The Challenge
When we’re out in the field, we can easily take over a thousand images in a day. When you add up those images over a few days, multiple trips, and several years, it’s easy for those tens or hundreds of thousands of images to turn into a mess.
The Let’s Get Organized course was designed to be a one-stop shop showing how to set up and organize your photos in Adobe Lightroom Classic. Learn everything you need to know about image management in 4 hours.
Course Summary
- Duration: 4 hours
- Software: Adobe Lightroom Classic
- Includes: 40 Lessons, Downloadable Keyword List
- Difficulty: Suitable for All Skill Levels
- Cost: $79 plus tax
Who will benefit from this course?
- Modules are designed to accommodate everyone from beginners to experienced users of Lightroom.
- The videos are short and digestible lessons making it easy to follow as well as find and rewatch specific topics.
- Here’s my advice if you aren’t comfortable with technology and wonder if this course is right for you.
What’s included in the course?
- 40 easy-to-follow Lightroom videos presented by professional landscape photographer Chrissy Donadi.
- Everything you need to know about image management within 4 hours.
- Instant access to course lessons for 1 year.
- For a limited time, our launch special includes a complimentary downloadable keyword list specifically designed for nature and landscape photography.
What will you learn?
- Understand the foundational elements of how to organize your photos in Adobe Lightroom Classic for Nature and Landscape Photography.
- Master the most effective methods to utilize Flags, Stars, Color Labels, and Keywords so you can find any image within seconds.
- Learn useful ways to use Snapshots, Virtual Copies, Collections, and Stacking Groups in your workflow.
- Gain a clear understanding of the most efficient ways to import and export your images.
- Explore the various settings to consciously balance between performance speed and storage space.
Course Curriculum
The first 4 modules are designed to help you set up and optimize Lightroom’s performance. Then, the remaining 6 modules walk through the best methods to effectively and efficiently import, keyword, and categorize your images as well as ways to approach a re-organization effort.
- Module 1: Lightroom Foundations
- Basic Terminology
- Lightroom Interface Tour
- Key Principles
- Technical Details
- Module 2: Folder Structures
- Understanding and Working with Folders in Lr
- Filtering and Finding Folders Fast
- Module 3: Understanding Catalogs
- Catalog Settings: General and File Handling
- Catalog Settings: Metadata and Automatically Writing to XMP
- Module 4: Lightroom Preferences
- General and Presets
- External Editing and File Handling
- Interface and Performance
- Module 5: Importing
- Multi-Tasking Advantages and Interface Overview
- Copy as DNG, Copy, Move, and Add
- Preview Types and File Handling
- Image File Renaming and Copyright
- Importing Summary
- Module 6: Culling and Categorizing
- Views (Grid, Loupe, Compare, Survey)
- Flags
- Stars
- Color Labels
- Spray Paint Tool
- Practical Culling
- Module 7: Keywords
- The Value of Keywords
- Keyword Panels Deep-Dive
- Keyword Panels Summary
- Importing and Exporting Keyword Lists
- Downloadable Keyword List
- Module 8: Organizational Tools
- Metadata Panel
- Virtual Copies
- Stacking into Groups
- Snapshots
- Module 9: Collections
- Collection Types
- Using Collections in Lightroom
- Practical Applications
- Module 10: Exporting
- General Settings
- Metadata Options
- Watermarks
- Presets
- Bonus: How to Travel with Lightroom
Reviews of Let’s Get Organized
Awesome course! I did not realize that there were so many options to Lightroom. I have already ordered some Raid storage so I can get multiple SSD external drives onto one unit. Thanks again!
Bruce S.
Many LR classes focus on the overall product or editing an image, but if you don’t understand or apply the organizational tools of LR, you’ll often have a mess or you’ll spend needless hours trying to clean things up. This class was extremely helpful and well worth the time. I wish it had been available when I first started using Lightroom!
Alice K.
Although I’ve been using Lightroom for more than a dozen years, this course introduced me to shortcuts and functionality that I hadn’t used before. It also provided an opportunity to revisit some of the Lightroom preferences I’d set years ago and hadn’t updated to reflect my current workflow. The course presented many ideas that will help me to more efficiently review and organize my photographs after capture. and I highly recommend it.
Rob D.
Awesome course! I did not realize that there were so many options to Lightroom. I have already ordered some Raid storage so I can get multiple SSD Such an informative course! I have been using LR for 4 years and have never taken advantage of the smart collections. Now I can’t wait to completely change my collections and make them smart collection sets! I learned a lot about keywording tips which will be so helpful and also using the correct flow to make sure my backups are stored in a different place from my catalog. It has given me so much to think about and I am going to take all the changes I want to make in baby steps but I am excited to really organize my images in LR now to a way that will work for me. Thank you so much!
Kathy L.
This was a great course for any level. It helped me understand and set up Lightroom. It covered topics and areas that I didn’t even know existed in the program. Chrissy has also gone above and beyond answering questions and providing additional tips.
