How to speed up workflow in Lightroom – 3 tips
1) Smart Previews
This will improve the performance of LR on your computer. Also, the previews get stored to your LR catalogue, so you don’t have to be always connected to your external hard drive and keep raw files ready. LR will simply allow you to make edits on the smart previews and transfer them later to your RAW files.
2) Rating photos using Colors, Stars and Flags
As you are going through imported photos, you want to select the ones which are worth working on. My way of doing this is working in “rounds”. During the first selection, I hit the number 6 key to colour selected photos red. It’s a very rough selection. I am looking for light, composition, sharpness, and maybe interesting facial expression.
Then I go through the selection again with the red filter turned on. This shows me only the photographs I have previously selected, so I don’t waste time on the refused images. The second time I am looking for something more to the image – emotions, gestures, patterns – basically I am selecting more precisely. I hit the number 4 key, which rates my images with four stars.
At this point, I also usually apply a preset, change the exposure or the white balance. Just to see if the photo is worth working on. Sometimes I may do one last selection, choosing the best, usually already edited photos which I am going to use. This is done by the key P, which flags the image as “picked.” The filter which shows you the images I picked is here:
3) Auto-advance
When marking your photos, you don’t have to press the right arrow after each photograph. Simply turn the auto-advance option on and be happy. And faster. Note: Works only in the Library mode.
Alternatively, you can turn on CAPS LOCK. It does the same thing and works both in Library as well as in Develop mode. Smooth as hell.
That is pretty much everything for today. Hope you find those useful and if you want to learn few more, check out another article on shortcuts in Adobe Lightroom.