Photography Masterclass - How to Get Started in Lightroom Classic | Part 1

[Music] welcome everyone happy month happy Monday what am i saying happy Friday everybody it is that time of the week and I am so happy to be here today to share with you my first and continued series my master class on photography here on be hands so happy to see so many of you already in the chat I've been chatting with a few of you before the show kicked off and I couldn't be more excited and couldn't be more pleased to be doing this now on a regular basis so for those of you who are new new to me new to Adobe LOD new to what's going on here so Dobby live is pretty much broadcasting regularly all the time you know all week long showing you tutorials artists working all disciplines from creativity with illustration and vector art and hand lettering and and photography and Photoshop and everything else that we can think of XD as a regular theme here and on Fridays are worldwide evangelist like myself we get to do our own masterclass each for an hour so I'm kicking things off now starting with this Friday and each week I'll be doing a photography class travel permit it like sometimes I will be out on Fridays but for the most part I am usually home on Fridays in my home office here in my home studio where I get a chance to do these live streams and share with you everything photography related so in the past I might have done a Lightroom tutorial here and there and a Photoshop tutorial here and there and they were kind of interspersed throughout the Adobe ecosystem on facebook on lightroom channel once a month and things like that but now I have a dedicated spot to talk all things photography every single week so like I said it couldn't be more happy with that now with that said we're gonna kick things off today with a getting started in Lightroom because I want people to have a foundation for Lightroom because that's what the rest of the whole class the whole master series from here on out is gonna we're gonna keep going back to Lightroom so maybe one day I'm doing a photo shoot on the class and you guys get to learn about lighting camera settings and all that but guess where all the images are gonna go they're gonna go in my room and then maybe one one week I'm doing retouching guess we're going to be getting the images from Lightroom to retouch so it's just we're starting with microphones so that way everyone's starting on the same page even if you've never used Lightroom before that's why we're starting with this very very very getting started day and I even had someone in to chat ask me what is Lightroom I use Photoshop to edit all my images all the time I don't even know what Lightroom is so we're really starting from the beginning now with that said there are two versions of Lightroom there is the Lightroom which we're starting with today Lightroom classic that has been around for this is the one that's been around for over 10 years this round one has been around for over a decade it's gotta be twelve thirteen years by now Lightroom has been the professional tool for photographers to manage their images for over a decade so when people say well what is Lightroom I use Photoshop to edit my images here's the difference Photoshop is the world in my opinion the world's greatest photo manipulation and editing software you can do just about anything with with photography with graphic design with architecture with medical you can do all kinds of people using Photoshop in all aspects of life to edit images edit medical images even and edit architectural images and in the legal field and everywhere insurance everywhere people are enhancing and showing their on their work with images Lightroom does have some non-destructive editing capabilities but what it's really geared towards is management of those photos in other words Photoshop opens up just once you're done you saved my cozen it doesn't know about those images anymore they're gone so at that point either you're using something else to manage those photos or are there just in folders on your hard drive and you're figuring out where they are all right so with that said what's the difference between the two versions there's lycra and and I know the naming is confusing there's Lightroom classic again classic meaning been around for over ten years and then there's one that's just now called Lightroom what's the difference and and this is where I'm starting with this because you really should make a decision as to which way you're going to go if you're just starting out with this or even if you have been using Lightroom either version and you're trying to decide which one should I stick with or which one should I go to or stick with then here's what you really need to ask yourself Lightroom classic is all about managing your photos but you're the caretaker of where those photos are meaning you're taking care of the hard drives that they're located on you're taking care of the navs Network server that the images are on you're backing them up you're creating your own disaster recovery plan in case everything dies where would you get your images back from Lightroom classic does none of that it does not care where you keep your images it does not back them up for you if your hard drive gets fried tomorrow and you don't have a backup nothing Adobe can do about that with Lightroom classic because it's up to you to be the caretaker of the actual images themselves Lightroom not classic the other Lightroom that's fairly new only been out for a few years that one is cloud-based from the standpoint of every image you import into the newer cloud-based Lightroom does get backed up it does get synced to the cloud it gets synced to the cloud in its full resolution original format so if you shot and raw the RAW files get backed up you shot a JPEG the JPEGs get backed up you edited an image and ended up being a tiff the TIFF gets backed up so whatever image you import into Lightroom is backed up your hard drive gets wiped