Lightroom workflow optimization, esp. exporting and renaming

I've got a retainer to do medium-volume residential real estate photos, and looking for tips and tools to optimize Lightroom workflow.

Requirements:
For my own organization, I use the date of the shoot and the house address to identify the photos in a few different places: In my local folder name, in my filenames, and in the name of the Dropbox folder into which the finals are delivered.
The realtor wants the photos numbered in a certain order: 2 "hero" shots at the beginning, then the rest of the keepers in an order that's representative of walking through the house, then some behind-the-scenes (BTS) shots for realtor's informational purposes only (closet interiors and other ugly stuff).
The realtor needs 3 batches delivered: Web-res for all hero/keeper shots, web-res for BTS shots, high-res for all hero/keeper shots.


Step 1: I have an import preset, with a Custom Text box for file renaming and a text box for destination Into Subfolder. I type the house address into the Custom text token in the rename panel, the date is put into the file name by the preset. In the Into Subfolder box, I type the date and the address.

Step 2: I do my culling to pick 2 "hero" shots, 20-25 keeper shots, and 10-15 BTS shots. These are rated with 5, 3, 1 stars respectively.

Step 3: Do all the processing on the hero and keepers, starting with a couple presets that do 90% of the heavy lifting, then doing minor touchups (mostly just white balance and verticals).

Step 4: After processing, I sort the folder by Rating (descending) so that the two hero shots are at the beginning, then the keepers, then the BTS, then the discards. Then I drag to re-order the 3-stars so they're in "walkthrough" order. Then I rename the entire batch to include the house name and sequence number starting with 001.

Step 5: Then I do three export steps:
- Select the 3-5 stars, choose my Fullsize preset, type the destination folder name, and export at full res
- Select the 3-5 stars, choose my Websize preset, type the destination folder name, and export at web res
- Select the 1-stars, choose my Websize preset, type the destination folder name, and export at web res

I have export presets to accomplish these steps, but the presets all retain the folder/path name that was in the Export Location box at the time I saved the preset, so I have to fix that every time.


Some thoughts:
I'm typing (or pasting) the address six times over the source of this process:
- file naming on import (might be able to change this to a generic import name since I'm renaming again later)
- folder name on import
- renaming after ordering
- three times for export destination folder

Is there a way to make the contents of a naming token persist until I change it? If I could type the "Shoot name" once and have it persist until I change it, that would speed things up a lot.

Is there a tool or plugin or other trick to do three Export presets at once?

What else am I missing that could speed up the process without losing any organizational integrity?

Looks like Rob Cole's Export Manager plugin might have done a lot of what I want; sadly, his site is no longer in operation and nobody seems to have heard from him in a while.

I know that this might sound a little simple, but couldn't you just type the path data in Notepad and use Ctrl+C to copy it? If you are doing it all in one session then the text will ramine selected as you switch the focus to and away from Notepad. If you are using the same string over and over I will remain on the clipboard, so you could just keep using Ctrl+V to paste, without the need to pick up the path all of the time. The same could even help with the filenames too. It will at least reduce the amount of typing needed.

I have a text document that lists most of the IPTC Subject codes that I use. The thing is that I use a subset of multiple codes for a lot of images, so I have those common combinations saved in the file too, then I just need to copy the one I need for any set of images. I still have them in the full list.

Not overly clever but it saves a lot of typing all the same.

Alan

BigAl007 wrote in post #18272498
I know that this might sound a little simple, but couldn't you just type the path data in Notepad and use Ctrl+C to copy it? If you are doing it all in one session then the text will ramine selected as you switch the focus to and away from Notepad. If you are using the same string over and over I will remain on the clipboard, so you could just keep using Ctrl+V to paste, without the need to pick up the path all of the time. The same could even help with the filenames too. It will at least reduce the amount of typing needed.

Thanks, that's not too different than what I'm doing - type the address into the first box, copy it to clipboard from there, and it remains available on the clipboard until I copy something else.

There's still a fair amount of room for human error in the process, though.