10
USING PHOTOSHOP LIGHTROOM 2
The Lightroom workflow
About Lightroom catalogs
Lightroom uses a
catalog
to track the location of files and remember information about them. A catalog is like a
database that contains a record of your photos. This record is stored in the catalog and contains data such as preview
information, links that indicate where the photos are located on your computer, metadata that describes the photos,
and editing instructions applied in the Develop module. When you rate photos, add metadata and keyword tags,
organize photos into collections, or remove photos from the catalog—even when the original photo files are offline—
the settings are stored in the catalog.
All of this information enables Lightroom to give you flexibility in managing, identifying, and organizing photos. If
you’re photographing on location, for example, you can import photos into Lightroom on your laptop, and then move
the original photos onto writable media or storage devices, and continue organizing and managing your photos
without worrying about filling up the laptop hard drive. You can then transfer the catalog to your desktop computer,
preserving the changes you make and keeping track of where the photos are stored. The catalog that you import with
photos from the on-location shoot would be a separate catalog from any other catalog that may be stored on the
desktop computer.
Note:
Although you can view photos in both Lightroom and Adobe Bridge, the two applications behave differently. To
view photos in Adobe Bridge, your computer hard drive must contain the photos, or your computer must be connected to
a storage media that contains the photos. This is because Adobe Bridge is a file browser that only displays readily
accessible photos. The Lightroom catalog is a database that keeps track of the photos you import, so you can preview
photos whether your hard drive contains the actual photos or not. To edit photos in Lightroom, however, the software
does need to be able to access the stored photos.
By default, Lightroom loads the most recent catalog. You can open a different catalog by choosing File
> Open Catalog,
or you can determine which catalog is opened in the General preferences.
Viewing and organizing photos
Photos in the catalog and their accompanying data are viewed in the Library module. You can view all photos in the
catalog as thumbnails in a grid, or the catalog can be filtered in different ways to show only specific photos. The Library
module has controls that let you search for and display specific photos and data. You can also group photos into
collections, into a temporary collection called the
Quick Collection
, or into a smart collection based on a criteria that
you specify. You can also use keyword tags and metadata to find your photos.
The Library module is where you view, sort, manage, organize, compare, and rate your photos. It’s your home base for
working with photos after importing them into Lightroom.
Photos are displayed in the central area of the Library module in any of four views:
Grid view
Displays photos as thumbnails in cells, which can be viewed in compact and expanded sizes. The Grid view
gives you an overview of your entire catalog or specific groups of photos for rotating, sorting, organizing, and
managing. Options are available for viewing information about photos, including their ratings, color labels, and Pick
or Rejected flags in the cells. If you photographed a series of similar photos, they can be neatly grouped in a stack with
the thumbnail of the best showing. See “
Finding photos in the catalog
” on page 92 and “
Grouping photos into stacks
”
on page 71.
Loupe view
Displays a single photo. Controls let you view the entire photo or zoom in to see part of it. Zoom levels up
to 11:1 are available. When you’re in the Grid or Survey view, double-clicking a photo displays the image in Loupe view.
Compare view
Displays photos side by side so that you can evaluate them.
Survey view
Displays the active photo with selected photos so that you can evaluate them. The active photo has a white
border. Change the active photo by clicking a different thumbnail, and deselect a photo in Survey view by clicking the
X
in the lower-right corner of the thumbnail.
Updated 03 September 2009