out no problem you get a new hard drive couldn't reinstall that version of Lightroom all your stuff is synced down from the cloud and you're back in business so you have to decide which one of those routes you want to go now the other caveat to that is I saw someone mention it earlier that I'm using Lightroom mainly on my phone in my iPad these days if that's the case that's great because that version of Lightroom the mention that I mentioned the cloud-based one also syncs across all platforms so if you're using Lightroom on a Mac and you're also using the Lightroom on on a PC and you're using Lightroom on an iPad you're using Lightroom on an Android phone those same photos will be available on all those devices without you doing anything extra all you have to do is just be signed in with these same Adobe ID so that's really the difference now you might say well that second one sounds amazing like that's the one I would want like why wouldn't I go there well there are some limitations because a you're paying for the storage in the cloud so at let's say $9.99 a month you're only getting one terabyte of storage so therefore if you needed two terabytes 5 terabytes 10 terabytes to manage your ongoing storage then at that point you would need to pay more per month for that storage that's one caveat the second and probably the biggest one is that since Lightroom not classic Lightroom is so new it doesn't have all the features of classic which is probably the main reason why I'm probably years away from switching to it because there are features in and Lightroom classic that just aren't available yet in Lightroom so it's a trade-off it depends on which one you want can you can sync classic photos to the cloud you can sync smart preview classic photos to cloud ah there's a difference so you can't have that feature for classic or or merge the two where the pillar of what feature you're talking about and if you talk about the sinking to the cloud let me I'll get into more about her into a whole episode on Lightroom Mobile and Lightroom sinking and all that but just in a nutshell Lightroom not classic sinks full resolution all the time hundred percent of the time that's it Lightroom classic from your desktop is never sinking the full resolution it's never sink in a video it's only sinking what's called a smart preview which is just that it's a preview of the file that's not the full resolution good enough reviewing good enough for small printing good enough for sharing on social media it's twenty-five hundred forty pixels on the longest edge decent for a lot of things but it's not the forty eight megapixel raw file that you shot with now if you did shoot with your phone and your classic user and your phone's 12 megapixels and you shot it in raw in the Lightroom app that raw file is getting synched up because it you shot it on unlight room on the phone and sink back down the classic so there's the difference between the two and Shawn you're welcome okay so we're in again I'm not gonna spend a lot of time on that difference because we're gonna do a whole episode on that difference so I want to get the people started with classic today we're going to be doing both applications along the way in this masterclass so you'll get a chance if you are a Lightroom user you'll learn things there if you're a classic user you'll learn things there you're a Photoshop user you'll learn thing there there you have a camera or smartphone you'll learn things about that as well so with that said let's get started with Lightroom classic today we'll deal with the other version of Lightroom in another episode fair enough let's do it all right let's switch over to my desktop and in my desktop right now I've got my catalog this is my personal catalog that I use single day in Lightroom classic and for those of you all even wondering well how many photos can I have well I've got close to a quarter million I've got two hundred forty-three thousand nine hundred and seventy-eight photos being managed by Lightroom classic and that that's that number is only going to keep going up it's not going to go down all right suddenly decide oh you know what that vacation from ten years ago I needed more delete because these are also memories these are the things that you're going to just keep growing so therefore you're going to always have more photos going forward so Lightroom has to be able to keep up with that number and I know people with much larger catalogs than this so it can keep up with that number alright now remember earlier when I said you're managing the physical files where it like the drives they're on backing them up that's all your responsibility well that's why I use the word manage when I talk about classic because this photo of the Eiffel Tower let's zoom in on it real quick that photo of the Eiffel Tower is not in Lightroom's catalog meaning yes it's being represented yes it's being shown yes I can edit it yes I can open it up in Photoshop and do more with it but the physical photo is actually on my hard drive somewhere that's not Lightroom only links to it so if you're an InDesign user for example and you place a photo that photo isn't in your InDesign document sure it shows you can size it scale it apply effects to it print it put it in ten different InDesign documents but the actual image is on your hard drive somewhere and it's linked to all those documents so it goes that those two hundred and forty three thousand photos are on my hard drives have more than one if they're on my hard drives and they're therefore I have to back up those 243,000 photos they're not being backed up by Lightroom if that drive or those drives died and I didn't back them up at best I'd be left left with some smart previews but I'd be bit left more importantly with a lot of missing photos okay so today the purpose of today is to get you started on the right path to manage your photos to know where your photos are at all times to be organized with your photos and to make