My Lightroom 4 Workflow | Develop Module: Let’s Get Editing
Posted by Katrina Kennedy on May 9, 2012 in Blog, Lightroom, Photography | 22 commentsHere we go! We are FINALLY diving into the Develop Module after spending A LOT of time in the Library Module.
There you are. My basic work flow. See, not so hard is it? There is so much more! Let me know in the comments below what was new to you and what else you’d like to learn! I’ll be back with more!
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Hi Katrina, thanks for all these step by step LR videos they have been so helpful. You mentioned calibrating your monitor in this video and I was wondering what you used to do this. Yesterday I had prints made at a store lab and found that I exported the jpegs in the wrong color profile for their machine. They asked if I calibrated my monitor and mentioned something called a Spyder device calibration system. What do you recommend using? Thanks again for all your help, Michele
I calibrate with the Spyder3 device. It’s a simple process with a device I place on my monitor. Takes about 2 minutes. Looks like I need a blog post about it!
Ok, for some reason the blog post won’t let me post a new comment, but I can only find a reply button.
I only have a laptop (hope to get a desktop in the next few years the next time we are due for a new computer), is it worth calibrating a laptop?
Also, I loved to see how you did the B&W conversion, this will be VERY helpful! I also loved to see your workflow for basic edits. This is so very helpful, Katrina! I can’t thank you enough!
I was playing with blog settings this morning Jenni! Now it should look like what you expect.
It is worth it to calibrate your laptop monitor as well as your desktop. In fact, I think it may be more important to calibrate your laptop. Important that you calibrate it in good light at the angle you usually have your monitor.
Great demo-thanks! I especially enjoyed watching your b&w processing.
Thanks, Katrina. These videos have been great. I’ve only been using Lightroom for a couple months. Now I’m tempted to upgrade to 4.0. The black & white conversion process was especially helpful.
Thanks, Katrina! I think I’m going to look into calibrating my laptop
And the blog comment section looks back to normal 
Thanks!
Jenni, Amazon and B+H photo both carry the Datacolor Spyder4express monitor calibration device. They have various models available but this one seemed to be the basic one. It will calibrate your laptop and your iPad too. I am planning on getting one because I really did see a noticeable color change when I printed my photos this week at the store from how they looked on my laptop. It was the first time I had photos printed since I started editing them myself on RAW files and not just using the camera jpegs. I was disappointed by the color shift. I will let you know how I make out with it. – Michele
Thanks, Michele!
I think I am finally going to have time to really dig in to lightroom this week and am looking forward to getting caught up.
My question is this … do you remember in the TTL class I posted the picture of my daughter on her 16th bday and it was way back lit and you suggested using LR to brighten her face? (hoping for a yes, of course I remember that … how could anyone forget?! lol)
Well … that last step you just did after converting to B & W … is that how I would brighten just her face in my birthday shot?
(I did end up making some changes in PS because I didn’t have lightroom at the time, but here is the original which I posted in the 365 gallery http://captureyour365.ipbhost.com/index.php?/gallery/image/6348-march-22-sweet-sixteen/ )
I do remember your photo Kim!
The adjustment I used in this video changes the color tones. You would want to use the Adjustment Brush (K).
Brush her face and then adjust your exposure to lighten her face.
The brush tool is a little tricky to use, but I have faith you can figure it out
I’ll cover it in a few weeks.
TY! Looks like it is going to do nothing but rain here for 7 straight days so my house may actually get cleaned and then I may have nothing else to do but play in LR!!
One more “quicky” (I think) … I bought a desktop harddrive yesterday that I want to have just pictures go on … I think I get that I just need to re-export the ones that are already in LR. After that can I change the default export location to be this harddrive?
And I hope you don’t answer this until tomorrow because I hope you are enjoying a wonderful wonderful mother’s day!!! xoxo
In Lightroom, you can simply move the photos to the new location. You’ll see your external drive listed in folders on the left side of the Develop Module.
Then you can simply change your export location for subsequent imports.
And look at me, I waited a day to answer!
Love these videos Katrina, thanks so much for sharing. I really like those shortcut & keyboard tips, very handy. I noticed also your comment about calibrating & I was wondering if you are on a Mac as I used to use a Spyder to calibrate my PC but since I moved to a Mac (LOVE IT) a few months ago the salesman said you don’t need to calibrate Macs,Whats your your opinion on this please ? Thanks Katrina.
I live in a Mac world Leonie:) And yep, I use Spyder to calibrate everything in the house.
Thanks Katrina, I appreciate your advice!
I’ve been using LR3 for a while now, and I do use the develop module extensively – especially since I started shooting in RAW. Each video has shown me something new. In this one, I was very excited to learn ab about using the target adjustment tool in B&W. How handy!
Thank you so much for these videos. I got caught up on the videos and took.notes today. They have helped me a great deal.
I caught up on all your LR4 videos today. I do things *very* similar to you. My favorite tip you shared? SOLO mode. Oh my goodness that helps with the visual clutter, doesn’t it?
Found your post from a Google search on Lightroom workflow. I will definitely be poking around your site more. Just curious, is there a reason you didn’t crop your photo first and then do the edit?
Glad you found us Yvonne! No real reason for that order. I typically encourage people to work topdown, which I did not. I think for this photo I was really focused on getting the conversion done, so crop came second. As much as I have a routine, sometimes I do just ignore it
Hello! I was wondering how to crop correctly for prints. I’ve done cropping in LR4 and sent off my photos for an on-line lab, but they replied saying my crop setting was off and there will be a white ‘border’ where the picture did not fill the print. They also request a certain resolution (300?), how do I default this to work every time? Thanks for the tutorials!