# Sports Photographers Workflow - Photomechanic/Lightroom



## Tom Beary Photography (Jun 6, 2016)

This is my current workflow when in the field.... 


Ingest to PhotoMechanic - (Auto Ingest, Copy Locked Photos only,Apply generic IPTC Caption) 

Apply individual captions including player names using code replacements linked to team-sheets 

Cmd + Y to move selected files to a folder on my desktop called 'Auto Import Folder' 

Lightroom automatically imports from this folder whilst applying a sports preset at the same time 

Crop & Straighten the photo & apply further adjustments if needed in the Develop module of Lightroom 

FTP to agency server using an FTP plug-in from within Lightroom (lightroomsolutions.com/ftp-directly-from-lightroom/) 


Would like to hear opinions and other methods people use!  If people can suggest any improvement i can make too feel free ....


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## Linwood Ferguson (Jun 7, 2016)

I do something similar, but I have found that crop and straighten is much faster in PM than in Lightroom, so first I do a culling pass to pick the ones to upload (I use tag = T), select, then another pass to crop and straighten, during which I reconsider and cull a few more.

With that done, especially good light, I find almost no work need be done in LR.  For bad stadium lights I may need more color touchup, but day sports are generally just done at that point, and I publish to upload from Lightroom.

I originally did the crop and straighten in LR, but the delay for each individual shot to get the crop tool to turn on was just really annoying, whereas there's no delay at all in PM.  I also found that second culling pass was productive, as I would make better choices (occasionally going back and picking a different shot from a burst). 

Also, I do a drag and drop into LR; what's the benefit of the extra move? 

LR is really contributing a lot in the presets, I have calibrations done for each night venue that I usually shoot for the bad stadium lights, and I'll use a preset but sometimes adjust a bit first (for example if it's a particularly harsh shadow day, or soft shadow day).

I actually do (almost) all the metadata in LR.  Unlike develop functions, LR is really fast for that.  I do sometimes add captions while cropping in PM, as they carry over, but by doing it all in LR I am not limited to getting it all coded before I move to LR.  But it's a tossup, PM could do all the same stuff.

Using PM cut my lightroom processing time at least in half!


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## johnbeardy (Jun 7, 2016)

Tom Beary Photography said:


> Would like to hear opinions and other methods people use! If people can suggest any improvement i can make too feel free ....



I'd be surprised if one could make it significantly more efficient. Yours is a classic case for using PM's code replacement, and I presume that speed is also a big issue.

Isn't a PM crop read by Lightroom?

I guess I would just question what happens to the images that aren't auto imported. Do they not have any value? If you do import them later, you might try importing everything and using star ratings to identify those needing further work and transmission.


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## Tom Beary Photography (Jun 7, 2016)

Ferguson said:


> I do something similar, but I have found that crop and straighten is much faster in PM than in Lightroom, so first I do a culling pass to pick the ones to upload (I use tag = T), select, then another pass to crop and straighten, during which I reconsider and cull a few more.
> 
> With that done, especially good light, I find almost no work need be done in LR.  For bad stadium lights I may need more color touchup, but day sports are generally just done at that point, and I publish to upload from Lightroom.
> 
> ...



I just find that i nearly always like to make minor changes even in good light with a nicely exposed shot i will still add some vibrance & a little sharpening .... also, the Auto Import is just a cmd & Y in Photomechanic with Lightroom auto importing once's its open so i can go straight there to edit my file

thanks for the reply ... interesting to see another workflow


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## Tom Beary Photography (Jun 7, 2016)

yes speed is my main priority while the game is taking place ... i need a couple of action photos within the first 15 minutes of the game starting with another ten at half-time 

yes a PM crop is read by Lightroom but i prefer to crop in Lightroom as its keeps some nice aspect ratios 

as the for the rest yes they are not so important as i have time after a game to go back and look at them .... i usually import the remainder at that stage


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## Linwood Ferguson (Jun 7, 2016)

Tom Beary Photography said:


> yes a PM crop is read by Lightroom but i prefer to crop in Lightroom as its keeps some nice aspect ratios



If you didn't know, you can save predefined aspect ratios in PM also in the lightning bolk, so it's a quick two clicks to select a specific ratio, just like LR.  The only difference (which is a bit obscure) is if you already drew a crop, and change this, the crop overlay does not change until you click a corner of it.

What I do miss on PM is a fine lined grid overlay form, the 2 (if I recall only 2) lines each way often are not near vertical or horizontal objects, so it is a bit harder to get really precisely level horizons.  But I really like that it is faster to get an overlay on a shot, position, and move to the next shot.  Much faster.

Relative to the other comments, I also, especially in basketball season, need to upload a few fast for press releases or the paper itself, then go back and review and select a lot more for a game gallery.  I've experimented with different markings and not really settled in on one.  I prefer not to mark in PM with stars or colors, as I use those in LR at times; but if you mark by "tag" in PM, it's very easy on a second pass to UN-mark, as hitting the tag button is a toggle.  I really wish I could change the "T" so it was "Tag" and had to do something else to untag so I would not by accident.

My new camera also let's me star and color (I think) photos before upload, so I get a head start, but since I shoot with two bodies I probably won't start doing that until yet another body is needed, so quite a while.  But I do need to start putting in more audio tags, now that both bodies will do those, and incorporate audio into the workflow (e.g. first review all shots with audio files).  I feel like i'm really missing out on an accelerator by not using that more.


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## Tom Beary Photography (Jun 7, 2016)

Ferguson said:


> If you didn't know, you can save predefined aspect ratios in PM also in the lightning bolk, so it's a quick two clicks to select a specific ratio, just like LR.  The only difference (which is a bit obscure) is if you already drew a crop, and change this, the crop overlay does not change until you click a corner of it.
> 
> What I do miss on PM is a fine lined grid overlay form, the 2 (if I recall only 2) lines each way often are not near vertical or horizontal objects, so it is a bit harder to get really precisely level horizons.  But I really like that it is faster to get an overlay on a shot, position, and move to the next shot.  Much faster.
> 
> ...



thats really cool with being able to select a specific aspect ratio with PM ... will definitely look into it further so thank you 

i do like the auto straightening in Lightroom .... does get it right a lot of the time. However maybe i can save time by cropping & straightening in PM


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## rob211 (Jun 9, 2016)

The 2015.6 update just released to Lr CC has a very nice Transform panel that's new; it does auto leveling and perspective correction, and is pretty awesome. You can turn it loose and then sync over several photos, taken from the same angle, and get them all corrected. It might speed things up depending on how well it works with your particular images. The manual controls are also improved over trying to use manual lens corrections for this.


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## johnbeardy (Jun 9, 2016)

Not sure Transform will be too relevant to Tom's work, Rob, but there's another big feature in 6.6 which should benefit everyone. It's now much faster to get to pictures in Develop. Lr now loads 4 extra images into RAM, 2 before and 2 after the current image. Even on my underpowered Mac Air, the improvement is dramatic as you left and right arrow through a series of images.


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## johnbeardy (Jun 9, 2016)

But you do make me think of an important thing. Is Tom using Auto Sync mode in Develop? If you can keep your head screwed on and keep your eye on how many images are selected, it's the fastest way to work.


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## Tom Beary Photography (Jun 12, 2016)

johnbeardy said:


> But you do make me think of an important thing. Is Tom using Auto Sync mode in Develop? If you can keep your head screwed on and keep your eye on how many images are selected, it's the fastest way to work.


 Yes its perfect for a sequence of action photos ....


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