Photo How To

Here's another of our ongoing tutorials designed to help you make the most of Adobe's latest Lightroom update that's full of new tools and a few surprises. Today an acclaimed French photographer demonstrates five new tricks in Lightroom 2023 that he says, "will change your life."

While your life may be fine just as it is, we can all use some help streamlining our Lightroom workflow and understanding how the new capabilities work. And, at the very least, that's what you'll learn in the 20-minute lesson below. If you life changes for the better too, consider that a bonus.

Instructor Serge Ramelli is a successful French photographer whose landscapes, street photography, and cityscape imagery appear in over 120 galleries across the globe. He kicks of today's episode with this bold claim: "I'm going to show you five techniques that I'm sure you don't know and have never used." Make sure you watch until the end, because Ramelli presents his "secrets" in reverse order, from the least to the most important.

The countdown begins with tip #5, explaining what Ramelli says is "the best way to organize your photos"—a topic we covered in greater detail a couple weeks ago. Ramelli discusses the method he uses to speed up his workflow and choose the best photo for an occasion. He says that some photographers "spend days or months trying to locate an image," and his approach will solve that frustration.

The system he developed proved very helpful after shooting over 170 images of his pretty daughter. Ramelli explains that he first reviews all the photos from a session, and then rates them in order of potential. That's only his first organization step, and he carefully describes all the others.

Next on the list is a technique for creating AI presets for super-fast edits, in this case for portraits. But you can do much the same for all sorts of photos. The idea is to create a single preset for a particular style of imagery that you can apply almost instantly to similar photos. As you'll see, this one will save you tons of time.

The last three techniques are those Ramelli considers of increasing importance, beginning with a straightforward method for synchronizing images between two Lightroom libraries—on both the laptop and desktop computers. He then explains a trick for moving you Lightroom Collections to your phone.

The lesson concludes with a very helpful demonstration of how to create a website for free using your Adobe photography plan. Ramelli has almost 650,000 subscribers to his instructional website where you can a wealth of shooting and editing tips and tricks.

And don't forget to watch the detailed tutorial mentioned above that explains how to clean up your Lightroom mess and never lose a photo again.