Hey guys! This is Janine from Pangolin. Thank you for tuning in to my Lightroom course...
Today I want to speak to you about all the different options
Lightroom provides you, in order to file and organize your images. Let's get started...
i know you're all super eager to start importing and editing your images, but unless you understand
the tools Lightroom provides you with, to organize your files, you will really
struggle to find your images quickly. Taking all the fun away, and working with your files.
So, let's go through all the different options. I know everybody has a different mind structure.
Some people work very messy, and are very creative. Other people need to be very, very organized, to go
forward in their thought process. So Lightroom offers you all these different tools, in order
to make your mind up as to what works best for you. So, there are five major tools that Lightroom offers
you to organize your files, and I quickly want to introduce you to them. #1 Color coding.
We're going to be using this little film strip of a Pied Kingfisher, to go through our different
filing options. Down here, in the space, you have the option for different organizational tools.
The easiest one in my mind is to color code your images according to specific themes.
So, especially if you work on one large catalogue that holds all different images of yours...
from personal images, or even professional shoots of babies, or
weddings. You can color code them according to different themes, so that you only work
in one specific theme at a time. Let's say your weddings are red, and your wildlife photography
is green, and friends and family are purple. You will always know which area you're working in.
So, if you color code every single image as we go along...
you will have it very easy. If you go and mark all your images together in your matrix,
you can also color code all your images together. That holds for all specific filing
options that you have. #2 So, the second option of filing your images is by rating them.
Very easy. You can give them a rating between five and one stars, depending on how good that image is.
The nice part of this filing option, is that it often starts in the field. All your professional
camera bodies allow you to rate in camera, as it happens...and as wildlife photographers
we all know we often have to be patient. There's long intervals with nothing happening in between....
and during that time, you can already sit down. Go and review your images, and start rating them.
So, when you import them, you will see right here...the rating will come along, and you can find your five stars.
Your best images quickly. To post them to your friends at home. You also have the option
to rate them, when you simply know, you got the right shot. Maybe you've worked for a picture
for weeks, and days...and there's a crazy situation happening, and you know you nailed it!
Quickly go back in your review. Rate it so you don't lose it, within the spur
of the moment. #3. Your third option of filing your images, is by flagging them.
You can flag an image, and say you want to reject that specific image. I find this image
quite funny. If we zoom in, you will see that this little guy has his eyelid closed, as he
is whacking the fish on the log. So, let's say we would reject this image. It would become grey and
milky. But, in turn, we really like this image...where the fish is looking straight towards us, and we say pick.
Both of these flags you can quickly give by shortcut 'P' stands for pick, and 'X' stands for reject.
As you go through your images - pressing the arrows - you can go through them one by
one, and either press X or press P on your keyboard, deciding whether you would like, or not like it.
Sometimes, having only two options, rather than five color options, makes your life a lot easier.
Later on, you can then go and delete all the rejected images, so that you clean up your
file system. How would you do that? You would go up and choose a drop down menu photo, and press -
delete rejected photos. Your fourth option is to organize your photographs according to
collections. We have spoken about collections in the previous module...that talks about your Lightroom
structure...and collections are there to fine-tune the organization of your images. It is a space
where you virtually place your images to gather them according to specific topics. Those topics
could be holidays such as Cuba. Could be animals such as elephants. Could be competitions,
or other destinations. Images you have shot with a specific camera. Any of these collections...whatever
comes to mind, can help you to find your images much faster, and retrospective. If the collection
you want to work with isn't there yet, you quickly press the little + sign, and say
create collection...and then you can drag and drop your images into any collection you would like.
You can also use a shortcut 'B' in order to address a certain picture, and add, or remove it from your
specific target collection. Your target collection, is the collection you're currently working with.
At the moment it would be my social media Facebook collection, and it's indicated by a little + sign.
You can set any collection as your target collection, by right clicking on the collection,
and changing the + sign over. But, some of these collections, you do not have to populate by hand.
You can also create smart collections...and that is really lovely, for instance, if you
have an interest of finding all your wildlife images that have a five star rating quickly,
you can give a smart collection a certain set of rules. I want the rating to be greater, or equal than
five stars, and I want an additional rule. Let's say, all our wildlife images are color-coded
green. Then I want all the green color-coded five-star images to automatically slide
into my best wildlife photographs folder. So, this folder I wouldn't have to populate by hand.
