How to Organise your Photos Post Editing in Lightroom

Having your pictures organise in folders leaves it much easier for uploading onto different  media platforms. I use Lightroom for editing  my pictures and also find it ideal when sorting my pictures into different folders and can all be done using presets which can be saved and allow for easy upload of pictures in one click.

Lightroom Star Rating

Lightroom has the very handy option of star rating your pictures. When I import my pictures into Lightroom I do a quick review of each one to decide which ones i want to work more on. I use the 3 star rating initially for the ones i want to keep.  Note the benefit of using Lightroom is that all your pictures can be backed up to a catalogue so your photos are always available to retrieve.

1. Once you have decided which pictures you want to work on, click the drop down menu beside the stars and click rated. This will allow you to filter your pictures for the ones with stars.

2. When i finish my edits, i do a final review to decide which pictures i want to export specially for facebook/social media. I will export all those rated 3 star or higher for printing but i will assign a further star to the ones i want to export for social media.

3. First i export my pictures I want for printing (3star or higher rating). On the export menu I have designed and saved  export presets. The settings below are the optimum setting for 5×7 printing. I create a folder based on the topic of the pictures. To rename all the pictures on export click the dropdown menu and choose Custom- sequence, you can then name your picture E.G: Tullamore Dew R.Cummins May 2018. Each picture will then have a -1,-2,-3 etc after the name post export. This leaves it easier when searching your pictures if you have them saved under the topic/subject of the photo group.Settings can be changed depending on what size you print.

4. I will then Filter for the 4 star rating pictures, these will be the ones I use for social media, and apply a watermark to.

5. For exporting these I will put them in a subfolder in the folder i created earlier and call it “Facebook watermarked”, this allows for easy importing onto social media as all your watermarked pictures will be in one folder. Again settings can be changed as required. To save the preset Click add and name your preset.

6. When you view your folder, you should have a subfolder with your watermarked pictures which can be uploaded straight into Facebook.

Creating a Watermark in Lightroom

In your export option, under watermark click the dropdown menu and choose edit watermarks.

You can add an image as a watermark or simply use your name and year. you can choose the opacity, colour, size, font and location on the picture of the watermark. click save and name the watermark preset. You can now add this watermark as a preset.

Conclusion

Hope this makes your editing easier.  If you have any questions let us know in the comments below.  Happy editing!