3

Tools Available within the Library Module

Lightroom's Library module is the foundation of a lot that happens when we work on our photographs. The Library module's design helps us to find and choose our best shots quickly and conveniently. With each new edit, the experience of using the Library module turns more organic and intuitive, allowing us to focus on the photographs without overthinking the tools that we are using. There is no one right way to use Lightroom for creating our edits. Each of us does photography differently, focusing on different topics, and has a different process. We also have a varying level of "trigger happy"; landscape photographers will approach editing their work differently to wedding photographers or a hobbyist collecting memories from family trips. The good news is that the Lightroom's Library module is built in a way that will speed up and simplify the editing process for any and every type of photographer, streamlining our methods and keeping it enjoyable.

In order to approach all of that in an intuitive way, we must learn how to move around the Library module freely and understand where everything is. When I say everything, I mean Lightroom Library's tools as well as all of our photographs and their locations within the Library as well as on our hard drives. We will do just that in the first part of this chapter, later learning more about keywording and metadata. We also need to know the tools to give us a good idea of how our final edits look, both as a part of a sequence and as singular photographs.

In the second part of this chapter, we will explore many different viewing and selection modes but also dip into developing our photographs with the Quick Develop panel (QDP), which will also give us a great teaser of Lightroom's capabilities when it comes to adjusting our photos. Without further ado, let the fun begin.

Figure 3.1 – The Library module

The main topics we'll cover in this chapter are as follows:

• An introduction to the Library module and its workspace
• Editing photographs – all the tools you'll ever need
• How I edit and my editing workflow

An introduction to the Library module and its workspace

We will start with the Library module's left side, which lists all our available photographs in their physical locations. By available, I mean all the pictures that we already imported into Lightroom.

Figure 3.2 A

Figure 3.2 B – Detail of the left side panel in Library Module

The left-side panel

This is where we will learn how to make our life easier and explore all the tools helping us to manage our collection, making sure everything is easy to find even after years of collecting.

Navigator

The first tool we have at our disposal is Navigator.

Figure 3.3 – A Navigator close-up with the FIT option chosen

This is a miniature version of the currently selected photograph. If we choose so in the preferences, Navigator will also always show the first photograph in each folder we are hovering over with the mouse cursor, which is handy when we skim over hundreds of folders. This is how to do it – Lightroom Classic > Preferences > Interface > Show photos in Navigator on mouseover. Preferences are also available with a keyboard shortcut, "⌘". With Navigator, we can choose how the currently selected photograph is displayed. We can do so by clicking the small up/down arrows to select the FIT/FILL option, the 100% view next to it, or the custom magnification level as a third option, which we can adjust with the small up/down arrows.

You might find Navigator handy and fitting for the way you work, but I personally don't use it and most of the time have this tab closed. All of the functions I just mentioned are accessible from different and, in my opinion, more convenient places when looking directly at and through photographs. We will get to these later.

Catalog

The next tab on the left side is the Catalog tab:

Figure 3.4 – The Catalog tab detail

Initially, if you are new to Lightroom, it will contain four options – All Photographs, All Synced Photographs, Quick Collection, and Previous Import. Once we export our photographs as a catalog, the contents of the last export will be visible at the bottom of the Catalog tab under the Previous Export as Catalog heading, but that's a detail to look at later; first, we will learn about the main four sections.

All Photographs

This function does precisely what it says. With one click, Lightroom will display thumbnails of all photographs we have so far imported into Lightroom, regardless of whether they are available on a computer's hard drive or unavailable because we store them on an external drive. The number next to it is the total number of photographs we currently have present in our Library. With a right-click, we can access additional functions of this option, which are in the order of appearance as follows:

• Import Photos and Videos: This will lead us to the menu we discussed in detail in Chapter 2, Bring It All In – Importing Photographs into Lightroom, so I won't go into any additional explanation – it's just another way to import our images.
• Import from Another Catalog: We only need this option if we have another catalog, other than the one we are using at the moment, and want to add images from it to the current one. It is an excellent function if we're going to merge separate catalogs into one at some stage, but as I mentioned in Chapter 2, Bring It All In – Importing Photographs into Lightroom, don't think about it until you really know your way around Lightroom and have a good reason to do it.
• Import a Photoshop Elements Catalog: If so far you used Photoshop Elements for working with your photographs, Lightroom will help you to easily transfer this work. To do this, go to Photoshop Elements > File > Manage Catalogs > Optimize. Once you complete this process, come back to Lightroom and choose the Import a Photoshop Elements Catalog option, and then follow the instructions on the screen. This is a one-off event, and once completed, you can continue to work on your photographs from within Lightroom.

Figure 3.5 – Right-clicking All Photographs

Quick Collection

Any images we view and work with can be added to the quick collection with the "B" keyboard shortcut as long as Quick Collection is our target collection. Choosing Quick Collection as the target collection can be done by right-clicking it and picking the third option from the list or with a keyboard shortcut, "⌥ ⇧ ⌘ B".

We have access to another two options after right-clicking – Save Quick Collection and Clear Quick Collection. With Save Quick Collection, we can create a collection (we will talk about collections in the next chapter) with all photographs that are currently present in the quick collection. Please keep in mind that if we add any photographs to the quick collection after using the Save Quick Collection option, they will not be automatically added to that saved collection.

Figure 3.6 – The small plus sign next to a collection means that it's a target collection

Previous Import

Here, we can always find images from our latest import. If you imported a set of photographs while going through the second chapter, this is where you will find all the images from that import. It's as simple as that, and there is no additional layer of functionality on top of this one.

Previous Export as Catalog

After we export a catalog, this is where we will find the contents of that latest export. You will notice that right-click gives a Remove This Temporary Collection option, which is how I keep it – there's no need for me to have a function that I rarely use. If you choose to remove this option, it will be back when you export any of your images as a catalog. Other than that, you will never have to think about it again.

You might ask whether there are any benefits to exporting a catalog. Yes. All functions within Lightroom can be beneficial; some are just not for everyone. Imagine this situation – you have an extensive edit to complete or want to work on your personal project, but you are going on a 2-week trip where you know you will have no access to the internet or, at most, just a patchy connection.

With a reliable connection, you can sync images to your cloud storage and access them via the Lightroom app on your mobile device – problem solved.

