Lightroom Classic's (abbreviated as from now on LrC) interface has seven Modules (top right of the screen): Library, Develop, Map, Book, Slideshow, Print and Web. This set of blogs concentrates on the Library and Develop modules and exporting photos and Print module and will only briefly cover the others (Map, Book, Slideshow and Web). I'll also cover other topics that aren't module related such as Exporting (jpeg, Tiff file versions of your RAW files) and Plugins
The usual workflow or order of things would be; Import photos, then add photos to collection(s), add keywords, rating, colour labels as needed to organise and select the photos to keep/ work on. Then move onto Developing the photos and finally export to share photos, print or produce a book or slideshow or web page
A few things to consider before we get to importing photos and the develop module, exporting and the Print Module.
Organising or cataloguing images is covered by the broader term of Digital Asset Managment if you are interested in alternative ways of managing your digital assets Blake Rosenberg from Image Science has a comprehensive blog
References and further reading and learning. Face to Face, Videos or a textbook study style, free or paid, your choice:
Lightroom Classic Quick Start Guide - a textbook style - Free but you will need to register your email to get a copy of the pdf file. A good reference to work through and to have to refer to. There is also a full, paid for, handbook available.
Phlearn on YouTube - Lightroom Classic in 30 days (also does Photoshop in 30 Days)
Julianne Khost's Lightroom Classic - The complete Picture - Free YouTube videos. Well-structured and explained clearly.
A list of Lightroom Classic 'courses' on YouTube - varying quality but it's comprehensive!
Sydney Photographic Workshops - a paid comprehensive course.
If you google Lightroom Classic Courses in Sydney Australia, you will find more.
Sydney Community College offers beginners and advanced courses - paid for, but cost effective.
Lightroom Classic Quick Start Guide - a textbook style - Free but you will need to register your email to get a copy of the pdf file. A good reference to work through and to have to refer to. There is also a full, paid for, handbook available.
Phlearn on YouTube - Lightroom Classic in 30 days (also does Photoshop in 30 Days)
Julianne Khost's Lightroom Classic - The complete Picture - Free YouTube videos. Well-structured and explained clearly.
A list of Lightroom Classic 'courses' on YouTube - varying quality but it's comprehensive!
Sydney Photographic Workshops - a paid comprehensive course.
If you google Lightroom Classic Courses in Sydney Australia, you will find more.
Sydney Community College offers beginners and advanced courses - paid for, but cost effective.
So, you have purchased a plan and installed Lightroom Classic on your computer. Before you start though there a few things to consider about organising your images, or even if you have already set up a system. Here's a list of things to consider before diving in, they are covered in detail in the references.
Some terminology:
Catalogue: is a database file that tracks the location and information about your photos and videos. The catalogue doesn’t contain the actual image files themselves; instead, it stores information about them such as metadata about your images, adjustments, and edits you’ve made.
Importing: the process of cataloguing your images within LrC and optionally either transferring images from your camera or card to your computer in a location of your choosing or adding images already on your computer to LrC's catalogue.
Metadata: is the information embedded within an image file and/or LrC's catalogue file that describes various aspects of the image such where it is located, what collections it is in, keywords assigned to it, the images EXIF data (see below) and develop settings used to process the image. Metadata can be incredibly helpful for organizing, searching, and understanding your photos.
EXIF data: data within the image file about how it was taken, shutter speed, aperture, lens, camera, ISO, date it was taken etc.
LrC creates a catalogue file and folders containing preview files for your images as you work with them and also some other folders and files. These are created, by default, in your pictures folder on the main drive of your computer. But you can locate them almost anywhere that your computer can access. The preview folders can become quite large over time. But if you are only just starting out, they won't be too large. You'll get the best performance out of lightroom by having the catalogue and preview folders on the computer's main drive, but you may one day run out of room. The catalogue file and preview folders have to be together but can be located on an external drive if required. On a good external SSD drive you may not notice any performance issues.
You can have more than one Catalogue but there is no performance gain from LrC in doing so. You can only have one catalogue open at a time so it's not possible to search for images across multiple catalogues. So, one catalogue is most efficient. Performance issues with LrC arise from the computer's limitations (memory and hardware etc.). Find out more about catalogues at Adobe's FAQ: How Lightroom Classic Catalogues work and here. Note that professional photographers with multiple clients may see some benefit in having a separate catalogue for each client. Your circumstances may suit multiple catalogues too. It's not normally recommended though.
For many people LrC's working file sizes aren't an issue as they don't have too many images. To the right is a typical file list LrC would create for a catalogue called 'example', if you already have a catalogue set up yours may have some additional folders. To illustrate: catalogue and preview sizes for a collection of 148,953 images (generally not considered a large collection!) are:
Catalogue file: 5 GB
Previews folder: 137 GB
Smart previews folder: 80 GB
Total size of the folder containing all of LrC's working files and folders is 226 GB
Previews folder: 137 GB
Smart previews folder: 80 GB
Total size of the folder containing all of LrC's working files and folders is 226 GB
You can change the name of your LrC catalogue and folders through a menu option within LrC at any time. And you can relocate your catalogue and associated folders as required if you run out of room. See Adobe Help for how to do both of these
Where to store images and in what structure. Your images are not 'in' LrC, despite Adobe calling the process of cataloguing your images 'importing'. They are wherever you want to put them. The folder structure you have for you images is up to you. It can be by date, by event or place or some combination of all three, or anything you can think of. It is better to keep your images under one parent folder e.g. 'Pictures' with subfolders as you like under it. That makes it easier to back them up (or restore them from backup) using your normal computer backup process. Many people use a date-based structure, but the structure you choose just needs to be one you can work with. You can avoid having duplicate images in multiple locations by using LrC's collections and/ or keyword functions (see below). Duplicate images under any circumstances are best avoided. Note that a RAW file such as _DSC1234.ARW and its jpg version of _DSC1234.jpg are two different files.