As I go through the images, if an image is both rated green, and has gotten five stars from me,
such as the Pied Kingfisher down below. You will see that image will automatically be added to our
smart collection. Very, very handy way of organizing your images. #5. The fifth, and the last option to file
your photographs, is also the most powerful option. You can keyword your images, by giving it little
tags that you associate it with. Let's give it a try...so I know this is a Pied Kingfisher...
that means it's definitely part of our bird life. It would be part of my wildlife collection, and
I have shot it in Botswana. In the Chobe National Park. So, all these titles already helped me
find this specific image. I would also say that the Pied Kingfisher is busy feeding,
or fishing...however you want to specify it, and if you later edit it a certain way, you could
say it is black and white ,or sepia, or it has a dark background...anything that reminds you of
that image. That you could search by. You will put into your keywords, and why do I say it is
so powerful? Now you have a way to cross-reference your images. so whatever you're looking for...
it doesn't matter in which holiday, which trip, with whom, or which year it has taken place.
If you' have keyworded it correctly, you will be able to find that image at the tip of a finger.
So, now that we've filed our images so beautifully, I want to show you how to find your images.
So, when you're in your matrix view, you have the option to search through a library filter - up here.
If this filter bar isn't available to you, please search for your view drop down menu, and tick the
show filter bar - up here. So, now you have the option, within a certain folder that you have highlighted,
to search 1. for any text combination that might come to mind. So, I can now look for birds
within that folder, but I cannot just look for birds, I can look for flying birds.
If I have keyworded them that way. So, now I can look for all birds in flight I have ever
shot...regardless of what country it has been in, or which holiday it has taken place at.
I cannot just look for text. I can look for attributes. Attributes is all the filtering,
and color coding, and flagging, we might have done. So, if you want again all your nature photographs
that have five stars...and I believe only this Pied Kingfisher got this rating for us.
All the images with five stars in a green color will pop-up for you. You can also search via
metadata. If you have different camera bodies, and you have a tele lens, and a wide angle lens...and
you know you specifically want to work with your wide angle images, you can look for images taken
with a certain lens. Metadata you can always combine with any of the other filters to
help you find one specific filter at a time. So between your filing, and your filtering tools,
you have plenty of options to store away your photographs neatly, and to find them again quickly.
However, sometimes you have so many options at hand that you really struggle to decide
what works best for you. So, I quickly want to show you my filing system. Specifically
if you have a look at my folder structure, you will see that all my images are stored under external
hard drive called JK photos. All my images from the past five years, are stored chronologically.
We have the year. We have each month, and under each month, we have each day that I photographed.
So, maybe that might not seem initially intuitive to have your images stored chronologically, because
you might not remember the exact days you've been in each location on your holiday, or you
might struggle to remember when last you visited your mom...and you photograph that beautiful image
with the grandchildren. However, that's where all your different filing options - flagging
and color coding - comes in. To help you filter back out. Working with our guests,
and from my past personal experiences, I know that a lot of people have an enormous
hierarchy structure under their images. It looks something like that. Under their wildlife options
they might have each and every animal individually listed. But besides having elephants, and giraffes,
and hippos...there might be other trips, such as Namibia, where you also photograph these animals.
So, now you cannot cross-reference them anymore. You might have some folders chronological, and others
for events, such as birthdays. You might have friends and families, but then you have holidays,
and you might have weddings and parties. In between all these different themes, you start losing track
of what is happening. Even if you have only one way to name all your different folders...by date,
and then a theme, or a subject. That hierarchy structure becomes immense, and it grows into
all kinds of directions...and you start losing track of your images...and it becomes really frustrating,
because number one, you don't look at them anymore. Going through them and editing
them becomes more cumbersome than anything. So therefore, using a chronological file structure,
and then making use of your different organizational options, makes a lot of sense.
So, I personally always create a 'best of collection' ...after having them chronologically filed, and that
best of collection allows me to create these themes. But, now they are virtual and therefore
they don't take up so much space, and I can delete them again, once I don't need them anymore.
In secondary, I make use of keywords. Keywords is the magic key of finding your images again.
If keywording seems like a project that is just way too big for you to take care of, and
it seems like a massive waste of time check out my lightroom tutorial on youtube on keywording.
It shows you how it can be done under very constraining time conditions, and also what
the advantages are. Think about it. It won't take so long, and we'll practice it when we go through my
workflow for people with a very busy schedule. Stay tuned. I hope these filtering options helped you
to get a hang of how to organize your pictures. Sit down, and think about your preferred structure
for the future, before we import our first images into Lightroom.
See you again!