Adobe Lightroom Workflow

W00DY

Hi All,

I am having a problem working out my Lightroom workflow. The problem I have is having to have multiple versions of the same image on my HD. I now about Virtual Copies however I don't think this will be a solution.

I shot JPEG (not that it matters) and have the following versions of an image:

- Original
- 5 Star (full sized processed images)
- 5 Star Web (as above but resized for web, 800px longest side & watermark)
- 4 Star (non processed images)
- 4 Star Web (as above but resized for web, 800px longest side & watermark)

So this results in 3 copies of the same image on the HD. Is there anyway to avoid this? The reason I feel I need 3 versions is becouse I display the images on the web, but need to preserve the original sizes for print.

I am not sure if there is an answer but would love to hear from anyone who keeps Originals, Print and Web versions without the need for 3 times the HD space (nearly).

Cheers,
W00DY

cmason

One thing I have found interesting about Lightroom is that you dont need to save your exported images. At first, I catalogued all exported images, into an 'edit' folder below the main folder, so that all exported images were in this folder...I could simply go to the edit folder for each shoot and see the finals that I posted or printed.

But, Lightroom, and in some respects its virtual copy, allows you to discard the exported photos altogether. If you create a virtual copy of each version you exported, you can simply re-export later when you need the image, no need to keep the image at all! Yes it hurt my head at first, out of fear of losing the image, so I make sure I backup my Lightroom DB (separately from what Lightroom does).

Now for some really good or otherwise critical images, I still prefer to keep a copy, but all others are simply virtual copies, in the 'edit' folder.

Good luck

colourbox

Have you set up export presets? I made export presets for my standard outputs, so if I need one, I just hit Export and choose the preset. In other words, instead of storing 3 copies at different specs, I tend to generate them on demand from the master image. When I upload to the web, I usually don't keep the web copies around on the disk because they can always be re-generated by my web preset.

Hindsight

cmason wrote:

One thing I have found interesting about Lightroom is that you dont need to save your exported images. At first, I catalogued all exported images, into an 'edit' folder below the main folder, so that all exported images were in this folder...I could simply go to the edit folder for each shoot and see the finals that I posted or printed.

But, Lightroom, and in some respects its virtual copy, allows you to discard the exported photos altogether. If you create a virtual copy of each version you exported, you can simply re-export later when you need the image, no need to keep the image at all! Yes it hurt my head at first, out of fear of losing the image, so I make sure I backup my Lightroom DB (separately from what Lightroom does).

Now for some really good or otherwise critical images, I still prefer to keep a copy, but all others are simply virtual copies, in the 'edit' folder.

Good luck

hmmm intresting. So how does this work exactly? Say I'm going to export 20 photos to post in a web gallery, at 600px on the long side. I would export them to a folder somewhere as jpegs and then upload them. What do I need to do in order to get LR to make virtual copies so I can delete these once they're uploaded?

cmason

Hindsight wrote:

hmmm intresting. So how does this work exactly? Say I'm going to export 20 photos to post in a web gallery, at 600px on the long side. I would export them to a folder somewhere as jpegs and then upload them. What do I need to do in order to get LR to make virtual copies so I can delete these once they're uploaded?

It depends on whether the size is in your edits (crop), or in the export settings. If in your edits, then just do the crop, and save as Virtual copy for each photo. If it is in your export settings, then simply save the export preset as colourbox suggests. Then whenever you need a 600px version of any photo, just export with that preset.

canoflan

Exports for web
I will usually have the original, the processed psd file (for I always make it to PSD at some point), then the flatten psd with custom watermark. I don't mind having 3 of the same for I have collections and key words tied to each that identify their purposes differently.

For the web, I take the flattened psd, watermarked pic and export at 100%, jpeg, 300ppi, and 800 on one side for constraining size.

I am not really sure to do it otherwise. I guess the flattened psd file isn't needed since I only use it for the web, but if I lose what is on the web, I simply just select the website name in the keyword area on the left side of the Library module and they all come back up and I can simply export again easily without going back into PS.

LiquidAir

Personally I have largely automated the process of creating web scale images so I just delete them from my hard drive once I have uploaded them. It takes so little effort to recreate them that I don't feel the need to save those files on the off chance I need them again.