Beth asked …
I just got Lightroom. Teach me how to use it? (yes, that’s a question)
Also, Anna and Noah think you are super talented with your blanket/quilt making skills. Anna wants to know if she can lay on it. Can she?
I promise to start working on some Lightroom tutorials. I have a list already … just gotta find the time to write and screenshot and write some more.
And I hope Anna and Noah and Eli are all enjoying that quilt. I had a blast making it while thinking of your amazing family and your children. All five of them.
Sarah asked …
How the heck do you save all your photos once you finish editing them in PS?
Do you save the original version also, or only the edited version?
Do you have a way you file them so you can find them easily?
When you put a watermark on your photo, do you save an original without it in case you want to print it out one day? Or do you just take it off later? How do you do that if you save your pic as a jpeg instead of the photoshop version?
Oh good questions!! They all kind of tie into each other, so I’ll go through my workflow, and that should cover all of them.
I shoot in RAW format only – there are many reasons for this, so that’s a different post altogether. But let’s just start with that.
I upload my images into Lightroom straight from my camera or card and initially arrange them by date. Once they’re all uploaded, I go through them and delete the unwanted images. Sometimes, I do quick edits as I’m going through them, but most of the time, I just click through and reject/delete. [I will write a full post on how I do this very soon.]
Once I have the images I want to keep, I go through and edit them. I basically have a little folder with my favorite presets that I use all.the.time. Some of them aren’t anything more than a little boost in brightness & contrast while others completely change the tones of the image. If I have a bunch of images that were basically taken in the same light (i.e., Disney images) then I batch-edit using the same preset. [tutorial coming soon]
I don’t save originals straight out of my camera, because it is one-click to “reset” the image back to it’s original format in Lightroom. Plus, that would take up WAY too much room on my computer.
At this very moment, the images that I upload straight from my camera/card are on my computer (C and D drives) while I have my Lightroom catalog backed up on one of our servers. One of these days, I’ll get a separate harddrive just for my images, but the server is a great backup for now.
So once I finish editing in Lightroom, I send to PS for final edits, re-sizing, adding my watermark, making storyboards, etc. I export all images from Lightroom using JPEG format (I do not resize!) into a folder on one of our personal servers. I have them organized from there into about a zillion different folders.
Most edited originals go into a folder called “Lightroom Exports” – if I make changes in PS (adding textures, changing tones, etc), then I save it in that folder, as well. So if I need to go back and print an image, I pull the large file from that folder.
Once I edit in PS, I resize to no more than 1000px on the longest side and add my watermark. Then, I save that image into a folder called “Flickr” – I have subfolders there for various subjects (emma, house, vacation, etc.) All of these folders are also on our server, so the ONLY images on my computer are the originals uploaded straight from my camera.
The re-sized and watermarked images are the ones I upload to Flickr or to my blog.
As for organizing my photos, everything is organized in Lightroom by date, and I add tags when I have time. Outside of Lightroom, all of my images are organized into different folders that probably make sense only to me.
Did that cover everything? Please let me know if you have any other questions or would like to see more clarification.
Misty (a sweet friend from high school with the cutest little girl!!) asked …
When did you decide to stay home with Emma full-time? Did you leave for maternity leave and never go back or did you go back for a while and then make that decision? And how did y’all make that work financially (without me getting too much into your business)?
We decided while I was pregnant that I would leave my job and stay home with Emma, so when I left my job a week before she was born, we all knew that was it. I know a lot of people who do maternity leave and then don’t go back so they can get paid for it, but I just couldn’t do that, so my last day at work was my last day of getting paid.
Not to get too specific, but Ken bought our house while he was still single, so we knew that his salary alone could pay all of our bills/mortgage/groceries, etc. I made decent money at my old job, but I used to to joke that his salary paid the bill while my salary was the tip.
Since we made the decision while I was pregnant, we knew that we would be losing my salary, so we socked away a lot of money into savings, as well.
Then, in March 2008, Ken made the tough decision to leave his well-paying corporate job (due to stress and unbelievable hours) to start his own business. And all financial security flew out the window. I can’t even tell you how we made it the past couple of years … I truly have no idea how we paid our bills on what was in our bank account. It was more stress than I could ever imagine, and there were definitely times where we were borrowing from Peter to pay Paul, but we made it through. And due to an opportunity that he just couldn’t pass up, Ken is back in the corporate world. (Not for the same company as before)
I can tell you that we worked VERY hard to stretch our pennies, and that included using cloth diapers on Emma, menu planning and coupon clipping to save money on groceries, adjusting to lower/higher thermostat settings, using homemade cleaning products and detergent, shopping at Goodwill and consignment stores, making some of Emma’s clothes and cloth diaper covers, reading library books instead of buying new, renting movies from RedBox or the library instead of buying them, asking for clothes and shoes (for Emma) for birthdays/holidays, eating out was a luxury, just doing without.
But sometimes, it’s just not doable. I know many many moms who cry while driving to work, because they’ve calculated and calculated to no avail. Sometimes, doing without just isn’t enough.
In the end, I have no secret formula … I honestly feel very blessed.
Casey asked …
Where did you get the headphones?
… from this post.
I think I originally told someone that the headphones came from Target, but I think they were actually from Walmart. The brand is Phillips, and the package says 6+ years, but they fit Emma just fine. They only had one color (blue/white) when I went, but perhaps they come in different colors? I assure you, we would have wound up with purple or pink if they had those options.
Tiffany Lee asked …
I love the color of your photos and am just curious how much of that is camera setting versus post-processing.On average how many photos do you post process? Do you typically batch process them? And when you are post processing are you manually adjusting your photos or typically using actions.
… from this post.
I actually emailed Tiffany back straight away, but I thought I’d post my answer here in case anyone else was wondering.
I post-process pretty much all of my images, even if it’s just a contrast or brightness adjustment. I shoot in manual, so hardly any of my images have the same settings, but if I have a series of photos that are all taken in the same light / same subject / etc. (like in my recent sidewalk chalk post) then I do batch-process in Lightroom.
Because I use Lightroom, I don’t use any actions, but I do use presets, and I pretty much always use my own that I’ve developed over the past year. I would love to try out some actions one of these days – I definitely don’t see anything wrong with manipulating images!! – but I still use Photoshop Elements, and I’m going to wait until I can purchase CS4 (or whatever the latest version is) before I start playing with actions.
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Okay, phew. That’s all of the questions I saw … if I missed one, please let me know! And thanks – that was fun!! I’ll have to do that again soon. :)
