Hello my friends! This year, I’ve had so many food bloggers ask me how we process and organize all of the tens of thousands of photos and videos on Steamy Kitchen. I thought I’d create a little video on our workflow with my friend and Steamy Kitchen assistant, Cheri Alberts of The Watering Mouth.
I’m lucky to have someone so multi-talented like Cheri living close to me, she comes over 2-3 times a week to help test recipes, shoot and edit videos and process the gazillion photos that I take for each dish. She’s practically part of our family now, my kids love her, the dogs love her and my carpal tunnel/tendonitis-arms love her.
I think what Cheri and I do best is quick, simple workflow. Editing and organizing photos isn’t our favorite thing to do (it’s really a chore) but our tools that we use make it super easy and efficient. What actually takes the longest is going through the photos and choosing which ones to use!
Our main tool on the computer is Adobe Creative Cloud, which lets you use the entire Adobe suite of products for a monthly fee. As products get updated, you get the latest version, instead of having to buy each software individually and purchase updates. Our 2 main software tools that we use is Adobe Lightroom and Adobe Photoshop.
As you’ll see in the video, Lightroom is our work-horse for organizing, tagging, editing and exporting photos. Editing only takes a couple of clicks and I can batch-edit with simple copy/paste commands. Photoshop is only used if we have to add fancy text to a photo.
Okay, here’s Cheri’s video for you!
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My goal for 2014 was to buy and learn Lightroom… here I am, learning. Thanks for the video! This is a great start!
I’ve been using LightRoom for five years now–both for work and for my blog–and I love seeing how similar our workflow is!
Fantastic tips, it’s lovely to see the process of how you make your food look so good!
Super helpful video! I use LR, too, but not very good with keeping things organized. Now I know how to using keywords! And, the brush tip for editing only certain areas is EXACTLY what I’ve been needing. Thank you for taking the time to create this video!! 🙂
Very informative video … precise, concise and thorough. Thanks!
Great video Ms. Jaden! Thank you so much for sharing this! 🙂
Thanks for this post and the video! I love reading your blog and have learned a lot from it. I use Adobe Photoshop and did not know about the Adobe Creative Cloud. Thanks again for sharing!
Love this video — thanks for sharing so many wonderful tips. I’ve been using Lightroom too but I love the tip about adding keywords — always learning something new 🙂
Please PLEASE be sure to back up your data. Your workflow for dealing with your photos is excellent but Just because you are using an external drive doesn’t mean your data is safe. Make sure to make a copy and store it offsite, just in case.
Disasters always happen at the most inopportune times. Storing offsite is your best defense. That can be to a cloud hosting site or cloning your HD on a regular basis and giving it to a neighbor or family member to store for you.
http://macithelp.blogspot.com/search?q=backup
I love you blog Jaden. Your photos are always wonderfully mouthwatering.
Bruce
I agree…editing photos is not fun. I even have a hard time choosing which photos to use. I’m always interested to see what other bloggers are using, and thinking there must be an easier way than what I use. 😉
Thanks for sharing!
Denise
Can’t see the video 🙁
Fixed now — sorry!! 😀
Can’t see the video (it says it is private?)
Thanks Kalyn, fixed now!