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A few years ago, I started doing all my photographic post-processing in Lightroom.
It's the program used by most professional photographers and is reasonably user-friendly, I got to grips with Lightroom mostly by watching a very useful series of YouTube videos by Anthony Morganti, but this article is just a description of my basic workflow.
I pay around £10 a month for access to Lightroom Classic (which I use almost all the time) and Photoshop (which I rarely use except for model releases that need thumbnail images superimposing on them), but I get them both free now through having submitted so many images to Adobe Stock.
My aim when using Lightroom is to produce the best photograph I can. That usually means changing a few basic settings to add contrast and saturation, but I have no problem cloning out dust spots, flies or even annoying tourists!
I sometimes want to be more ambitious, though, and this tiger shot is an example.
The original picture looks dreadful. I took the picture in bright sunlight, but I deliberately underexposed it to create the illusion that the tiger was lit by a shaft of light in a cave.
It needed a lot of work in Lightroom to complete the effect, but it's won a couple of competitions now, so I think it's worth it!
Some photographers want to stick to naturalism as much as possible and won't do anything to their images apart from crop them or perhaps add some contrast.
Others give themselves a bit more licence by saying that they want the picture to come as close as possible to what it looked like in real life - which is never very convincing, but there you go.
Whatever your approach, this guide to Lightroom workflow should help you reach your goal as quickly as and reliably as possible.
What does 'workflow' mean?
Your workflow is simply the steps you go through in order to choose your best shots and make them look as good as possible.
You might be on a cruise ship in the Antarctic or in a tent in Chobe National Park or back at home in Blighty, but - wherever you are - you should have a standard approach to cataloguing and post-processing your shots. This is my system, but feel free to change it or add to it according to what you prefer:
Import to computer
I like to keep up-to-date with editing my pictures, so I usually work on them every day after I get back from the game drive (or wherever I happen to be).
I'm usually out all day shooting, so I take the first chance I get to go through everything before lunch or dinner back at camp.
To do that, I first of all connect my camera to my MacBook Pro and import all the RAW files to a new folder in Pictures on my external hard drive using Image Capture.
I have two cameras, so I usually have a shower or something while the first one's chugging away, and then I work on the first batch of images while the second is being copied across from my other camera.
I usually take as many as 1,000 images in a day, so this can take a while, and I get very impatient at this point!
I've done my best to buy Compact Flash (CF) or Secure Digital (SD) cards with the fastest possible read and write speeds just to help speed up the process, and I now have an extra-fast XQD (eXperimental Quality Determination) card for my D850, but it's never enough.
I have a Mac, so Image Capture is the default program for importing files, but it will obviously be different if you have a PC.
I could import my shots directly using Lightroom, but I've had a couple of bad experiences when Lightroom has crashed while trying to import thousands of files, so I use Image Capture just to be on the safe side!Import to Lightroom
I then import the files to Lightroom. This doesn't involve any actual copying of files, so it only takes a few seconds.
I do it without using a custom 'Import' preset, but you could set one up if you wanted to. It's a trade-off between speed and convenience.
If you always want a vignette, for example, then you could create a preset and import using that preset. That way, every shot has the same vignette.
You may also find that there are other settings you want to adjust globally. Until recently, you could change the Lightroom default settings for such things as sharpening and luminance, but you can’t any more, so double-clicking on the sharpening slider will set it to 40, which you probably don’t want as you’ll end up ‘sharpening noise’!
The only alternative is to set up an ‘Import’ preset that covers all the bases. However, it makes the import process last that bit longer, so it's up to you.
Another thing you can do is create 1:1 previews. This again is more time-consuming, but it makes a huge difference when it comes to viewing and editing each file in full-screen mode.
It's extremely frustrating when Lightroom keeps displaying the 'Loading...' message for each new file, particularly when you just want to check sharpness at 1:1, but those messages disappear if you build the previews during the import process. Try it and see for yourself.
