Today I'm going to show you seven tips to get you working faster in Lightroom
now editing is a lot of fun and it's really good to change your photos and
make them look exactly how you want them to but there are a few parts that are a
little bit monotonous so if you can speed these boring bits up it can really
help and a quicker you are editing the more time you get behind your camera now
this first one is one that I do forget from time to time but when my computer
does start to slow down this is the first thing I do go to and it does
normally help you do need to be optimizing your catalog around about
once a month so to do this click on file and optimize catalog it may take a while
but it's well worth doing and you will see a speed increase in your Lightroom
workflow so remember optimize your catalog at
least once a month even if you have to set a date in your calendar when I'm
importing my images I'll change the build previews to embedded in sidecar
this will give you a slightly slower import time but when you're in your
library module once the images are all there this is when you'll really notice
the difference what it basically does is use those previews that were already
created in your camera so when you scrub through your images just in the library
module things will be a lot quicker so when I first get my images into
Lightroom I like to use the star rating system and I'll basically rate them on
how I think they look and what I'll tend to do is use the cursors and the number
system so I'll press anywhere between 1 and 5 depending on how good the image is
and when you do set this preview you'll find that scrubbing through in the
library module will become a lot quicker and a lot more efficient now one
downside is that you won't be able to zoom into your image in the library mode
to do this switch to the develop module this is a little bit annoying but the
speed increase in the library module when rating your images is well worth it
and also I've got an the little bonus tip if you are
scrubbing through in this library module you can also slide two fingers on the
trackpad left or right and this will quickly scrub through your images this
is especially good if you've been shooting sports in burst mode you can
quickly locate the shot that you like and the shot that really looks the best
by literally sliding the two fingers left or right so if you have an image
where you want to change a specific part of that image say grass in the
background or say a shirt or something like that you may think to go over to
photoshop for this but you can actually do it in Lightroom so make sure you are
in the develop module come down to the HSL panel where you have all of these
sliders and then instead of changing each color slider that you think would
match up click on this little circle in the left top corner and then go over to
your image click and hold on the color that you want to change and then drag
your mouse or the trackpad up or down this will then change the colors that
are in that part of the image that you clicked on this works in all hey Chel
tabs so luminance saturation and hue this is especially good if that color
really stands out from everything else then you can really change that color to
exactly how you want it say if you've been shooting in aperture priority mode
your shutter speed may move around quite a bit especially if you're shooting
towards the Sun and then away from the Sun and back towards the Sun again now
if you want to match the exposure in these images there is a setting called
match total exposure so to select the images you want to match click settings
and then click on match total exposure what this will do is match the exposure
between each shot regardless of the individual settings
the way I used to do this was to use sync settings but the problem with this
is if you change those first settings in the image and sync them across
everything if your settings are changing when you do sync them you may see a lot
of differences between these images with match total exposure it actually makes
the images look the same instead of just changing numbers on
sliding scales so you may know that you can double-click on each slider name to
reset it but if you do this whilst holding down the shift button Lightroom
will put in what it thinks that setting should be this is almost like an auto
button for each individual slider and this can teach you a lot about what
lightroom thinks the settings should be compared to what you think the settings
should be but just remember after doing this you can put the slider exactly
where you want it sometimes you just want to look at your image without any
distractions and you may already know about hitting the F button to get your
image as a full screen preview but if you just want to dim the background
click L this will dim everything around it and then if you click it a second
time the background will go completely black this can just remove all of those
distractions around the image that might be getting in the way and you can sit
back and just focus on the image itself to see what needs doing to it to change
the amount of dimming in that first image click on Lightroom preference and
interface there you can change the background color and the amount of
dimming in that first click I just keep it on 80% if this seems to be a nice
level for that first click and remember on the second click everything will go
black anyway so you have those two options and if you want to get back to
the normal screen just press it a third time sometimes when you are in an
editing frenzy you might get carried away with your sliders if this does
happen you may not even remember what the original image looks like so it's
always good to have a quick way of looking at the original image to do this
click on backslash it's the same on both Mac and PC if you press it quickly it
will stay on until you press it again if you press and hold it it will stay on
until you let it go now let me know in the comments below if you have any other
tips to speed up your Lightroom workflow I know there are a lot of tips out there
so it to get a pool of information and then we
could all learn off each other and if you want to learn more about editing in
Lightroom click on this next video over here and for some Photoshop tips click
on this video down here and if you haven't already give us a thumbs up if
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everything photography I'll see you next time