1 Introducing Adobe Photoshop Lightroom

An introduction to the main features in Lightroom, showing an example of a typical studio shoot workflow

Photograph: Gold Hill, Shaftesbury © 2016 Martin Evening

Sony A7rII | 70mm | 200 ISO | f/8 @ 1/320th

Welcome to the Adobe^® Photoshop^® Lightroom^® system, which is designed to meet the needs of digital photographers everywhere. Lightroom consists of two components: Lightroom Classic CC, which is the desktop version of Lightroom; and Lightroom CC, which refers to all things mobile, but in particular, the Lightroom CC computer application. Because this book is predominantly about working with Lightroom Classic CC, the main focus is on how you can best work with the Lightroom Classic CC desktop program. Some Lightroom Classic CC users may also be subscribed to Lightroom CC, in which case there is a whole chapter at the end of the book dedicated to discussing Lightroom CC mobile workflows and how these integrate with Lightroom Classic CC. With this in mind, and for the sake of simplicity, I mostly refer to Lightroom Classic CC as “Lightroom” throughout the book. However, in the Lightroom Mobile chapter, I make a clearer distinction between Lightroom Classic CC and Lightroom CC/mobile.

Lightroom was designed from the ground up to provide today’s digital photographers with the tools they most need. This is reflected in the way Lightroom separates the various tasks into individual modules, is able to process large numbers of images at once, and lets you archive and retrieve your images quickly. But before I get into too much detail, let me begin by explaining a little about the basic concepts of Lightroom, the essential preference settings, and the Lightroom interface.

Figure 1.1 shows a summary of the Lightroom system workflow. You can begin by explicitly importing stills or video files into Lightroom. For example, you can import files from a camera’s flash memory card, directly from a (supported) tethered camera, from files on a hard drive, or via an import from another catalog. The master files are then stored wherever you choose to place them. Once the files are imported, Lightroom is able to process and manage them without you actually editing the files themselves. Everything you do in Lightroom in the various modules is saved automatically to the master catalog file, which is used to store all the Lightroom edit information independently of the master images. As shown in Figure 1.1, you can export data from the Lightroom catalog as a complete catalog with copies of the master images, plus Smart Previews. You can also synchronize photos via Lightroom CC/Lightroom mobile, using the Adobe cloud servers (the Lightroom mobile workflow is explained in more detail in Chapter 11). The Library module is used to manage the catalog, the Develop module to carry out the image processing, and the remaining modules are for creating different types of outputs from Lightroom: i.e., published books, slideshow presentations, prints, or web galleries.

You will notice Lightroom has a locked interface, where all you can do is edit the visibility of the modules and module panels—you can’t actually rearrange the panels or make them float. I see this as a positive thing because you always know where you are when you are working with Lightroom. With other programs, like Adobe Photoshop CC, people tend to personalize the program in the way they arrange the panels and their appearance. I find that if I am asked to take control of someone else’s computer, it can take a while to work out where everything is in their version of Photoshop. With Lightroom, the interface is always the same, and it’s never a problem trying to locate a particular panel or tool.

Just after the release of the last edition of this book, however, it became clear that those improvements did not benefit all customers. Worryingly, customers running high-spec machines with multiple cores and lots of RAM were reporting slowdowns in performance over time that necessitated reboots. Adobe has since cured the slowdown problems and provided performance tweaks to ensure Lightroom runs faster on high-end systems. Therefore, if you are running a system with more than 12GB of RAM or with multiple cores, you should now expect to see some improvement in Lightroom performance. In theory, the more cores you have, the better. You should see an improvement with the speed of images loading while importing in the Grid view. On my four-core machine with 32GB RAM, for example, the import speed is around 15–20% faster. If I had more cores, I could probably expect to see even better import speeds. Customers that have their cameras set to save compressed raw files might notice a speed up in rendering previews from a set of newly imported images. Customers with catalogs that have over 100K of assets should also see improved performance during importing.

The speed gains will be dependent on other factors besides just the number of cores and RAM memory, but generally you should see better performance. But you should also expect to see improved on-screen interactive adjustments when working in the Develop module, as well as faster batch merge operations for HDR/Panorama Photo Merges, faster Export processing, and faster Auto Imports.

