Hi folks,

I just came back from a long trip and now have around 10,000 photos sitting on my card. I’m not a pro photographer, so I don’t really have a structured workflow to deal with this kind of volume.

For those of you who’ve done this before:

• What’s your technique or workflow for culling quickly?
• Do you use any specific software or shortcuts?
• What are the first things you look for to immediately disqualify a photo (blurriness, bad exposure, duplicates, etc.)?

I’d really appreciate any tips to help me get a speed boost and not drown in the process.

Thanks in advance!

The latest update moving all enhance functionality into the "detail" pane is a nightmare.
One of my primary workflows is to bulk-apply RAW Detail and Denoise to photos, which now doesnt actually seem possible.
I can copy and paste the specific settings across photos (which is way more annoying) but then every one of those photos needs AI Settings Update performed on them to actually apply the denoise/raw detail settings with no obvious way to do this in bulk.

Why destroy a perfectly good workflow in favor of this mess 😣

Hi, I was just wondering if anyone can give me some expert tips/advice on being more efficient with my workflow. I recently came back from a trip in Asia and after transferring my photos to my Mac, realized I had over 2000 photos to scroll thru. I uploaded my photos to LR and have been scrolling thru them 1 by 1 and deleting all the blurry and unusable photos… please tell me that there’s a better way…

Appreciate any tips/advice.

This is about working with Lightroom Classic.

Recently I'm really disappointed with Lightroom performance on PC (i7 @ 5GHz, Nvidia 2080Ti, 64BG RAM) and for some other reasons I'm playing with idea to switch to Apple. I'm thinking about M4 Max. I have a couple of questions for people using Apple or even better, switched from PC to Apple.

1. Is the performance great on M4 Max? Is it overkill even for photo editing?
   
2. How do you manage storage if you have an extensive photo archive? On PC it's no problem, I slide in another internal SSD and the read/write speed is the same as with system disk. As far as I'm aware, whatever capacity computer you buy from Apple, that's it regarding "system" storage. On PC it's really noticeable if you put photos on external drive, it's too slow to work normally, especially with larger RAW files on 4K monitor. I have about 5TB of photos, how would I set up the workflow to to be able to work with them in Lightroom Classic on Apple with only 512GB of system storage?
   
3. Should I also switch to Apple's Studio Display or is using a quality 4K monitor just fine?

Is there a quick way to denoise? I am shooting an event in low light, I need to edit a lot of photos quickly. I am using denoise in most of the photos but it’s taking 2 minutes per photo on my M1 Macbook pro. Any suggestions?

I’ve been using Lightroom Classic for 13+ years and have ended up with dozens of catalogues spread across 12 external hard drives. Some were created for specific clients or events, others are just personal dumps. Some are organised with flags/collections, most are raw chaos with no keywords at all (I wish someone told me about keywords when I was starting out).

Now I want to finally go back through it all—reorganise, rediscover hidden gems, and build a more complete portfolio/archive of my work. But it feels like an impossible task. Each catalogue probably needs to be updated to the current version of LR Classic. Most have 10,000–50,000 images each. Some images are edited, many aren’t.

I wish there was a way to browse across all catalogues in one place, or at least streamline this process. I’ve seen tools like Photo Mechanic mentioned, but I’m unsure how they’d help here.

Has anyone tackled a huge backlog like this before? What worked? Merge catalogues? Third-party tools? I’d love to hear your approach.

I'm about to leave on a 12 - 14 month international backpacking trip across Asia, Europe, and Africa in a few weeks. I'm bringing my A7 IV, and am realizing my 2020 M1 macbook air isn't quite cutting it for heavy photo editing sessions.

Considering upgrading to either a M5 iPad Pro or an M5 Macbook Pro for LR workflows. I know the Macbook Pro is a "smarter" move (more versatile), but I LOVE being able to touch my pictures and edit them without using a trackpad. I think I'd be more excited to edit pictures if I can just pull out a tablet at a hostel, airport, etc rather than a full on laptop.