Without that connection, we can work around the problem by going to the folder/collection we want to take with us, exporting it as a collection, including the original files, and saving it on a memory card. Once done, we need to transfer this new catalog to a laptop with installed Lightroom, and voila – we can edit, including work on the original files. If space and speed are of utmost importance, then including only Smart Previews will be sufficient, especially if we will import an edited catalog back to our Library. As long as we don't change filenames and their location, and basically keep the file structure untouched, we can import from another catalog into our master Lightroom catalog, and we are all set. I know I'm digressing, but it's good to be aware of this functionality.

Figure 3.7 A

Figure 3.7 B

Figure 3.7 C – Exporting and importing a catalog

Folders

The third panel in this column is called Folders, and as you would expect, it is just that – a panel containing all the folders with images we have imported into Lightroom so far. This panel splits into different physical locations where we store our pictures. In my case, it's the hard drive of my computer, Drobo storage (which I use as my primary backup), and two virtual folders that contain photographs and automatically sync pictures from my phone via the Lightroom mobile app. When we open any of the drive's tabs, we can see only folders where our photographs are. We can expand this view by right-clicking any folder and choosing Show Parent Folder. We undo this by right-clicking again and selecting Hide This Parent.

Figure 3.8 – Hide This Parent and Show Parent Folder

The right-side panel

The Collections panel is a whole thing in itself, and we will talk about it (and the Folders panel) in the next chapter. Right now, we will jump across the screen to the right side of our display, which in its default state starts with the histogram. I will digress here and explain it simply for those who are not too familiar with the concept of histograms.

Histogram

Histograms are graphic representations of data, and in the case of Lightroom, the histogram represents the intensity of tones from dark to bright.

Figure 3.9 – Histogram examples

On the left side of the chart are blacks and shadows going through mid-tones in the middle to highlights and whites located on the right-most edge – please have a look at Figure 3.08 to see two sample histograms. There are 256 levels from left to right, 0 representing black (shadow clipping) and 255 representing white (highlight clipping). The taller the chart at any of the levels, the more we have pixels at that particular intensity. If the graph's height is more than 0 on the left-most or right-most edge, it means that we have unrecoverable details in one or both of these areas. The more darker tones we have in our selected photograph, the more our histogram will veer to the left, and the opposite applies to the lighter tones. The same principle of intensity applies to the RGB channels, represented by their respective colors. Note the visual hint, with the graph changing from darker to lighter from left to right.

Figure 3.10 – Left – clipped shadows and right – clipped highlights

Quick Develop panel

This panel contains a simplified version of the Develop module, giving us the ability to make small changes "on the fly" while editing our current batch of photographs– all without the need to go to the Develop module.

Figure 3.11 – The Quick Develop panel with all the tabs closed

The QDP is divided into three separate tabs, each offering a different set of functions – Saved Preset, White Balance, and Tone Control. The QDP tabs are independent of each other, and we can open or close them separately to suit our needs and, most of all, keep the workspace uncluttered. This way, we can focus on the photographs, not on everything around them. Let's take a look at each of the tabs in the QDP and what they contain:

Figure 3.12 – The Quick Develop Panel with all the tabs opened

Saved Preset

When we start working with Lightroom, this section will contain only a handful of default presets, but over time, we can save our own, buy custom-made presets on the internet, swap them with friends, and even find some really cool free stuff if we look around. Clicking on the pop-up menu of Saved Preset allows us to apply any preset that we have to the currently viewed photograph, and if we are working in Grid View, then that preset will apply to all highlighted photos. Using presets in this way allows us to see how our edit might look after we develop it and is an opportunity to try something "on the fly" while we are still choosing our favorites. We can quickly check out an idea without breaking out of editing mode by going into the Develop module and changing the framing with Crop Ratio or having a glance at how our photo might look in black and white:

• Crop Ratio: If we want to check how the photos will work as a square, make sure that the series of portraits will fit nicely into Instagram's 8x10 format, or whether the landscape will look good in the CinemaScope aspect ratio, this function will help us do it. Again, if we are viewing in Grid View, then the chosen aspect ratio will apply to all highlighted photographs.
• Treatment: This offers just two choices but profound ones – color or black and white. With this function, you can quickly switch it here and immediately find out whether the series or single you are looking at will work well in timeless black and white.

White Balance

We are slowly getting into developing our photographs. If you don't shoot with the RAW file format, the possibility to tweak the white balance post-shoot is one of the good reasons to start. The top option is a drop-down menu, and the next two start a repeated pattern for all remaining tools in the QDP. Singular arrows pointing left and right change settings by 1/3 of a stop, in the case of white balance; the left arrow will make the photo cooler and the right arrow warmer, respectively decreasing and increasing the light temperature in Kelvin units. We can also deal with the balance of the tint with the magenta versus cyan slider – aka the struggle between too much green versus too much pink. The double arrow is where things get interesting, as we can adjust settings by a full stop; see Figure 3.12.

Tone Control

This is the last tab in the QDP, and it gives us a real teaser of what we can expect in the Develop module. Just as with the White Balance tool, with single arrows, we can adjust settings in 1/3 of a stop and with double arrows in full-stop increments.

Settings in the Develop module will reflect all the changes we will make in the QDP, and all sliders, which replace the arrow buttons, will be moved to reflect the changes we made. All of the changes we made in QDP will also appear in the develop history in the Develop module.

As with a few other things earlier – let's not get ahead of ourselves; there is just so much interlinked functionality in Lightroom that it's hard not to mention specific things along the way.

The Reset All button at the bottom of the QDP will reset settings for all three tabs, reverting our photograph(s) to their original state. At the top of this tab, we can also try the Auto settings button. Its accuracy, however, is highly dependent on the type of photograph we are trying to adjust. It will work great on evenly lit photographs but usually get it wrong for tricky light or high-contrast work. See for yourself; try it on a few entirely different photos, and remember – everything happening within Lightroom is a non-destructive process, and Lightroom will never alter our original pictures.

We can always click on Reset All and return to the beginning. Note that holding the "⌥" button will change the Clarity and Vibrance tools to Sharpening and Saturation respectively. Also, collapsing the QDP tabs doesn't close it completely. We always have access to the presets, white balance presets, auto/manual exposure, Clarity/Sharpening, and Vibrance/Saturation controlled with the "⌥ (Alt)" button.