Choosing to build Smart Previews as photos are imported enables you to continue working in Lightroom when the master files are off-line. For example, all the masters might be stored on a remote hard drive that is disconnected from the computer. Working with Smart Previews can help you achieve faster Lightroom performance, because Lightroom can work more quickly when using Smart Preview (compact, lower-resolution) versions of the master files. To help you take advantage of this, the Performance preferences includes the option to use Smart Previews in place of the originals when editing in the Develop module. Where Smart Previews are available, you can also manage the photos via the Library module and geotag photos using the Map module. Although you can create on-screen slideshows using Smart Previews, you cannot export slideshows. Similarly, you can use Smart Previews in the Book module to create or edit a book layout (but not to generate a book). Also, you can’t export Smart Previews to Photoshop.

It is worth pointing out that all Develop adjustments in Lightroom are non-destructive and recorded as edit instructions that are stored in the central catalog (and can also be stored as metadata with the image itself). This means that a single raw master file can be edited in many ways and output or printed at different sizes without your having to create different pixel image versions from the original. Any image edits and ratings you make in Lightroom can be recognized in current versions of Adobe Bridge and Photoshop. The same thing applies to ratings and other metadata. If you edit the metadata in Lightroom and save the changes made to the file, these too can be read in Bridge. The reverse is also true. For example, if you add keywords and assign a colored label to an image in Bridge, these metadata edits can be read by Lightroom and updated to the Lightroom catalog—although this does raise the question of which settings are correct when a single image has been modified in two separate programs. In this situation, Lightroom informs you of any conflicts and lets you decide which settings should override the others.

Of course, a hierarchical folder management is fine if you know in which folders your images are stored. But as you start working with many thousands of photographs, you’ll soon find this is no longer such a practical solution. Yes, Lightroom can store all your images in a neat hierarchy of folders, but its real power as an image asset manager comes into play when you use the Filter bar to search for images in the catalog. Once you get into the habit of entering descriptive keyword information each time you import new photos, you will be able to search your archive more easily and more quickly when browsing for specific photographs.

Lightroom has been built from scratch, which means the engineers were able to design a program that not only addressed current demands but also anticipated future needs. For example, whenever you apply consecutive image adjustments in Photoshop, you are progressively degrading the image. Lightroom, on the other hand, allows you to make as many adjustments and changes as you like; it applies them as a single adjustment only when you choose to edit in Photoshop or export the photo as a fixed-pixel image. You can also revisit the edits you make and create improved versions as the Lightroom editing tools are improved (Figure 1.3).

In Lightroom, the photos in the catalog are like your digital negatives. Whether they are raw files, PSDs, TIFFs, or JPEGs, they are always preserved in their original state throughout the entire Lightroom workflow. You can create slideshows, generate web galleries, or make print outputs without ever physically altering the original files.

Once you start bringing images into Lightroom, you won’t necessarily find yourself locked into working exclusively in the program the way you are with some other programs. Lightroom is flexible enough to allow you to work simultaneously with Bridge or other image browser programs. Adobe Camera Raw, which is used by both Bridge and Photoshop, does provide the same level of flexibility, but only up until the point when you render a raw file as a pixel image to be edited in Photoshop.

You will require a computer that meets the minimal specifications listed below. Although it is possible to run Lightroom with a minimum of RAM, Lightroom will certainly benefit from having as much memory as possible. Therefore, it is recommended that you install 4 GB or more of RAM. A computer with a fast processor will help, of course. You don’t need much hard disk space to install Lightroom, but you will need to give serious consideration to how you will store all the images in the catalog. Here are the minimum requirements for Mac and Windows systems.

The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Creative Cloud agreement permits you to install Lightroom Classic CC on a main computer and a secondary computer, such as a laptop, because Adobe recognizes that a lot of its customers regularly work on more than one computer. You can also use a single Lightroom subscription to run a Mac and/or Windows version of the program. All Adobe applications use the same install process, which requires you to have an Adobe ID when installing the software. Your Adobe ID can help Adobe when handling customer support issues or if you move Lightroom to a new computer. The other benefit is that Adobe can improve the product by analyzing workflows in greater detail and can ultimately present tailored content and help based on your unique workflow. However, you do have the ability to opt out of data gathering: Choose Help Lightroom Classic CC Online, click on your account ID in the top-right corner, choose Manage Account, and go to the Security and Privacy section.

Although Lightroom will require you to sign in to install, it is still possible to register computers that are normally kept permanently offline (such as those used in secure environments). Follow the regular install procedure until you get a message that says “having trouble connecting to the Internet.” At this point, click the link and follow the instructions on how to generate a response code using a separate Internet-enabled device. This code will be valid for 72 hours.

