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To get the most out of Lightroom as a food photographer, it’s important to have a workflow that’s easy to follow and easy to stick with as well. It can save you a lot of time and help you stay on top of backups, both of which are key to a successful food photography business. I’ve adjusted my own workflow over the years and some of the things I do now, I wish I had known before. That’s why I’m sharing my method with you today.

 

First I would like to mention that this workflow works for me and the way that I work. I am not trying to say this is the end all be all! Make sure you pick and choose what works for you. Hopefully, you’ll be able to take at least one or two things away from this blog to help you create your own Lightroom workflow.

 

Shooting tethered

 

A good editing workflow starts with a well-planned photo shoot. Shooting tethered allows me to see my images as I am shooting them, so I can make changes in the composition, lighting, and props as needed.

 

When I shoot tethered, I use the Canon software, which allows me to see the images live. I have the appropriate Lightroom catalog open with auto-import enabled. This way the images are directly imported into my catalog and in the correct folder on my hard drive. In case you missed it in the last blog post, I shared a very useful tutorial here.  

 

In the auto-import dialog box, I make sure to enable Add the Images to a Collection to keep the images organized within the catalog. I also have a preset for metadata that includes copyright information and keywords.

 

I update the naming structure of the files to make them easier to manage. For my clients, I choose a structure like “Client name – Project (or date) – Filename”. When renaming, I also consider SEO best practices. For example, images that I will be using on my portfolio are named “Food name – Food Photography – Frenchly – Filename” to hit the food photography keyword, as well as the dish name. For my blog, I usually name them “Blog post keyword – Food Photography – Frenchly – Filename”. It makes for quite long names but they give a lot of information about the images so I am quite happy with it.

 

Culling and editing

 

I find that I edit faster and more efficiently when I’ve culled my images properly, so I follow two important steps after an import and before I get into the “real” editing:

 

Step 1:

 

I use a 1 to 3 rating system to cull my images. First, I do a very quick pass where I delete the objectively bad images (shots before the hero food is placed, focus is off, flash didn’t fire, etc.). I remove them from the catalog and the hard drive to make space. Then I rate the images I like with a 1.

 

Step 2:

 

Now it’s time for a second pass. I select similar images and press N to get into the survey mode. I rate 2 stars to my favorite ones, keeping one of each similar setup. The ones that I really love get a 3-star rating. I like to keep the 4- and 5-star ratings open because as my photography improves, I can up the ratings and not have my older images clutter up the new, better ones.

 

 

 

Then it’s on to the edits!

 

Once I have chosen the 2- and 3-star images, I start editing them. I often use the survey mode to see them all together and make sure my edits are consistent. I edit every single image in the Develop panel, balancing light (using Tone Curve), color (using the HSL menu), and composition (using the crop tool). Occasionally I will switch over to Photoshop if I need to do a composite.

 

Once the broad strokes are looking good, I go through with adjustment brushes to remove unwanted spots or add brightness/darken specific areas of my image. I try to get my lighting correct in-camera, but if I want to add a little something extra I will sometimes use a graduated or radial filter (in the tool kit above the Basic menu).

 

Most of what I know about Lightroom, I learned via the Lightroom Magic course by Two Loves Studio. I highly recommend it if you want to up your editing game!

 

Understanding and organizing Lightroom catalogs

 

There is one thing that you need to keep in mind (and it took me a while to understand it). Lightroom doesn’t actually store your images. It only keeps track of the metadata and the edits you do to them. This is important because it means Lightroom is not a way to back up your images. You’ll need to back them up separately.

 

I used to have a gigantic catalog that would contain all my images. As I got more and more images, it became difficult to manage (and also somehow my catalog got corrupted and I lost all the edits). After that, I decided to create a new catalog each year, which worked for me for a while. As I got more and more client work, I started creating a new catalog for each client. It works really well as a lot of my clients come back for more work, so I have all their images in one catalog and can make sure my edits are consistent from project to project.

 

I also create new catalogs every year for each of my retainer clients, so the catalog sizes remain manageable.

 

Exporting

 

When I send the proofs to my clients, I do it through a gallery website called Pixieset. It offers a professional and beautiful way to present photos to your clients. It also allows you to organize the images into folders, add watermarks, and allow your clients to select their favorite images directly within their galleries. This way they don’t have to email you random file names, which is both annoying and a potential source of errors.

 

My favorite thing about Pixieset is the Lightroom Plugin. With it, I create and export new sets in Pixieset directly from Lightroom. This eliminates the need to export images to your hard drive before importing them into Pixieset. It’s a huge time saver but it also saves space since you don’t have to store exported images on your hard drive.

 

Once the client has selected their favorite images, you can copy them directly from the proofs folder onto the finals folder in Pixieset, remove the watermark, and send the link and download PIN to your client.

 

Check out this IGTV to see exactly how I use Pixieset:

View this post on Instagram

Today I wanted to show you a Behind the Scenes of a shoot for one of my Tea photography client. I will show you how I set up my scene, modify my lights, and how I use Pixieset to save time and provide the client with a beautiful gallery. For more tips and tricks for your food photography, head to my blog https://www.french.ly/blog #foodphotography #foodstylingandphotography #foodphotographer #smallbusiness #diyphotography #photographytips #bts #behindthescenes #behindthescenesphotography #productphotographer #diyphotographer #foodstyling #foodphotographyandstyling #foodstylingtips #foodstylingprops #foodstylist #foodstylistlife #foodphotographer #foodinspiration #productphotographer #dcphotographer

A post shared by Fanette Rickert 🥑📷 Food Photog (@frenchlyphotography) on Jan 9, 2020 at 12:49pm PST

 

After the client workflow

 

Even though I’m done with the client at this point (until next time, that is) I’m not done with the shoot.

 

After a client receives their work, I go back to the selected images from that project. There may be some images I want to set aside for my Instagram or portfolio. I differentiate them with color labels and then export them using an export preset I previously created. For example, I export my IG pictures at 1080px  and 90% quality (bumping your quality down from 100% to even 95% considerably diminishes file sizes). I export portfolio images using SEO-friendly file names and bigger file sizes. If you want to add a watermark to the images, the Export menu has an option for that as well.

 

Backing up

 

Keeping files safely backed up is a very high priority in my business. After each shoot, I follow a backup workflow to ensure that nothing gets misplaced, corrupted, or deleted:

 

For RAW files:

 

I import straight from the memory card to a Google Drive folder on my laptop. This folder is backed up to the Cloud by Google Drive. I keep the memory card until the client project is done, just in case. The Google Drive folder is backed up to my network drive. {The network drive is a Wi-Fi hard drive that lives in my basement.} It has 4 separate hard drives. 2 of them are dedicated to hosting my backups and the other 2 are backing up those backups.

 

Maybe this sounds crazy, but if you’ve ever lost client work you understand my semi-obsessive backup process.

 

For Lightroom catalogs:

 

My Lightroom catalogs are located on a folder on my laptop, which is backed up on iCloud. I also create .xmp files in all my catalogs. This allows me not only to work on the same catalog on different computers, but also to recreate a catalog if one gets corrupted. It’s sort of backup of my edits.

 

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That’s my entire Lightroom workflow for food photography, from beginning to end! Do you have questions about a section? See something I missed? Leave it in the comments or sign up for my email list and hit reply…I’d love to chat about it with you.