What are your "standard" changes in lightroom? Oh, and have some cake.

[MLeeK]

you will find that if you start using the curve better you won't be needing to increase your vibrance.
I have already set my version of ACR/LR (grrrrrrrr... LR headaches) up to automatically apply the standard curve that I use and my basic raw sharpening. I do not adjust anything in the exposure, brightness, clarity, vibrance, saturation department. Only adjusting the black level which I have a standard of about 4. Once the curve is applied it fixes the flat look and those other settings are not needed. I have changed my parametric curve to high contrast.
All of those things are already done when I open the image in LR or ACR.
Then I use about 3 presets all of the time-one for wrestling, one for basketball and one for portraiture. Those adjust for the headaches each of those sports poses for me and the one for portraiture is a different curve and sharpening than what I use on everyday/journalistic images.

If I am working on a newborn or a particularly pesky wb problem then I adjust the HSL-mostly luminance.
I often correct for wide angle distortion when I use a wide angle because after all of these years I STILL haven't learned to be more careful of it. I adjust for vignetting on the lens that I have that I notice the vignette on. If I want a bit of a vignette I add it here too.
If I am creating black and white I do it here on the HSL tabs where I can control every aspect of how each color is converted.
If I have screwed up I'll adjust the exposure or brightness.
I adjust the white balance for most everything in raw. Skin tones I also adjust in PS because it's easier to nail them there. Except sports-which I only do WB in raw.

In short? I do just about everything in ACR/LR.

 

[MLeeK]

for Raws, shots of people
Neutral mode
+4 fill light
+4 highlight recovery
Black point to 5
contrast to 35
Vibrance 15
Saturation 6
Bright +3

I auto sync that to all the shots at once, then I start going through them one at a time to tweak. They don't usually need much else.

Every photo gets a levels check based on the histogram.

Right before export, auto sync sharpening. 92 2 20 90.

You do know that you can make LR/acr do that for you before you even look at the image, right? You just set those as your default settings and instead of the adobe defaults that the software came with it applies what YOU want.

 

[DiskoJoe]

The standard is just strictly WB and exposure. That's it. Everything else is depend on the photo (indoor or outdoor, weather, outfit, season, vegetation etc.).

Im pretty much the same. The exposure and white balance almost always get tweeked just a bit then I go from there. There is no real reason to do a set regiment everytime if you are taking the pictures properly. A set regiment for certain lighting conditions would probably be something better to look into then standard editing practices. This will save edit time.

 

[Desi]

for Raws, shots of people
Neutral mode
+4 fill light
+4 highlight recovery
Black point to 5
contrast to 35
Vibrance 15
Saturation 6
Bright +3

I auto sync that to all the shots at once, then I start going through them one at a time to tweak. They don't usually need much else.

Every photo gets a levels check based on the histogram.

Right before export, auto sync sharpening. 92 2 20 90.

You do know that you can make LR/acr do that for you before you even look at the image, right? You just set those as your default settings and instead of the adobe defaults that the software came with it applies what YOU want.

Yes, I don't know HOW to do it yet, but I'm not ready to commit to such a thing anyway. As I do this more and more I am finding that I do some things a lot (like the vibrance and contrast). But I'm still very much learning.

I hadn't considered trying to apply a curve. I've just started messing with curves over the last month.

 

[MReid]

yeah...I guess am basically lazy...it only takes a minute the way I do it so haven't bothered to do a preset.
curves is like black magic to me....I never go in there.

 

[Overread]

480sparky - one idea with your method - shift noise reduction down next to sharpening. Both are pretty destructive processes to the image data, so if you can hold off performing them till the very end that gives you more data to work with for curves and other processes (this excludes capture noise and sharpening stages of course)

 

[cardonalj]

i take it one step at a time and work my way down from the top in developer mode. bf that i was a naive person and just assigned a preset and messed with the sliders in basic mode.

 

[480sparky]

480sparky - one idea with your method - shift noise reduction down next to sharpening. Both are pretty destructive processes to the image data, so if you can hold off performing them till the very end that gives you more data to work with for curves and other processes (this excludes capture noise and sharpening stages of course)

It's a non-issue since I typically shoot at ISO 100 and NR isn't needed. But I will move it, however. Thanks!

 

[MLeeK]

yeah...I guess am basically lazy...it only takes a minute the way I do it so haven't bothered to do a preset.
curves is like black magic to me....I never go in there.

OH!! it is sooooo easy once you play with it and see what it can do for you!!!!

I am not talking a preset. I am talking change what your software AUTOMATICALLY does.

 

[Compaq]

My workflow is, in all its glory, whatever I see necessary