Spring Clean Your Workflow
Image by Lis Warren
Edited with Quest 46 Camellia
As the seasons shift and the days grow brighter, there's no better time to give your photography workflow a fresh start. Just like clearing out a cluttered closet, tidying up your digital space can bring clarity, efficiency, and even inspiration. In this guide, we’re diving into simple yet powerful ways to "spring clean" your workflow—from organizing your files and keywording in Lightroom, to optimizing performance and speeding up your editing process with smarter culling and AI tools.
Let’s shake off the digital dust and get your editing process blooming!
Organize Your Files
One example of file organization
Everyone has a different system for organizing their digital files, it’s as personal as organizing a physical space, even if it’s digital. Sometimes, we make a filing system that makes sense to us at the time, but as our business grows, the system becomes chaotic. It’s just so hard to go through and fix it when you have so many files!
That said, it might be time for some spring cleaning in your photo files— especially if you do client work. You don’t want to lose or delete something important!
Tip: Make sure you are importing your files directly onto your computer, external hard drive, or NAS (Network Attached Storage). Know where your files are going so you can organize them in a way that makes sense to you, rather than letting Lightroom or a culling program plop your files willy nilly on your hard drive!
Here is one way to organize your files I find helpful:
Folders by Year
Inside your Year folders, add folders by client or photo session
Separate folder for RAW files (it helps to add 1. in front of the name so it shows up first)
Separate folder for Photoshop edited files (you can put 2. in front of that folder name so it shows up second), if applicable
Separate folder for Exported files (you can put 3. so it shows up third)
Inside your Export folder, add folders for High Resolution (Hi Res) files, and Low Resolution (Lo Res) or Web Resolution files
It should look something like: 2025 -> Client Name ‘Family Photos’ -> 1. RAW, 2. Photoshop, 3. Export -> Hi Res, Lo Res
This is just one example, but it helps to know exactly what is where, and when you’re exporting from Lightroom, you know what files go in which folder!
BACK UP YOUR FILES
Image by Lauren Alexandra Photography
Edited with Quest 46 Camellia
There are many ways you can do file backups to make sure you’re never in a situation where you’ve lost a client’s photos. The standard of data protection many photographers follow is the 3-2-1 Rule: 3 copies stored on 2 different types of media with 1 copy kept off-site. It’s good to have redundancies, especially if you haven’t delivered your client’s gallery yet!
You can store files:
On the original SD card— don’t delete or wipe your cards until clients have received and approved their photos!
On your computer
On an external hard drive
Cloud Storage like Google Drive, Dropbox, AWS, etc
Back-up service like BackBlaze
On-site NAS (Network Attached Storage) or RAID array (Redundant Array of Independent Disks)
Organizing your files now makes it easier to make sure everything is backed up and protected.
Keywording in Lightroom
The Keywording panel in the Library module in Lightroom
Keywording your photos as part of your workflow is a great organizational system. Some people add keywords they want to be exported with the file metadata, some just do it for sanity reasons.
One thing I find helpful is adding a keyword for the preset you used to edit a photo with— that way, you don’t have to go back to the History in Lightroom or get confused after syncing hundreds of edits as to what presets or tools you used!
Keywords also show up as searchable fields in Lightroom if you’re trying to find images of something specific in your archive— for example, if you keyword all images you’ve taken of dogs, you can command+f (on Mac) to open Lightroom’s search bar and type in “dogs”.
Some things you might want to add as keywords:
Your name or business name
Location where the photo was taken
Subject of the photo
Genre (like wedding, family, portrait, etc)
SEO keywords you might want in your image metadata (make sure you click Include Metadata in the Metadata dropdown in your export settings)
Tip: If you’re a visual organizer, or if you have a bunch of images you want to keyword in a session like a wedding, try Lightroom’s Spray Can tool. You can “spray” on keywords, ratings, labels, etc, just by pointing it at the files in the Library! See the video below for an example.
Metadata Copyright Info
In the Lightroom Library module, under Keywording, there’s a module for Metadata. You can create Copyright Presets that get saved to your image metadata, just don’t forget to update them each year! The presets can be assigned to your images when you import them in the Apply During Import area, making it easy to save your info to your files! See video below.