Keywording

Keywords are one of the foundations of an easily searchable library. When I started my adventure with Lightroom, and even with photography in general, it was hard for me to get a perspective on how and where it might progress. Some 10 years and 500,000 photographs later (about 5 years ago), I found my collection in a bit of a mess, spread across multiple hard drives, separate catalogs, and hundreds of DVDs. When I started compiling a better-organized body out of it and consolidating everything into one catalog, I realized how badly a lot of what I had was keyworded. So, if you can afford the time, keyword your photographs carefully; it will come in very handy with many tasks within Lightroom.

Figure 3.13 – The Keywording panel with all the tabs closed

Keyword Tags

Starting with the pop-up menu next to Keyword Tags, we have three options after we click on it – Enter Keywords, Keywords & Containing Keywords, and Will Export.

Figure 3.14 – Keyword Tags

Enter Keywords is an easy concept – we write keywords, which I think about as tags, and separate them by commas to create separate keywords. There is another trick you can use for your keywording, which is creating keyword hierarchies, and you can do this by separating keywords with greater than (">") and less than ("<") symbols. Whatever keyword is at the open end of the symbol will be the master keyword for the other one. The same rule will apply if you use the vertical bar (|) after a keyword. Suppose you write the keywords dead zoo>bird taxidermy, bird taxidermy<dead zoo, and dead zoo|bird taxidermy; here, bird taxidermy will be nested below the dead zoo keyword in the following keyword list. I can see how this might be beneficial for some of you, and for certain types of work, it might be a great time saver down the line, but I don't use it too often and only for specific projects. You can check your hierarchies by choosing Keywords & Containing Keywords or going to the keyword list in the next panel.

Figure 3.15 A

Figure 3.15 B – Example of nested keywords

Will Export simply presents all keywords, which will be written into pictures' metadata upon export if we choose to do so in the export settings. We will learn all about the exporting process in Chapter 8, Get Them All Out – Using the Print and Book Modules.

Keyword Suggestions

This selection of nine keywords is based on several different criteria such as other keywords already associated with the photograph, photographs captured at a similar space and time, and possibly others, as shown here:

Figure 3.16 – Keyword Suggestions

I could never pinpoint exactly how this works, and Adobe stays vague about it too. I find this function a hit/miss feature. Sometimes, it works great and lists exactly what we need; sometimes, it's just hilarious trying to be helpful, especially when it has no reference points in other keywords. I think about it as a tool that's always there; I keep it open but rarely use it. It's quite different from the following one.

Keyword Set

This is where keywording becomes more straightforward, especially when we are not used to doing it. The pop-up menu offers a few helpful options, as shown here:

Figure 3.17 – Keyword Set

In my experience, there is a lot that we can do with nine keywords, but what's great about this list is the option to use all nine of these keywords with simple keyboard shortcuts. Once we press the "⌥" key, next to each keyword appears a number from one to nine. When we press any number while holding the "⌥" key, we assign the keyword next to that number to our chosen photo or a set of images. If you think that is an excellent functionality, you will like the following paragraph even more.

When we click on Recent Keywords, a pop-up menu will open, giving us access to create our custom lists of nine keywords with the same keyboard shortcuts assigned to them. Whatever type of edit we might be working on will have a related set of keywords at our fingertips. We only need to choose Edit Set…, add up to nine keywords that we need to work on, pick Save Current Settings as New Preset… from the preset list above, choose an easy-to-decipher title, and we are all set. As a default, we have three lists at our disposal called Outdoor Photography, Portrait Photography, and Wedding Photography. Even if we never worked extensively with keywords, these should give us a pretty good idea of how we might start approaching the making of our lists. I create them as required and clean up afterward using the Restore Default Presets option.

Figure 3.18 – Customizable keyword sets

Keyword List

One more function we have at our disposal to help us with keyword management and also add a powerful keyword-based search engine is Keyword List, a list of all keywords we have ever used in our Library. Keywords that we don't have assigned to any photographs anymore will also be visible on that list and available for us to use again in another way. By ticking the box on the left side of each keyword in the keyword list, we assign that keyword to the currently chosen photograph (or a group of photographs). As for the search engine, once we hover over a keyword that we assigned to at least one shot, we will notice a small arrow appearing on the right side of that keyword. Clicking on the arrow will open, in the Library view, all the photographs with that keyword. It might not seem that powerful at first sight, but imagine that you have photographed your dog for 15 years and want to find all of the photos that include your friend across all the different created folders and drives over all of these years. If we were diligent enough to keyword his name along the way, then with a single click of a button, all of them will appear in front of us. Just think about the options.

At the top of the keyword list, we have a very efficient filter to search for any keywords. Once we start typing, Lightroom will filter out from the keyword list any keywords that do not match the combination of letters we just typed. As we go through the filter keywords, please also note a small arrow on the right side. Once we click on it, a small three-word sub-menu will appear, listing All, People, and Other:

• All is a default setting, listing all the keywords we have ever created (and not deleted) in Lightroom.
• People limits the list of keywords to people whom we keyworded using the People view (which we will come back to in a few paragraphs).
• Other, which covers the All keywords except confirmed people.

Figure 3.19 – Keyword List | People

Metadata

All of the core metadata sits within EXIF and IPTC. I always took these for granted and used them whenever needed without giving them a second thought, but for clarity, let me briefly explain what both of these are and dive into a few other available settings.

EXIF is an abbreviation of Exchangeable Image File Format and contains all information generated by our cameras. EXIF includes the camera model, photograph creation date, exposure mode, lens used, aperture, and focal length, and takes into account and calculates a 35mm equivalent for all crop sensors. It's a great tool when we want to experiment with manual settings, serving as a journal of all the different settings we tried, displaying them next to the effects of our experimentations. We can also display a specific portion of these settings over the viewed photographs, both in Loupe View and Grid View. One extra tip to take from this – when we are hovering over the metadata in this panel, some of it will become highlighted (most of these lines are also represented by an arrow on the right side of them). When we click on the highlighted setting, Lightroom will filter the currently viewed selection of photographs using the value we clicked – that is, if we are browsing through our pictures and our attention is caught by a photo made with a specific lens, we can click on the Lens field and Lightroom will filter for all images made with that lens.

IPTC means International Press Telecommunications Council, and it is a format developed by "old media" to organize the process of sharing information. The IPTC standard was adopted by "new media" in a more or less unchanged form, and search engines widely use it. Any field that you hover over will slightly brighten up, which means you can edit its contents. We can create a preset with all copyright information that we want to have included with our photographs and either sync it here in Grid View or apply it when importing our photos. Here is how it's done.

