I’m pretty chuffed that I can now title a post “lightroom love” as in now I get it, I truly get it!
I’ve been OK with using Lightroom for quite some time, but the struggle was real, people! The struggle was real.
When I wrote My Struggles with Lightroom in 2012, I could not have been more confused, and I could not have disliked the organizational part of Lightroom more.
However, armed with some of Kim Klassen’s helpful and information-packed classes, I slowly got the hang of it (I can’t even tell you how many times I went over the free “Leap into Lightroom” class) but it was many, many … many times. And even recently when I realized my workflow had taken a wrong turn somewhere along the line, I revisited it.
So why do I feel the need to shout it from the rooftops today? Well, because this past October I started a new catalog and file system all.by.myself!
I’d been using the same catalog for two years, which isn’t a bad thing. It was pretty well-organized, but I felt the need to start fresh for 2017, so to make good and sure I was going to be using it in 2017, I started in October of 2016 (he he.)
You can see the name at the top of this screenshot “LIGHTROOM OCT 2016-DEC 2017 CATALOG.lrcat”.
I’m not going to go into my file structure or workflow because I think that’s something a person has to figure out for themselves.
However, I will divulge one little secret, and that is; I’m not big on keywords … they drive me a bit bonkers. Bonkers is not good.
Before I switched catalogs I made sure I that:
- I studied Kim’s lessons thoroughly (again)
- the old catalog was organized as possible (and backed up of course)
- I had exported all images I was going to use for Instagram or my blog so I wouldn’t have to be switching back and forth, causing mass confusion in the process
- I knew how to set up sync with Lightroom Mobile (again), that part scared me because I viewed it as a hassle
I started this process at the beginning of October, and today I made the commitment.
It takes time and courage … and I found I had both :)
Congratulations! I love Lightroom and use the simplest possible organization…just by date. That worked fine until I began my first 365 project. Yikes! I do use keywords but have not been diligent about it in the past with the result that my computer is now choked with thousands of photos that need to be purged and/or labelled. I agree about the helpfulness of Kim’s free class. It really got me started, too. I should revisit that, for encouragement, if nothing else. :-)