Adobe Lightroom 6/CC: Up To Speed

Lightroom 6/CC: Up To Speed

R.M. Hyttinen

Copyright & License Notes

Lightroom 6/CC: Up to Speed

By R.M. Hyttinen

Copyright © 2017 by R.M. Hyttinen.  All rights reserved.

Published by PCM Courseware, Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

http://pcmcourseware.com

ISBN: 978-1-943005-11-6

Examples used in this book are fictional.  Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, businesses, incidents, organization or events is purely coincidental.

All rights reserved.  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.  Although every precaution has been taken in the preparation of this book, the publisher and author assume no responsibility for errors and omissions.  Nor is any liability assumed for damages resulting from the use of information contained within.

If you found this book helpful, please consider leaving a review wherever you purchased this book.  Also consider telling your friends about it to help me spread the word about my book.

Thank you so much for supporting my work!

License Notes

This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be re-sold, given away to other people or used in any type of training classes. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite e-book retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Trademark Acknowledgements

Adobe, Lightroom and Adobe Creative are registered trademarks of the Adobe Corporation.  All other known trademarks have been appropriately capitalized and are the property of their respective owners.

Introduction

As the author and founder of PCM Courseware, I am delighted to bring you the next in our Up To Speed series of guides:  Lightroom 6/CC - Up To Speed.  Since 2003, PCM Courseware has been publishing innovative Print-On-Demand electronic courseware for both the PC and the Macintosh and beginning with the Up to Speed series, we are now creating software guides for everyone, not just for software trainers.

My mission is to create guides to make learning technology concepts easy, no matter what kind of learner you are. The guides are simple to use yet comprehensive in their effectiveness. Many readers find the step-by-step approach of our manuals to be a valuable self-study resource as well as a handy reference.

You do not need to read the book sequentially, although this can certainly be helpful if you are just starting out with the Mac operating system.  I’ve written the book from scratch, starting with basic Lightroom topics and moving on to more advanced features of the software, designed to help you to become more productive more quickly.

If you are looking to accomplish a specific task, be sure to take advantage of the handy Table of Contents.

So let’s get started with Lightroom 6/CC – Up to Speed!

CHAPTER 1 - THE BASICS

Introduction to Lightroom

Welcome to exciting world Adobe Lightroom!  Lightroom is a powerful image-editing and image-management program that is an all-in-one solution for your photographic needs.  From within Lightroom, you can manage your photos, edit your photos, work on photos in Photoshop and in other supported applications or plug-ins, and share your photos with others.

Lightroom’s strength lies in its ability to manage a high volume of photos, making it an ideal application for the professional or hobbyist photographer.  Moreover, any changes that you make to an image from within Lightroom are saved to the catalog file and not to the image directly. This is referred to as non-destructive editing.

So let’s get started!

Creating a Lightroom Catalog

Lightroom stores all of the information about your images, such as metadata, ratings, tags, flags, collections as well as any edits you make to your photos in the catalog file.  When you import an image into Lightroom, you are not actually bringing the image itself into the application.  Rather, Lightroom adds information about the file and its location to the catalog file.

The first time you open Lightroom, you will be prompted to create a new catalog file.  By default, the file is stored in the Pictures folder in a subfolder called Lightroom.  You can, however, move the catalog file wherever you like as well as change the name of it.  If you wish to open an existing Lightroom catalog, choose File > Open Catalog from the menu.

Some people use several Lightroom catalogs, perhaps one for personal use and another one for business, for example.  While Lightroom does support multiple catalogs, it is recommended to only use one catalog whenever possible, as it is easy to group categories of images in the application.  Some people claim that having multiple catalogs can lead to confusion and trouble down the road.

To Create a New Lightroom Catalog, do this:

1. Launch the Lightroom application.

2. If you are opening Lightroom for the first time, you will be prompted to create a catalog.

3. Click Create Default Catalog.  The catalog will be stored in the Pictures subfolder under your User folder.

4. To create a new catalog from within the Lightroom application, click File > New Catalog from the menu.  Provide a name and location for the file.

Determining Folder Organization

Before you being importing your photos into Lightroom, it’s recommended that you decide ahead of time where and how you’re going to store your folders.  You may end up with tens of thousands of images so you’ll want to create an organization that’s easy for you to work with.

To begin with, it’s best to keep your photos under one main folder.  For instance, if you decide to store your pictures on your computer, this might be your Pictures or My Pictures folder.  If you are working on a laptop or if your computer has limited hard drive space, it’s best to create a folder called Pictures (or whatever you wish to name it) on an external drive with plenty of storage space.

The next step involves deciding upon your folder structure. Under your main Pictures folder, you will create subfolders and name them depending on how you wish to store your images.  Some people like to store them by date and shoot.  For instance, if you shot a wedding on the 23rd of June, 2017, you might name the subfolder something like:  2017-06-23 – Smith Wedding.  Or you might have a separate folder for each year, and in that folder, you would have separate subfolders for each shoot.  So in your 2017 folder, you would have a subfolder entitled:  Smith Wedding.  Other photographers organize their folders only by the shot:  Smith Wedding, Haley Birthday Party, Puerto Vallarta trip, etc. What’s important is that you create a folder organization that makes sense to you.

Once you decide upon your main folder, it’s easiest to move any folders containing images that you want to import to Lightroom into this main images folder.

Setting Import Preferences

One final step in preparing to import photos into Lightroom is to set some importing preferences, which are located under the File Handling tab of the Lightroom Preferences dialog box.

If you are importing your files in .DNG format (more on that later), click the File Extension drop-down list and choose whether you want the extension to be uppercase (example.DNG) or lowercase (example.dng).  From the Compatibility box, make sure to select the latest version of Camera Raw.

