adobe photoshop lightroom Archives | Digital Dental Photography

Have you ever wanted to find some patient photos from several years ago, but couldn’t remember the patient’s name? Maybe you’re updating your website with some new photos, and it was a great veneer case, but the patient moved away, and you’re completely stumped? Especially if you’re using your Practice Management Software (PMS), this becomes a virtually impossible problem to resolve. So how do you manage this?

Adobe Lightroom Smart Collections for Dentists

One of the most powerful and useful tools for dentists managing their dental photography catalogs, is the Lightroom Smart Collections feature. Based (usually) on keywords that you’ve assigned to your photos, whether on importing them or adding them later, Smart Collections automatically collect all photos with a given keyword. You can also create Smart Collections to collect photos with a certain Rating (1-5 stars), Color Label (red, green, yellow, purple, blue), Metadata (date taken, GPS location if your camera has this feature, etc), or even combinations of criteria.

Keep Your Patient Photos Well-Organized

I’ve already discussed a basic structure for organizing dental pictures previously, and as long as you remember the year and procedure type, this can be an easy way to find a patient, because that name should show up in the list of patients under that procedure. However, if you’ve been practicing long enough and taking enough pictures, this is not always easy. Where I live, Charlotte NC, is a highly transient area, with lots of professionals moving into and out of town, so we tend to have high patient turnover rates. In addition, we often have patients driving long distances for our unique combination of services, including LANAP Laser Periodontal Therapy^TM, Six-Month Braces, and Cerec Same-Day Crowns, and those patients return to their regular family dentist after their treatment with us is complete. It’s hard to remember patients we don’t see regularly, right?

Setting Up Your Smart Collections

When thinking of all the possible ways and combinations you could set up Smart Collections, the enormous possibilities can seem daunting. Remember, though, you only need to do this for image sets that you really want to track over time. This type of organization is very useful for dental lecturers and for anyone wanting to use your own photos in your marketing. Theoretically, this might include sets as follows:

Dental Implants
- Straumann
- Implant Direct
- Blue Sky Bio
Porcelain Veneers
Crowns
- Lab-made
- Cerec
Whitening
Six-Month Braces
Invisalign

For example, since I’ve started taking photos through my Leica M320 Dental Microscope, I use a Smart Collection based on the keyword “microscope” as an easy way to sort out those photos taken through the scope, rather than with the conventional DSLR set-up.

Smart Collections Save Time

If you’re anything like I am, with a dental photo catalog of nearly 65,000 images over the last 8 years, and you want to find photos of a given subject, without having to remember every patient name and sort through them all, Smart Collections are the way to go. Because they AUTOMATICALLY collect every photo in your catalog with the criteria you select, they’re a huge time-saver.

Learn to use Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Smart Collections, and you’ll make your life so much easier, any time you need to find one or more photos, but don’t remember the patient’s name, or if you want to find photos from a lot of patients of a certain procedure, material, etc.

Please let me know in the comments if you have any questions, or if you’ve found other easy ways to organize your photos!

Ever worry that an unscrupulous web designer, colleague, or ad company might steal your images from your Facebook page, website, or other online source? If so, read on to learn some easy ways to help protect your work, provide legal coverage if necessary for action, and how to find out if your photos have been stolen.

Has Your Photography Been Stolen Online?

To my knowledge at this time, I’ve never had any of my online photos “stolen,” by which I mean no one has downloaded or “hot-linked” them for use on their on website or in other marketing media. That’s not to say it hasn’t happened, it just means I’ve never found any examples, because I don’t spend the time searching to find out.

Online Image Protection Has Limits

First off – if someone is REALLY determined to steal your photos, it is virtually impossible to stop it. Sure, there are ways to add “right-click” protection to stop the easy “save as” copying, and there are ways to hide the image file location to prevent someone using an HTML embed, but in the end, there are far more ways being created on a daily basis to get around them than there are ways to stop them. If hackers can break into major corporations and government agencies…….well, you get the idea, right? But since it’s unlikely you’re up against that kind of firepower, mostly you’re looking to keep unethical web designers and colleauges from using your work to advertise themselves. Fortunately, there are some easy and fast steps to do this with Photoshop Lightroom, and the best part is that, while the initial set-up takes a little time, after that it is virtually automatic and needs no more than a couple mouse-clicks…..seriously!

Creating Copyright Metadata Templates

The first step is to create a Metadata Template that can be embedded into your photos. Start at the Menu by choosing Metadata > Edit Metadata Presets, and you’ll see the following Dialog Box pop up (click for a larger view):

You don’t need to complete everything – total overkill. The ones you do want to complete are the following sections, and at the end of this article you’ll see a set of screenshots of the information I include.

IPTC Copyright
IPTC Creator
IPTC Image (parts of it)
Keywords

Click the little arrow next to each section, and once you’ve filled in your information, you’ll save this as a new Preset; the easiest thing to do is call it, “Dr. So-and-So,” where you fill in your name.

Applying a Metadata Preset

Once you’ve created your Preset, you have 2 options, and I recommend you do both to be on the safe side:

Apply that Preset to photos already in your Image Catalog, and
Set this Preset to be automatically applied whenever photos are imported.

To apply the Preset to existing photos, it’s almost ridiculously easy. Simply select all the photos to which you’ll apply the information, and go to the Right Sidebar of the Library Module > Metadata. When it opens, click on the “Preset” location and choose the Preset you created. You’ll be asked if you want to apply it to just the selected photos, all photos, or another combination. Select “All Photos” And BAM! You’re done with applying that information to photos you already have. Easy, huh?

When you’re ready to import new photos, it’s about this easy, too. Choose Import and select the source from which you’ll be importing the photos, most likely a memory card. Again in the Right Side Toolbar of the Import Dialog, you’ll see a tab titled “Apply During Import.” Directly under that, you’ll see an option to select a Metadata Preset. Do that, and once you’ve chosen the folder to which you want to import, click Import. And BAM! Every photo imported from now on will have that information added to it, unless you change that import option.

Ensure the “Right” Metadata Stays During Export, But Don’t Violate HIPAA

There are a couple items to be sure of when exporting images for use on your website, on a social media platform such as Facebook, etc:

Do NOT include your patient’s name in the file name or keywords (DUH!)
When using a Publish Service or Export dialog, make sure to NOT strip out the metadata

Suggested Metadata to Include

The following are taken directly from the template I have created within Lightroom at my office; for my personal photography, I obviously use different information.