Lightroom really really super easy that's what today is all about so I'm not gonna start with my two hundred and forty three thousand photos I'm gonna start with none let's go up to the file menu let's create a brand new catalog that means an empty one it's going to ask me where where do I want to put this brand new catalog and what do I want to call it so I want to call it photography masterclass Lightroom classic that's what I call it notice the default location of where it wants to put it catalogs by default are a Lightroom document store we're in the pictures folder by default you don't have to put it there but it does have to be on a local drive as opposed to a network drive so I mentioned network drives earlier network drives are fine for the photos most of mine are on a network drive but the actual catalog needs to stay local to the machine you're running Lightroom on alright so it wants to put it in a pictures folder by default since it doesn't really matter where it is I don't care put it in the pictures folder that's fine by me coz while I back up my pictures folder which I back up this whole Drive not a problem so I'm gonna go ahead and create that catalog it closes the other one and opens up identical with nothing in it oh no zero photos I'm feeling lonely already this is sad we have no photos we have to make some photos really quickly alright so let's get some photos ready before we import them into room what do you mean by getting ready like that's just important yes and no you could just import them but then you aren't doing it through aren't man who's gonna say aren't doing the right way you aren't managing them the proper way okay the key to a happy Lightroom catalog is not only you having an understanding of where your photos are but if you really want to be successful with Lightroom then you should determine categories that you shoot or that you work on so I've created this sample my photos and videos folder this is just a sample this is yes is my photography but it's just a sample it's not my 230 thousand or turning quarter million photos I'm gonna open up that folder and in that folder this is what I mean by categories so I photograph family I photograph friends I photograph landscapes I photograph portraits I do travel I do work and that's about it the other things that aren't gonna fit into those categories maybe you make a folder called miscellaneous but at the end of the day make a folder that's going to contain all your folders on a particular dog your images on a particular Drive so they're just not scattered everywhere and then think about it take a few minutes and think about what it is you shoot what it is you do so if you shoot street art street art would be a category you photograph children maybe your children photographer children you photograph families obvious families if you photograph whatever it is aerial photography aerial photography whatever your categories would be make them s folders I've made mine I can have more than that I can always add to this I can do whatever I want but those are the ones I'm going to start with those may not be all the ones I end up with but those are the ones I'm starting with now inside those categories would be the actual it folders of images so for example in family I've got this folder call an hmm no it's a person call I'm making up a name for and and there would be pictures of aunt so and could be a cousin daughter of whatever and could be whatever that person is to you then I have a couple folders of from family reunions here's one from back in 2010 here's one from last year so forth and so on so you'd have subfolders for all the things that you do in family same thing with friends here now in this case they're just random photos in the friends folder in other words I don't have a folder for each friend I just have a friend's folder okay that's fine nothing wrong with that then what I mean by that is they don't if you don't have enough photos to end up in individual sub categories then you could put them all in loosen that one folder that's fine it's not a problem landscapes I went to Iceland I went to mount a Monument Valley in Arizona or you you talking and Page Arizona and I went to Iceland twice so I have an Iceland main category and inside that main category I've got Iceland 2016 in Iceland 2017 because I went more than once and I don't want to put them all in the same just loose in the same Iceland folder so this this is the kind of organization I want you to start thinking about when it comes to managing your photos all right next up and and by the way I need to take out just a quick second say this if you are watching this on YouTube not being so if you're watching this on YouTube thanks but we're missing your comments so if you want to want me to see what you're saying then you need to head over to Behance dotnet slash live that's where I'm monitoring the check okay so Iceland is a category and it's inside that category or two different trips to Iceland there's all the images for Monument Valley here all you from page Arizona and so forth and so on and then of course portraits and in portraits I would have cat subcategories for each person that I photographed okay then travel all the locations so Bahamas cruise I went on a Bahamas cruise twice so again the subcategories aunt Pruitt what's going on man Iceland 2016 oh this is a leftover from my last time I didn't I'm gonna actually delete that because we already made in Iceland one okay and then New York I've been to New York I've been to Paris I've been in lots of places but these are the three samples were starting with and then work well what's work work could mean a lot of things a lot of people in this case I'm talking about work as meaning my employer Adobe so Adobe MAX was you know we do that every year and I've got a couple of max folders 2018-2019 in there and then of course the sales conference just some random photos from 20 there are 2,000 okay so we could go look at those there's