We will be talking about preview sizes and render times later on, but most people prefer to set the JPEG preview size as Medium.  This seems to be the most optimal setting in Lightroom for most folks.  You might, however, want to ensure that the Embed Fast Load Data checkbox is checked as this allows you to work with files quickly when in the Develop module.

Under the File Name Generation area, you can specify how to deal with special characters in file names.  Typically, it’s good practice not to allow special characters when naming files, especially if you’ll be sharing them with others online or via e-mail.  Special characters in file names can affect the stability of the file, and there are many systems which do not allow such characters.  Therefore, it’s recommended to set the option to not allow non-standard characters from Lightroom Preferences.  From this area, you can have Lightroom automatically replace illegal characters and spaces in a file name with a dash or underscore.

Increasing the Camera Raw Cache Settings can improve performance when you’re working in the Develop module, especially if you tend to work on a set of images more than once.  Initially, you might want to set the cache to 2 or 3 gigabytes to start with depending on how much free hard drive space you have available.  Many Lightroom users find that setting the cache to about 20 gigabytes can dramatically increase performance. If you prefer, you can change the location of your cache file although you’ll want to ensure that it’s on the fastest drive possible.

To Set Import Preferences, follow these steps:

1. Choose Lightroom > Preferences from the menu if using Mac or Edit > Preferences if using Windows.

2. Click the File Handling tab on top of the Preferences window.

3. If using DNG, choose whether to use uppercase or lowercase from the File Extension list.

4. From the Compatibility list, choose the latest version of Camera Raw.

5. Choose the desired JPEG Preview from the drop-down list.

6. From the File Name Generation area, choose how you would like Lightroom to treat special characters.  It is recommended that you don’t use special characters such as *?=+ and the like in file names.

7. To increase performance when working in the Develop module, increase the cache size under the Camera Raw Cache Settings area.

Importing Your Photos into Lightroom

Most of the time, you will be importing photos into Lightroom from either a memory card or from another folder on your computer.  As mentioned earlier, it’s recommended to move any folders containing images that you want to import into Lightroom into your main images folder.

To begin importing, choose File > Import Photos and Video from the menu or click the Import button on the lower left corner of the screen (the Import button is only displayed when you are in the Library module).

If you are importing from a memory card, Lightroom’s Import dialog box automatically displays when you insert the card and lists all the images on the card.

To Begin Importing Photos in Lightroom, do this:

1. Click the word Library on top of the screen to ensure that you are in the Library Module.

2. Select File > Import Photos and Video from the menu.

Or

Click the Import button on the bottom of the left pane.

Or

Use the Command + Shift + I keystroke combination if using Mac or Ctrl + Shift + I if using Windows.

Or

Insert a memory card in your computer.  The Import dialog window will launch automatically.

Choosing the Source

The first step in importing your photos is to choose the source location; that is to say, to tell Lightroom the location of your images.  This can be a SD memory card or a location on your computer.  If you are importing directly from an SD card, this part is already done for you.  By default, the card reader displays in the left pane with all of the images selected.

If you will be importing photos from a folder on your computer, you’ll need to navigate to the folder containing the images you wish to import.  As mentioned in the previous chapter, it’s recommended to move any folders containing images that you want to import into Lightroom into your main images folder.

By default, all of the images in the folder are selected.  You can, however, eliminate specific images from the import.  To do so, click the small box on the top left corner of the image thumbnail to deselect it.  Any images that are deselected will not be imported into Lightroom.  To select a contiguous group of images, click the first image in the group, hold down the Shift key and select the last image in the group.  All images between and including the first and last one will be selected.  Click the box to deselect all of the selected images at once.

To Select the Source, follow these steps:

1. Click the name of the drive that contains the images you want to import.

2. Click the right-pointing arrow (the disclosure triangle) to navigate down your folder list.

3. Click on the folder that contains the images you want to import.

4. To remove any images from the import, click the small box on the top left corner of the image thumbnail to deselect it.

5. To remove all images from the import, click the Uncheck All button on the bottom of the center pane.  Then, click the selection box for only those images you want to import.

Setting Copy Options

Once you’ve chosen which photos to import, you’ll next need to choose how to import those photos by selecting copy options.  On top of the screen above the center pane are four copy options from which to choose.  These are as follows:

Copy as DNG - Copies the photos to the folder you choose and converts any Camera Raw files to Adobe’s Digital Negative (DNG) format.  DNG is an open-standard, non-proprietary format.  Many photographers believe that converting your RAW files into DNG is a good way to future proof your images, ensuring that they’ll be editable in the future. Don’t worry if you neglected to do this during import – you can always convert your files to DNG at any time by choosing Library > Convert to DNG from the Library module menu.

Copy - Copies the photo files to the folder you choose, including any sidecar files.  Use this command if adding files from an external drive or if you wish to simply copy images from a folder to your designated images folder.

Move - Moves the photo files to the folder you choose, including any sidecar files. Files are removed from their current location.  Use this option if you want to move your images from one folder to your designated images folder.

Add - Keeps the photo files in their current location.  Use this option if you have already placed the images in your designated images folder and wish to simply add them to the Lightroom catalog.

To Set Copy Options, do this:

1. From the import window on top of the screen, choose one of the following import options: Copy as DNG, Copy, Move or Add.

Setting File Handling Options

From the right pane of the Import screen, you can specify File Handling options during import.  From the Build Previews drop-down list, choose the type of render preview you wish to use – that is to say, how quickly the images render when you are viewing them in Grid view or Loupe view (more on views in the next chapter).