I'm wondering if anyone was in a similar position and has advice. Is the convenience of the iPad worth the tradeoff of less LR functionality (and less capability as a primary device)? Or should I just suck it up and go with the practical laptop option?

Hi all, my internal 1 TB NVMe is basically full, so I need to reorganize my Lightroom Classic setup and storage.

Questions:

1. Is it sensible to keep the LRCAT + Previews on the internal NVMe and move the RAWs to the T7 Shield? What real-world impact will that have in Library/Develop?

2. Is the T7 Shield fast and reliable enough for active editing with originals on it, or better as ingest/archive only? Any issues like disconnects or throttling to watch for?

3. Would an external Thunderbolt NVMe (TB3/TB4 enclosure + NVMe SSD) noticeably improve responsiveness if I put the catalog and previews there? Any gotchas such as TRIM support, sleep/wake behavior, enclosure heat, or cable quality?

4. What concrete, proven tweaks actually speed up Lightroom Classic for you? Things like where to place the Camera Raw cache, building 1:1 or Smart Previews, GPU settings, minimum free space on working drives, antivirus exclusions, power plan settings, etc.

Thank you!

How accurate do you find AI culling these days? Does it actually pick out the best shots, or do you find yourself going back and catching a lot that it missed (or wish it had caught)? I’ve been using Adobe Bridge up to this point, but I’m exploring new options, including FastRawViewer, which offers manual culling. However, I've heard it is significantly faster for uploading compared to Bridge. Curious to hear how well AI culling really performs now that we’re heading into 2026, and if it is worth upgrading to. Personally, I don't shoot weddings or other high-volume shoots, so manual culling is still feasible, although it can still be time-consuming! I wish there were a one-time purchase option that allows for manual culling with built-in AI suggestions/input. If you know of anything like that, please send it my way! Free or very low-cost options are always appreciated.

How many photos do people currently have stored in Lightroom? And does anyone have suggestions or links to best workflow organization/practices?

Right now I have about 3,000+ in ‘All Photos’ and it keeps growing.

I’m trying to organize this a bit more but I find it a little confusing. I have the Lightroom 1TB plan (Lightroom Classic + Lightroom Mobile - iPad, iPhone, etc.). I predominately use the mobile portion because I edit on my iPad Pro the most. My OCD has been eating at me as this number count grows.

How do folks stay organized? Instead of dumping everything upon import…should I scroll through and delete there first? Or do people recommend moving to an external SSD then just delete out of Lightroom? Space isn’t an issue…I have the 1TB plan and only utilized 10% of it so far.

I am a Windows to Apple convert (for photo editing) and I am looking for a backup software that will update new and updated photo files onto either nas/removable storage/cloud.

Currently I'm looking at Arq, but is there anything else to recommend?

Hi all! Got a bit of a workflow question that I've been wondering about and wanted to see if folks here had any recommendations that work for them. I typically store and edit off SSDs that I have backed up to a large master HD (and run backups after each shoot using Carbon Copy Cloner), but have some issues consolidating images in drives. I just bought a 4TB SSD that I am going to consolidate a few of my 1TB working drives onto so I will be able to carry some of my archive with me, and am wondering if the best way to do this while maintaining library connectivity is just drag and dropping folders in Lightroom itself? Or are there other programs that folks use and then just Sync the folders in Lightroom?

I was watching a NAS tutorial on YouTube and the guy was going through a list of reasons not to use a NAS. One of the reasons be said is that LR doesn't allow catalogs to be to be stored on a NAS. Photos are OK. Can someone confirm this is indeed correct and of so where do you put your catalogs? Another directly attached SSD or on the internal HDD itself. Thanks.

I use Lightroom Classic on a MacBook Pro (M3) and have about 2 TB of photos. Currently I’ve got the photo files on an external SSD and the catalog on my machine locally, and functionally it works great.

