Fundamentals of Lightroom I: Organize Files and Boost Your Workflow

In the quest to nail the perfect shot, seasoned photographers take a high volume of images...hundreds, even thousands. This can either lead to an unruly mess of images or an organized, structured portfolio of work sorted by date, type, subject matter, quality, and other data of real use. Most of us dream of landing near the latter, but how?

It's time to get organized! Why start here? Adobe Lightroom is more affordable than Photoshop, has significant photo editing capabilities, and offers a unique system of database-driven image cataloging and organization to streamline your workflow.

In this class, you'll learn how to articulate and play with your creative influences, settings, and media in ways that help you create categories. Then, with that roadmap in mind, you'll create a custom organizational system for shortcuts that sort, find, and share photos faster than ever–leaving more time to focus on your true creative work!

What You’ll Learn

• Introduction to the Lightroom Workspace. Look around the software setup, focusing mostly on Library Mode. Learn some initial software personalization steps and get familiar with the main menu categories and contents.

• File Handling. Learn how to import files and understand how to classify file destination, type, and structure. Learn about moving files and how to understand and handle your catalogue.

• Detailed Information As Organization. Know how to add keywords and metadata details to photos. Learn how to identify patterns that can help with organization, and use them to create custom labels.

• Organize Your Photos Into Collections. Learn how to use collections, smart collections, and collection sets to get your images organized.

• Work with Organized Photos. Put the organizational fundamentals of Lightroom into practice. Learn how to set up keyword presets, metadata, and geolocation, as well as how to work with stacks,maximize shortcuts, and search your catalogue successfully. Learn how to apply fundamental editing functions to many photos at once.

• Sort and Share Your Work. Maximize the value of Lightroom by setting up and linking your organized images with your online presence, harnessing the power of social media to build community and share your creative vision.

What You'll Do

• Brief. Explore how to integrate Lightroom into your own workflow and creative process.
• Deliverable. An organizational system for yourself in Lightroom.
• Collaboration. As you go through the class, update your project and share your progress with your fellow students.
• Specs. You will share full-width images and screenshots with the class.

By the end of the course, you'll have a system for organizing hundreds and thousands of photos into a managable library that streamlines your work and leaves more time for finding and perfecting the perfect image.