I wanted to go into Adobe camera raw, I sent everything to Adobe Camera raw. It's going to give me the highest possible quality, flexibility and speed, but definition if you do anything in like room where adobe camera raw, it's nondestructive. It's impossible to change a file in adobe camera or like room. They're not pixel processors. They're raw editors, even If you work on something like a J Peg image, it still is going toe. Only add metadata to that file. It never changes the original sensor data or pixels. Very cool that it's impossible to hurt an image. Also, anything you do through adobe camera or light room is going to be because it's metadata. You can save as many variations on that image as you want for free, because there things called snapshots built into adobe camera. Unlike so you can say, I like that version and that version. I want this black and white like that, like that. Save them all as you're going on and it's free. It's kind of like a save as, but it doesn't take up any space. It's easy. It stays with the file for life. Part of that file. Snapshots are awesome. You also have presets in there, so when you make something I go out like this black and white, I can apply it all 50 of these images that I have open at the same time synchronized. There's a 1,000,000 reasons why you want a wean yourself off of using photo shop for your image processing. Save it for your graphic design and heavy lifting image retouching All of your image polishing is gonna be done in adobe camera raw or like, beat that into by the end of these 10 sessions. Yes, the you saying that you could you could save as many different types under that one. Particular. Finally, can you rank those also like you want you like one that you did out of that so much that you want to put it in your portfolio So you label it purple, and then you can rank those. So if you go back and try to find it, you can. Absolutely, Absolutely. The question is, you've got these snapshots which will go, we're looking to. So right now I'm gonna do a command are. But I'll show that we'll talk about snapshots little bit because they're so useful if you what I do in my workflow. If I've got one image that I like and I've done five versions of it have stayed safe snapshots inside of adobe camera raw. I can't duplicate that bio five times and save it off as five different separate files. Not automatically. I can simply click on the snapshot and say save. There's a great save, but now that lets me resize it. Change color space, sharpen do a 1,000, things that you couldn't do before, so I can't snapshot one save snapshot to save Snapshot three. Safe tiff. JPEG for print Whatever Web reduced file size sharpened. Awesome. So, yes, you can do exactly that in light room, which you may do is create virtual copies if it's a one image and I do 10 snapshots of really cool things, five of them I want to save office. Separate files make five virtual copies Each one of those virtual copies will have all the snapshots from that original one, and I simply turn on the snapshot for each virtual copy. They act as if they're five separate files for export, but they really don't take up any space because their virtual Yes, you're using a Mac. But for those of us, that air PC Um, what's the command that you're as opposed to control? Um, command on the Mac is controlling the PC option on the Mac. Is Ault on the PC. Right click on the Mac is right click on the PC. Slightly different because of the emphasis on the inflection. But aside from that so command good. You guys woke up just for justice for a second. I got you guys with, um, command are or control are on the PC is the shortcut to open up without having photo shop open, which I will do now. Or you can come up here and click on the little Iris icon up here. And that's the same as open up in camera. By the way, if you aren't centric with adobe camera raw in your workflow or light room, I have an entire three day serious on both adobe camera, raw or in light room here at Creative Life, and they are awesome.