they're like 20 years old okay anyway now that I've shown you kind of some of this organization about how to get started then and Kevin's asking a question is this is this the same for the iPad person well the iPad version is really sinking what's represented from your desktop version or the images you've been ported and you organized into albums in the iPad version so organization is organization it doesn't matter which version of the software we're talking about so let's say you only had an iPad and you were only doing mobile photography well then you don't have to worry about folders on your desktop but you would still want to organize them in Lightroom on the iPad in category so it'd be easier to find them okay so with that said and someone's asking or someone said something that's pretty pretty profound in the right that's that's a that's a life in photos and what I'm not sure what you meant but here's one of the things that the ways to think about why you want to take the at least start this process or do it upfront or continue it once you get it going well let's say one day I decide oh you know I'm reminiscing I remember going to Iceland it was an amazing time and I remember this great waterfall and I would love to see a shot of that waterfall right now maybe I want to use it for our brochure or something well a lot of people think key words and key words are great and I'm not going to ever knock someone for using key words they're amazing but if you had great organization you wouldn't need as many keywords because I'm looking for my Iceland shots they're gonna be in one of two places I'm gonna go to landscapes and boom there they are or maybe I'm gonna go to travel and they're not there okay so that I have to think about which what was I thinking at the time I was shooting landscapes that we're about a trip then it would being travel and then I found them done so that's why you have to start thinking about it this way all right now once we have them organized this way and I'm gonna urban I'm gonna I'm gonna address your comment as well once we have them organized this way you've taken the time to do this you've got them organized by categories in whatever folder on whatever Drive you want them on then what well if I drag that folder watch this a drag that folder down to Lightroom classic and let go it takes me to an import and I told it to include the subfolders and the default choice is add meaning don't copy them don't move them don't do anything with them just add them as is alright and then I'm gonna go ahead and say we'll get into the rest of this import dialog box another I'm just gonna say important and yep enable address lookup and look at what it did over here look familiar the exact structure is now in Lightroom so thanks that word the exact structure is now in lightroom i f4 every time i add new photos now it's just maintaining this I don't ever have to deal with the hard drive anymore meaning dealing with put organization because that was just to get you started now that you started now that we're in Lightroom all future organization happens here I want to create a new folder I created here I want to import photos or move them around in the folders maybe I do want the Iceland to be in travel instead of landscapes I move them here I do all of the rest of my management here I don't ever have to think about it again so again if I if I go back and say I would love to see those images from Iceland and I click on Iceland as a whole category then I see all the images from 2016 and 20 2017 if I twirl it down then I can see oh just let me see the ones from 2016 just let me see the forty-seven from 2017 they're all there all the videos are there too by the way so the videos it's it's building the preview for it but that video will start previewing the horses going down the road there in a second everything is there just as if I had managed it on my hard drive first ok so the question the question or a comment that someone said is I am pork folders by date this is Irving Irving Johnson I am the third I import photos folders by date and then once imported I use Cole elections to organize by subject and and by the way the the process that this person used if that works for you awesome and by the way that used to be the default method that Lightroom used for importing and always import it by date you'd have to change it to something else so that's a very like established way of doing things that particular way doesn't work for me because I'm never going to remember a date that I photograph something unless it was an anniversary or something other than that I'm not gonna remember what month this was in Iceland and what day that particular shot was shot on so organizing by date if that works for you awesome knock it out do it it just doesn't work for me because the dates don't mean anything to me a week later two months later six months later six years later I don't remember when those Caribbean cruises were but if I go to a folder call kriby and cruise boom I can find them I had to go through folders by dates and years I don't remember what year it was I'm never gonna be able to find stuff by date cuz I simply won't remember when they were but if I have it organized by the categories I'll always be able to find the stuff because I can read I can see the category name so again two different metaphors two different ways of working there is no right or wrong it's whatever works best for you I just know date doesn't work for me alright so with that said let's move on and let's talk about something that that was also a part of that comment now and this will help you also understand something about Lightroom and so let's say for example that I go to Monument Valley here and I look at these images and I see the names here look familiar tlw 7 0 0 3 t LW 7 0 0 4 so forth and so on just like the dates don't mean anything to me those file names don't mean anything to me those are names of the camera signs sure I set up the camera to