San Diego Children's and Newborn Baby Photographer | Little Sprout Photography

Updated Gallery

Just a quick note to let you know that we recently updated our gallery. Pop on over to the Little Sprout Photography homepage to take a look at some of our latest images. San Diego Baby Photography.

Lightroom Workflow Tips

Came across an interesting post on a few Lightroom timesavers. We also use the clarity brush for sharpening and have brushes set up for dodging and burning (and softening skin, whitening teeth, etc…) — some good tips here; definitely worth a read.

Speaking of Lightroom…

Here’s an interview with fellow San Diego photographers, the Boudoir Divas discussing their photography business. I found this fascinating:

We are happy to say that our post-procession workflow is now completely streamlined… to the point that we are able to do same-day viewings for ALL of our shoots! Here’s how it goes: Immediately after a session, we have our client leave the studio for an hour, to go grab lunch or a cup of coffee… and while they’re gone, we download their images and edit and process in Lightroom, using presets that we’ve created to go with all of our distinct sets and lighting set-ups. When the client returns in one hour, we have her proofs all ready to go…

We’re not able to turn our images around that quickly because our image processing workflow involves a lot of handcrafted dodging and burning, but, wow, that’s impressive.

Pick/Reject
Many times, I’ll end a shoot with dozens (hundreds?) of pictures, which can feel a little overwhelming. After playing with using a star rating system or color-coding my photos, I’ve found the fastest way to sift through the images and quickly sort the keepers from the losers is by using the status flags. Here’s how:

1. Import your images and make sure you’re viewing unflagged images only. This ensures your picks and rejected photos will be automatically removed from the filmstrip upon selection. I find this helps me keep track of images I’ve already addressed.
2. For each image, click P to keep it or X to reject it. I am fairly ruthless at this stage — if an image is out of focus or I don’t like to composition, I will go ahead and reject it. If several images look good, I will use the Compare and Survey views to make sure I’m picking the best image of the bunch.
3. Now switch the flag so you’re viewing rejected photos and delete all of these. No use in wasting space on lackluster images. Once finished, I turn off the status flags so only my picks remain.

I find this simple keep/reject system enables me to quickly sift through large numbers of photos without getting stuck on arbitrary star ratings.

Quick Black & White Check
This one is really easy. From the library or develop modules, select an image and hit the V key. The image will be converted to grayscale. Hit V again to switch back. This is a super easy way to quickly gauge how an image will look in black and white before performing a more thorough conversion.

Quick tip for creating black and white conversions in lightroom: Try sliding the color temperature up to 12000 or so and then desaturating the image. The higher color temperature makes skin appear smooth and creamy, and the funky colors are neutralized by sliding the saturation to zero. From here, you can adjust the Blacks, Brightness, and Contrast sliders to taste…