Lightroom 4 workflow

Head over to adobe.tv and check out Julianne Kost's tutorials. Put aside a few hours and sit with the software and a couple of images whilst you watch it.
 
YouTube is also another option.
 
But unfortunately YT is often full of people claiming to know how to do things when they don't....
 
I found the Scott Kelby book excellent, and from a practical side not just a dry textbook.
 
I think workflows will depend on what you are doing with your pictures. Basically I import with keywords that will cover all the pictures - month, year (does occasionally prove very useful) where, colours etc then quickly go though them and dump those I don't want. If I am shooting an event I will add owners/animals names where known plus breed, if shooting purely for me will add keywords that reflect the reason I took them - backgrounds, plant names or whatever. If shooting event will then go though images and get them ready to put into slide show, or for my own purposes could do almost anything with them.

If you were using it for nothing but shooting weddings for instance you would have a set routine but the main thing for me is to make use of the keyword facility as you load the pictures so you can find a particular picture or background in a year or three's time. Lightroom is good for basic editing or getting pictures partially ready for Photoshop if you do detailed editing
 
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Setting up a series of import settings for the different work you do will really help save time in your workflow. Keywords and develop settings are all available, as well as save locations, backups etc. Automates a lot of tedious things.

Like Kerioak I go through and clear out the stuff I don't want after import. I use the 'flagging system' as I find it really easy to go through and use the shortcut keys to highlight images for deleting. I've set up one of my tablet shortcut keys so it then deletes all the images I've 'flagged' at the single press of a button. I don't use the colours/rating much at all, but you may find it works for you.

I'd also recommend setting up some smart collections as the options are limitless and really help to locate a particular image.
 
I don't have LR4 but have LR3, although it's not something I use that often.

That said, I watched a live webcast called 'The Ultimate Lightroom Workflow' a few weeks ago at Creativelive. It was over three days, and I watched most of it, but from what I saw his workflow it was a great way of organising files, and because the chap doing it, Jared Platt is a professional, his worklow is optimised for speed of editing, using custom presets to speed up editing, but also organising the files into catalogued jobs which take the strain of the computer to speed up working and organising a person's whole archive.

It's was $99 when the course was on, (the courses are normally discounted while the course is live) and is currently $149 to download. If I was a LR poweruser or especially if I was a professional, then I would have bought the course, because it would have helped you cut hours off editing large numbers of files.


There are books available for less cost, and online videos for free, but a professional workflow demonstrated by a professional is hard to beat imho. Like I said, if I was really into LR or a Pro, then I would have bought the course, because as a Pro at least, I would have made the money back quickly with the money save in work time and organisation. :)
 
The Creative Live LR workshop is worth checking out. Two full days.
 
Anyone tried Lynda.com DVDs?
 
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