use my initials but the numbers don't mean anything to me they never will they just separate the filenames so that they're not all named the same thing and the camera doesn't in the camera could know using jail tagging but it doesn't know that pose in Monument Valley or at least back then it didn't know and it doesn't so it doesn't name anything that way so in this case another thing that will help you in your process is to understand what you're changing in Lightroom and whether or not it changes the physical file or it just makes a change inside of Lightroom alright so Mary is asking a question if I want to clean up my Lightroom should I do it within Lightroom or within the file folder or within a finder or the windows are that's whatever using always do your management after the fact in Lightroom meaning you just okay to manage up front in the folders that's fine but once you get it in the Lightroom don't go back to the folders and start messing around and I jokingly refer to this all the time is don't cheat on microphone don't go behind Lightroom's back and start messing with stuff case in point so let's let's let's do this first before you get to the file names so that's seven zero zero three right let's go to that image actually in the finder show it to me there it is there seven zero zero three and if I go back up yep it's in a Monument Valley folder let's twirl that down there are seven zero zero three and let's say you know what I would love to have a folder called favorite Monument Valley yeah let's do that favorites in Monument Valley and I'm going to take that seven zero zero three because it's one of my favorites and I'm in the operating system here and if I can get this to scroll you the scroll there we go drop it in my favorites for this is what I mean by doing stuff behind Lightroom's back I just made a change to where that image is behind Lightroom's back and as soon as I come home to Lightroom Lightroom gives me this and says you've been messing around you've been doing stuff you aren't supposed to do you're doing stuff that you shouldn't do behind my back I got this I could have moved that for you but you went on your own you decided you knew best and you decide to move stuff around this is how people create problems in Lightroom because they go behind Lightroom's back and they start doing stuff it's in Lightroom you want to create that folder credit in Lightroom you want to move the image to that folder moving in Lightroom know everybody's happy all right so so let's let's undo the damage now by the way if you I know best on God I'm king of my photos if you know best and you did decide to move it on your own you could click the photo missing thing it'll bring up your operating system and you can go point to where that image or those images are and it will fix itself well you're fixing it you'll fix it but why go through that two-step process in the first place if you just want to move a photo you decide your organisation's different then do it all in Lightroom then you don't have to do it a second time you'll have to go fix it later so let's go undo the damage let's zoom out let's go back to Lightroom sorry let's go back to the operating system let's take that image that was in my new favorites folder and let's put it back where it belongs let's get rid of that favorites folder delete it and guess what when I come back to Lightroom oh the missing photo thing went away because it knows where it is now this is what I mean by Lightroom is just pointing to those images on your hard drives you move something rename something delete something change something copy it to no Drive and delete it from the old Drive how would you expect to keep up with all that because you're doing it behind Lightman's back if you entrust it your photos to Lightroom to manage them then use Lightroom to manage them so how would we have done that in the real world well first of all if I just wanted a favourites of my Manya valley photos i create what's called a collection i wouldn't try and do it at on a folder and a hard drive there's no need to but just for the sake of argument if you wanted to move a photo to a different folder maybe you have like you want to separate in my ears like i did earlier so let's say that i wanted to create a monument vally when was this this was 20 digitized this was 2009 all right so let's say that i wanted to create a monument valley in 2009 in 2010 folder or something like that then what I could do is while I'm on the monument valley folder here on the left of Lightroom classic I could create a subfolder and I could call it 2009 and look there's even a checkbox include the selected photos yes create and now it just moved it it just moved that one photo into a brand new folder called 2009 and no missing photos magic no missing photos nothing wrong because I'm doing I'm telling the Lightroom to do the work now here's the test what happened on the hard drive is it still in the monument valley folder on the hard drive or did Lightroom really moving on the hard drive let's go check oh my god look there's a 2009 folder right there out of the blue and look what it's got in it one image seven zero zero three because it's managing what's on the hard drive and if you tell him to create a folder in Lightroom it's creating a folder and harddrive you rename an image in Lightroom its renaming the image on the hard drive because while you're the caretaker of the images and backing them up and knowing where they are if you want to manage them that's what Lightroom is all about all right so now let me get back to my file naming thing let's go back to this so searching for my Monument Valley photos is great because I can go to a folder and find them but if that if it was in that 2009 folder let's add didn't name it properly an error like just in years then I wouldn't know which ones which this is why naming is the next best thing to folder organization so now let's go ahead and select all of them they're all selected now