What is lightroom catalog

Select between grid view, single image view, comparison view, and survey view. The latter two comparison view and survey view are a dream for photographers. These are particularly useful when choosing from a range of similar images. The other sections along the top speak to the editing process more than the sorting of your catalog.

You can set up a folder at the start. Then whenever you upload images, Lightroom will automatically sort the original files for you. This feature acts as a digital assistant, meaning you can focus less on mundane file sorting.

That means you can spend more time doing what photographers love most—looking through images! Another crucial feature is the way Lightroom works with images. As I mentioned before, the catalog works with previews. This means you can edit an image as much as you like and never touch the original file. If you have ever worked in Adobe Photoshop , you understand that this is an important feature. This could be something as simple as changing the file size to a web-based format.

If you have gone over the original file, you might as well kiss that picture goodbye. The modifications they give you are significant. Especially for making minor adjustments like cropping or straightening an image. I prefer to do this step in Lightroom rather than Photoshop.

The accessibility to these modifications is what keeps me coming back. Lightroom defines the purpose of each slider as simply as possible. There are many occasions where these features remove the need for Photoshop. It allows you to see the original and edited version side by side or split down the middle. For a thorough explanation of all the edits, you can make in Lightroom, check out our Effortless Editing with Lightroom course. Lightroom makes batch editing simple and easy.

Adobe understands that jobs or planned shoots usually occur in the same environment with the same lighting. You can edit one image to your liking, then save the adjustments and apply them to the rest of your pictures. This is all done in the program. Lightroom even lets you fine-tune the adjustments and add them to the preset. If you want to edit the colour temperature and contrast but change the highlights individually, you can. Rarely is this good idea. Instead, take the opportunity to omit the unusable photographs at this point.

You can also make Collection Sets — used for organizing collections and smart collections. Exporting Photos indiscriminately is the best way to fill your disk with multiple copies of the same photo.

My advice is to create export folders as subdirectories in the same location as the one you use to keep the catalog. If you must move images, then move them within the Navigator panel on the left in Lightroom so that the location of the image is updated. Navigate through the filesystem until you find it and the location will be. Most of the key takeaways are portable across systems. These are:. Some people never progress beyond Lightroom and others insist that Photoshop on its own is enough.

Will Adobe Creative Cloud continue to dominate the space? Try it for yourself, get a Free Trial here. After you import the photos into a catalog and export them into a filesystem is when the photo editing takes place! This will include the histogram — you should already be familiar with this from your camera. Colour grading and the tools available to you in Lightroom. Keywords or Collections? Adobe Lightroom offers a lot of choices when it comes to Catalog Management.

This is not a review of Silver Efex Pro though if you want to take a closer look at Silver…. So I had an old and unloved camera converted and started to shoot in the UK in June.

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The Lightroom Catalog works the same way, except digitally. The Catalog is where all the information about images imported into Lightroom lives. Folders are where the image files live. Folders are not saved inside of Lightroom, but are stored somewhere on an internal or external hard drive.

When importing images into Lightroom, you specify where those images will be stored on your computer or an external hard drive. This sounds confusing, but the folders are like any other folder on your computer.

The ones with your images just happen to be referenced by Lightroom so the images can be viewed and edited within the software. Organization within Lightroom is key. Jim Harmer just published an article on the Improve Photography website with some great tips for accomplishing this. One big step in the organizational process is to develop a good folder structure.

There is a never-ending debate about how to set up folders and what to name them, but I won't go into that here. Choose a system that makes sense for your workflow and that works for you. One tip that I would repeat is to keep all of your images within a single root folder. It doesn't really matter; just pick something and keep all images inside that folder. Within that top tier folder is where you will have all the different subfolders that make up your folder structure.

Within that folder, there is a subfolder for , and within that is another folder titled Zion National Park. The images that I captured in Zion last month are saved in that folder on an external hard drive. Using Collections is a great way to take your image organization within Lightroom to another level. There does, however, seem to be a lot of misunderstanding about what Collections are and how they work.

Think of Collections like the playlists on your MP3 player. Just like adding songs to make a playlist, you add photos to a Collection. The important thing to remember is that adding a photo to a Collection doesn't mean the photo is copied to a new location. The original image stays in the folder where it was placed when imported. Adding it to a Collection gives you the ability to see the preview and reference the photo from that original folder location.

A single photo can be added to as many Collections as you want, and there will still only be one original image file. The Collections panel is accessed on the left side of the Lightroom interface from any of the Lightroom Modules. The Collections panel will be the last one on the list in that left toolbar.

If you don't see the Collections panel, it can be revealed by right-clicking on any of the other panel names and selecting the option for it to be visible.

Bonus tip: Right-click on any of the panels and select Solo Mode. That way, only one panel will be open at a time. Once a new panel is opened, the previous one will close automatically, and keep the workspace clean and easier to navigate. This feature is available for the panels on the right toolbar as well. A window will pop up giving you the option to name the Collection. There is also the option to place the Collection inside a Collection Set. More on what a Collection Set is in a moment. Lightroom Library Module.

Day 4. Lightroom Develop Module. Day 5. Basic Lightroom Editing Workflow. Day 6. How to Use Lightroom Presets. Day 7. Lightroom Export and Everything Else. Do you have any questions or comments about the Lightroom Catalog?

Just leave us a comment below - we would LOVE to hear from you. I am Gayle. I am a wife to my handsome husband and mom to 4 beautiful kids. In my spare time, I am a photographer and blogger at Mom and Camera. I have a passion for sharing my love of photography with others.