Someday I’ll be ready for full-fledged Photoshop. In the meantime, I’ve worked up from Photoshop Elements to Lightroom, which has been plenty to learn on its own. As I’ve slowly picked up tips for Lightroom, I really appreciate the work other photographers have put in to documenting their workflow. I was even pretty excited to find out that workflow is a thing you can describe! Here’s how I’ve come to work through images, in case I can pass along the favor.

When I import a new set of pictures, the first thing I do is apply keywords to each image. SO helpful when you’re looking for images later! I like all my images to have descriptions of their state, origin, size, location, and subject matter. Even better, I try to add information about the image’s orientation, color, and possible purpose. Is it a layer, a background, a focal point? For example, this image was taken in Marymoor Park, with Subject keywords of trees, water, and horizon. Here’s are my top-level keywords, and a smattering of sub-level options:

• Aspect
  • Landscape
  • Portrait
  • Square
• Color
• Origin
  • Microscope
  • Phone
  • Raw
  • Scanned
• Place
• Season
• Size
• State
  • Archive
  • Background
  • Detail
  • Focus
  • Untouched
• Subject
  • Buildings
  • Horizon
  • Text
  • Texture
  • Trees
  • Water

At some point, I use the flag system to keep or delete photos (P for Pick, X for Reject), and then I rate each image with 1 to 5 stars. Some people might make that culling process their first step, but I prefer to apply keywords in bulk, to a group of images, while I’ve got the shoot fresh in my mind, and give myself some time to ponder ratings.

Now, I’ve got rated images to choose from. Lightroom provides multiple ways to sort and search based on ratings and flags. I run a Smart Collection filter on them to find images from the last year or so, rated with at least 2 or 3 stars, and I start working on whichever of those catches my eye. Finally, as I focus on one image, I use the development processing features that correspond to the darkroom, and load it into Photoshop Elements for layering. Here’s the image at top, for example, greatly improved by the addition of one of my color palette montages! All the edits, good and bad, pile up, as I putter with images and build up another body of work.