Nicole S.
Thank you SO much for taking the time to write back, and for sending the video. I am definitely a visual learner, so that was much more helpful than sending written instructions would have been. You have helped me immensely. Now, instead of my Library panel being more than a foot long, and having to scroll a lot, it is much more compact and manageable. I would have never figured this out on my own. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I am sure I will learn a lot more as I work through the course, but this alone gave me more than my money’s worth.
Paul R.
I can’t thank you enough for the Lr organization series. I found you through my local photo hero, Brenda Petrella. All I want to do for the past few days is reorganize my Lr catalog. I’ve been feeding my kids nothing but cereal ;)
Britton M.
This was very useful and clarifying. I think most LR users would benefit greatly from this course.
Richard P.
Let’s Get Organized for Lightroom is the most comprehensive educational and easy to understand series I’ve ever experienced. There’s so much information and I’m glad it’s available to review segments repeatedly.
Ken W.
Great, thorough course, Chrissy. I have spent countless hours, even years learning wonderful processing skills but found myself with 21,000 photos very poorly organized. This course was exactly what I needed. I wish I had done this years ago. It makes sitting down at my workstation a pleasure and allows me to focus my time on processing images.
Steve B.
Great course! It shows that you really put a lot of time and effort into this. Thanks for the information, the tips, and the encouragement. Keep up the good work and I look forward to seeing your next project!
Trevor D.
I’ve used Lightroom for several years, and still learned many new things about it. Organization is key to keeping track of photos and creating collections for use. Thanks much for the lessons.
Dennis M.
Though I don’t have a mess despite using Lightroom for, um, a lot of years, this course will help me use features I’d still not discovered, and organize more wisely and productively for the next stage of whatever it is I’m doing. Chrissy, your self-deprecating sense of humor is a breath of fresh air.
Mary B.
I had a basic introduction to Lightroom through a photographer I was mentoring with online, but this course is a much deeper dive and I learned a lot of new/different things that will be of practical benefit. Chrissy does a great job of explaining things in easy to understand terms and the structure of the course is very logical, thorough, and well-organized. Especially loved the insights into culling/categorizing and keywords. The exhaustive starter keyword list provided is a big time-saver and almost worth the cost of the course alone!
Brian S.
Never lose track of a photo again
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I download the videos?
The course has been designed as an online course so I can make necessary updates as Adobe Lightroom introduces new features. Therefore, downloading the videos is not an option and prohibited. The only portion which is downloadable is the keyword list.
Can I share the login wtih a friend?
My answer: If you benefit from this course, the highest compliment you could possibly give me is to encourage your friends and peers to also make a purchase. This product took years to produce and way too many hours which I dedicated to planning and compiling the lessons. With that said, it is appreciated that every household purchases their own copy, and it is not shared with friends, enemies, frenemies, and pirates. Please know your support is greatly appreciated in helping me produce future content.
My lawyer’s answer: As agreed upon in the terms and conditions and purchase agreement, you are purchasing the product with a license of intended use. This license is only for your own personal use and cannot be shared with other individuals not living within your household.
What do I need to watch the course?
You will need a high-speed internet connection to take the course. The course has been designed to be compatible with all devices, including Apple and Windows desktop computers, laptops, tablet devices, and mobile phones. If you are able to watch the course preview video, then you will be able to stream the videos.
What form of payment do you accept?
To ensure the transactions are in a safe and secure manner, the website transaction is through Stripe, a large and widely used e-commerce company. The credit card companies accepted through Stripe are Visa, Mastercard, Discover, and Amex. In addition, I understand it is more convenient for some to use PayPal for online purchases. Therefore, there is an option to select PayPal as the payment method.
How can I leave feedback?
I am always happy to hear the good, the bad, but hopefully not ugly feedback on my products. If you benefited from the tutorial and would like to contribute a testimonial, there is a feedback form in the last module. Alternatively, please reach out using the contact form on my About page. If you have suggestions for improvement, please share that too! My goal is continuous improvement so I welcome constructive criticism.
What if I have an older version of Lightroom Classic?
The course focuses entirely on Lightroom’s Library module. While Lightroom Classic’s current version is 11.2, much of the Library module features have remained consistent with smaller changes and tweaks throughout the years unlike the Develop module updates which have received massive overhauls.
For example, the Let’s Get Organized! course lessons on working with folder structures, catalogs, importing, flags, color ratings, stars ratings, view types, spray paint tool, keywords, smart previews, regular collections, smart collections, and exporting would still be applicable to the older version of Lightroom. The overviews on catalog settings and Lightroom preferences even remain largely the same in previous versions of Lightroom.
To take full advantage of every single course option, yes, you would need the latest version of Lightroom. Although, even if you are using Lightroom Version 5.0 released back in 2013, you can take advantage of 90% of Let’s Get Organized!.