To create a metadata-related preset, click on the pop-up Preset menu in the Metadata Panel, choose Edit Presets, fill in any information you want, click Done, and save the changes as a new preset:

Figure 3.20 – Creating a metadata preset

In Grid View (the "G" keyboard shortcut), click on one of your currently visible photographs and then choose all of them ("⌘A"). Once we highlight all the photos, we need to select Sync Metadata… and ensure that the image we have highlighted and synced with has all the required details filled in. Alternatively, you can also choose one of the presets you created and apply it to all the selected photographs.

Figure 3.21 – Sync Metadata…, available on a right-click

Note

We'll learn more about Grid View and different view types in the Getting to know the toolbar section.

We can also apply our newly created presets while working in the import dialog, which we covered in the previous chapter. In the right-side panel, make sure you choose Apply During Import > Metadata, and from there, your chosen preset will stay selected as default for all your imports until you decide to change it.

The field I use the most in the Metadata panel is Large Caption. Anything we write here will populate as a caption on most websites, and when we send it to a newspaper or magazine, they will be able to see it as a caption.

Figure 3.22 – The Large Caption field

Comments

The very last panel here is Comments, but you can't use it from within Lightroom. It will show comments that other users write on your photographs if you sync them and share collections via Lightroom Mobile. I honestly never saw this feature being used by anyone.

It feels like we've had a very long introduction without mentioning the crucial part of this chapter, editing our work, but before that, here's just one last tip regarding work with panels in general. When we click on any tab in the side panels, we will activate a pop-up menu to choose which tabs are visible, creating a workspace to suit us better. Any tabs can be turned on or off by clicking on them. The Show All option can also restore them. My favorite option here is Solo Mode – when enabled, only one tab remains open at a time; when we click on any other tab to open it, the previously active tab will close. This function works in all panels, and it comes in handy if we switch between tabs often and don't want to keep scrolling up and down all the time.

Figure 3.23 – Solo Mode

Now that we have a good idea of the panels available in the Library module and their functions, we are now ready to start editing our work.

Editing photographs – all the tools you'll ever need

I might owe you an explanation. I know that some of you think about editing in terms of picture postproduction and retouching. I come from a school of thought where "to create an edit" is to choose the best photographs from a created body of work and sequence them, especially if they will not be presented in chronological order. However, the most important thing is to sift through everything to make a selection that is interesting to look through and hopefully leaves the viewer hungry for more. Anything to do with postproduction or retouching, I will always call developing photos, which is appropriate for the Lightroom Develop module. I hope this makes things a bit clearer.

We have at our disposal a great variety of tools to suit any type of workflow, but first, let's make our workspace look the way we want.

Getting to know the toolbar

We will start with the toolbar at the bottom of the Library window and activate all available tools. To do that, we need to click on the down-pointing arrow and choose, one by one, all the unchecked options. These tools will now be visible on the left, each separated by a vertical bar.

Figure 3.24 – The toolbar – all tools activated

Starting on the left, we can choose between the available view modes.

Note that when you hover over each view for a moment, it will display the tool's name and, what's even more critical, a keyboard shortcut for that tool. This mouseover to see the tool's name and its potentially associated keyboard shortcut works across all Lightroom tools. Try to remember this when using Lightroom. Sometimes, these shortcuts are just great as reminders. Sometimes, we might learn about a shortcut that we wished existed and were not aware of, but let's get back to the View Modes.

Grid View

This is where we can view our images as, well, a grid.

Figure 3.25 – The Library in Grid View mode – all panels collapsed

It's an entirely customizable grid too. First and foremost, we can change the size of viewed thumbnails with the slider on the right of our toolbar. We can do the same using the "+" and "-" keyboard shortcuts to increase and decrease the size of thumbnails. As we already mentioned in the introduction, all panels can be collapsed, and we can do this in a few ways:

1. We can click on the small arrows on the side of each panel.
2. We can press "TAB" on the keyboard to collapse/open both side panels.
3. We can press "Shift TAB" to collapse/open all panels.
4. We can press "T" to show/hide the toolbar.
5. Finally, we can press "" to show/hide the Library Filter bar on top of our Grid View.

Hiding/collapsing everything gives us a very clean workspace that might become a default view for editing once you get to know the basic keyboard shortcuts. It is for me, with various tweaks, depending on what I edit at any particular time.

Figure 3.26 – The Library in Grid View mode – all panels opened

The next step is understanding what information we can display over each photograph in Grid View. We have three customizable views to choose from – Compact Cells, Expanded Cells, and what I call Clean Cells (Adobe does not call it anything):

• Compact Cells give us little information, but what we can choose is quite flexible. Additionally, we have the availability of a large index number at the top-left corner of each cell.
• Expanded Cells provides much more information, and we can adjust the type of displayed information by clicking directly on different info fields in Grid View. I encourage you to play around with choosing various options that you might think will work for you. The settings I use as default are Capture Date/Time, File Name, and Common Photo.

This way, I get a quick overview of when I made a picture, what lens I was using, and my settings for the photo. The filename is always handy and is a quick reference for finding photographs at a later stage; as you possibly noticed, I have a habit of not renaming any photos and always keeping them under their original names. When we want to reset to defaults, we can go to Library View Options and click on Restore Defaults.

• Clean Cells – this is just the photo with the cell not containing any information. If I can get away with it and don't need any info, I just go through the edit visually and use this view. Nothing on the screen draws my attention away from the photographs, and I can focus just on the pictures.

Figure 3.27 – Settings from left to right – Compact Cells, Expanded Cells, and Clean Cells

To manage any of the preceding cell views, we need to right-click on any photograph and choose View Options... from the very bottom of the appearing menu, go to View > View Options, or click the "⌘ + J" shortcut.

We can cycle through these three views with a shortcut, "J".

Figure 3.28 – The author's preferences for Grid View

Loupe View

The next view in the toolbar is Loupe View.

