Original subtitles

I'm doing a screen recording of exactly what

and how you should have your Lightroom set

up.

There's only a few short things to keep

track of.

There's no magic number of gigabytes to keep

your cache or any weird resolutions to, you

know, magically import or deal with your files.

It should be pretty darn easy.

The first thing you want to do, and

this should be the only time you really

need to do this unless you want to

switch back, is go to your Applications folder,

wherever it is.

Just click Applications and go to your Mac

hard drive or whatever.

I have applications hidden from my favorites because

I always just click down here, but normally

you would see them listed here.

You can also just go to Go and

find Applications right there.

So opening Applications, bam.

Whatever you do, you just want to find

where your Lightroom, hopefully your Lightroom CC application

lives.

So I have Adobe Lightroom folder.

Here it is.

This is my Lightroom application icon.

Pretty simple, right?

You just want to right-click on that,

Get Info.

Make sure it's opened in something called Low

Resolution Mode, which is what I'm going to

click right here.

There's other like third-party pieces of software

that'll enable you to like enter things in

low resolution, aside from just Lightroom if you

wanted.

But this is the only application I care

to do this to, and it's the thing

I leave on all the time.

So make sure this is checkmarked Low Resolution.

Alright, then the next time you open Lightroom,

you'll notice maybe around the fonts and some

of the graphics and stuff, it's a little

more blocky and cubey, but that's okay.

For me, I don't care if it speeds

up my editing time by two, you know,

by a factor of two.

I just don't care if low resolution is

a thing.

Now, one other piece of advice I can

give you is if you go up here

to Lightroom Preferences and go to the Performance

tab, which is this one, make sure Use

Graphics Processor is turned off.

I haven't come across a single computer yet

with a graphics interface card where this actually

has helped.

Even with fast graphics processors, I've had a

lot of, basically, you go into the Develop

mode and every time you go to the

next photo it like flashes black once or

like has a weird delay in loading.

I keep this off.

And then always, always, always have under the

Develop section here, Use Smart Previews Instead of

Originals selected on.

Everything else in my Lightroom setup and settings

is default.

As far as I can tell, it's all

just regular, the way that it came.

No other magic tricks for you there.

Alright, now I'm going to import a memory

card.

So I have my memory card inserted, or

I'm about to insert it.

Ignore that warning.

Alright, my memory card's inserted.

Now, whenever I insert a memory card, this

is just a compact flash card, it always

tries to auto-detect the device itself, meaning

the camera.

I never import from that as the source.

I always go down here to the Nikon,

or to the, you know, whatever this would

be named for you, down here at the

bottom, break out their actual directory and choose

the main root folder.

I only have 30 photos on this, this

is just a pure example.

And then always make sure Include Subfolders is

checkmarked.

So what I've found is if you use

devices up here and you've crossed multiple days

or you haven't formatted the memory card or

something, sometimes it'll ignore entire folders of pictures

for reasons I have no idea.

Maybe they fixed that glitch, maybe not.

I don't want to find out.

I've never had a problem importing from right

here.

Just make sure you have Include Subfolders selected.

And then I have Set to Copy.

Ignore DNGs, anybody that tells you you need

to use them.

You're just wasting processor time.

It's just pointless.

I edit from the .NEF or .ARW or

whatever your camera raw file name is.

So just go to Copy.

Make sure all the photos you need copied

are selected.

These are very important checkmarks and selections over

here.

You want Build Preview set to Standard.

Not Minimal, not Embedded, not 1-to-1.

Freaking Standard.

Okay?

Simple as that.

I don't care what anybody else tells you.

The only time you need 1-to-1

is if you're going to be zooming in

on a lot of your pictures or all

of your pictures, which hopefully you don't have

to do.

Build Smart Previews.

Yes, always.

Never not do that.

Smart Previews.

Well here, I'm going to break this out

and really explain it in some detail.

Hopefully you have a nice glass of wine

or a coffee or some hot drink to

get you through this.

But if I navigate to my folder, my

catalog file is saved right here.

It's 2017, and I use one catalog file

per year, and my performance is always stellar.

Ship shape, right out of the box, fast

and stellar.

You do not need to create a new

catalog for every new session or every new

wedding unless that helps you and your organization

the way you have things saved.

I don't need that.

I save everything by date.

I'll show you that in a second.

This is all you need.

One Lightroom catalog per year.

Now wherever that catalog is saved, you'll see

two sidecar files if you have these two

options selected.

Here, this file are the renders and all

the thumbnails that you see when only and

when you're in the library mode.

When you switch over to develop mode, you

see something totally different.