Images can be stored wherever you like but they are best on a fast drive. LrC doesn't change your images and only needs to read them to create previews and, for example, using de-noise or to generate a jpeg file where it reads your RAW file does some magic and creates another file.
There are settings you can change within LrC to improve performance. For example, creating 'smart previews' which can be used in the develop module to save LrC from creating a full preview each time you make a change. Smart previews are stored alongside the catalogue file so should be faster to load.
Should you rename your image files? The normal camera generated file names are in the format "_DSC12345.ARW". They start naming from _DSC0001.ARW up to _DSC9999.ARW and then the renumbering starts again. The 10,000th filename will be duplicated which can be a problem in LrC. If file names aren't unique and a file is moved to the same folder, either intentionally or by accident, as a file with the same name one will over-right the other. You can rename files as they are imported into LrC or you can rename them at any time in a batch. Note that there is no batch facility to change part of a file name within LrC. i.e. you can't change just part of a file name through a batch process like a find and replace function in a word document. Although you can change part of the name of a file one by one. So, it's best to get it right first go!
To avoid duplicate file names an appropriate schema might be to have a format like "place_date_sequencenumber". But anything with the date and a sequence number would do the job. So, a series of 25 images all taken at Dee Why on the same day might be renamed dee_why_06_02_25_0001 to dee_why_06_02_25_0025. You would need to take 9,999 images at Dee Why on the 6 Feb before you had a duplicate problem. It's also good practice to have '_' rather than spaces in file names but not a requirement. Renaming can be done easily within LrC either on import through a re-naming template or after importing as a batch.
The following are completed in the Library Module. It's tempting to skip over this and move straight processing your photos in the develop module and export and/or print them. But it's a good idea to keep on top of these 'filing' activities so you can find your photos later.
Most people don't use all of the features in the Library Module for organising photos, for example some don't bother with keywording. Use whatever system works for you, and so long as you are consistent in its application, like any good filing system, it will all be fine!
Keywords, collections, colour labels and ratings are all attributes or classifications you can assign to your images to help you find them later. It's up to you how complex or simple you keep your classifications. Simple is best obviously. If you assign a red colour label to images for example you need to remember what that means. There are 5 colour labels and one custom colour label available. There are 1 to 5 star ratings available.
It can all get very complicated if you try to be too granular. For example, images I post to this website have a red colour label, images I select to work on from a shoot have 1 star and once worked on either have 5 stars (a keeper) or no star (might get deleted but usually just forgotten about and taking up space!). Many images never get any stars! That's the extent of my colour label and rating schema.
Keywords or keywording can become a burden but are also very useful for finding similar images in your collection as you can search, or filter based on a keyword(s). I keep it very simple and assign keywords based on parent keywords of 'What' 'Where' and 'Who'. Spelling and capitalisation of words will mean keywords are treated differently. For example, Where>Dee Why is different to Where>dee why and Where>deewhy is different again. If you decide keywording is for you take care with typing! If you ever decide to get into stock photography (commercial libraries of images available to purchase) keywording is mandatory and controlled through a keyword library.
Collections are probably the most powerful feature in LrC and almost mandatory if you want a well organised image library. A collection is a way to organize your photos into specific groups for easier access and management. Think of collections as virtual albums that can help you group photos by a theme, project, event, or any other criteria that suit your workflow. Collections are especially useful for organizing photos for specific tasks like editing, printing, or sharing.
An image can be in one or many collections. Collections can be grouped into collection sets. Collections sets can have collection sets within them as well multiple collections. A few key points about collections:
Virtual Grouping: Unlike folders, collections do not move or duplicate your photos on your hard drive. They simply create a virtual grouping.
Easy Access: Collections provide a quick and easy way to access a specific set of photos without having to navigate through your entire catalogue.
Organization: You can create collections to organize photos for a project, event, or any other purpose. You can also create smart collections that automatically gather photos based on criteria you set based on the metadata of your images. For example, every time you give an image 1 star it could be grouped into a smart collection of all 1-star images.
Easy Access: Collections provide a quick and easy way to access a specific set of photos without having to navigate through your entire catalogue.
Organization: You can create collections to organize photos for a project, event, or any other purpose. You can also create smart collections that automatically gather photos based on criteria you set based on the metadata of your images. For example, every time you give an image 1 star it could be grouped into a smart collection of all 1-star images.
Filtering within LrC is the process of sorting your images to find a particular one or group. You can filter the whole catalogue or a collection or a folder. The filter criteria can be a combination of keywords, colour labels, ratings, EXIF data, date or location data. getting the most of this feature depends very much on how well you implement all the aspects above, and set out in the references, about cataloguing your images.