Figure 3.29 – Loupe View – all panels open

We can enter Loupe View by clicking on it in our toolbar in the following ways:

• With the "E" keyboard shortcut
• Hitting "Enter", hitting the space bar choosing View > Toggle Loupe View, or choosing View > Loupe
• By just double-clicking on any photo in Grid View

Since I discovered keyboard shortcuts, I always use "E" or double-click on the image, but Lightroom can accommodate various approaches and habits, as you can see. Using "E" allows entering Loupe View from any place within Lightroom. As you can imagine, Loupe View can also present vital information about the photograph we are viewing. When we press "I", it does so. Pressing that shortcut again will cycle to the second set of info, and on the third keypress, it will disappear again. We can choose what information is displayed in the same way as in Grid View by going to View > View Options or pressing "⌘ + J". Once we are in Loupe View, we can zoom in on any area of the photograph. Note that our cursor became a small loupe. Once we click anywhere on a picture, we will be zooming it to 100% of its size. We can change that by adjusting the value with the zoom slider located on our toolbar. When we click on the photo again, it will return to its default size, fitting the view area.

Compare View ("C")

With this view, we can compare two photographs side by side, as shown here:

Figure 3.30 – Compare View with the side panels collapsed

Once you enter this mode, Lightroom will automatically assign the currently viewed photograph as Select and another one as Candidate. The picture we can actively change has a thin white frame around it, which by default is around the photo marked as Select. We can change the active photograph to a different one by clicking on any other photograph in our Filmstrip. Note that using left and right arrows will not change the Select photo but instead the Candidate photo – this is to help us choose the best photographs in a series.

While in Compare View, we can zoom in on both images simultaneously or separately; we control this by linking and unlinking focus with a small lock icon on the toolbar. When the photographs are not linked, and we would like to see the same zoomed area on Select and Candidate, we click Sync, and this will zoom to the same area which we are viewing without changing the Link Focus setting. The following tools after the zoom settings are Swap and Make Select.

The swap will exchange Select and Candidate, while Make Select will upgrade our current Candidate to the status of Select and choose the following available photograph as Candidate. Both sections, Select and Candidate, have all necessary rating tools underneath them, including flags, stars, and color labels. Once we are finished with this Compare View, we can either click Done or press "C" to exit to Loupe View. We can also use any other keyboard shortcut and jump to a different panel or different module.

Survey View ("N")

This is also a tool for comparing photographs, but not only can we choose our favorites among a selection of pictures; we can also change their sequencing by manually moving around our photographs.

Figure 3.31 – Survey View with the side panels collapsed

Survey View works even with just one photo, and there is an upper limit on how many photos we can choose for Survey View, but it's a large number, dependent on the screen size. For me, this is the ultimate tool for choosing photos that fit in a series. In the name of "less is more," I always try to edit out any photos that are not, in my opinion, simply the best. I use Survey View more often than Compare View, even for choosing from a series of similar photographs. I find it easier to pick one of four or five than constantly focusing on just two and picking the better one. Survey View is also handy for comparing various virtual copies, but we will get to that in the chapter about the Develop module. As with other tools in Lightroom, this view supports star rating, flagging, and color labels. What I like the most about this view is that we can shuffle photographs around and see how they look next to each other.

People ("O")

When we activate People View, Lightroom will open a new tool and start the process of recognizing faces on all photographs in the location we are currently viewing (a folder, a collection, all photographs, and so on).

Figure 3.32 – A People View example with opened panels

If we choose in Catalog Setting ("⌥⌘,") Metadata > Automatically detect faces in all photos, then People View will be populated with Lightroom's best guesses. I say best guesses, as sometimes Lightroom's AI's attempts are hilarious or simply odd, such as a road sign or a piece of fabric; sometimes, it will just be completely wrong and guess the wrong person. It's an interesting feature, especially if your photographs are full of faces which you want to be all clearly defined and searchable. I'm experimenting mostly with family photographs at the moment and with varying levels of success, but the more I use People View, the more I like it. I urge you to try it, especially if you are just starting your journey with Lightroom.

Painter

Imagine a spray can that you can load with whatever you want – Painter is a realization of that idea within Lightroom. To turn on the Painter tool, we need to click the spray can icon or use the "⌥⌘K" shortcut. This will open a menu with the list of available "paints."

Figure 3.33 – The Painter feature turned on with a custom keyword set in use

First and foremost is the keywording paint, which I use most often. To work with keywords in Painter mode, I make my thumbnails very small but large enough to recognize the person, object, or anything else that I want to assign a keyword on each photograph, and I start spraying. Just as with an actual spray can, as long as we hold the mouse button down as we move across pictures, we will be assigning our chosen keyword to each of the pictures we go over. The same principle applies to spraying pictures with labels, settings, rotations, and so on. To disable Painter mode, we simply "put the can back from where we took it" by clicking the empty gray circle, where we activated the Painter tool on the toolbar, or by pressing Esc. We can also temporarily activate Painter mode by holding "⇧⌥" – this will change our cursor into a spray can, allowing us to paint with the most recently used settings.

Sorting

I think that of all the available tools in Lightroom, this is the one that does not require explanation. The letters A>Z or Z>A sort by ascending or descending, and a pop-up menu provides us with a plethora of options.

Figure 3.34 – Sorting – descending and ascending on the left, and the available fields to sort on the right

Flagging

We have a choice of three flag statuses – Flagged ("P"), Rejected ("X"), and Unflagged; two of them are available here as buttons, and not choosing any of them leaves a photograph with the Unflagged status. As a default, all photographs have the Unflagged status.

Figure 3.35 – Flags – pick (P) and reject (X)

We can filter our Library for all three statuses, separately and in combinations, and there are many ways to use the flagging system:

• Example 1 – After we import all images and we need to send out a few samples, we can quickly skim through all the imported photographs, assigning a few the Flagged status with the "P" keyboard shortcut, which is easy to remember with the mnemonic pick this photo.
• Example 2 – After we create the final edit and send samples to our client, they might come back with a choice of five photos they would like to see in black and white. We can quickly locate the photographs in question in that scenario, filtering for their filenames and marking them as Flagged.
• Example 3 – When we are working on an edit, we can mark all out-of-focus, closed-eyes, and unusable pictures as Rejected with the "X" keyboard shortcut (as a mnemonic, think about "crossing" them out and checking them for deletion). Once we are done, we can filter the folder we are working on for Rejected and delete all the filtered photos.

Rating – stars (0–5).

The star rating is probably the tool I use most often, not counting the Develop module, of course. From complete amateurs to professional photographers, everyone faces the same problem – out of all the photographs I took today (during the event, concert, hike, holidays, project, and so on), which ones are the best and good enough to show my client? The star rating helps us with that, and I'll show you how I do it in practice later on in this chapter. Each photograph in Lightroom has a default rating of 0 stars. By clicking on a toolbar star, we apply a rating of that many stars; they add up as we go left, and so the first star is one, and the last one is five.

