by Gavin Seim: So I wrote a few articles recently over on my Seim Effects site about editing faster and managing better, and I felt they were worthy of a mention here on PPS. If you want to edit your images faster or have ever questioned the way you manage LR catalogs take a peek and you might just get something new. Enjoy… Gav
Super Workflow: The 7 Steps to Photo Editing Awesomeness: This is an outline of pretty much everything I’ve learned about the flow of fast editing with a step by step look at how to work more efficiently. It’s geared towards LR users, but applies to most any editing workflow.
by Gavin Seim (updated 7/21/12): I give workflow a lot of thought. In fact I started writing this nearly two years ago and it’s based on methods I’ve refined in my own business. If you read this and follow through with it, you WILL edit faster. Truth is, I’ve actually refined my skills by just by writing this down. I’m going to be a little blunt today so don’t take it personally and don’t think me arrogant. My goal is to make us all better at editing so we have more time for life. Good processing is very valuable, but it does not have to be slow.
I devote a lot of energy to planning workflow for my own studio and for the tools that I make for LR, Photoshop and Aperture (check those out here). I’ve experimented a lot and I’ve built a system that works. As photographers we often end up with hundreds, even thousands of images to edit. But editing should not be a tedious overbearing monster. What we need is a plan. I say that in a good batch workflow, you should be spending no more than 20 minutes sorting & editing per 100 images. If you spend much more than that, you likely have ENAS, or Editing Non-Awesomeness Syndrome. It’s a common ailment among photographers, but there is a cure, which we’ll address here.
This topic can get tedious if we don’t have some fun so lets keep it light. Really though. These concepts work for 25 images or 25,000. It’s about being organized, creative and efficient with editing. It’s the opposite of having countless pieces of software you switch back forth to, or endless erratic steps to reaching your goal. I can edit a wedding with 1500+ images in 3-5hrs of computer time. I’m not a light editor either, so some will do it even faster. Sure, it’s OK to spend extra time editing because you’re enjoying your work or doing fine art, but a solid foundation will make every project flow better.
Because I’ve also built a business out of making workflow tools, I’ll be using my own effects today. But these tips apply to any tools that fit into a smooth editing plan. I’m also using Lightroom. It’s the fastest I’ve found to date and can do about 90% of what Photoshop can, but about 5x faster. That’s huge! If you use Aperture or something similar that’s cool too. I’ve worked with both and the approach is essentially the same. If however you’re still doing main corrections in Photoshop, you’re probably wasting time. Doing all your editing in Photoshop does not mean you’re more creative. It just means you’re slow! That’s not to say you should not use PS. But with a good A-Z workflow you’ll use it less, edit faster and make your work better.
By Gavin Seim. Disclaimer: I don’t know Captain Awesome personally, but I feel confident that this would be his approach is he used Lightroom.
Understanding the Catalog: Updated 03/2012. I’ve discussed catalogs on the Pro Photo Show and also cover them in my LR workshops, but I wanted write it down in simple terms. First lets get clear on what a catalog does. The LR catalog is a single file (.lrcat) that houses the edits and changes you’ve made to the photos it points to. I generally explain it in analog terms. Imagine a file cabinet of negatives in your storage room. Next to it is another box and inside that are note cards referencing every negative in the file cabinet, each stating what was done to that negative to produce the final print.
The LR catalog is similar, only it’s digital. It references any images you tell it to and keeps track of what changes have been made those files. Rather than looking up a note card however, you just open the catalog and LR shows the result of any changes that have been made. LR does not care which folder the actual files (negatives) reside in. It just looks where you tell it to. Now if you were to delete the LR catalog, it would be like throwing out that box of note cards. The negatives would still be sitting where you left them, but the changes would be lost.
LR makes a default catalog when you start using it, but you can make as many catalogs as you want (File/New Catalog) and open any one of them by simply double clicking the on the catalog (.lrcat) file. Now let me share some power user tips that can make your image management easier. I make a Lightroom Catalog for each job. That’s right every senior, family, and couple get a catalog made in their honor. Sometimes people think I’m sort of a LR heretic for this, but they usually change their minds in time. It’s simple management mechanics and is becoming more common every day.
Why Separate Catalogs? Many photographers that use Lightroom have one huge catalog that all their images are referenced from. They manage projects from within that catalog using collections and the folders. The actual images may be referenced from various drives and directories all over their system. What happens when those images are moved? The catalog can no longer see them and you get an annoying question mark on the thumbnail that indicates a missing file. To use them again you have to point LR to the new location where the files have moved. In itself this is not hard, but as a catalog grows, file management often becomes an issue and it becomes easier to misplace files.
There’s also the smaller issue of speed and reliability. Though LR deals with large amounts of images well, the bigger a LR catalog becomes, the more eggs you have in one basket and the more hassle you “could” have should the catalog become damaged (of course you should always have a backup). But even with that I prefer a more streamlined approach to catalogs. I don’t have to worry about a huge master catalog getting out of hand and I don’t want the hassle or managing it. Lets take a look.
I frequently crawl under the hood in Lightroom. Today I’m working some projects in LR3 and experimenting with the latest features and tools. Something I’ve started doing to make certain effects more adaptable, is what I’m calling Tone Independent Presets. They add an effects without using any of the primary tone settings like exposure, brightness, contrast, white balance etc. The result is an effect that can easily be applied to a plain image, or after general and batch corrections without effecting previous tone settings. This preset is an example of that.
I’ve spent quite some time today (probably too much) looking at the tones and feel of classic Polaroids and doing lots of tweaks in LR to get the look I wanted. The result is this effect I’m calling Gavin’s Old Polaroid. It’s a classic Polaroid themed tone that I think you’ll find appealing. This is a test of effects that will probably show up soon in an update to Color Fantasies presets collection. You get it today however and it’s free to boot. You can download the ZIP below. While it uses some LR3 features, This, like all my other presets will still work on older versions of LR. Enjoy… Gav
Just a quickie I though some of you might find interesting. I talked about getting you all some high ISO samples from these cameras on the last podcast, so here they are. After the show, I got together with Nickles and we did a very informal ISO test. Nothing fancy, just some quick, poorly lit handheld images with Cyrus and Harrson. Still, you’ll get the idea. The 5D MK2 was still a solid contender with a great fine grain feel.
The 1D has a trump card because it can go to much higher ISO and while it might be noisy, I would not hesitate to use ISO 50K if I was in an ultra low like situation like a wedding reception. On the show I said it looks as good at 50K as the MK2 does at 12k. Looking here I see that was a an overstatement, but for how high the ISO is I’m still impressed. A little grain does not kill us, in fact the grain on these newer cameras is looking better all the time.
I used basic noise reduction in LR3 (no plugins) but I did use new process version which made a lot of difference in the final quality. To illustrate that I’m posting a side by side on the new and old process as well. Click for larger versions.
by Gavin Seim (updated 7/21/12): I give workflow a lot of thought. In fact I started writing this nearly two years ago and it’s based on methods I’ve refined in my own business. If you read this and follow through with it, you WILL edit faster. Truth is, I’ve actually refined my skills by just by writing this down. I’m going to be a little blunt today so don’t take it personally and don’t think me arrogant. My goal is to make us all better at editing so we have more time for life. Good processing is very valuable, but it does not have to be slow.
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