Optimize Lightroom
Is your biggest complaint about Adobe Lightroom that it is slow? With all the advancements in AI masking (many of which we’ve tried to include in our presets to speed up or eliminate hand editing), Lightroom can run pretty slow if not optimized properly. Try these tips to speed up Lightroom as part of your workflow spring cleaning:
Use Smart Previews— enabling Smart Previews when editing allows you to view and edit on smaller versions of your photos, making Lightroom more responsive without sacrificing quality.
Regularly optimize your Catalog(s). Lightroom includes a built-in feature to "Optimize Catalog." This reorganizes your data for better performance. You can find it under: File > Optimize Catalog
Delete old Preview files— Over time, Lightroom builds large preview caches that can slow things down. Periodically go to: Edit > Preferences > File Handling and clear 1:1 previews that are no longer needed.
Use GPU Acceleration Wisely— Go to Edit > Preferences > Performance and make sure "Use Graphics Processor" is enabled if you have a capable GPU. If Lightroom behaves erratically, try turning it off to test. Note that LR will send you periodic pop-ups urging you to turn ON your GPU, but if you notice it is faster turned off, it’s fine to ignore those pop-ups. ;)
Update Lightroom and other system software! Updates to software often include bug fixes, performance improvements, and new features, so make sure you’re updating software regularly and that your operating system and graphics drivers are also up to date.
Turn of Auto Face Detection and Address Lookup. These background tasks can hog resources and slow down Lightroom. Turn them off under: Lightroom Classic>Catalog Settings>Metadata tab
Sometimes, the slowdown is due to a slow computer, so try these tips to clear up space on your hardware, too!
Keep your LR Catalog(s) and preview files on your computer’s internal storage (not on an external hard drive). The internal SSD offers faster read/write speeds, which LR relies on.
Delete old Lightroom Catalog backups— you definitely don’t need 10 years' worth. It’s okay to remove older ones (even if it feels daunting). Keep your most recent 2-3 backups in case something goes wrong (sort by date and delete the older ones, ensuring that you delete the folder and not individual files within it). Also, retain backups from before significant Lightroom updates until you’re certain there are no issues with the new update.
Sadly, sometimes a machine is just outdated or needs more RAM. Lightroom uses a lot of memory, so if, after everything, you still experience lag, upgrade your computer’s RAM (16GB or more is ideal) or update your machine to something with a faster processor.
Culling and AI Editing Software
One of the most important things to think about when you’re cleaning up your workflow is time. How much time do you spend going through files or editing sessions more or less the same way you always do? Not everyone wants to automate these tasks— that’s totally fine, and there are plenty of “in-between” things you can do so you still have control but allow for a little help.
Culling and AI Editing software can help give you time back— there are a lot of companies that do both, now, and when you find one you like it can be AMAZING. You also can choose to do one or the other, and as I mentioned, retain control.
Some software companies include:
Photomechanic (not AI-based but helps to manually cull images quickly)
Yes, you can manually cull images in Adobe Bridge or Lightroom. However, with features that allow you to view every face in an image up close at once (instead of zooming in on each person to ensure their eyes are open and in focus), AI-assisted culling is the way forward. Some photographers prefer to let software manage the culling process entirely, while others (like me) opt to have the software display ratings and details such as eye and focus assessments and make the final culling decision themselves.
As for AI editing— if you have a strong personal style or use only a few of the same presets to edit the majority of your portfolio, AI editing might be a good solution for you. AI editing companies like Imagen create a personal AI profile for you based on your past edits, and Imagen has a Lite AI profile option that uses a preset you already own and use to create a profile for you. Archipelago Presets partners with Imagen and we sell a few of our presets in their Profile Shop as well!
Image by Klaudia Graňáková
If you (like most photographers) love having control over everything you edit, you can always take the base edit from the AI editing software and tweak it in Lightroom to your liking.
Just like tidying your home can bring clarity and calm, giving your photography workflow a good spring cleaning can lead to a more efficient, inspired creative process. From organizing your files and fine-tuning your Lightroom keywords to optimizing software performance and exploring smart culling and AI editing tools, every step helps you reclaim time and energy for what truly matters—creating. So take a moment to refresh your systems, simplify your setup, and set yourself up for a season of smooth, stress-free editing. Your future self (and your hard drive) will thank you.
Are you going to spring clean your workflow? Do you have any workflow tips? Tell us in the comments!