GETTING STARTED - Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3: Streamlining Your Digital Photography Process - page 31

The Lightroom Workl ow
Even with all the variables involved, it is possible to characterize a standard workl ow
for digital photography. h is is the skeleton framework—you can customize this
to the needs for your photography as you see i t. In any case, the basic steps of the
workl ow remain the same:

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1. Capture the digital photos with your camera

2. Download the photos onto your computer hard drive and Import into
Lightroom

3. Organize your photos and set aside the best ones

4. Develop the selected images

5. Exp ort i les from Lightroom for specii c purposes

6. Output your photos as prints, Web sites and/or slideshows

Of course, each of these steps is actually comprised of multiple tasks that vary
depending on circumstances. h ese tasks—and time saving shortcuts and
techniques—are explained in detail in the following chapters.

If you perform each phase of the workl ow similarly every time, you will soon be able
to think several steps ahead. h is facilitates better decision-making and dramatically
speeds up your work.

Process in Lightroom, not in-camera
h ough many current camera models of er varying levels of processing within
the camera itself (brightness, contrast, color and sharpness controls, black and
white conversion, etc.) it's almost always best to do the image processing on your
Lightroom, not in the camera.

THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING ORGANIZED
In digital photography, ef ectively managing your image i les is crucial. Regardless of
how many photos you have now, it's very likely that over the coming years your photo
library will grow to many hundreds of thousands—even millions—of images. If you're
not already using a good organizational system, now is the time to start. Hard drive
storage, folder organization and i le naming strategies are discussed in detail at the
end of Chapter 2.