Lightroom Classic Workflow For Beginners - Step By Step!
Join me as I go through a complete Lightroom Classic workflow for beginners, from import to export, and every single editing step in between!
Not sure what you should be doing in Lightroom Classic, or what a Lightroom workflow even is?! Then this is going to be perfect for you 👌🏻 I’m going to walk you through a typical lightroom workflow, from start to finish, so you can see how you can use Lightroom Classic to organise your photos, edit them to polished perfection, and shave hours of your post production workflow.
If you have you ever found yourself wondering exactly where your image files are, or getting frustrated because you can’t find a particular image, then you need a Lightroom workflow.
If you have ever found yourself staring at an image thinking “I don’t even know where to START editing! What should I do?!” or randomly pulling on sliders, crossing your fingers and hoping for the best, then again - you guessed it - you need a lightroom workflow!
That’s because without efficient workflow in place, you’ll find yourself doing different things at different times, your image collection will get into a complete mess, and your photos will look like they’ve been edited by 10 different people, each with their own split personality disorder.
The key to using Lightroom efficiently is to have a step by step workflow in place - and that’s exactly what we’re going to cover today 🙌
You can either watch the video below, or scroll down to read a written tutorial instead - whatever works best for you!
Before we dive into the actual workflow, let’s take a look at what a Lightroom Classic workflow is, and why you might want one!
What is an Lightroom Classic workflow?
A Lightroom workflow is simply a number of steps that you go through each and every time you upload, import and edit your photos. It should take your straight out of camera image, and organise it so you can find it again when you need it, apply a series of edits that take you from the blah RAW file to a beautifully polished image, and then get it ready for sharing with the world, either online or in print (or in slideshows or photobooks!)
Having Lightroom workflow means that you don’t have to re-invent the wheel everytime you take an image into Lightroom, instead every time you import an image into Lightroom, you will work through the exact series of actions until you have gone through them all, and therefore can consider that particular image “produced”!
It’s important to note that does NOT mean that you make the exact same editing adjustments with every single image! Every single image will have different tones and values, so will require different edits, but you do have a checklist of edits that you go through, in the right order. This means as you go through your edits, you’re asking yourself “does this image need this?” and then “Does this image need that?”, and then applying the edits as needed.
What’s the point of having a Lightroom Workflow?
Having an end to end workflow in place will help save you time, get and stay organised and be more consistent with your edits, because you’re not doing different things each time you upload a photo.
So instead of having files scattered about in different locations, with useless names (like CR315689!) and with duplicates of the same image scattered around, they will be exactly where you want them to be, and named and tagged so you can find them again.
Most importantly (for me at least!) your images will look a thousand times better, because you’ll know exactly what editing to do at an image - instead of slapping on a random preset, or following an online tutorial that isn’t suited to your image!
(Pssst! To help you with this, be sure to download our FREE Lightroom Classic Starter Kit and get a guide to importing, a step by step editing checklist, and an exporting cheat sheet….all for the pricely sum of $0)
I’m not going to lie, it will take some time to get your Lightroom Classic workflow up and running, but it’s so so SO worth it, as you will use it every day of your photography life, and on every single photo!
What should I do in my Lightroom Workflow?
Although your workflow should be individual to you (and a wedding photographer will have a slightly different workflow from a fashion photographer for example) the basic series of steps is pretty much the same for everyone!
So let’s go through an entire Lightroom workflow for beginners, step by step:
STEP ONE: IMPORT
The first step in any Lightroom Workflow is get the images off your memory card and saved onto your computer or external hard-drive (I recommend an external hard drive) Use Lightroom to copy the file to your external hard drive, and import a reference into Lightroom in one step. This is also where I rename my files, and add keywords so I can easily find them again!
STEP TWO: ORGANISE (LIBRARY MODULE)
Once you have your images safely stored on your drive, and have a reference to the file imported into Lightroom, the next step is to sort, cull and rate your images.Go through all your images from that shoot, and decide which you want to edit, and maybe even which ones are going to go into gallery (although you may want to do this after you’ve edited them - remember it’s your workflow!) or which ones are for the delete pile.
