I am very much what society would call ‘a creative’. I love diversity, and I rarely think in linear structures. Most of the time my mind looks like a wall of sticky-notes and the way in which I talk rivals the flight-path of a butterfly feeding on a garden of flowers. I love the diversity of the different tasks I get to do every day. I cover a range of tasks in a day as I wind my way through the coordination of the Londolozi Creative Hub (our in-house advertising agency, marketing department, design house, print shop, IT department, systems centre, online story-telling hub, film and media production house and photography department with an in-house gear rental shop). One of the parts of this daily dance that I love to do is to sit and coach guests on how to edit their wildlife photographs. I love how I never know what direction an editing session is going to take when one of our guests arrives for their hour of tuition at the studio door. One of the more exciting directions, for me, is when I get to sit with an amateur photographer who has allowed the bug to bite and wants to know more about the intricate details of what the software can do.
In one of my recent session with a guest (actually with a friend, and colleague’s dad- Henry Smith), we spent the hour talking a mile a minute about the more ‘nerdy’ side of Lightroom. We spoke about everything from cataloging our photos to adjusting feather and flow in the adjustment brush, and finally settled on the topic of speeding up our workflow using the power of Lightroom’s synchronisation settings.
In today’s tutorial, I wanted to share some of my tips for the easiest way to remove that sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach when you sit down to edit thousands of photos from your holiday, knowing you don’t have all the time in the world to do it.
Lightroom is an incredibly powerful tool, and if you know the capabilities of it, you can change the way you view your photography. The synchronisation of edits is one of those things that most people don’t know about, which is why I wanted to unlock this side of the software for you so that you can get more out of your batch editing and speed up your workflow considerably. There are a view caveats that you need to be aware of when syncing your settings, however, so watch my tutorial below for all the info.
If you have any suggestions as to what you would like to know more about for a future tutorial, please let me know in the comments section below… I would love to make sure we cover all the topics that you need help with.
Happy editing!
P.S: Thanks to Henry for the inspiration to do another video tutorial!
Thanks Amanda! With the thousands of photos we take at Londolozi, this is great advice! Your help in getting me started with Lightroom at the Creative Hub has been invaluable!
Hi Michael. It is so lovely to hear from you! I am glad that this tutorial has helped you. It is definitely one of the lesser known tools, and very valuable indeed for those of us who believe that pixels are free 🙂
Thanks so much for the tutorial. I’m looking forward to learning much more when I’m there next April. Until then I’ll be practicing.
Thanks for your comment Anne! Practice really is the key to editing. Looking forward to meeting you next April!
Thanks a bunch for this tutorial, Amanda! I can hardly wait to start experimenting…
Thanks for your comment, Mary Beth! I hope you are still enjoying playing around with Lightroom. 🙂
Hi Amanda so pleased you’ve done another tutorial on Lightroom! Inspiration to get going on my unedited photos! It’s such a help!
Thanks so much Gill. I am glad that you enjoyed it, and that you are still using Lightroom. Your black and white edits were beautiful, so keep up the practice! 🙂
Amanda, we’ll be at Londolozi in November. Do you recommend practicing before we get there or can you help us? Do we need to make an appointment in advance? Thanks.
Hi Andrea. You can most certainly make an appointment to come up for a session with the Studio team. You don’t need to book in advance, but be sure to let your Camp Manager know that you would like to book on arrival, and they will get in touch with us. It would be great to get a head start before you come in November, just to get the most out of your session. If you are very new to Lightroom, take a look at some of my other tutorials here to get you started:
http://blog.londolozi.com/2015/07/lightroom-tutorial-1-my-basic-workflow/
http://blog.londolozi.com/2015/08/lightroom-tutorial-2-what-is-white-balance/
http://blog.londolozi.com/2016/01/lightroom-tutorial-3-the-adjustment-brush/
http://blog.londolozi.com/2015/12/the-top-10-reasons-to-use-lightroom-this-holiday/
http://blog.londolozi.com/2016/05/inspired-by-ansel-adams-a-look-at-the-beauty-of-black-and-white/
Looking forward to meeting you later this year!
As if Londolozi wasn’t already wonderful enough . . . along comes The Hub. The commitment to excellence in all that makes Londolozi so special is certainly evident in the concept and the people that are part of The Hub.
Thank you for the kind words, Jeff. We are very proud of our Creative Hub and it makes us happy to know that we are adding value in every way possible to your experience 🙂
VERY helpful, Amanda! Thanks again for your help at Londolozi, which, together with this tutorial, is already saving me a lot of editing time! Can’t wait to come back and see all of you at Londolozi again!
So glad you found it helpful, Henry 🙂 You are doing a phenomenal job so keep it up… I was very impressed with your Lightroom skills!
That’s wonderful Amanda. Thanks as always to you, Roxy and Alice!!
Thanks Al 🙂 Looking forward to having you back agains soon for another studio session.