So when you're in the library mode, which

is where you should do all of your

culling and you're flagging your keepers and you're

xing your throwaways or whatever, all your culling,

the files you're actually seeing, are all pulled

from this file right here.

This is rendered and made by selecting build

previews.

And you just want to select the standard

size.

Here is where smart previews sit.

If you actually break this out, I don't

recommend you do this, but everything's saved in

a weird way here in some sort of

like database.

Eventually I here we go.

You don't need to know this for any

reason other than that.

It essentially creates low resolution versions of your

raw files, saves them all right here in

this for you.

You don't even have to think about it.

So if you have build smart preview set,

it will take a long time to render

both standard and smart previews for a full

wedding, usually an hour or two, maybe more.

But you have low resolution versions of your

raw files sitting here.

And so when you're editing, um, when you

have that, uh, preference thing selected here, the,

where we were earlier develop you smart preview

instead of originals, that's a lot less processing

power for your machine.

It's only pushing like 2,500 pixels instead

of six or 7,000, however large your

files are from your camera.

Um, so it's fantastic.

Uh, you can edit from the smart previews

as if your raw files are connected and

it's fantastic.

I can't recommend it enough that combined with

the low resolution mode, um, that we looked

at first makes light room just insanely fast.

Now I also have make a second copy.

Normally this is checkmarked when I have my

external hard drive connected right now, only have

one external hard drive connected.

Uh, usually I have two and this other

one is sitting right here next to it.

Um, and that's where I have the second

copy of raw files sent.

Um, you can break this out and navigate

to any folder.

I recommend you have two completely different standalone

external hard drives.

Never save raw files on your local machine

hard drive.

Um, make a second copy to that second

one.

Hopefully you never have to touch those again.

They just sit there until, you know, you've

delivered the wedding, you can delete them or

something like that.

Um, okay, so this is important.

Um, I do apply a simple kind of

import preset to the, uh, the stuff that

I use.

I've got presets from years down here, just

all sorts of weird crap, but pick whatever.

Most people have a starting point.

Hopefully you don't just have a random preset

at the beginning of every session or wedding

that you, you do.

But if you just have a baseline, like,

okay, I always boost exposure plus one or

whatever.

Make sure that's applied on import here.

So you never have to look at your,

your images straight out of camera ever.

Um, I lose way too much time in

my life.

Second, guessing myself whenever I, uh, edit and,

uh, have the straight out of camera poisoning

my mind and comparing it back to that.

My edits always look way too extreme.

Um, but all that matters is the end

result.

It's really hard to get the straight out

of camera out of your head, um, and

compare it to the end result.

So I, I just apply a simple preset

on import.

I don't do any metadata presets.

This is under keyword where I would put

like client name, location info, anything I need

so that all I have to remember is

the year that it occurred.

I opened that catalog file for that year,

and I can search globally for whatever keyword

I want in the library mode, library mode.

Let's see, search for text and stuff like

that.

So I would just put the client name,

whatever.

This is just my, some pictures of my

dog.

So I'm going to say popcorn.

All right.

And the destination, this is the other location

that your actual raw files, um, that you're

going to be working from are sent.

So remember the second location, second copy, this

is a, where backups are sent.

You never actually interact with those again, unless

you lose what's here in your destination.

So I'm going to navigate to my main

external hard drive.

I have two main folders to pay attention

to here.

Some of these other ones are just pointless.

One is my delivered folder.

This is where I keep all of, once

I've delivered and uploaded the raw files, I

just click and drag the folder to delivered,

uh, for that year.

So I have one delivered folder at the

end of the year, and I can back

that up easily, you know, somewhere else.

Uh, now anything that's undelivered, I keep in

an in progress folder right now.

It's just called in progress too, for no

reason other than it's called that normally it's

just called in progress.

And, uh, all these are just random things

from when I was using old cameras that

like weren't formatted properly or whatever.

So these years don't matter.

All that matters is what's in progress right

now.

So these are undelivered or just recently delivered,

and I haven't dragged over, uh, weddings and

sessions and everything that needs to be done.

So I save everything in just a folder

by date.

So it'll go to in progress, two seven,

2017, and then today's date when I just

took these pictures.

So everything's just got its own folder.

Simple as that.

You hit import.

Let me make sure everything's good here.

Nothing else to talk about.

No.

Okay.

Boom.

Now it's going to throw an error because

I don't have my second copy hard drive

connected right now.

So you'll see that in a second, but

once it copies and imports, it'll start rendering

while we sit here and watch.

But you know, if you have a full

wedding or something like that, it's going to

take.

So this is just an error because I

didn't have my backup thing.

