TUTORIALS | LIGHTROOM CC - SEARCH TOOLS & EDITS

Last month, we focused on Lightroom CC, including the iPad version, more specifically about importing our photos, adding keywords and ratings if we chose and deleting photos we didn’t want to keep. We also learned a little about the People feature. Like before, we can scrapbook one of these newly added photos OR we can search to find another one. You’ll see that Lightroom CC has a search filter feature much like Lightroom Classic. You can sort by attribute or multiple choices of metadata (keyword, camera used…). You do have the ability of a multi-level search, too. Like last month, I’ll be including screenshots from the desktop version of Lightroom CC as well as the iPad version.

Like in Lightroom Classic, the first step in sorting through your images is selecting your search pool. You can limit your search to your most recently added images, to all of your photos, to folders by date as well as separate albums you’ve created. You’ll just click the appropriate section on the left hand side before clicking on the filter icon at the top.

In these examples, I’m searching in All Photos or in a folder by date, then I click the Filter icon. I can narrow down my search by keyword, by # of stars, by camera used, by People identified, etc individually or I can perform a multi-level search using multiple search criteria.

In the mobile version, you can accomplish much the same thing, the interface is just slightly different. I still identify the source on the left and click the filter icon. You’ll see the # of stars as an option, keywords, camera, etc. If I click on keywords, I see several choices. I can click in the little box and it will be selected. I can then use the back arrow to go back and select another criteria for a multi-level search. You’ll notice my first “selection” in the bar at the top. This way you’ll be able to see all the levels of your search.

Here’s something unique about Lightroom CC vs Lightroom Classic, the search tool is intelligent. In Lightroom Classic I would have to keyword my dog Obi with the keyword “dog” to be able to search for it that way. Not in CC! Type in DOG and it automatically searches all my photos and picks out dogs. Cool, huh?

Here I’ve searched for FOOD and the program has identified items mostly correctly. {I actually thought the iPad version did a little better job of it.} You can also do a multi-level search this way too, like this example of food AND cookie where it narrows the pool even further.

Now we get to see how using both Lightroom Classic and Lightroom CC can be helpful. In LR Classic, I can select a folder or collection along the left hand side, right click and choose to SYNC it with CC/mobile. Note the little icon to the left of the folder, that’s how you can tell it’s a synced folder. They just show up under albums in LR CC, easy peasy!

One thing I did notice is that the keywords on my images from Lightroom Classic NO LONGER transfer over to CC. Research tells me that LR CC’s flat keyword architecture can’t deal with the hierarchical keyword structure from Classic.

Now that we’ve selected our photo it’s time to do a little editing. Click on the three slider icon on the right hand side under the cloud icon. This brings up the editing panel. You can scroll down for white balance, contrast, exposure, etc. If you don’t want to tweak the individual sliders, you can click the Presets section at the bottom to see your installed presets.

Lightroom CC has tone curves sliders (if that is your preferred editing method) in both the desktop and the iPad versions, they just appear in slightly different places on your screen.

When you open the Presets section in LR CC, it opens a second scrollable panel showing all of your installed presets. You can scroll over the different presets and you’ll see your image change as it previews how that preset will look when applied.

When I was playing around in LR CC for this tutorial I found something new (at least to me) – profiles. I clicked on the Profile icon and I got a selection of styles almost like the guided edits in Adobe Photoshop Elements. Like with presets, you can scroll over the different profiles and see how they will look on your image. If you find a profile you love, you can make it a favorite by clicking the star in the upper right hand corner of the profile thumbnail. The nice part is that the one I made a favorite in the desktop version automatically became a favorite on my iPad!

In case you’d like to learn a little more about profiles, I found a a really good article from The Lightroom Queen that explained them. https://www.lightroomqueen.com/camera-profiles/

I hoped you’ve enjoyed this series of articles on Adobe Lightroom Classic and CC and how I use them in my digiscrapping process. I’d love it if you’d share your favorite tips in the comments.

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Stacia