and now let's go to I never remember where this stuff is it's either under library or it's under photo widths under library we want to rename photos so I'm renaming the photos and I'm gonna call them Monument Valley 2009 and use a starting number of one and okay whether it was 20 photos 200 photos 2000 photos 20,000 photos they just all got renamed in an instant and they really got renamed if we go back over to the operating system look they're all renamed now because oh did I say 2001 I meant to say 2009 that was a typo so okay typo rename the photos once again rename photos yeah I said 2001 I'm in 2009 click OK it's ok to make a mistake long as you can fix it and here we are fixed they're all renamed my name is Valerie 2009 27 28 29 all the way back up to one that's very beginning okay including it renamed the one one in the other folder so it's keeping track of everything for all right so with that said now that we know to stay out of the operating system once they're in Lightroom let Lightroom do all that work for you and all you think you're gonna be doing in the operating system is backing them up that's it you don't have to worry about anything else because anything else you'd want to change anything else you want to move anything else you want to do it would do it good question Rudolph Rudolph says I shoot raw plus JPEG so will this rename both files I believe the answer is yes I don't shoot raw plus JPEG very often but yes I believe that is the answer okay and Mary Brown yep we're getting you're getting two collections right now so remember when I said I probably wouldn't make a folder called favorites because it really doesn't make a lot of sense in the lightroom scheme of things because it's still a monument vally shot just because it's a favorite doesn't mean you need to put it in a special folder or call favorites so what you're gonna do instead is you're going to use the next best thing and this is why people ask this all the time I got folders what do I need collections for what our collections why would I use them I don't see they use so for thisone blah blah blah okay there's either why because the folders are physically where the images are you rename them they're rename you move them they're moved you delete them they're deleted this is where they physically reside but from the standpoint of now let Lightroom is managing where those photos are I want to now have some fun and creativity and do stuff with my images in different ways that have nothing to do with the physical location of the photos so for example maybe instead of favorite Monument Valley I create a collection called favorite landscapes now that I've done that and I get the option always to include that selected photo yes do that and boom it made it and put it in a collection called favorite landscapes but here is the benefit to lamp - I don't have to benefit - landscapes here's the benefit to collections and and by the way in other versions of Lightroom they're call albums so just so you know you are doing the same thing alright I go back to Miami ballet this is the actual folder where the images are I can say ooh that's a favorite drag that one in let me scroll down some more who are really I'm just guessing by the way ooh that's a favorite let's drag that one in let's scroll down some more cool I really like that one that's a favorite let's move that one in but you know what I shot more than Monument Valley as far as landscapes are concern let's go to Iceland let's click on Iceland oh yeah that's a favorite oh love that shot that's a favorite notice how I love my own photography that's a favorite let's drag that one oh yeah that waterfall is amazing let's drag that one in oh yeah I love this Scot this drone shot I took it with Church here that's awesome oh my god one of my favorite shots is this a mountain range let's do that so now I've got a collection of favorite landscapes that have nothing to do with the physical location on all the folders I am now organizing my photos the way I want to present them the way I want to look at them the way I want to organize them for my own viewing purposes maybe I'm making a portfolio maybe I'm gonna make prints so I'm putting them together in ways that I would want to see them so we did landscapes let's do one more page Arizona and let's grab a few of my page Arizona shots I like that one I like that one that one's five-star so it must be a favorite NASA favorite let's go ahead and do that okay so now I've basically made my favorites collection of landscapes no matter where the landscapes were actually taken so by the way the other benefit of doing this is now they can be arranged in whatever order I want I'm telling the story maybe I went to mind that Valley first I want to move the minor valley shots up front maybe then I got to this weird tree in Miami Valley and I'm gonna put that in between and then maybe that tree came next and then of course then I went down into the slot canyons and that was where I first went in and then I saw the sand falls and so forth and so on so I'm organizing them in the order I want them in and then of course I went to Iceland and of course yeah that waterfall actually was first and then we got the next day and we saw that we got the next day and so actually we saw that first and then I'm gonna put the church last okay now if I delete a photo this photo really isn't that great and plus I have a better one here's a test delete gone did I delete the photo or did I just remove it from the collection I removed it from the collection if this were a live audience this is where you'd be raising your hand and you tell me but any meaning live in-person audience I know you guys are live out in the virtual world but anyway this were a live live audience in person you raise your hand I call on you and some people would say you deleted it off the harddrive and some people would say no you just removed from the collection of course to remove it from the collection people are right so