Using Smart Collections in Adobe Lightroom
At this time of year many photographers are looking back on the work they did in the previous 12 months. A retrospective view. A year in review. An assessment. Whatever you decide to call it, it can actually be a tedious enough process just finding your best 10 in amongst thousands and thousands of photographs. Don't get me wrong though, this exercise is worth it's weight in gold as you can really gain some perspective on where you were at the start of the year and where you are now, as a photographer. It can often be a real eye opener to see in what ways you've improved and in what ways you've changed your style. After all, we're always evolving and adapting as photographers and therefore the photographs we produce are inevitably going to change as we grow.
Luckily for us though, this deeply rewarding (yet tedious) process can be made much easier now that we're in the digital era. We're fortunate to have software that can stores tags and meta data. It can order and time stamp our photographs, making sorting and filtering through them all and finding the photographs we're most proud of that much easier.
That is...if you know how to use the software you have.
Many people see Adobe Lightroom as a simple piece of software with a couple of sliders. Trust me, it's much more than that. It has brushes, a simple cloning tool, it's amazing at organizing photographs and preparing photographs for printing. It does nearly all a photographer could ask for.
Today, I want to help you to find your top 10 photographs from the previous year. To do this we'll be taking a look at Adobe Lightroom's Smart Collection feature, Target Collections and a few basic rules to set these up.
So, if you've been putting off doing a review of the year that has just passed us by have a watch of this video and the re-assess whether you think you have the time or not.
Grab a coffee, press play on the video below and enjoy!
If you have a Lightroom tip you would like to share, or even a question about Lightroom please do post your comments below, or contact me at michae@rammellphotography.com
Thanks for watching.
Check out Other Lightroom VIdeos here
How to Create a Black & White Smart Collection in Adobe Lightroom - Black and White Challenge
Have you been nominated for the Black and White challenge? You know the one: someone posts a Black & White photograph to a Social Media site and then they nominate you to then post one black and white photograph each day for 5 days? You have? Excellent! Then this may help you out with that challenge.
Did you know you can actually setup a Smart Collection in Lightroom so you can view all of your Black and White photographs in one, neat collection? This will make finding all your best Black and White's far easier and participating in this great little challenge so much more fun.
If you're at home or in a place where you can watch a video, then check this out. If not just continue past the video for the instructions laid out with screen grabs:
(Be sure to share links to your 5 Black & White Photographs below!)
- Open Lightroom and then open the Library module:
- Click the 'Collections' view on the left hand side:
- Click on the small + icon on the left hand side and choose 'Create Smart Collection' from the new menu that appears:
- In the new window that appears give your new smart collection a name, such as 'Black and Whites' or 'Mono Only' etc...
- Optional: If you would like to include this inside a collection set, just check that box and choose your collection set. This is handy if you wanted to have sub-collections, for example Black and White's with a 1 star rating etc...
- Next up set the parameters of the smart collection by clicking on 'Rating', then choosing: 'Develop' > 'Treatment' (as shown below):
- Your Smart Collection then should look something like this:
- Click 'Create' and you should now be looking at all of the Black and White's in your Lightroom Library. Presto:
So there you go - a Smart Collection showing just the mono photos in your library! Have a go.
Why not share a link to some of your very own Black and White photographs below in the comments.
VIDEO: Preparing a Photograph for Print
Printing is considered by many to be the final step in making a photograph. It’s a sentiment I agree with.
The ‘problem’ with printing though is that people often think it’s expensive or that prints never come out quite right:
- Prints can sometimes come out too dark
- Prints are sometimes not as sharp as they were on screen
- The colours can be wrong -
- Too warm or too cool is a common issue
- Skin tones being innacurate and people appear either Orange or Pale
- I’ve also heard on many occasions that prints can appear ‘washed out’ with blacks appearing slightly grey.
Well today I want to share with you a short video to guide you through the basics of printing and to avoid these common issues. If you’re printing your photographs this is, in the most basic way, the very least you should be doing with your photographs in Lightroom to ensure they come out as bright as you intended them to be, to have rich blacks and brilliant whites and to be clean from spots. Take a look:
So, try applying the clipping method and adjusting your screen brightness before editing your photograph and see how different the results are.
If you have any questions please do get in touch with me via the contact form, or over in theFacebook community