Like I said, no, no big deal.

Now you want to watch this, your standard

previews and your smart previews being built.

You want both of these tasks to be

complete, fully complete before you start editing any

wedding or any session.

So we'll give it just a second here.

This is the reason I only used 30

pictures.

Now this takes raw processing power.

There's no real way to speed or quicken

this process in Lightroom except for having a

physically faster computer.

That's why I still own an iMac, a

big screen iMac to render smart previews and

standard previews as fast as I can.

And to export weddings as fast as I

can.

But that's really the only reason I use

this machine.

Unless I'm just looking for a different way

to edit.

My desk is a standing desk as well.

So sometimes it's nice to edit from that

in this screen, but usually I edit from

my small little laptop.

So these, all these previews that you're seeing

right now, these are all just the standard

previews that are rendered in library mode.

That's it.

Simple as that.

You can see how quickly everything's running, but

you can actually speed this up even more

if you're still, if you're ever seeing the

little loading sign, I'm not seeing it right

now because I've done all the optimizations we

need, but if you ever see the little

loading thing in the bottom, there's a problem.

There's a huge problem.

You should never see that in library mode.

Okay.

So another thing you can do to like

double the speed of everything is just hide

your histogram.

Simple as that.

It's not going to be any faster on

my machine because it's already fast enough, but

I promise you hiding your histogram will totally

make a night and day difference in your

speed and responsiveness.

Same in develop mode.

If you hide your histogram in develop mode,

it's a huge speed boost.

Okay.

So I think there's one other thing, but

let me double check.

That is it.

No, it's running shape.

You should also never ever see the like

a slow pixelation render.

It should be instantly exactly what you need.

Obviously a lot of these pictures are out

of focus.

These are just whatever shots for fun of

my dog real quick, but yeah, it should

never be slow.

And if it is, make sure these three

or four things that I've told you, you

know, are completed.

Now, if you are connected to your hard

drive and all your raw files, you'll definitely

see the fact that you have original plus

smart preview here.

Oh, I know what I wanted to talk

about before we get to that.

If you've already imported something and didn't render

standard previews or smart previews when you imported,

do this.

Click on whatever the folder is, select, go

to grid mode, select all, go to library,

previews, build standard previews, not build one-to

-one and don't discard anything.

Just build standard previews.

These are probably already rendered, but if not,

you'll see it takes one at a time.

It takes, you have to re-render everything.

Same if you make any huge global adjustments.

If I went and did a huge quick

develop adjustment and like boosted, lowered the exposure

and every single shot or something like that,

you would have to re-render your standard

previews.

You can see them like slowly plucking away

here as it randomly renders stuff.

You'd have to re-render everything.

So anytime things are slow, just select all,

make sure your standard previews are rendered fully.

So I'm going to let this do this

few hundred pictures real fast.

Now, you can also, after the fact, render

smart previews.

Remember, there's standard, which is what's in here

in the library mode, and then there's smart

previews, which are what you see and work

with in the develop module.

So you can render smart previews in the

same spot.

Just go to library, previews, build smart previews.

These are already built, so it's just scanning

through super, super fast or mostly built, I

guess.

Yeah.

And this takes a long time, but normally

that's why I do it all on import.

I apply a baseline preset on import.

I render everything on import.

So when I'm actually ready to sit down,

pick whatever wedding or session or whatever that

I want, I can just select the folder

and just start going, just flying through.

I don't know why it's saying loading, but

I think it's a, yeah, I think it

was just a carryover from the fact that

I was just rendering stuff.

But yeah, essentially it should be, it should

be ship shape all the time, no matter

what.

The only other thing that I think would

be worth mentioning is, let's see here, when

you're ready to export, here we go.

I highly recommend instead of using something like

JPEG mini, it is a great piece of

software.

You can use it if you want, whatever.

When I export, I found pretty much the

exact same size to quality for use, running

everything through JPEG mini, which just is a

non-configurable, makes everything smaller, still looks good.

I found that just setting JPEG quality to

84 has the same file size and basic

same quality without having to run it through

a whole nother piece of software like JPEG

mini.

So when I export and deliver to my

clients, I do JPEG quality 84, 300 pixels

per inch resolution.

I've been back and forth between 300 and

240.

It doesn't really make a difference unless you're

printing a huge poster size.

So 300, 240 is probably the minimum that

you would want for your pixels per inch.

And I don't resize to anything.

I just leave them full size.

And then I sharpen for screen standard.

That's the only sharpening that I do.

And then I just do copyright only metadata.

So pretty straightforward.

Now one cool thing is I use Shootproof,

and they have a great publish services plugin.