if I go back to that folder for Miami Valley whatever that image was it's still there still in the folder it's just not in the collection anymore so this is why we use collections because I don't have to physically move them into different folders I can put them in collections where I want is there any sort of smart technology within Adobe that could do some of this categories categorization for you yes there are subtler things call smart collections so as a matter of fact you can see that it gives you a default collection set call smart collections are out the back and collect smart collections in classic which is by the way and not a feature of the other Lightroom remember I said there were features and one not in the other that would be one smart collections allow you to specify criteria for example let's make one let's make a new smart collection since you brought it up I'm going to do a smart collection create a smart collection instead of collection so that's the difference and now I get to specify the criteria of my smart collection so I'm gonna say my 5-star photos so now I'm telling it I don't care what it is I don't care if it's a portrait a landscape a travel photo whatever I'm saying give me all my five-star photos so greater than or equal to five stars and by the way you can add multiple criteria here's the criteria lots of different criteria even by categories so if you're looking for a specific date range show me all my five-star photos from 2019 show me all my five-star photos from 2019 that were taken with a particular camera so you can really get detailed into your smart collection and you can add of course multiple criteria so I can go and create that one that's just saying give me all my five stars so just show me all my five-star photos no matter where they are in my entire 250,000 image library over a mile or a catalog or in this one which only has 248 some images alright so now let's say oh you know what and I'm not really digging this photo anymore it's not really five stars I'm gonna make it four instead boom gone hmm because it doesn't meet the criteria anymore gone from this called smart collection not gone from Lightroom just not in this smart collection anymore because it doesn't meet the criteria this is only looking for five-star photos and if I make something less than five stars it's gone so this is why we do collections this is why we do smart collections we don't want to constantly be moving things around on the hard drive that's what the folders are for to store everything to organize everything but the collections are where the money is that's where you get to decide no matter what it is maybe you're making your portfolio and you only want to put your 20 best landscapes in it so you can make a collection call landscape portfolio and drag over your 20 best photos and then if you want to change one remove it from the collection drag a new one in that it's better than the better than the other 20 that were there before so with that said I want to just realize that when you are doing something in the folders depending on what you're doing to the actual images you are doing it to the actual images renaming moving deleting these the folder area the hard drive of the folders area is actually doing the physical movement deleting renaming to the files now let's bring up the next question what people would say our ask let's say for example notice that this photo is in my 5 stars because it's obviously rated 5 stars it's there but it's also in my favorites so yes an image can be in more than one place at a time it can be a more than one collection at a time let me be clear it could be a more who one collection at a time it does not it does not change where it is in the folder so I can have that in my favorite landscapes my landscape portfolio my 5-star photos so forth and so on same photo now people asked earlier while I'm using um I'm using Photoshop what's Lightroom so we already covered a lot of that managing your photos which in Photoshop doesn't none of this but now let's talking about a little bit of editing a little bit of making a change let's say I take this photo which we've already demonstrated as in at least two collections and I go over to what's called the develop model which by the way if you are a Photoshop user this is the exact same thing as Camera Raw so I go over to the develop module and I make a change to it I'm going to go into my my hue saturation and color actually I'm not gonna go to music you said I should go I'm gonna go into my basic panel and I'm just going to take the saturation all the way down basically making a black and white now by doing that first of all here's there's one difference just like Camera Raw that's a non-destructive edit nothing physically changed on the hard drive that is only showing it in the and in your Lightroom catalog it's metadata that was a metadata changing change taking all the color out of it but here's the test question that was that was one of the reasons I did it here's the test question it's in two collections it's in five stars it's in favorite landscapes if I go look at five stars is it in color or black and white meaning our developed changes only apply to the collection or in and the answer is no they're applied to the photo no matter where the photo is so if I go look at this photo in the folder I don't look at it in the collection like a look at it anywhere my Lightroom catalog it's going to be black and white because you're making a change to the photo the collections are just referencing photos they're not good good answers shop black and white Oh Jacqueline you got caught your response was delay but you got caught so it is it is gonna stay black and white because the collections are just you organizing the way organizing your photos from a presentation standpoint or a looking at standpoint the actual edits are the actual edits so just like remember when I took took one of those photos for a couple of us photos from four five