Figure 3.36 – The star rating tool set to four stars

To do this with keyboard shortcuts, we can simply use digits "1" through "5" on our keyboard to do the same. When in Grid View, all selected photographs will receive a star rating, and it's a technical fact worth remembering. I made a mess a few times when I started my journey with Lightroom, applying a rating to the whole folder without noticing it after spending a few hours rating and flagging everything. We can always use "Ctrl + Z" to undo the last edit (or many of them; keep pressing), but we can't do it after closing Lightroom so remember that a rating will always apply to all selected photographs when we are in Grid View. When we use Loupe View or Survey View, only the currently viewed photo will receive the rating (or flag/color label for that matter), even if we have multiple photographs selected.

Color Label (6–9)

This is another way to distinguish a selection of photographs, this time with color labels. To use it, we can either click on the five different colorful squares in our toolbar or use numbers on the keyboard. Numbers 6 through to 9 represent colors in the same order as they appear in the toolbar.

Figure 3.37 A

Figure 3.37 B – Images showing the Color Label tool set to Yellow and right-click to set the color label

Unfortunately, there is no keyboard shortcut for the purple label. The only way to apply purple is by choosing one of the squares, going to the photo > Set Color Label > Purple, or clicking on the photo and choosing Set Color Label > Purple. We can remove applied color labels by using toolbar colors or the same keyboard shortcut. All numbers toggle an assigned color on/off. Remember when we looked at View Options a few pages ago ("⌘ + J")? One of the available options to pick was Tint grid cells with label colors – with this option enabled, all cells will be colored with an assigned color and, when selected, have a thin frame in the same color around the photograph.

Rotate

You can rotate the picture counterclockwise or clockwise. You can do this by either clicking on corresponding arrows or with a keyboard shortcut – "⇧]" for counterclockwise and "⇧[" for clockwise.

Figure 3.38 – The Rotate, Navigate, and Impromptu Slideshow tools

You can also do this in Grid View by clicking on one of the corresponding arrows in the bottom-left and bottom-right corners of each photo cell. As you can imagine, you can also access this function by choosing Photo > Rotate Left (counterclockwise) and Photo > Rotate Right (clockwise). As with everything else in the Library module, if we have more than one photograph selected while in Grid View, we will be applying the chosen setting to all of the selected photographs.

Navigate

Left is forward and right is back, just like our keyboard arrows. But we already knew that...

Impromptu Slideshow

When we click this arrow, Lightroom will render and play an impromptu slideshow, starting with the currently selected photograph. This slideshow will use settings we have picked in the Slideshow module, and if this is the first time we are using it, they will be default Lightroom settings. We can also start this impromptu slideshow at any time by using the "Enter" and "Esc" keyboard shortcut to stop it.

Zoom

While in Loupe View, with "E", we can use the Zoom function, which can zoom in as far as 1600%. We can either click anywhere on our photograph to zoom into 100% detail, use the "Z" shortcut, or use the slider directly.

Figure 3.39 – The Zoom tool in Loupe View

After we press "Z" to zoom into 100%, adjust the zoom level to any value other than 100%, and press "Z" to zoom out. Next time we press "Z", Lightroom will use the adjusted zoom setting. We can reset the setting to 100% by double-clicking on the Zoom slider's arrow.

Draw Face Region

Activating this function will allow us to associate a face with a name. If you didn't activate Automatic Detection of Faces in Catalog Settings ("⌥⌘"), then you might want to assign names to some faces within your Library manually.

Figure 3.40 – The Draw Face Region tool activated and ready for name input

These names will now be accessible for search functions and visible in the panel on the right in Keyword List > People.

Grid (not to be confused with Grid View)

This function overlays a grid over our selected photograph, and we can adjust its density with the Grid slider. We can also hold the "⌘" key to access a small menu that will appear on top of our selected photo.

Figure 3.41 – The Grid Overlay tool activated

By left-clicking on the size or opacity words, we can move left and right to change the grid size (density) and opacity.

Thumbnails

While we are in Grid View, the aforementioned three options are unavailable (Zoom, Draw Face Region, and Grid will be unavailable). They are replaced by the Thumbnail Size slider, which we can move left and right to adjust the size of displayed thumbnails to our heart's content.

Figure 3.42 A

Figure 3.42 B – The smallest and largest possible thumbnails

Getting to know the Filmstrip toolbar

The next available toolbar is under the one we just learned about. It runs over the whole length of the Filmstrip, and it is available in the same form within each module, being an integral part of the Filmstrip. This toolbar contains some of the most valuable tools for making edits.

Figure 3.43 – The Filmstrip toolbar

The first tool on the left is for managing additional displays – there will be more about it in Chapter 10, Final Notes and Summary.

The next button opens Grid View – here, it's called Library Grid. The following two arrows are forward and backward and only work for locations, so we can jump there and back between folders, collections, and so on.

Source Location is a set of valuable information about what we are viewing. It shows us the following:

• The type and name of the location we are currently looking at
• The total number of items in this location and the number of images displayed after we applied any filters
• The count of presently selected images
• The filename of the now highlighted image (if we hover over other photos in the Filmstrip, then this will be the name of whichever photograph we are hovering over)

Figure 3.44 – Source Location

We can click anywhere on this toolbar, as far as the word Filter, to open a handy location sub-menu.

Figure 3.45 – Source location sub-menu

The first set of locations is always the same and provides us further access to a few handy default locations and collections that we usually overlook. With All Sync Errors we can check for any issues we might have with Sync. Once in a while, something will get stuck for various reasons, and here is always a good place to start our investigation. In case of an unknown failure, we can go to Lightroom Classic > Preferences (or "⌘") > Lightroom Sync to try to figure it out, or reset Sync by pressing "⌥" and choosing Rebuild Sync Data.

The second set is what makes this sub-menu worthwhile, in my opinion – Favorite Sources. We can add to this list and easily remove from it a shortcut to any location within Lightroom we want. To do this, we must go to the location we would like to have on this list and choose the Add to Favorites option in the relevant menu. If the location is already referenced in Favorites Sources, that menu position will change to Remove from Favorites.

The third and last set is Recent Sources, which doesn't need an introduction. It is a list of our 12 most recently visited locations – we can clear it in the following, the last part of this menu.

