- Lightroom classic provides several ways
to speed up the editing process,
by applying the same adjustments to multiple images.
So once you have a photo edited,
just the way you like it,
you can take those edits and apply it to the other images.
This is referred to as batch or bulk editing.
It works best with a collection of pictures
that have common characteristics,
especially exposure and lighting.
We'll use the Grand Canyon photos
that are found in the chapter seven,
zero seven 11 folder,
and explore multiple ways for batch editing.
First, we need to edit an image,
so I'll switch to the develop module.
I'ma do a quick edit on this.
I'll choose the Adobe landscape profile,
auto tone it,
change the white balance to cloudy,
because that does a nice job of warming it up.
And then I'll open up the shadows
so that we can see into that Canyon wall there.
Now this is looking pretty good.
What we want to do is take the edit for this image
and apply it to the rest of them.
So the first method of doing this
is to just switch to the second image in the film strip
using the right arrow key.
Now we have a button at the bottom of the right panel group
that says previous.
Clicking on previous will take the edits last applied
and put it on the image that you have selected.
So you could go through the whole film strip really fast,
selecting the next one,
clicking previous to get all the way through it,
but there's even another way to do it that might be faster,
and that is to select all the images
that you want to apply that edit to.
So I'll hold the shift key down,
click on the 10th image.
So two through 10 are selected here,
and then this button that said previous,
it now says sync,
and it says sync dot, dot, dot
and the dot, dot, dot means more options.
So if we click on it now,
we'll get a panel of options.
If you want to skip over the options,
you can hold down the option or alt key,
and that changes it to sync without the more options.
Let's go ahead and look at what those options are.
When you're synchronizing the develop settings,
you can choose exactly what you want to synchronize.
Typically, you won't sync the selective edits
because every photo is going to be a little bit different,
and by default, those are turned off.
So I'll go ahead and just click synchronize
and pay attention to the film strip.
You'll see that edit pop into all those images really quick.
It's really cool how that works.
Let's take a look at another method using presets.
I'm going to do a command + Z or a control + Z to undo that,
and then I'll click the reset button
to reset the edit on image number two here.
And we'll go back to the first one that we edited
and create a preset of this.
The presets panel is in the left panel group.
Let's toggle it open by clicking on the triangle.
These are all presets that come with Lightroom.
We can create our own preset by clicking on the plus
and then choosing create preset,
and then have to give it a name.
It could be any name,
it could just be landscape.
And then here,
you also have the options
to apply the settings that you used.
I'm going to go ahead and leave all the default here
and just click create.
And we'll see in the presets panel
that we have a new group user presets
and the Grand Canyon preset in there.
Now we can select the second image in the film strip
and apply the Grand Canyon to it.
And we could go through the whole film strip doing that
or we could sync them all doing the same thing.
You can also apply a preset in the library module.
Let's switch to the library module and see that.
Actually, I'll choose the third image
and we'll switch to the library module.
And in the right panel group at the top,
it says quick develop,
and next to it right here where it says defaults,
if you click on this,
you'll find all your presets,
including user presets Grand Canyon.
So with a preset,
you don't have to switch to the develop module
to do your editing,
which could speed you up even more.
Let's go back to the develop module
to explore one final way to bulk edit
by syncing the edits as you edit.
So to do this,
we need to select everything in the film strip.
I'm going to do a command + A or a control + A to do that.
That brings our sync button back.
And if you hold the command or control key down,
it turns into auto sync.
And when we click auto sync, it's now turned on,
so any edit we make,
it's going to automatically apply to all 10 images.
Let's just apply a preset to do this quickly.
I'll apply the black and white landscape preset
and crank up the clarity of this.
And you'll see that all of these images
were edited very quickly.
Knowing how to batch or bulk edit
by synchronizing your adjustments,
greatly speeds up your editing workflow,
saving you time,
and possibly even increasing your earning potential.