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I received a lot of emails in response to last weeks post from viewers asking me (and others - like YOU) to document our workflow in detail for some select projects.

We tend to provide a lot of small snippets of Lightroom workflow concepts but I agree that a more complete presentation of how we stitch together these pieces and parts to generate real-life examples sounds like a perfect use of this forum for all of us.

That being said, I am going to put my foot in the fire and walk through one particular workflow for a recent shoot. I will not be going over file/directory setup and/or importing so choose your own methods for getting your images into Lightroom. There are a ton of great tips here for doing just that.

I shoot outdoors almost exclusively, and it is with this in mind that we’ll go through this exercise outlining my particular approach to an outdoor shoot.

Before we go any further, let me share some details …

Just as I was preparing to take these shots, a nasty thunderstorm swept in and about 5 minutes later the lightning and rain took over. The available light drastically dimmed and flattened out - the mood of the day, and my shoot, changed in a matter of seconds. My response: SHOOT LIKE CRAZY.

With children, you have to shoot fast, low, and quickly … and fast. Did I say fast?

Afterward I had  a great batch of images in front of me and it was the mood of the day and the storm that I wanted to bring out in these images.

We’ll start with the final image series:

{x=camera= 1/50 f6.2, 3oomm, ISO 400}
{x=preset=summer+rain}

Now … let’s get to work …

Here’s our original series of images, directly from the camera:

Next we’ll create some virtual copies Ctrl+’ (pc) or Cmd+’ (mac) of our selection(s):

Now, let’s drill in on the first image in our series where we’ll do the bulk our our adjustments:

This is a good time to pull out your RPG Keys. You don’t have one? Now is the time to get one.

We’ll make the following Basic adjustments in the Develop Module:

1. Exposure: +1.15
2. Blacks: 14
3. Brightness: 0
4. Contrast: 0

As we can see, we’ve taken some of the ‘flatness’ out of the image:

Next, we’ll make the following Tone Curve adjustments in the Develop Module:

1. Highlights: +60
2. Lights: +10
3. Darks: -20
4. Shadows -60

Now we’re cooking! Nice and punchy … just the way we like it.

Let’s punch up the blues/purples in the dress as well. We’ll approach this with the Targeted Adjustment Tool (TAT) in the HSL panel.

And by selecting directly on her dress and mouse-dragging UP (or using our RPG Keys), we’ll punch up the color just as expected:

Vignetting, vignetting, vignetting … I am addicted if not obsessed with Vignetting. And we’re going to get extreme with it right … now:

We’re essentially done with our post-processing. Here’s where we stand in our workflow:

Next let’s sync our work across the remaining images, and save our adjustments as a preset:

With our current image selected, select the other images you wish to ‘target’ with your adjustments. Once selected, we’ll choose the following options in the Sync dialog box:

And … done.

While in the Develop Module, pressing Y (mac or pc) will toggle some quick before-and-after previews:

If we like what we see (I sure do) … let’s export our adjustments as a handy preset we can apply in the future to other jobs, etc. We’ll simply select the + on the Presets panel:

… and name our preset x=summer+rain

Our new preset will live under the User Presets section of the Presets panel:

I always elect to store my presets with my catalogs for quick access as well.

If you’ve read this far … you must be exhausted … but then again, I promised an EXHAUSTIVE look into my workflow … so read on!

Lately I have been cropping everything square. so let’s set a 1×1 crop. And we’ll do this across all images with our Auto Sync trick.

First, I’ll select all the images I want to crop, then hold down the {Ctrl} key on PC or {Command} key on Mac and select Auto Sync:

… and simply crop our first image to 1×1:

Once all my adjustments are complete, I hold down the {Ctrl} key on PC or {Command} key on Mac and select to set things back to the plain old Sync mode we see as the Lightroom default. All our adjustments have been applied dynamically to our entire selection. The possibilities are endless with Auto Sync. You can auto sync not only develop panel adjustment … but even spot removal!

That’s it, we’re done. Here’s our completed Lightroom catalog - all images ready for export:

I’ve used this approach - and preset -  on some recent images and the results have been spectacular.

I hope this has been a good experience for you dear reader, as I am excited about the possibilities of seeing how others expose their workflow in Lightroom, and share those thoughts with the community.

Best Wishes,

|Brandon Oelling
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