stars down a four well it took it down everywhere like it doesn't just make it not a five star photo in the smart collection it made it not a five star photo everywhere in Lightroom so the changes you make cropping develop changes all non-destructive but they're happening to that photo no matter where that photo is in Lightroom it's not making those changes on the hard drive to the actual pixels it's just metadata okay so if I want to go back and say oh what was I thinking I do need that in color go back to develop I can either reset it to the previous settings or I just go back to the basic panel and reset the saturation back to where it was back in the middle and then that photo the color just comes back and the color comes back not only in the five star collection but also comes back in the favorite landscapes collection because that is the photo now one quick bonus tip I know this is for beginners but just so you know here's a huge advantage to working in lightroom versus let's say Photoshop versus let's say even the new Lightroom classic does something I love and use all the time and we'll finish on this because we only have a few minutes left one of the things you can do is you can go into the photo menu this is a classic exclusive you can go into the photo menu and you can create what's called a virtual copy that means you have whenever the name of that photo is so in this case I'm looking at one called Iceland 2016 570 edit that photo exists on a hard drive it's that photo it's a dmg that's that photo but if I create a virtual copy I'm saying create a copy that only exists in Lightroom then I can that's what I can do anything I want with and it does not touch of course that does not touch the original anyway but now I got to in Lightroom that aren't being touched it aren't taking up any extra space not duplicating the file on the hard drive not doing anything it will let me create a virtual copy of just that so when I played a virtual copy there it is and we can always tell a virtual copy from the original because the virtual copy has a little dog ear corner whereas the original does not so just do the virtual copy and then I can go in and I can say develop module and let's do something else let's say that we want to bring up the shadows more so we'll make the shadow a little brighter want to make the overall exposure a little brighter and maybe we will want to bump up the clarity and maybe we want to really make the bar it's really really vibrant over over the top vibrant like crazy the world exploding vibrant like unrealistically bad vibrant but in saturation but now that only happened to the virtual copy the original is the original so by the way maybe I want to crop it so I go back to this one i crop it this way and this way because I need a portrait unrealistic crazy-looking photo and now I've done that to the virtual copy and not the original so virtual copies are awesome way and classic to play what-ifs and have multiple versions of a photo for your client to see and work with because even though those only that those virtual copies don't create as many as I want from that photo even though they were I did 2 5 10 100 they only exist in Lightroom when you export them or when you print them you're printing the virtual copy of that edit so now if I wanted to show my client both of these photos I've got a file an export and export JPEGs out of both of those photos and they would get both versions of those photos they would get the one that is tall and unrealistically crazy bright and he'll give me the landscape original as JPEGs because it would make a photo from that virtual copy that really does exist out in hard drive alright so that is just just a bonus tip so we're leaving on a good note today for our first ever terry white photography masterclass here on beat hands and I thought I've been keeping up with the questions I'm just going to scan real quick to make sure I didn't miss any thank you guys for being here by the way I see a bunch of Kelby one people in here as well thanks Scott Kelby and Kelby one folks for joining me and go ahead to have you all here by the way if you're if you're looking for learning for a photography Kelby one comms another great place to go learn all right all right Pete's asking nothing to do with Lightroom your presentation setup hardware is neat picking the lower corner being able to view your entire screen so Pete if you head over to Terry white comp my blog my two blog posts ago I did a whole set up of mine I did a whole blog post on my 20/20 setup so you get to see it and get to experience it and check it out and so forth and so on so terry white comm if you want to check out the that I use in the hardware and software and all that stuff alright let's welcome you're welcome alright so next week we're just going to pick up where we left off we're gonna do more with classic we may get into the other version of Lightroom that episode I don't know yet but this is part one of this series we're gonna do part two next week and we're just gonna keep gum just going to keep diving deeper and deeper and deeper now that you got your feet wet now that you got some organization skills going now that you kind of know how Lightroom works you can work on that this week next week we're just gonna pick up where we left off and keep going as we got that out of the way all right so with that said I thank everyone for joining me today I will see you next week same time same channel and next up is the daily creative challenge so you guys get to learn more stay tuned thanks everybody catch you later [Music]

Channel: Adobe Creative Cloud

Views: 68,278

Keywords: how to, tutorial, Lightroom, Terry White, Photography, Lightroom Classic, Image Editing, Image Manipulation, Getting Started, Creative Cloud, Adobe, photo management, library, catalog, Photoshop, Adobe Camera Raw, raw editing, importing

Id: 8preKExixUI

Length: 56min 58sec (3418 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 07 2020