The first time you launch Lightroom, you will be shown a dialog asking you to select the country/region where you currently live. This is now required due to Google Maps usage in the Map module; the Google Maps usage terms prohibits its use in certain countries.

If it is absolutely necessary, you can carry out a super-clean upgrade. First, make an export copy of your current Lightroom catalog, launch Lightroom Classic CC to create a brand-new empty catalog, and then use File Import from Catalog to import the previous catalog and at the same time carry out a catalog upgrade. Just be aware if you choose to upgrade your Lightroom catalog using this upgrade method, you will lose any Publish Services data, because such data is not stored as part of the Lightroom catalog. So, if you have previously made extensive use of Publish Services in Lightroom, you will want to avoid using this method.

Current Lightroom Classic CC users will now find that the default option is to upgrade Lightroom Classic CC automatically. This means that as new updates are released—roughly every three months or so—Lightroom automatically downloads the new updates and installs them, overwriting the previous version. But the Lightroom updater system won’t overwrite an older, perpetual license version, such as Lightroom 6. It will be possible to change the default setting to manual version updates as before, or roll back to a previous dot release via the Creative Cloud app should you need to.

The default Library location for your Lightroom catalog is the username/Pictures folder (Mac), or the username/My Documents/My Pictures folder (PC). If you want to create a new catalog in a different location, you can do so by restarting Lightroom with the key (Mac) or the key (PC) held down during startup. This displays the Select Catalog dialog shown in Figure 1.5, where you can click the Create a New Catalog button to select the location to store a new Lightroom catalog. After you have successfully launched the program, go to the Lightroom menu (Mac) or the Edit menu (PC) and choose Preferences. This opens the General Preferences dialog shown in Figure 1.6, followed by the other preference sections shown in Figure 1.7 through 1.12.

Lightroom can currently use only a single GPU, so if your computer has more than one video card, this won’t offer any improvement (although the performance boost from using just one should be significant enough). For best results, the main requirement is that you have a compatible graphics card. You don’t necessarily have to have the fastest card to get optimum performance; a solid, midrange card can be just as effective as a high-end one. Also, if your system has a recent-generation Intel chip, this can make working in the Develop module faster. If you check out the Lightroom system info (Help System Info), look for an item called “Camera Raw SIMD optimization.” If your computer lists AVX2, then you should see an additional small improvement over AVX in terms of Develop module processing. Basically, the GPU is used for both the display preview management and the rendering (but only when Use Graphics Processor is enabled, of course), where different portions of the rendering can occur on the GPU and Central Processor Unit (CPU) simultaneously. The GPU processing is very fast, but the CPU work may take a little longer, which is why you may sometimes see a slight time lag in the on-screen rendering. But if you have AVX2, you will see a small extra speed boost to the CPU aspect of the processing.

The default location to download Lightroom CC/Lightroom mobile synced photos to is the Pictures/My Pictures folder. In the Location section you can specify an alternative location. Because many people prefer to use low-capacity SSD drives for their boot drives, I suggest the download location should ideally be on a large-capacity internal or external hard drive. Below that is an option to organize the imported subfolders by capture date and on the right is a menu of date format options you can select from. The Pending Sync Activity section provides an update of which files are currently being synced and tells you what is being uploaded or downloaded and from which source device the files are being downloaded. You can click on these links to be taken to the source files. If the syncing is only partially complete, you won’t be able to see the files of course, but you can at least check the source images filenames.

Once you start syncing files to Lightroom mobile, an All Synced Photographs collection item will then appear listed in the Catalog panel (Figure 1.15). This lets you view, at a glance, all photographs that have been synced with Lightroom CC/Lightroom mobile.

In the Collections panel, you will see a status icon appear next to collections that have been synced with Lightroom CC/Lightroom mobile. In Figure 1.16, the status icons show there are synced Collections. You can click a status icon to pop the dialog shown in Figure 1.17, where you can choose to stop syncing photos in that collection.

1. This shows the Identity Plate Editor after I selected the Personalized option. I then selected the “Use a styled text identity plate” option, so I could enter custom text, set the font type and font size, and use any font that was available on the computer. In the example shown here, I edited the text to show the full name for my business and set the font to Copperplate.