We go deep into the organisation process in Get Organized In Lightroom Classic as you really can do SO much here! Everything you do should help make sure that you can find your images again at the touch of a button, have your images filed in a way that makes sense to you, and has them organised for different projects.
One thing I want to say here is to make sure that you are following a system that works for YOU and what you shoot! I got myself into an incredibly big mess with Lightroom thanks to following a free tutorial on how to use Lightroom, but it was aimed at large, multi-photographer wedding photographer, rather than me, a family photographer and hobbyist.
(That’s why Get Organized In Lightroom Classic is aimed at hobbyists or one-man/woman businesses, so that you can create a workflow that is best suited to you!)
STEP THREE: THE PERFECT NEGATIVE
Once you are beautifully organised, you can then move away from the Library Module, and take your images over to the Develop module for editing.
This is where will apply your editing workflow - remember, a workflow is just a series of steps that you do on your images, in a specific order, so you don’t have to re-invent the wheel each time, and you have a more cohesive editing process.
The first “phase” of your edits should be getting the perfect negative, which has the following editing steps:
Perfecting white balance
Adjusting exposure, shadows, whites. blacks & highlights
Secondary contrast
noise reduction & sharpening
Adding saturation/ vibrance
Cropping and straightening
Our Edit Like A Pro in Lightroom Classic course goes through all of this (and the next steps too!) you know exaactly what editing steps to take, in what order, and even how to know how much to move the slider by! It will take away all of the guesswork and random slider pulling, and have you editing like a pro in no time, so be sure to check it out.
STEP FOUR: CREATIVE ADJUSTMENTS
Again, the exact edits will change depending on the image, but you can still go through the workflow steps, making the necessary adjustments for each image. This is where you can do things like:
Adding Vignettes
Color toning or black and white conversion
Enhancing or changing colours
Creative adjustments such as sun flares or vignettes
STEP FIVE: LOCAL ENHANCEMENTS
In the final editing phase, this is when you will carry out any local adjustments (in other words, not applied to the entire image) so this would be things like dodging and burning or portrait enhancement.
If you are new to Lightroom and editing, then I understand that all of that might seem a little overwhelming, but I pinky promise, if you have someone showing you not only how to the use each editing tool, but also WHY you are doing it, you will find this a heck of a lot of easier!
STEP SIX: EXPORT, SHARE & USE
With Lightroom, your edits aren’t applied until you export the image (so it’s totally non-destructive!) so your final step is to prepare the edited image for use - this could be sending the file to the printers, or sharing it on social media, or even creating a photo book or slideshow (both of which you can do directly in Lightroom!)
This is also when you want to make sure you back-up your images, and if you are in business, you might also want to upload your files to a gallery. I use SmugMug for both of these!
Creating Your Own Lightroom Workflow For Beginners
Now, you know what a Lightroom workflow is, why you need one, and what to do in one, it’s time to create your own!
I walk you through every single step of this in my Edit Like A Pro in Lightroom Classic program, so if you want someone to talk you by the hand and tell you what to do every single step of the way, from import to export (and every single editing step in between!) be sure to check it out.
If you want to DIY it, then use the above as your guide, but tailor each one to suit your own needs and style. Start to write it down, creating a pattern that you can follow each time to help you edit with consistency, and make sure that you have your image files organised.
Remember, you can always add to your workflow, or tweak it a little bit, so just do what you feel comfortable with just now, and you can add on more bells and whistles further down the line if need be. (Remember, you can also grab our FREE Lightroom Classic Starter Kit which will help you even more!)
I hope you enjoyed this Lightroom tutorial on how to create your own lightroom Classic workflow for beginners, and always, if you have any questions, please feel free to leave them below!
(Psssst! Want to reference this later? Be sure to pin it!)
