Speed up and streamline importing images into Lightroom using Import Presets. Learn how to create and edit presets for importing images into a Lightroom catalog, includes backup on import, renaming, import presets, choosing previews and folders for storing images.
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Complete transcript of this video:
Hello, I’m Helen Bradley. Welcome to this video tutorial. In this tutorial I’m going to show you how you can streamline the importing process in Lightroom with import presets. An import preset helps you speed up the process of importing images into Lightroom because you don’t have to make all the settings each time that you import. I’m in the Library module. I’m just going to click here on Import. I already have a disk in the drive. I’ve got a camera card in the drive. And we’re going to have a look at an existing import preset because you can see that the default here right now is craft images. What this is is in import preset that I created to import images that I shoot of the crafts that I make. And it has certain settings already in it. There’s no file renaming because I don’t rename my files. Apparently there are no develop settings here but there is some metadata that’s being added to the images as they’re imported. And the destination is already selected. You can see here that the destination is craft images. This Into Subfolder is not actually being used because it’s not checked. So in actual fact everything is going straight into the craft images folder. So let’s go and create an import preset. And the way that we do it is just to make the settings that we usually want to use. Here’s the camera card. I only want to bring in new photos. In this case these are daily photos. So let’s just check. I do want standard previews made. I don’t want to import suspected duplicates. If I wanted to make a second copy I could automatically set that up but I’m just seeing that my backup drive is not attached at the moment. So let’s leave that blank. If I wanted to rename files I could select that and set up the renaming, but I don’t usually do that. Apply during import. Now there is a develop setting that I want to use here. And here it is in my user presets. And it’s a camera standard profile. What that does is makes my images when they appear inside Lightroom look the way they did on the back of the camera. And then I can go to metadata and I can select the metadata. I’m just going to click Edit Presets just to see what this metadata preset looks like and make sure it’s the one that I want to apply. Well no, that one looks a bit empty. So let’s go to Helen Bradley copyright. This looks like the right one. So I’ll click Done. Now I’m not going to apply any keywords to these image. The problem with keywords is that they’re going to be applied to all of these images. So you can see that there’s a whole range of images here. And there’s really not a keyword that I would apply to everyone of these images. So I usually keyword later on if I keyword at all. So let’s just close Apply during import. And now I need to select my destination. Now I already have a folder for these images on my removable disk. It’s actually this one. Toshiba hard drive green is where my images are kept. I’m going to go into photos and I want to pick up my daily walk from 2010 onwards. So this is the folder in which the images are going to be placed. And once I’ve made all these settings I can go ahead and import the images. But if I want to use these settings or most of these settings again in future I’m better off creating them as an import preset. So I’m going to choose Save current settings as a new preset. And here is my preset dialog. And I’m just going to call this daily walk, whatever it is that is going to remind me that these are these images and click Create. And now I have an import preset that’s going to be saved with Lightroom. It’s going to be available from this dialog anytime I come into Lightroom. All I need to do is to select daily walk and all these settings will be automatically applied to my import. Now if for example I do go and reconnect my backup drive then I could click here and just make a change to the settings. It’s not going to change the import preset but I can actually vary these things if I want to. But it gives me most of the settings that I need most of the time. So I’m going to go ahead and just click Import. So there’s the basics of using an import preset in Lightroom. You’ll find that if you repeatedly choose to use the same settings that an import preset will save you a lot of that setup time. I’m Helen Bradley. Thank you for joining me for this video training session. If you liked this video please click the Like button here in YouTube to tell others that you liked it. If you’d like to see more of these videos and be notified when they’re released please subscribe to my channel. You’ll find lots of other Photoshop, Illustrator and Lightroom tutorials in this YouTube channel. And visit my website at Projectwoman.com for more blog posts and interesting articles on these programs.