2. After I had configured a custom identity plate, I went to the Identity Plate Custom pull-down menu and chose Save As to save the settings as a new custom template design.

3. If you select the “Use a graphical identity plate” option instead, you can add an image logo by copying and pasting or dragging a PDF, JPEG, GIF, PNG, TIFF, or PSD image into the identity plate area (PSD files can be added via the Identity Plate Editor using the macOS version of Lightroom). The logo image you place here should not be more than 57 pixels tall and can contain transparent pixels. Graphical identity plates can also be used in Slideshow and Web module templates, but be warned that a 57-pixel-tall logo will be far too small for use in a print layout. For print work, you will probably want to create identity plate graphics that exceed the suggested 57-pixel limit and that are therefore big enough to print with. By clicking the Show Details button (circled in Step 1), you can also customize the appearance of the module selector by choosing an alternative font, which can be in any size you like. Lastly, if you click either of the little color swatch icons (circled), the system color picker opens, enabling you to edit the font colors for the active and nonactive modules that appear in the top panel.

4. These examples show how the top panel looked after I customized the identity plate with the styled text (top) and graphical (bottom) identity plates options.

As with any application, the main menu commands are located in the Lightroom menu bar at the top of the screen (Mac) or at the top of the application window (PC). If you are in absolute full-screen mode, the menu bar will be hidden, but you can reveal it by simply hovering over the top of the screen.

The top panel section contains the identity plate, which normally shows the Lightroom logo. But, as was shown on the previous pages, you can customize this via the Lightroom Identity Plate Setup menu. For example, you can replace this with your own name or add a company logo graphic. On the right, you have the module picker menu for selecting the Lightroom modules: Library, Develop, Map, Book, Slideshow, Print, or Web. You can use the F5 key to toggle showing and hiding the top panel (Figure 1.25).

The content area is the central section of the interface where you view whatever you are working on. In the Library module Grid view, you see the images displayed as thumbnails in a grid cell layout. In the Library module Loupe view and Develop module, the files are displayed at a Fit view or 1:1 scale size. In the Map module, the content area displays a Map view. In the other modules—Book, Slideshow, Print, and Web—you’ll see previews of how print or screen layouts will look.

Whenever you are in the Library module Grid view, the Filter bar can be expanded from the top of the content area. This allows you to carry out searches using a Text search, or search by rating or flag status using the Attribute section. Or, you can use the customizable panels in the Metadata filter section using various search criteria, such as a specific date, camera type, or lens type. You can use the key to display more than one Filter bar section at a time and use the key to toggle showing and hiding the Filter bar.

The Toolbar at the bottom is available in all of the Lightroom modules. The Toolbar options will vary according to which module you are in and can be customized when you are in the Library, Develop, or Map modules via the Toolbar options menu (circled). Use the key to toggle showing and hiding the Toolbar.

In the Library module, the left panel is mainly used for selecting the source files via the Catalog, Folders, Collections, or Publish Services panels. In the Develop module, it is used to display the Presets, Snapshots, and History panels; and in the remaining modules, it is mainly used for accessing collections and preset settings. For example, if you are working in the Print module, you can save custom print settings as presets, which can then be applied to other images. The individual panels can be expanded or collapsed by clicking the panel bar header. clicking a panel bar toggles expanding to show the contents of that panel only or expanding to show all panels. You can use the key to toggle showing and hiding both the left and right panels. You can also right-click the arrows for the left or right panels to access the context menu options. These let you determine the hide/show behavior when clicking to reveal the side panels.

The right panel section contains mostly panels that provide information about an image, the controls for adjusting an image, or the layout control settings. In the Library module, you can manage the metadata settings for the currently selected photos, and in the Develop module, you can apply image adjustments. In the Book, Slideshow, Print, and Web modules, the right panel controls govern the layout and output. As with the left panel, individual panels can be expanded or collapsed by clicking the panel bar header. clicking a panel bar toggles expanding to show the contents of that panel only or expanding to show all panels. You can also use the key (Mac) or key (PC) in combination with a keypad number (, etc.) to toggle opening and closing individual panels in the order they are listed from the top down.

The Filmstrip is located at the bottom of the Lightroom window. It displays thumbnails of all the images currently viewable in the Library, highlighting those that are currently selected. The Filmstrip thumbnails are accessible in all the other modules and therefore allow you access to individual images or sub-selections of images without your having to switch back to the Library module.

Downloadable Content:

thelightroombook.com