Alternatively, you can create ‘smart previews’. That speeds up the editing process dramatically as the files being worked on are much smaller than the original RAW files. You can even keep those on an external hard drive if you’re short on space.Rate images
I only end up trying to sell about 5% of the shots I take, so rating the images I like is generally much quicker than rejecting the ones I don't!
(If your hit rate is more than 50%, you can always type 'x' to reject images and delete them later all in one go.)
To rate pictures, you simply type a number between 1 and 5, and the equivalent star rating is added to all the selected images. (You can press 0 to remove the rating or 6 to add the colour red, which I used to do for people shots.)
In my system, I give 2 stars generally to shots of my friends or fellow guests worth putting on Facebook, 3 stars to shots worth selling and 4-5 stars to my all-time favourites. (To give you an idea, I currently have over 12,000 shots I've rated 3 stars or more, but only 100 5-star shots!)
During the rating process, I sometimes have to crop an image or do some very basic editing to see if it's worth keeping, but I try to keep it 'quick and dirty' to save time.Check ratings
Once I've rated all my shots, I go over all the 3-, 4- and 5-star images again to check the rating. This crucially includes checking the sharpness at 100% because agencies are very quick to reject images that aren't quite sharp enough.
It also means checking for duplicates. It's very easy to end up with several shots of the same subject from the same angle, especially if the shots were taken at different times so they don't end up right next to each other.
Agencies again tend to reject images that are too similar to each other, so it's worth going through with a fine-tooth comb at this point. Otherwise, you'll end up duplicating all your later work for a file that ends up in the trash...!Post-process images
Digital images don't generally look their best straight out of the box, so this is when I spend a bit of time making basic adjustments to my 3-, 4- and 5-star images.
I make a couple of global changes, but the rest are local. The global changes are Auto tone and Post-crop vignetting. The Auto button in the basic panel of Lightroom is not perfect, but it's a useful starting point for any shot that just needs a little bit more contrast, clarity, saturation and vibrance.
I also use Post-crop vignetting on almost every image. Vignettes tend to focus the viewer's eyes on the subject by darkening the corners of the picture, so I generally set the slider to -20.
As most of my photos are wildlife portraits, that works just fine, but I generally won't use a vignette when there's a large expanse of sky as it just looks a bit odd!
The local adjustments I make to each file generally involve using the tools in the basic panel (such as cropping, changing the exposure and choosing different black and white points to avoid clipping of highlights and shadows), so I tend to click the 'Auto' button to begin with and then only make further changes when I have to.Add metadata
The most time-consuming part of this whole process is adding the metadata.
If you're not a serious photographer aiming to sell your shots to stock agencies, then you obviously don't need to do much at this point, but the more data you add, the easier it is to find files when you need to.
For example, if you've just come back from Botswana and someone asks to see all your elephant shots, you'll feel a bit daft if you've never even bothered to add any tags!
I take all my 4- and 5-star images and add titles, captions and keywords. Stock agencies have rules on the type and number of characters in each metadata field, so I avoid apostrophes and give all my images seven-word titles that are no longer than 50 characters. In theory, captions should be different from titles, but I find it too time-consuming to do that for all my files, so I keep them the same except for any 5-star images. I put those on my website and tend to enter those in competitions, so it's worth expending a little extra effort to sell the sizzle with a custom headline!
Keywords are essential for Search Engine Optimisation, so I use at least 10 but more often 20 or 30, including tags describing the location, content and theme of the image (plus obvious synonyms).
After each trip, I set up a metadata preset for Design Pics (my main stock agency) in order to add the data they require, such as city, country and copyright status.
I also create a location in the Maps module and drag all my images to it in order to geotag them with GPS data. It's worth noting that I set the time zone, date, time and copyright information on my cameras before I go on a trip so I don't have to worry about any of that when I get home.Export images
Lightroom is what they call a 'non-destructive' program, which means that the RAW files that you edit aren't actually changed when you edit them. Instead, Lightroom keeps a list of editing instructions that it follows every time you want to view a file.
