Adobe Lightroom

[DUCeditor]

In another thread Scott asked me if I used Adobe Lightroom. Frankly, apart from a brief mention of the name, I knew nothing about this product. But at his encouragement I looked into it, downloaded a trial copy (usable for 30 days), and almost immediately ordered the highly discounted (although otherwise identical) Student/Faculty version.

Yesterday it was delivered and I jumped through the necessary hoops to prove I had the qualifications for the discounted version. And hoops there were too! My Harvard.edu address -- adequate in itself for Microsoft! - was just the beginning. They also needed a photocopy of my Staff badge and a copy of a payroll check (with personal data blocked out of course). Yikes!

But anyhow I just received the serial number needed and loaded the program.

All the PITA is worth it. Scott was completely correct. This is a very useful application both for image library organization and image editing.

The thing I like most about it is that it reads both the camera data and the RAW files and with that information makes correction for lens anomaly (linear distortion, chromatic aberration and corner falloff) for any lens in its database (which all my Canon lenses are). And this download is far quicker than Canon Photo Professional -- the app I was using. It is so quick and easy that I will for most shoots save only the RAW images, no jpegs. (For things like extended vacations I will likely shoot mostly jpegs for storage reasons)

Anyhow I have now been using the downloaded trial version for over a week. All the "My Daily Walk" thread images have been largely processed with Lightroom. Photoshop was used on a few because of the Transform function which allows sophisticated spacial changes, something I like to use when reality unfairly intrudes on my composition.

I yet have MUCH to learn about Lightroom's capabilities. Anyone with good tips please do add them to this thread.

Grazie Scott for making your recommendation!

-don

[scott]

May I suggest you subscribe to one month of Lynda.com and go through the Lightroom Essential (13 hours) and then Advanced (6 hours) video lessons on there. Don't worry about paying for the premium service with the "exercise files", just pay $25 for a month.
I promise you will be estatic. I actually do an annual subscribtion that my wife and I share to learn all kinds of things. On a side note there are some really good photographers on there to provide thought and inspiration through their videos.
Photography Training & Tutorials

[scott]

I see they give some free samples of the training:
Lightroom Tutorials | Photoshop Lightroom 3 Essential Training

[Nokia]

i've heard good things about lightroom too.. but it won't process Raw pics from my Canon 60d! what a pain.. so I have to use an Adobe free converter to put them in .dng format.. lol

any free tutorials for lightroom that are good? youtube videos.. etc..

[scott]

Nokia what version of Lightroom do you have? According to this you should have support if you have downloaded the latest version: Lightroom 3.2 and Camera Raw 6.2 Now Available Lightroom Journal

There are a number of other learning sources online including YouTube videos but I think the $25 you would spend on Lynda.com would give you a priceless amount of knowledge, control and speed of the program. I use Aperture not Lightroom but they essentially do the same thing and after the training I was able process my pictures to look better (which is the real goal) and do everything more then twice as fast which is important when I have a large amount of photos to deal with.
Here are suggestions for learning from Adobe that include some free tips and blogs:
Adobe - Photoshop Lightroom: Learning Lightroom