Simplify Your Editing & Sharing With Lightroom CC with Dustin Lucas
After the massive shift in Adobe Lightroom’s ecosystem last fall away from Lightroom desktop and mobile apps, it’s now gotten a complete overhaul. Many users were upset when the standalone version went away and Adobe support ended for Adobe Lightroom CC 2015/LR6. Now that Adobe has launched four patch updates for its latest Lightroom apps, we are seeing the essential Lightroom features pour over from the desktop to the mobile app. Lightroom is supposed to make editing simple, and this is exactly what you get from the mobile Lightroom CC. From your shoot to your sofa, you can edit accurately on an iPad.
I laugh at that last sentence because I am always pushing monitor calibration and controlling the post-production work environment. Let’s forget that for now and focus on mobility. Why would you not want to make a quick edit at the shoot after wrapping up to get it posted to social media? Lightroom CC allows you to use the editing tools you love and post your images instantly. Protect your brand by editing with a professional tool, and show off your shots immediately.
If you are trying out Lightroom CC for the first time, you’ll need a few tips to get started.
Getting Started
Launch Lightroom CC, and you will see right away it’s ready for you to get started loading images. Instead of creating a catalog, we are working directly in the app. This will load the same every time. Say goodbye to saving, backing up catalogs (because your images move with the cloud) and linking to your account. They go where you go. We’re ready to add images. Lightroom can automatically search for new images, or we can simply add them.
As soon as we add images, you see a lot of movement with Lightroom CC, from images populating in the grid view, to organizing images based on date shot and syncing images to Adobe Cloud. Store images locally if you are working on a computer, or leave this unchecked to save space. Further organize and share your images with Albums. This allows you to share images with a link so people can view, like and comment on images. You can even give them access to download files.
Those of you with Lightroom catalogs that you’d like to bring into Lightroom CC can use the tool Migrate a Lightroom Catalog. This app is more limited in editing than the desktop Lightroom. This feature is simple to use and gives you flexibility with your previous catalog workflow. Now that you have a basic understanding of this Lightroom ecosystem, we are ready to edit.
Use Presets/Profile & Synchronize Your Editing
With the recent June release of Lightroom CC 1.4, we’ve got our preset and profiles back. For Lightroom users, these are the basis for working with tones of images, being efficient and able to create quick, click-to-export edits to post. Another massive upgrade came with the ability to synchronize develop/edit settings between images in the film strip. These two components push Lightroom CC to the next level. We can jump right in by importing and managing our existing presets.
Since I’ve built an arsenal of presets in Lightroom Classic CC, I can import my presets to manage what we need and don’t need. Go into the Edit tool by striking the “E” key and then hold Shift while striking the “P” key. After clicking the Options button, I can choose Import Presets to choose the newer XMP presets stored in my Camera Raw folder. Now we can grab multiple presets to import at once and even choose folders to group-import. Hide the preset folder after import. Press Options, choose Manage Presets and uncheck any folders you want to remove from your list. This is available for Lightroom Classic as well to help you manage your presets and remove the clutter.
You’ll notice you can choose profiles now at the top of the Light panel in the Edit module. Just as in Lightroom Classic, you can browse different standard, third-party and creative profiles. Just hold Shift and strike the “B” key to access them. This opens up our creative editing capabilities in Lightroom CC. For the longest time, the inability to adapt presets and profiles had been my biggest hang-up. Another vital feature is synchronizing your edit settings. Why have a filmstrip while editing at all if you can’t click multiple images and sync settings?
Now I have run into a workflow problem: I am unable to globally apply a preset to multiple images in grid mode. This isn’t a terrible hang-up for me because I can apply a preset and sync it to the images. I wanted to address it because many users work this way. Instead, we apply the preset in the Edit module, select images, copy settings and paste them. The copy-and-paste settings workflow is simple: Sync everything applied or choose what to sync. To copy settings blindly, hold Command and strike the “C” key. To pick which settings to copy, hold Shift in addition to the previous keys. Drop down each category to pick and choose exactly what you want.
Once you get your options dialed in, simply paste by holding Shift and Command while striking the “V” key. Then make some transform tweaks to the verticals to correct the skewed architecture. Strike the “C” key to open up the crop tool and quickly straighten the image. Hold Command and click and drag to ground the image evenly. Use brush tools to fix areas of the image needing special attention. Strike the “H” key for the healing tool, “B” for the adjustment brush, “L” for linear gradient and “R” for radial gradient.
The healing brush makes cleaning up dust spots on your sensor a breeze. Strike the “H” key and decide whether to use the Heal or Clone tool. It depends on how consistent the surrounding area is—in this case, I’d use the Clone tool. If we check the Visualize Spots tool, we will see little white circles that are easy to click and correct. The Heal tool automatically samples the nearest area to clone from, making your job even easier. (17) Now I am ready to share my images and show off some of these shots.
Show Off Your Images Instantly
The simplest way to share/save an image from your desktop is to click the share button in the upper right corner. Before we jump into Lightroom CC on a mobile device, you have to think about how to use this program for sharing/saving. Do you want to save XMPs or export JPEGs, and where are there image going? If you have the Raws stored locally, choose this folder to save XMPs in, which allows you to take your RAW+XMP into Photoshop later to make sure your edits transfer into Camera Raw. A faster way to edit in Photoshop as a copy is to select your image, hold Command while striking the “E” key to create a TIFF copy, and save layers. Once saved in Photoshop, this copy is stored in your Lightroom CC app and synced to the cloud.
Starting August 1, 2018, you will no longer be able to share from your Lightroom CC desktop app, so we should shift to our mobile device for postings. Since we want to shift to a more mobile workflow, we can dive into the mobile app for Lightroom CC and share our work. Once downloaded and logged in, we can start to view our images. We have the same functionality to use the edit tools, but custom camera profiles will be missing because they are not installed. You can export a JPEG from your computer or use the default profile applied. This is not a make-or-break, but it is a bit of a drag when jumping to a mobile device.
Now we add to an Album to share on the web, which is quite simple to do. Select the image, press Options, choose Add to, Create to choose an existing album and click Add. Then go back to your main page and choose the album to view your images. Click the Share button and choose Share Web Gallery to select settings. Share a link with friends or clients or jump to the web gallery to view the images online. This allows users to like, comment on photos and even download them through the web; no Lightroom software is required for anyone you share with. If you’d rather post these to social media, we can do that as well.
Simply touch and hold the image you want to share, wait for it to appear in the middle of your screen and scroll up. Click Share and choose the resolution at which you would like to upload the image. Choose small, and then you can choose which social media app to post in. Once you select the app, it opens the image to let you fill out the details. (27) It doesn’t get any easier than that. You have just edited, fully synced and posted to Facebook or Instagram in a matter of seconds.
The Results
Simplify your editing and sharing workflow with Lightroom CC. Nothing beats editing in real time after a shoot and posting to your social outlets to stand out. You could be doing this on the car ride back from your location shoot or on the way to the reception after creatives. Pack an iPad if you want to see your images larger than a phone screen. Many cameras have Wi-Fi sharing capabilities to wirelessly send shots to devices. This gives you a leg up on mobile editing.
Many of you may already be ingesting your JPEGs from your backup memory card to cull and edit a slideshow between creatives and reception. Your highlight-reel slideshows are a great touch that show off your skills. Now you can select/edit those images even faster with your mobile devices without having to lug around a laptop. Just set up a gallery and click play to start the slideshow.