You can just download this from their website.

And when it's installed, you get this little

Shootproof thing here.

And it has an entire hierarchy of every

gallery that you've got currently on there.

So I've got quite a few right now.

I've been using them for at least a

year and a half.

So if you're ready to deliver something, obviously

you don't want to export from the smart

previews ideally.

So you make sure you're reconnected to your

raw files.

You'll see everything light, ready to go here.

Just go to publish services, and you can

configure this if you just right click on

it and go to settings.

This is where you can make those same

export settings.

So sharpen for screen standard, quality 84 for

me.

You don't ever have to adjust this again

unless you need to.

You just right click and say create publish

set.

So I'm going to say popcorn my dog.

There we go.

Now you need to create a collection within

that set.

So that's fine.

Just create one thing.

And then you can literally just click and

drag whatever files you want.

I'll just select all and go to that.

Now the huge amazing thing about using an

export plugin instead of like exporting to your

desktop as JPEGs and then uploading using a

desktop uploader or something like that, is that

you can say publish and the pictures will

slowly trickle onto the Shootproof server without ever

having JPEGs on your computer anywhere.

So I never have JPEGs on my machine

unless I am selecting a few for a

blog post and I just put them on

there temporarily to upload to my website or

if I'm just exporting one for Instagram and

Facebook.

Otherwise I never have JPEGs on my machine,

just the raw files.

As soon as you hit publish here, they

are sent and converted to Shootproof through Lightroom.

So you'll see as I open Shootproof, eventually,

I don't know why my internet's a little

slow right now.

Eventually, I think once it does the first

one, then a bunch go quickly after.

It's creating the gallery for me.

It's naming it what I named it, popcorn.

And eventually you'll see all that right here

with, you know, alongside all your other galleries.

So let's just give this a second.

My internet is incredibly slow for some reason

and I have to figure this out.

One quick side note, if you're curious for

a real quick just download speed test, just

go to fast.com and it'll give you

a quick spit out of your speed.

Yeah, this is supposed to be 150 megabits

per second.

I think Nessa might be uploading a wedding

right now.

But yeah, that is really key because if

you make any changes, once these are published,

here, I'll go to one that's already been

uploaded.

Here's a wedding.

So I break all my weddings into parts

and deliver everything chronologically.

So to make that a little easier to

manage, I just do part one, part two,

part three, part four.

That way people can easily eyeball the beginning,

middle and end of the wedding.

But you can see these have been published

and uploaded.

So they're in a published photos subcategory.

If I edit any of these pictures, it'll

flag it as a modified photo to republish.

You just hit publish again.

It removes it from the service on Shootproof

and re-uploads it in the order that

it belongs right there for you.

So I'm going to undo that change because

I don't necessarily want it to be, let's

see, there we go.

This is my first wedding that I shot

with the a9.

So it's really interesting seeing that camera throughout

an entire day.

Anyway, my internet's very slow right now, so

I'm not sure if that sample upload will

work, but just wanted to walk through the

very simple, only things you need to pay

attention to in your Lightroom catalog.

Also read through what I'm going to write

up, but hopefully this is the nice visual.

Here we go.

We got one.

Finally.

Great.

So if I make an adjustment to this,

it's going to pop up into a modified

section.

But here on my Shootproof galleries, you'll see

popcorn.

There it is.

The file's there.

Everything's good to go.

I can set this to cover if I

want.

You're on from there.

But yeah, highly recommend you configure Lightroom in

this way.

One other thing that I'm going to have

some pictures and some explanation of in the

text.

My Lightroom catalog doesn't sit on this iMac

that I'm recording from right now.

I do edit a lot and I do

import and export from this iMac, but my

Lightroom catalog actually sits on my laptop, which

is just a 12-inch MacBook.

Instead of having to copy my catalog back

and forth and all my Smart Previews and

everything back and forth, you can actually mount

this laptop to any other computer using a

USB cable and something called Target Disk Mode.

I'll have another video that shows you how

Target Disk Mode works, but essentially it mounts

as if it's an external hard drive.

The computer is rebooted in this mode that

once it's connected, it just pops up as

if I just plugged in an external hard

drive.

And you can browse the entire hard drive

of that computer just like you normally would.

So that's where my Lightroom catalog sits.

It's just right here under my pictures folder.

So as soon as I'm done editing or

exporting or doing anything on my main big

iMac, if I need to hit the road

or go, I can just say boom, export

or go to trash or whatever, and then

I can unplug the machine and be on

my way.

You boot it up like normal and Lightroom

opens right up.

There's no copying of the catalog file back

and forth.