As a result, it's essential to export any files that you intend to view outside Lightroom or upload to any stock agencies. I've set up presets for all the folders I usually export to, but stock agencies generally want JPEG files no more than 20MB in size, so I've used that as my limit.
Most agencies also have minimum quality thresholds, so I try not to crop so much that the image is less than 6.3 megapixels. I initially export all my 4- and 5-star images as 20MB sRGB JPEGs at the highest quality setting to two folders: '4*' and '5*'.
I then export the same files to my 'Latest images' folder using a special low-resolution preset that follows the Design Pics guidelines. I have an exclusive agreement with Design Pics, and I give them first refusal on all my photographs.
However, the metadata requirements for Design Pics are different from those of the other agencies, so I have to be careful to get it right.
The main difference is in the Headline and Caption fields. Design Pics requires Headline to be 'NA', but I write a long description in the Caption field of my 5* images in order to put it on my website, and some agencies take the title of the image from the Headline and Caption fields, so I have to be careful.
Fortunately, there is a plug-in that copies data from one field to another, but I had to buy the paid-for version as the freeware only works on 10 files at a time...Upload to agencies
Once I've exported all my 3*, 4* and 5* files, I upload them to Design Pics via FTP using Filezilla (together with any required model or property releases). It usually takes them a few weeks to decide which ones they want.
When I've received a list of their 'selects', I export high-resolution versions and upload them via FTP again. Sometimes, these files don't pass QA due to lack of sharpness or some other issue, so I have to wait another week or so before I know exactly which files I can send to the other agencies.
Once I have the definitive list, I upload them to all the other agencies using Filezilla, websites or DeepMeta (for Getty Images). Buyers tend to search among the newest images, so I've taken to uploading 100 files each month in order to maximise the chances of a sale.
I keep track of the whole process on a spreadsheet. Each image has a row, and there’s a column for Design Pics and microstock files.
I note the current status by putting 's' for 'submitted' and 'y' for accepted. I've also created quite a few extra columns for continent, country, type of image, exhibitions, online galleries and competitions. Managing over 15,000 images is a complicated process, so I rely on Excel to make sure I know what's going on!Delete images
Once all my images are copied across to my laptop and properly edited and catalogued, I can format the memory cards and delete any unrated files in Lightroom.
File management should always be done in Lightroom rather than Finder in order to make sure that the changes are synchronised properly. If you do it the other way round, Lightroom will flag deleted images as 'missing'.
This also applies to any changes you make to the metadata. If you select the right settings in Lightroom, these will automatically be copied to the underlying files in Finder, and that's a huge time-saver.
For example, if you suddenly realise you've spelt 'elephant' wrong in some of your elephant pictures, you can simply search for the wrong spelling, highlight all the pictures that pop up and correct it globally in the keywords window.Back up
Backing up all my pictures and documents is absolutely essential.
I used to use a cloud storage service called CrashPlan from Code42 that ran in the background and simply copied any changes or deletions to the back-up servers in real time.
If I realised I'd deleted a file by accident, I could search for it on CrashPlan and restore whichever version I wanted - either the latest version or the version before I made a mistake with my edits.
CrashPlan worked fine as long as I had a working internet connection, but it did take a few weeks to sync all my files when I first started using it, and it didn’t help me when I was in Africa or in the Arctic Circle without any wi-fi!
As a result, I changed to using an external hard drive, but I couldn’t be bothered to carry it around with me, so I now just keep everything on my laptop hard drive - without a back-up! Hard drives are a lot more reliable than they used to be, but I know it’s not ideal…
My biggest fear is losing all the pictures I've taken while I'm on a trip, and I still haven't worked out a solution to the problem. I guess I could take a spare hard drive or USB stick, but I've been too lazy so far. Let's hope I don't pay the ultimate price...!
Lightroom is a subject I'm learning all the time, but I hope this will give you a head start!
If you’d like to order a framed print of one of my wildlife photographs, please visit the Prints page.
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