See the ultimate editing workflow in action
What will this work flow achieve?
To my knowledge, this is the only workflow that will allow you to perform the following actions all in one process, while you sleep.
- Ingest photos off memory cards
- Back up photos to a secondary drive
- Perform AI culling with Aftershoot
- Import all photos into an Adobe Lightroom catalogue
- Build Smart Previews
- Perform AI editing with Aftershoot
- Open the catalogue in Lightroom again, ready to review AI culled and edited images.
We all love AI culling and editing and the life-changing impact it has made on our editing time. With that massive time save, we are improving our businesses, and becoming better parents, partners and friends.
I am someone who is very particular about where I spend my time, and I want to make sure I’m not doing anything that could be either automated or outsourced.
I’ve been dreaming about a product that can cull and edit on Lightroom Import. I expect this is on the horizon, but until we get there, I decided to make my own automation which anyone can do with the following steps.
The software you’ll need
1
Keyboard maestro
(Mac only)
This is the automation software that will power the workflow. You can download it from here: https://www.keyboardmaestro.com/
Install it and grant the permissions.
2
Adobe Lightroom Classic
You’ll need a subscription to Adobe Lightroom Classic, although I can’t see why this workflow wouldn’t also work with Capture One.
3
Aftershoot
You’ll need the Culling and Editing subscription. Check out their insanely cheap pricing below if you don’t already have it.
Don’t have Aftershoot yet?
Is there a better Return on Investment out there?
Consider this: Aftershoot will give you the average cull and edit cost per wedding, regardless of how many photos you choose to cull and edit:
Unlimited Culling.
Unlimited Editing.
Just $480 per year.
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Here we go
How to create your own Automated Aftershoot and Lightroom Workflow
You’ll need to build your workflow yourself as it records your screen. It’s not something I can share with you as our screen sizes and resolutions will be different.
You’ll have to start by downloading and installing Keyboard Maestro
After installing it, you’ll need to grant the necessary permissions.
Now create a New Macro
Go through your normal process of how you would leave your computer ingesting photos off your memory card into Aftershoot and begin building your automation from the ‘Start Culling’ phase which kicks in once Aftershoot has finished the ingest. You will be in bed when this happens so you’re looking for a trigger, something that changes on the screen when it’s ready to start culling.
I used a combination of the following triggers to replicate my Aftershoot and Lightroom Workflow:
- Pause
- Pause Until Conditions are Met
- Press Button
- Move and Click from the Center of a Found Image
You can see my entire workflow here:
Tips to keep in mind
- Make your Lightroom and Aftershoot windows full screen so the buttons are always in the same position.
- Before you start ingesting into Aftershoot, leave Lightroom open on the Import window, with the import folder selected, with ‘Include Subfolders’ turned off and ‘Build Smart Previews’ turned on.
- Add a step in the workflow to tick the ‘Include Subfolders’ box when importing in Lightroom once the culling has finished in Aftershoot.
- Start building and testing the workflow one step at a time. You only need a handful of photos to test it which makes the process a lot faster.
- Enjoy! This is a learning experience for creating your own automations. Think about what else you do that is always the same procedure but which takes time and that you’d love to create an automation for.
- If you want to ingest multiple cards, use multiple card readers so you can ingest them all at once.
