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I thought I will write a guide on how to organize your photos in Lightroom, but as everyone likes something else, I will write more about how I organize mine, which may inspire some of you. So I will go through few points about how I order my photos, to make things easier.

One catalog

I use only one catalog in Lightroom. I thought some time ago to split photos into multiple catalogs, but then I found no good reason for it. Lightroom only allows one to be opened at one time, and I really don’t want to restart it each time I need something from a second one. Also, my catalog is currently over 100 000+ photos big, and the performance is the same as it was 10 000. Lightroom just does not loads closed folder and only time you will get a big slowdown is when it has to create the thumbnails for the first time.

Time and location based structure

I use the default folder structure, based on year and date. After import I also add a location to the folder name, so it’s easier for me to quickly identify what is in a certain folder. To make the number of folders more manageable, I tend to group folders from photos from a single trip.

Never rename files

I never change the default names of files. The files are imported as IMG_xxxx. This is because it makes easier to find a specific raw file for a photo, as I include this name also in the name of the final edit (the posted photos are usually named location-IMG_xxx-web).

Some people tend to rename the files, but that just makes things more messy.

Stars, colors and collections

I use stars to remember what I edited, and what I still plan to edit. Usually I just add 4 stars to photos I already edited, and 5 starts to those I want to edit. No stars are photos, I still a have to think about. If I don’t want to keep the photo, I just delete it (even if I still have to go through a huge number of photos and delete everything I don’t want)

I also have collections created, separate for finished photos and separate to photos I want to edit. This are smart, so once a star rating is added to a photo, it is automatically included in the collection.

Colors I use mostly to mark together huge groups of photos, like HDR panoramas or timelapse sequences. The colors help to distinct them from the surrounding photos.

Finished photos

I never delete the RAW files, as I use them quite often for tutorial and blog posts. I also keep the PSD of the finished photo, and two copies of the jpg version. One is sharpened and resized for web (1350×900 pixel) and one at full size sharpened for print. I don’t import these into Lightroom, as I don’t need them there. I store them in a separate folder and also on Smugmug. Of course the full size files in a hidden folder, just so I have access to them from anywhere.

All these take of course a lot of space, as a single edited photo can take over 1gb of space. Luckilly, the prices of hardrives go down every year, so getting a nice 4tb drive just for photos (or better two, so you also have a backup) is not that pricey anymore.

I could of course make thing more sophisticated, add keywords, filter all photos right as I import them and similar. I just never found the time to do that, even if I tried. And after years, I no longer see the need for that anymore, as all posted photos are in tagged posts on the blog, with keywords and descriptions. It’s just easier to type into a search bar than trying to fill information on thousands of photos.

Hope you all had a nice Monday, and as almost every Monday, I’m going to show you how I edited one of my photos. For today I chosen this one from London, from the Westminster bridge to be exact. So let’s take a look.

For this photo I didn’t want to do any drastic edits, so I chosen to use manual blending. I wanted to add more contrast and color, and also make it a little warmer.

Finished photo

Original photo

First I did few tweaks in Lightroom. I changed the white balance and removed the lens distortion. I also added a little vibrance. From there I loaded all the exposures into Photoshop layers.

All exposures

Lightroom tweaks

First in Photoshop I had to deal with the distortion. Here I used the Perspective crop tool to cut away parts from the top left and right corners, until I got a straingt image. Then I did the following edits (layers numbered from bottom up):

1. I started with the -1 exposure, as there I liked the sky the most
2. Corrected the highlits from the -2 exposure.
3. Brightened the dark parts form the 0 exposure.
4. Brightened the deep shadows from the +1 exposures. I haven’t used the +2 in the end.
5. A little contrast to the Basic midtones
6+7. Added glow to the photo
8. Color Efex Pro contrast to get more local contrast and detail into the photo
9. I did’t like how the light from the lamp transitioned into the sky, so I created a blured copy of the photo and blended parts of it in, to create a nicer glow.
10. Noise reduction for the sky.
11. Little more contrast to the Basic midtones
12. Brightening and contrast to the Dark areas of the photo.
13. Little more overall contrast.

And that’s all I did with this image. To find out more on how I edit, check out the guides and before after categories on this blog, or check out my video tutorial series here:

A little refresher for those who already seen this video, and a reminder for those who haven’t seen it yet :)

How about a small tutorial for today. Today I’m going to show you how I use Dodge & Burn to correct problems with layers masks and luminance selections.

The problem

If you use mask, you have probably noticed a situation, where they just don’t select only what you want. It’s mostly visible around the horizon line, around buildings and similar. When you start to blend, it will just create ugly halos around objects. This is because the mask does not fit the area perfectly, and you also effect a bit of the surrounded areas.

Similar, if you for instance try to select an object with a lot of empty space in between (like for instance the Eiffel tower), this also results in a lot of unwanted selections.

In this example screen-shot, I created a darks mask, to select the buildings. But as you can see, part of the selection are also the clouds, which I didn’t want to include. I hope it’s visible, as it is quite faint.

The solution

You can of course just take the brush and paint out the unwanted areas, or try and select just them and fill them in, but using Dodge & Burn is just quicker. First to remember, burn makes pixels darker, dodge brighter. So when correcting a layer mask, one needs to use Burn on Shadows when trying to remove parts from the mask, and Dodge on Highlights when trying to add more to the mask.

Here, I used Burn at 100% strength and just went over the sky. As it was set to Shadows, it only took the darkest areas (the sky in this instance) and made them even darker. The bright areas of the building were not effected at all, or only very gently. If I wanted to do the opposite, select the buildings more than they are, I would go with Dodge and Highlighs. They would get brighter in the selection, so selected to a bigger degree. Doing this few times, can create a very strong contrast between the selected and unselected areas, but the transition will not be the best. If you use this gently, you will keep the original transition between light and dark areas.