I’ve heard with Lightroom it’s very easy to edit a large number of images. Maybe it is, but I’m still learning my way around Lightroom, so for now, this is how I do things.
Say you just got home from vacation with about 500 pictures you want to edit quickly and get printed. Yes, I like to do those things quickly before years go by and I’m no longer interested in 2012 vacation photos.
The first thing I do is open all the images in Bridge and go through them all in camera raw. Even if they aren’t shot in raw, I can quickly see each image and delete the ones I don’t want. I know I’m not going to want three copies of the same shot, blurry images or boring ones, so I delete with abandon until I have a manageable size of images that won’t make me want to cry (around 40-60 is a good number for me).
Once I have the images I want to keep, I open up one of my favorite Photoshop tools: Autoloader. I purchased this early on and I have made very good use of it. The creator of Autoloader says it’s for anyone who hates to waste time. That is SO me. He hooked me right there. Autoloader lets you select a photo from which it pulls open your images one at a time with an assigned keystroke. When it’s open you can even choose to have an action run upon opening and closing of the image. You also choose the final folder for the edited images to go to.
Now, it’s been about an hour later. I’ve been quickly opening my vacation photos, applying a favorite action, then sending them all to the edited folder all while catching up on Season 2 of Parenthood on Netflix (on the iPad) or while listening to a Podcast.
Now I go back to Bridge, open up my edited folder and select them all to batch rename.
This step is not absolutely necessary for vacation photos, but I always do it for client images so they will have an easy to recognize number for ordering.
Now, before I let too much time pass and forget about these images, I upload them all to my favorite online printer and place my order. Then I burn a cd to back up my edited images and walk away. Vacation is done, printed and preserved.
How do you manage your photos?
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