Workflow

Lightroom From the Top: How Tony Northrup's Culling-First Workflow Will Change How You Edit
Video Tutorials

Lightroom From the Top: How Tony Northrup's Culling-First Workflow Will Change How You Edit

Every photographer I know has the same problem: a memory card full of 300+ shots from one session, a vague intention to “edit those later,” and a folder that never gets touched again. I fell into this exact trap when I was editing press photos for my band on zero budget, learning Lightroom by trial and error with no system whatsoever. The editing wasn’t the hard part. The chaos before the editing was.

The Lightroom-to-Photoshop Bridge Most Editors Set Up Wrong (And How to Fix It)
Video Tutorials

The Lightroom-to-Photoshop Bridge Most Editors Set Up Wrong (And How to Fix It)

There’s a specific kind of frustration that comes from doing everything right inside Lightroom, sending a file to Photoshop, and watching the color shift the moment it opens. I’ve had that happen on client work more times than I’d like to admit, usually because I hadn’t thought carefully about the handoff settings that govern what Lightroom passes to Photoshop in the first place. Once I locked those settings down, the whole round-trip workflow clicked into place in a way it never had before.

How to Build a Photo Calendar Inside Lightroom's Print Module (No InDesign Required)
Video Tutorials

How to Build a Photo Calendar Inside Lightroom's Print Module (No InDesign Required)

Every December I get at least three messages from photographers asking how to make a photo calendar as a client gift without paying for a web service that slaps its own logo on the back. I used to shrug and say “InDesign, probably.” Then I watched this KelbyOne tutorial and felt a little embarrassed that I hadn’t thought of the solution myself. Watch the full tutorial on YouTube before or after reading this, because the presenter moves fast and having this breakdown alongside it will save you some rewinds.

How to Move Your Lightroom Photos to a New External Drive Without Losing Your Mind (or Your Edits)
Video Tutorials

How to Move Your Lightroom Photos to a New External Drive Without Losing Your Mind (or Your Edits)

Every photographer I know has hit this wall at some point. The external drive is full, a shiny new one is sitting on the desk, and the question hits: how do I move everything over without Lightroom treating my entire catalog like a missing persons case? It’s one of those problems that sounds simple until you actually try it and suddenly every folder has a little question mark icon mocking you.

From Lightroom to Photoshop Without Losing Your Mind (or Your Raw Data)
Video Tutorials

From Lightroom to Photoshop Without Losing Your Mind (or Your Raw Data)

Here is the honest truth about most Lightroom-to-Photoshop workflows: they leak quality somewhere in the handoff. You export a JPEG, open it in Photoshop, do your thing, save it back, and suddenly you are three generations deep into a file that started as a beautiful raw. I have done this more times than I want to admit, usually late on a Friday night with a record on the turntable and a deadline in the morning.

Lightroom Classic vs. Lightroom vs. Lightroom Mobile: Which One Actually Belongs in Your Workflow?
Video Tutorials

Lightroom Classic vs. Lightroom vs. Lightroom Mobile: Which One Actually Belongs in Your Workflow?

For a long time, I assumed everyone already knew there were three separate Lightroom applications. Then I started getting the same question over and over from readers: “Wait, which Lightroom am I supposed to download?” It’s a genuinely confusing situation, and Adobe hasn’t exactly made it easy to understand at a glance. If you’ve ever stared at the Creative Cloud app and wondered why there are multiple entries for what feels like the same program, this breakdown is for you.

Why Every Lightroom Editor Needs a Second Monitor Setup
News

Why Every Lightroom Editor Needs a Second Monitor Setup

I’ve been editing photos in Lightroom for years, and I can tell you with absolute certainty: adding a second monitor was one of the best investments I ever made. If you’re serious about color grading and photo editing, this isn’t a luxury—it’s practically a necessity. The Game-Changing Reality of Dual Screens When I first started working with just my laptop screen, I thought I was maximizing efficiency. I was wrong. I was constantly toggling between panels, hiding the filmstrip to see more image, and squinting at histograms wedged into tiny corners.

Before You Touch a Slider: What Nigel Danson's Landscape Workflow Taught Me About Seeing First
Video Tutorials

Before You Touch a Slider: What Nigel Danson's Landscape Workflow Taught Me About Seeing First

Most of my worst edits share the same root cause. I opened a raw file, started dragging sliders, and hoped something good would happen. The file looked flat, so I’d crank contrast. The sky looked pale, so I’d push blues. Thirty minutes later I had something technically processed and emotionally empty. It looked edited. It didn’t look felt. That’s the exact problem that Nigel Danson addresses head-on in this landscape Lightroom tutorial.

Work Smarter in Lightroom: How Batch Editing Saves Hours on Every Shoot
Video Tutorials

Work Smarter in Lightroom: How Batch Editing Saves Hours on Every Shoot

There’s a version of me from about six years ago who spent three hours editing forty-seven press photos one by one. Same lighting conditions, same camera, same location — and I manually adjusted every single frame like some kind of masochist. If I’d known then what I know now about batch editing in Lightroom Classic, I could have wrapped that job before the record finished spinning. That’s not an exaggeration. Batch editing is genuinely one of those techniques that changes how you think about post-processing.

Why Your Lightroom Edits Look Different After Export (And the Exact Settings to Fix It)
Tutorials

Why Your Lightroom Edits Look Different After Export (And the Exact Settings to Fix It)

I sent a client gallery last spring that I was genuinely proud of. Warm tones, clean shadows, that particular shade of golden-hour amber I’d spent forty minutes dialing in. She wrote back confused. The images on her phone looked flat, slightly green, and nothing like the previews I’d shown her. Same files. Different world. That was a color profile mismatch, and it cost me a reshoot conversation I did not want to have.

Stop Squinting at Your Filmstrip: How Lightroom's Survey Mode Finds Your Winner Faster
Video Tutorials

Stop Squinting at Your Filmstrip: How Lightroom's Survey Mode Finds Your Winner Faster

Culling is the part of my workflow that used to eat the most time and give me the least confidence. I’d sit there clicking through similar frames in the filmstrip, second-guessing every pick, and eventually just choosing the one that felt right in the moment, which is not exactly a repeatable system. The problem isn’t taste. The problem is that comparing eight nearly identical shots inside your own head, one at a time, is genuinely hard.

Lightroom Isn't Just for Editing — Here's How I Use It to Wrangle and Rename Entire Photo Sets
Video Tutorials

Lightroom Isn't Just for Editing — Here's How I Use It to Wrangle and Rename Entire Photo Sets

Most photographers treat Lightroom like a one-trick pony. Import, edit, export. Repeat. But I’ve found that some of its most useful features have nothing to do with curves, color grading, or any of the things we usually talk about on this site. I use Lightroom as a full file management hub, and honestly, if I lost access to every other feature tomorrow, the batch rename tool alone would keep me subscribed.