Filters

Finally we are going to dive into Filters! Filters are accessible from two places. The first is this toolbar we are currently discussing, and this is my go-to filter selection for everyday work. We must fire up the second filter bar for a deeper kind of digging – it is located just above the photographs while in Grid View mode; we will get to that in a couple of paragraphs.

Figure 3.46 – Toolbar filters

Filters on this tab are in the same order as they appear in the toolbar above it, which is initially confusing. I remember clicking on rating and wondering why it filters images, or maybe it was the other way around. One filter that doesn't have a tool equivalent is Filter based on edit status, which allows us to look for photographs that we already worked on in the Develop module or original, unedited files.

Figure 3.47 – The Filter tool based on edit status

We can combine all filters on this tab with each other. When we choose multiple conditions, then all conditions will have to be met for Lightroom to display a photograph – that is, if we select Flagged Photos and two stats, then Lightroom will display only photographs that meet both these conditions.

The only slight variation is with the color labels – when we choose one color label, Lightroom will only display photographs with that color label. When we choose more than one color label, then Lightroom will display all photographs with either color.

Figure 3.48 – The toolbar filter enabled for images with a rating equal to or greater than two stars and a red, yellow, or blue label

Filters based on a flag, rating, and color are usually enough for any day-to-day work, but if we want to dig deeper, there is an absolute mine of information in the filter bar above our Library. We can switch it on by choosing one of the few default modes available in the pop-up menu next to the filters we just mentioned or choosing one of the modes in the filter Bar itself. If you can't see the filter bar with the Text, Attribute, Metadata, and None words, make sure that you are in Grid View, and if it's still not there, press "" on your keyboard – it's the shortcut to toggle the visibility of the filter Bar on and off.

Figure 3.49 – The filter Bar on top of our Library

Before we jump to the filter bar, note a small toggle at the very end of this row – it's an on/off switch for filters, and when turned on, it will apply the latest filter setting we used.

Figure 3.50 – The filter on/off toggle switch and the filter bar tools view

The filter bar offers four categories to choose from, and they can all be combined and are all visible in the middle of this bar. At the end of the bar, we can access the same pop-up menu that is on the Filmstrip toolbar, and lastly, we have a lock icon – when it's opened, the filter will switch off when we will change sources, and when locked, filters will not be disabled when we change sources.

Text

This field allows us to search for any string of letters and numbers within our photographs' data. Here is a good way to start if it's a filename, keyword, comment, or EXIF detail, as shown here:

Figure 3.51 A

Figure 3.51 B – Setting pop-up menus available from the filter bar

From the first menu, we can choose which parts of data we want Lightroom to crawl; the second menu allows us to specify conditions. The more specific we can be, the faster we will receive the results – that is, if we look for a string of digits in any searchable field, we will receive results with items pulled from keywords, EXIF, IPTS, locations, and so on. For example, 1,000 can be part of a filename, focal length, ISO, shutter speed, or detail of the name of our camera. If we, however, specify that we want to look for the same string just in the filename, the results will include only photographs with filenames that contain the searched-for string.

Attribute

This part of the Library Filter matches almost precisely the content of the Filmstrip Filter with the addition of the Kind function, which will allow us to display three "top-level" kinds of files – master photos, virtual copies, and videos – separately or in any combination.

Figure 3.52 A – The filter for the three types of files to be displayed – left to right – master photos, virtual copies, and videos

Metadata

This filter gives us the most impressive set of possibilities, and we can add up to eight different queries, one per column, when using it. The top of each column always has two switches, one in each corner:

Figure 3.53 – Metadata filters turned on with maximum columns and no filters enabled

The top left gives us a choice of all available filters we can apply, while the right is responsible for adding and removing columns. In the case of the date, the right switch allows us to choose sort order and view type; the hierarchical view shows all the top-level folders we can open, and flat view, which shows only the folders containing actual photographs.

Figure 3.54 - Hierarchical and flat view examples of the same selection

Filtered results are displayed on an "and" basis, meaning that results will be narrowed down with each column, starting on the left. For example, if we have a date as our first column and click on a date within it, all the following columns' results will narrow them down to only show results from the chosen date. Similarly, if we, for example, select Lens as our first column and pick one, then all following columns will narrow down their search results to only show images made with that lens, and so on. One thing to remember is that picking different results to be displayed in any of the columns will do the following:

• Reset all results in columns on the left side.
• Filter results in the columns on the right to reflect the new query.

Again, we can combine all three filters. Any active filter will have its name highlighted. We can deactivate all filters by clicking None.

How I edit

They say, "lead by example," so the following sections are some examples of my editing workflow.

The big one – editing a large selection of photographs

Here is a system which I use to approach large edits, especially when I need to work fast, there are many images, and I don't have time to dilly dally:

1. After importing a new set of photographs, I quickly run through them in Loupe View and mark as rejected any unusable photos.

This action not only allows me to prepare a reasonably clean collection to work with, but it is also an opportunity to skim through the whole body of images. I can see anything that stands out, and these "standout" images will get five stars straight away. It needs to be an organic process at this stage, without too much thinking involved. At this stage, I would be working primarily in Grid View, sporadically turning on Loupe View, confirming treasures and rubbish alike.

2. Once that's done, I will run through the photographs again, one by one, and mark anything vaguely interesting with one star. At this stage, it's still a very intuitive process – that is, suppose I have a burst series of 5, 10, or even more images, and while clicking through them, most seem good. In that case, I will mark all of them as one star and worry about it later; this is all about a gut feeling and simply choosing images that might be candidates for the final selection.

After this second stage, I do something that might feel counterintuitive for some of you, but here it is anyway.

3. I filter for all of the photos marked with one star, go to Grid View and mark them all as two stars, and then I filter through for the two star-rated photos and get rid of any weaker images by giving them one star.

By editing this way, removing the weaker images from the overall selection first, I have all of the photos that potentially create my final edit always on the screen. It is a process that also reminds me of working with tangible prints. When small prints are laid down on a table, we can shuffle them around, getting rid of photographs that don't fit in the sequence.

4. I repeat this process the same way, up to five stars or until I think I have picked only the best frames.

I found that having a target number of final photographs at the back of my head while editing can be a helpful way to stay focused and ruthless when getting rid of weaker images. The tricky question that might come to your mind at this moment might be, what is the magic number?