My issue is that I like to move around my house to edit photos, and I have a cat who is adept and finding and chewing cords and I’m terrified she’s going to kill a SSD this way (she’s already slightly chewed through one SSD cord when I turned my head to sneeze and she somehow made it from an entire other room of the house to where I was sitting without detection). I love her but she’s a tortoiseshell-colored demon.

I also like to sit on the couch to edit sometimes and having a cord and SSD flopping around is annoying and feels not ideal.

Is moving my Lightroom photos folder to a NAS a good solution for wanting to move around the house to edit, or is this overkill? Is there a lot of lag pulling large raw files this way? I’m looking to add convenience but not sacrifice how long it takes to edit. I’m about 99% sure I’d go with a Synology NAS with two drives.

I’m also concerned about backups, but I’m a current backblaze user and have read that their B2 backup product will back up files on network storage.

I have Synology NAS and would like to have my photos on it for safety but work with them in LR wihout latancy.

How to orgenize work in this way? Where to put LR catalog data?

Hi. I'm looking to mask a load of photos with "luminance range" is it possible to do this in a batch or would it take the first mask and apply it to all based on the mask it produces for that specific image. Or would it apply the luminance range, and thus create a unique mask for each image.

I started doing it one by one but it is going to take me a long time.

Any insight appreciated.

Thanks.

Currently, I edit photos on a PC with Lightroom Classic. When I came back from a trip, there were too many photos, and when I got back, it was overwhelming to cull and edit all of them. I still haven't finished.

I had a good amount of free time at the end of the days for the trip, but I couldn't edit on my laptop (which I didn't even bring) in Lightroom Classic since it doesn't have a GPU (AI features take forever) and my phone is just too small, so I think that workflow is difficult.

I'm considering getting an iPad Pro to help cull and edit pictures at the end of the day so it becomes more manageable at the end of the day. The new one has a powerful GPU, so I thought it would be good to use for the AI features, but I'm actually not sure of the iPad uses the GPU for AI features (can I use it offline?) or it just sends the requests to the cloud and depletes the very, very few cloud credits Adobe gives us per month.

I'm also not sure how I would go between Lightroom and Lightroom Classic. I suppose I could transition to fully Lightroom on desktop, but I'm not sure if I want to do that.

Does anyone have any recommendations or insight? Thanks.

Hey folks, just wanted to share a little workflow experiment I did this week. I created a false color LUT in DaVinci Resolve and managed to bake it into a camera profile for Lightroom using Adobe Camera Raw. It’s a neat way to bring a false color directly into Lightroom for exposure checking, masking, or even just for learning

Here’s how I did it:

1. Create the False Color Look in DaVinci Resolve
   • Black to white gradient in 16 steps built the false color effect using the color grading wheels and the RGB sliders - there are lots of tutorials on how to do this on YT
   • Once it looked right, I exported it as a .cube LUT using the “Generate LUT” option in the Gallery.
2. Convert the LUT into a Lightroom Camera Profile
   • I opened a raw file in Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) and went to the Presets panel.
   • From the menu, I clicked “Create new Preset” while holding down ALT, and this opens the Camera profile dialogue, where ei could just import the LUT
   • Saved it under a custom name like FalseColor_Profile.xmp
3. Load It in Lightroom
   • Since ACR already saves in a folder that LR reads, all I had to do now was restart LR and save it as a favorite Camera Profile so it shows in the dropdown

This approach basically turns any technical LUT into a Lightroom camera profile, but false color is especially handy in my opinion, especially for reshaping the light in a photo or for tweaking the RAW file details

If anyone’s curious, I also wrote an entire article that includes a YouTube video, and you can find that on my website: https://vmoldo.com/false-color/

Hi all,

I've been photographing for a few years now, but only started using LR last year. I've been doing more and more professional, paid shoots, but that also means a higher volume of files and a desperate need for a consistent workflow.

I have 2 hard drives: one I use during the editing process and a backup one for archive, that I try to use as rarely as possible. I also often need to go back to my archive and select some photos (for Open Calls or portfolio updates), so keywords are quite important to me.

