r/Lightroom • u/Acceptable_Button43 • Sep 10 '26
Workflow Dad's workflow
Hey! My dad (67M) is having trouble finding a workflow for lightroom and was hoping people might be willing to shsre adjustments/their work flow.
Right now he transfers photos via memory card to an external hardrive, puts them into DXO raw, then transfers them onto lightroom.
He says "there has to be an easier way to do this" lol and would love to help him find one but i'm not familiar with lightroom / editing
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u/grain_issue Sep 11 '26
I’d make Lightroom the default path and DxO the exception rather than sending every image through both.
Something like:
card > working storage > Lightroom > cull/edit
Then only send the files that actually benefit from DxO through DxO.
If you have 500 images and only 20 really need the extra noise reduction/lens treatment, there isn’t much reason for the other 480 to take the detour.
I generally try to make the most common workflow the shortest one and keep specialist tools for the photographs that actually need them.
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u/Max_Sandpit Sep 11 '26
I have a folder on my desktop for images I'm working on. In that folder I have folders for each shoot, by event and date. I import the photos off my cards into the folders. Then I import the folder in LR and the images show up and are ready for processing.
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u/Lumix_Shooter_22 Sep 11 '26
I’m not sure why you’re using DXO? Lightroom converts RAW files just fine!
I bring everything into Lightroom, export edits into a folder on my desktop.
When I’m confident I’m done with the images I export them to an SSD drive.
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u/saladstories Sep 11 '26
Wait I’m embarrassed that I have 25k photos that I just import directly to Lightroom mobile on my iPad then cull from there.
I haven’t figured out how to store the raw files on a ssd smoothly after storing in Lightroom. But from all you guys I guess it makes more sense to import to ssd first?
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u/_aspheric_ Sep 10 '26
-HD
—Lightroom
—-year-month-day- project name
——capture
——edits
——output
I import everything into Lightroom into a capture folder. I rate the photos I want to edit and drag them into a separate folder. I export JPEGs into an output folder. Synchronize and keep everything in a “single” location.
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u/dbvirago Sep 10 '26
My workflow is similar as I use DxO for raw conversion. But I use Lightroom to import the images to my internal SSD drive, where I cull out the garbage. Then I use the DxO Lightroom plugin, to send them to DxO, but only what I am going to work on that night, 5-30 images. I have a preset in DxO that does all my standard adjustments, so it's a couple of clicks to get the jpgs back into LR.
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u/midwesternexposure Sep 10 '26
Import to SSD > cull with photomechanic for speed > import selects into LR > process > export is my preferred workflow. Photomechanic is a little pricey when it’s not provided by work, so I built an personal app that does a lot of that culling/rating with a few prompts in Claude but that’s a bit of a hassle although it’s definitely doable with a bit of research.
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u/mimosaholdtheoj Sep 10 '26
I put my SD card into a reader, copy photos to an external hard drive and SSD, then from the SSD I import directly into Lightroom after culling (also in LR - I don’t use the AI assist, I do it manually). Then I edit in LR
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u/Acceptable_Button43 Sep 10 '26
Hi! Just talked to my dad and learned that it is an external hardrive, lol. Thank you so much!
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u/Acceptable_Button43 Sep 10 '26
Can I ask what SSD means? The step he's seemingly having trouble with the most in his work flow is the culling. He directly does that in lightroom without the AI step. From what he's explained to me, I think he needs a step where he can eaisly go through his photos and import the ones he wants to edit into lightroom (I hope this makes sense, thank you so much!)
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u/bfreegv Sep 12 '26
I use Fast Raw Viewer for the step that you mentioned. My camera makes date based folders on the memory card. I just copy those to a staging area on an external drive. Sometimes I don’t get around to them for a long time. I cull and rate the photos there. Keepers are moved to an import folder, duds are deleted. The program also honors the ratings from the camera so if I’ve gone through and starred photos in my camera, I can just use the program to quickly move them to my import folder. The same ratings show up in Lightroom so I often already have the highest priority files flagged. Depending on the shoot or project, I may keep the original folder with the files I didn’t initially select to import to Lightroom or delete. If he’s insistent on DXO, which I know some people are, he could process the files from the import folder and then have a separate process to import the files into Lightroom. The program is a one time purchase and not too hard to learn. A lot of people use Photomechanic for this but I found it to be more difficult than what I needed. Many people just import into Lightroom and cull from there, but that process takes too long for me. I don’t want to sit there and wait for it to build previews when I’m going to delete a very large percentage of what came out of the camera in the first place.
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u/UteJazz Sep 11 '26
An SSD is WAY faster than a hard drive. I keep my photos on one and do my Lightroom Classic editing from there. I keep backups on and external hard drive (safer than an SSD for long-term storage) and a cloud backup to protect against theft or disaster.
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u/mimosaholdtheoj Sep 11 '26
SSD is a solid state drive! It’s a small portable hard drive. As far as culling options - Narrative select is a fast option, but culling is the Bain of every photographer’s existence. It’s a pain for all of us. I just went through 7000 photos last night and I wanted to cry
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u/msabeln Sep 10 '26
Solid state drive. It’s the modern, faster equivalent to the old hard disk drives. It’s far faster but also a lot more expensive.
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u/deeper-diver Sep 10 '26
One can argue that DXO RAW is not even necessary. I'd remove that step.
Import directly into Lightroom. Be done with it. Make sure to set the paths in Lightroom to where the photos will reside when imported into Lightroom. Could be the same external hard drive (or internal drive).
Make sure all file management is done from within the Library module of Lightroom. Do not do any file/folder changes outside of Lightroom as that's a sure-fire way to mess things up.
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u/Ok-Lingonberry-8261 Sep 10 '26
Does every photo need DXO pure raw? I tend to only use it when I've got egregious ISO, like shooting a fast-moving animal in the deep shade under forest canopy.
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u/msabeln Sep 10 '26
Lightroom’s Denoise is excellent.
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u/NoHoliday8732 Sep 11 '26
Especially if you just have noise reduction built right into a preset, I really don’t use denoise as a separate function.
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u/NoHoliday8732 Sep 11 '26
Why would you do DXO RAW? That’s a bottleneck of redundancy right there.
But also, you’d have to describe how he shoots to get any answer on processing.