How to Quickly Edit Light and Airy Wedding Photos in Lightroom

Lightroom can be a photographer’s best friend, or an eye-rolling foe if you know you’ll be stuck at the computer with it for hours… or days. 

But have no fear! Let’s get you editing quicker and more consistantly with a light and airy photography style. 

I shoot A LOT of weddings- my estimate would somewhere around the 700 mark in my career. That’s a long 10 years sitting at the computer with Lightroom. Eventually, I became obsessed with making the editing process quicker, without losing quality- so I could ya know, live a little too. 

So I created my own preset, called Sueña Presets. This gave me a quick, consistent look I could apply to every photo, even night photos. 

Want to know the full process? Let’s begin.

1. Shoot as consistently as possible. 

   • Practice makes perfect, fewer mistakes and less editing.

2. Open Lightroom, create a new catalog for the client and upload all the photos. 

3. The culling process begins. 

   • I go lens by lens by going to ‘Library’>’Metadata’ and selecting the lens I want to cull. This gives me a quicker sense of accomplishment when I’m done with a lens. I’m really fast at knowing the exact photo I want, and once I have it- I don’t even look at the other photos in the set. I do this by rating 1’s or 2’s. 

• 1’s are no’s. 2’s are go’s.

4.  After round one of culling, I filter to all my 2 starred photos, and do another round of culling, looking at all lenses together this time. 

• 1’s are no’s. 2’s are go’s.

• Side Note: I haven’t explored “After Shoot” yet for quicker ‘AI-driven’ culling, but I’m highly considering trying it out to speed my process even more. I’ll get back to you on that. 

5 . After the photos are culled, I apply Sueña Presets to all photos. 

• I take a set of photos (in the same room or lighting situation), adjust the first photo in the set using exposure and white balance, and hit “sync” to adjust all photos in that same lighting. Boom, done. 

• Repeat for each lighting scenario. The great thing about Sueña Presets is that for me, it requires very little adjusting. 

6. After Sueña Presets has been applied to all images and adjusted, I go through each photo in the gallery making sure the exposure and white balance is consistent photo to photo. 

• At the same time, I mark any photos a 3 star, that needs photoshop work (taking out signs, fire alarms, etc.)

7. When the gallery is complete and beautiful, I mark photos with a 4 star that I want to be black and white, make a virtual copy, and apply Sueña Presets Black and White.

• I usually give 10%-15% of my gallery in black and white (with a color version for the client as well.)

You may have heard that editing is the longest process in photography, and you have heard right! But with consistent shooting and editing presets, you can cut your time down substantially and get back to your life! 

Happy Shooting!