There are some really cool things that you can set up in Lightroom that can drastically speed up your workflow. As an event photographer, I create a new catalog for each of the different events that I shoot.

The first thing I do is set up Lightroom so that it asks me what Catalog I want to use when the program opens. Since I create a new catalog for each event, this means that Lightroom doesn’t need to open the last catalog, only to have me close it and create a new one. It’s really easy to set.

• Step 1: Open Lightroom
• Step 2: Click on Preferences
• Step 3: Set the Default Catalog to “Prompt me when starting Lightroom”

• Step 4: Close Lightroom

Now the next time you open Lightroom, you will get the following screen:

This allows you to open any of the catalogs already on the current computer and more importantly you can create a new catalog by clicking on the Create New Catalog button located on the bottom of the window. This opens the new Catalog window which allows you to pick a place to create the new Catalog.

Once you have created the new Catalog, you can now import the images into it.

This little change saves me a ton of time, hopefully it will save you some time as well.