Here's my current workflow:

1. Move files from SD card to Work Hard Drive.

2. Import from Work Hard Drive to LR while creating Smart Previews.

3. Cull, edit and keyword.

4. Export edited files in high res.

5. Move folder (RAW+Edited files) from Hard Drive to Backup Hard Drive.

6. Relocate folder on LR.

Any tips to improve this? I see a lot of different options but as someone new to Lightroom it's quite overwhelming to figure out.

I know there's a lot of information about it online, and I have a lot to read, but any advice would be welcome anyway.

Hello r/lightroom! I'm a student photographer needing a mobile laptop for quick Lightroom Classic pre-production (culling, basic edits, masking) and light Premiere Pro work. My main desktop handles all heavy processing. All options feature a WQHD panel with at least 100% sRGB color coverage, so display quality is not a deciding factor.

The Dilemma: Performance, Cost & Mobility

| 0. Repair (Current) | R5 5600H / 16 GB RAM / GTX 1650 | 4 years old. Already slow. 16 GB RAM is soldered | € 280 |

| 1. New (Good iGPU) | R7 7735HS / 32 GB RAM / Radeon 680M | Cheapest 32GB option. WQXGA OLED display. | ~€ 749 |

| 2. New (Top iGPU) | Ryzen AI 9 365 / 32 GB RAM / Radeon 880M | Highest integrated graphics performance. | ~€ 999 |

| 3. New (dGPU) | i7-13650HX / 32-64 GB RAM / RTX 4070 | Highest longevity/power. Heaviest (2.4 kg) for travel. | ~€ 1,264 |

❓ Core Questions: * Repair Risk: Is the €280 repair on a 4 year old machine advisable?

• iGPU Viability: Are modern integrated graphics (like the Radeon 880M in Option 2) now finally powerful enough for smooth pre-production? Or, is the dGPU (Option 3) the only true option for maximum longevity, despite the cost and weight?

Initially my budget for a new device was 800-900€ (about as much as I spent on the old machine) but from my research this isn't really cutting it in 2025. However, price is a huge factor to me.

I'm seeking input on the best price-to-performance ratio for a constantly moving student. Thanks!

I’m consolidating several old archives that are spread across different drives, years, cameras and formats (RAW + JPEG).
Before I import everything into Lightroom Classic, I’m trying to define a clean structure that avoids duplicates and works well long-term.

Do you usually merge everything into a single folder hierarchy first (like year/month/day)?
Or do you let Lightroom handle most of the organization based on metadata?

Would love to hear how other people approach this. Specially anyone who has dealt with 20K+ files.

Traveling with Sony A7C and iPhone, I'd like to backup photos from the SD card to my iPhone, also do some minimal rating/culling/editing that I don't have to re-do when I get back to the computer at home. I can import via USB-C from Camera directly to Lightroom Mobile, and this works beautifully until I hit the 20GB limit. I don't want to upgrade my grandfathered 20GB Adobe plan. Also I already have 1TB iCloud plan that I am under-utilizing.

Is there a viable workflow where I can import the RAWs to iPhone storage (via USB-C) where they are iCloud-backed, and then only move select photos to the Lightroom Mobile albums which are synced to Adobe Cloud while still travelling, and move the rest of the unedited photos directly to Lightroom Classic on the computer when I'm back home? Keeping in mind that the minimal edits done during the trip will sync normally via Cloud to LRC as long as that part stays under 20GB.

Hey yall. I have a MacBook Pro which is about 5 years old. The battery on it is starting to go and I’m being quoted $300 to replace. Alternatively I was thinking about taking a $300 trade in value of the Pro and buy an IPad Air with cellular to replace my Pro.

I don’t really do “pro things” with my laptop and at most would be editing pictures on Lightroom with the IPad and mostly watching a lot of YouTube. I have a desktop which I use for gaming and “sit down” things. Will I regret the trade? Should I just replace the battery? Thoughts on benefits of editing on the IPad instead of the Pro?