The Organizational Power of Keywording and Filtering in Lightroom

In an industry where time management and efficiency can either make or break your business, you want to constantly be on the lookout for ways to maximize the results of your efforts. One of my favorite ways to maintain organization inside of Lightroom is through the use of Keywording.

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how Lightroom Keywording works

More than anything, keywording is meant to appropriately organize files to help filter through images when necessary. Whether it be for culling or search purposes, assigning keywords to your photos can help dictate various characteristics of your images. When in the Library Module you’ll notice the Keywording Panel split into three sections: Keyword Tags, Keyword Suggestions, & Keyword Sets. Here is a simple breakdown of their purposes:

• Keyword Tags: In this dialogue box you can create your own keywords, typing them out specifically for individual images or a grouping of images. Once you create the keyword, it will be added to the Keyword List, just below the Keyword Panel, where you can create sub-groupings within a keyword.
• Keyword Suggestions: Lightroom curates a few of your most recently used keywords for easy access when keywording similar sessions. This can save you a decent amount of time when you need to get through a thousand images with identical keywords to a previous session – like a wedding, for example.

• Keyword Sets: This is a list that you can modify and tailor for the catalog you are currently working on. Since there are so many parts of a wedding, keywording each pertinent segment can help you filter through images when you are in search of a particular image from a specific part of the day.

Using Lightroom Keywording for Wedding Photography

Where we have found this feature to be most useful for us is while editing wedding catalogs. With 16-20 hour weddings, there is only so much patience to sit and cull and batch-process scenes that are vastly different in lighting and settings.

So, to maximize our time spent in post, we have devised a keywording system that allows us to work on weddings, section by section, to keep shots consistent throughout scenes, and to lower the risk of burnout and sloppy editing. This one simple facet of Lightroom enables us to quickly and effectively pace out our post-production process to deliver consistently incredible imagery.

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