I’ve been having a disconnect between the storage of my photographs and the editing process for several months. I’ve used Affinity Photo for the longest time and creating individual files for each edit. Somehow I happened on Lightroom Classic (LrC) after trying numerous other tools and this time around something was different with the interface and it seemed easier to figure out. Past designs of Lightroom kept me away and I wanted to be able to edit with simplicity from my other devices and create a consistent look across all my photos.

I am satisfied with how quickly it let me cull all photos from the 2022 Battle of Camden from ~400 down to ~180 photos. Robert Clay told me how he was able to sync his LrC collections across devices so after figuring out how to do that on my macOS version, I was able to access it elsewhere to edit it. And I’m keeping the catalog on a synced drive and referencing the RAW files from an external drive while generating 1:1 smart previews when importing with the add function so files are not copied but referenced.

I also wanted to create a new style for primarily these living history photographs. I was inspired by faded prints and an antique rustic-brown wooden stereoscope that I used a long time ago. Yesterday, I first created the faded look shown on the first image and then went for a textured appearance on a closeup in the second image.

Maybe I’ve found a style I’m satisfied with in the third image, after starting over from scratch this afternoon to modify my editing preset. This newer custom style reserves the original faded print look of the antique stereoscope inspiration and brings back some of the color I wanted to see again while creating a dreamy appearance.