As with most things in creative practice, this includes photography, there are no correct answers, but as a rule of thumb, I'm happy to hit a 10% mark when editing any large commission. Thinking in these terms, and just as an example, let's assume we spent a day at a wedding and made 2,500 frames. Probably 10–20% will get an automatic "boot out the door," and another half or more will be parts of a burst/series or any other images shot in quick succession. That's already around up to 1,500 images rejected from the final edit after the two-star run. If we can keep every fourth photo from what's remaining after that, all is good, and we did a great job.

The easiest way to eliminate weaker images when looking at similar photographs is by comparing them in Survey View and downgrading them there.

After all of this is done, I will usually revisit the lower ratings for one more run-through to find any possible gems that might be hiding somewhere and, in the end, delete anything with zero stars. There will be some exceptions that I will flag or assign color labels to, but that's a whole different topic.

This leads us directly from easily manageability to enjoying perusing our collections. Once you have fewer photographs, you will pay more attention to them. It will be easier to find what you are looking for, and instead of searching for a needle in a haystack, you will simply open a gallery of images you already liked in the first place so that you can then choose your absolute favorites.

Handy shortcuts to use here are view (the "E" keyboard shortcut) and delete (the "X" keyboard shortcut). Once this is done, I filter for the rejected photos and delete all the original raw files.

The not-so-big one – everyday edits from shorter commissions

As much as I would love all of my jobs to be multi-day sessions, lots of work consists of quick 1–2 hour callouts, sometimes half-a-day jobs. I will often approach editing these smaller commissions differently – here is an example of how I might do it:

1. After importing a new set of photographs, I'll glance through them in Grid View, and if I remember any unique frames that I know I want to see first, I'll make sure to do so and give them a high star rating, often five stars. I do this to ensure that I will not miss the intuitive "likes," even if some of them won't make the final cut. At this stage, if I want to send the client a sample, I will choose one or two of the images I just rated, do a "quick develop" job on them, export, and send an email/message to the client.
2. Once I have done that, I will make sure the photographs are in capture time order, and I will go to the first photo from the session and choose Loupe View ("E"). I will, at this stage, hide all panels using the "Shift Tab" keyboard shortcut.
3. The first run should be very intuitive, and so I quickly look through all of the photographs, rating everything that catches my attention with one star. If the pictures I initially rated with five stars still stand out when I get to them, I will leave them at a five-star rating; if they don't stand out, they will get a one-star rating in the process and be ready for the second round.

When I say that I do a quick, intuitive run, I also mean that I don't linger too long on picking favorites from multiple frames within sets of bursts but instead choose from them on the fly. Sometimes, I might have a burst of similar photos from the same situation with only minor details making the difference – that is, closed eyes, someone moving head or hands, or objects and colors leaving or entering my frame. In that case, I might go down to the bottom of the screen to open Filmstrip and do a bit of "mini-editing" of the burst.

4. I will start by selecting all photos in the burst – this way, when I get to the last one, Lightroom will "wrap around" the selection and go to the first photograph in this burst.
5. Once selected, I will skim through them quickly a few times, marking favorites with one star.
6. Once I have a smaller selection, I will choose only the one-star images from this burst by filtering or manually by using "⌘ click".
7. From here, I press "N" to enter Survey View and rate the ones that stand out as weaker with zeros. After that slight digression, I will come back to all photographs and continue the one-star rating process.
8. After the one-star round, I'll filter for all images with a one-star rating and turn on Grid View again. I will now scroll up and down in this view to find pictures that I definitely like and want to include in the final selection, rating them with two stars. Once I'm happy with my picks, I'll filter for images with a one-star rating, change to Loupe View, and quickly run through all ones to make sure I didn't miss anything.

From here, it is just downhill, as by this stage, I should have a pretty well-defined edit rated two stars. If photos come from a 1 hour-ish session, it's probably already a final edit, which I might reduce by downgrading a few images to a one-star rating. If I have more photographs from a more extensive session, I will do a third, sometimes fourth, and fifth run, with an increased star rating each time, until I get to a selection I'm happy to present to the outside world.

Special treatment of edits with additional requirements

Quite often, edits will require special treatment, and this is where I usually deploy a color rating.

Let's say I want to make my final edit available in black and white (or even in a few different variations). In that case, I do the following:

1. I select all photos in the final edit, right-click on any of them, and choose Create Virtual Copies.

Once we create our virtual copies, our selection will switch to the newly created copies. This is a great under-the-radar Lightroom feature.

2. From here, I simply apply a color label with the following keyboard shortcuts – "6" for red, "7" for yellow, "8" for green, "9" for blue, or if I really want purple, I'll right-click on one of the photos and choose Set Color Label > Purple.

From here, we can do a few things:

• To keep working only with the newly created virtual copies, I filter for Color Label, which I just applied to them.
• To stay only with my originals, I'll go to Edit > Invert selection. Another way to filter for originals is to filter for whatever was our final edit's star-rating value and select Show photos with "Unlabeled" label – it's the seventh color label filter's value.

As for flags, I use them in several different ways. One would be to mark during editing my personal favorites – sometimes what we like most might not be what a client will like most; sometimes, I flag things I want to include in a blog/Instagram.

Summary

After going through this chapter and experimenting with Lightroom itself, you should be confident enough to handle any edit using ratings, labels, and flags. My musings in the How I edit section are by no means a definite solution, nor will they be suitable for all photography and editing styles. For example, in my early years with Lightroom, I used flags as my go-to tool, and only after flagging did I start rating photographs, which I found constraining and more time-consuming. Additionally, it was taking away the usability of flags on larger-scale projects. I bet that by now, you already have your ideas on how to deploy available tools, and I would love to hear how you use them in your workflow.

We just looked at the extensive list of options available within the Library module. The critical point to take away from here is that we don't need to complicate our workflow by understanding all the combinations of the available tools but instead start small – pick the type of labeling that feels natural and start using it. All of these tools are here to make our choices more straightforward and more intuitive. The same goes for comparing photographs and using different types of views. Even though we have extensive keywording and querying capabilities, the main thing is to keyword our images descriptively so that when the time comes, we can quickly pinpoint the right ones. Lightroom exists to make photographers' time more easily manageable. Even the simple act of editing our selection by an increased rating to find favorite shots should be enough to start with; the rest will come naturally when we need it. Simply being aware of the availability of more complicated options will make it easy to find them when we need them.

In the next chapter, we will look at the management of our collection, structure the Library to help us find everything faster, and prepare Lightroom to be a reliable photographers' companion for years to come.