Getting Started With Lightroom
Post-processing is an unavoidable, inseparable part of professional photography today, be it photojournalism or fashion photography. Because of that, choosing the right software tool for post-processing your work efficiently is as important as having the right camera and lens combination for the job. Photoshop is one such tool and is widely used by photographers (hence the term “to photoshop” applied to almost any sort of image editing), but it is not intended strictly for photographers – it has a much broader user appeal. For photographers, Adobe has developed a somewhat different piece of software called Adobe Photoshop Lightroom which is what we will predominantly be using to edit our images.
Lightroom is a database-driven image management software that automatically reads image metadata (such as camera make and model, date/time captured, aperture, shutter speed, ISO, white balance and more), known as EXIF and writes information about each photograph in a new database known as “catalog”. As images are imported, Lightroom has built-in functionality to add additional information to each image, allowing you to tag images with specific keywords, flags and star ratings. This makes it very easy to sort through hundreds of images and pick the best ones, edit them selectively or in batches, then export the best images directly into websites like Flickr and Facebook. This type of tagging and indexing is not available in Photoshop, because Photoshop does not keep a database with cataloged images.
Today you will learn the basics and develop a rough workflow for using Lightroom in order to develop your images further. Review the videos below in order to help you process your first image in Lightroom. You can do this either in colour or in black and white.
Lightroom is a database-driven image management software that automatically reads image metadata (such as camera make and model, date/time captured, aperture, shutter speed, ISO, white balance and more), known as EXIF and writes information about each photograph in a new database known as “catalog”. As images are imported, Lightroom has built-in functionality to add additional information to each image, allowing you to tag images with specific keywords, flags and star ratings. This makes it very easy to sort through hundreds of images and pick the best ones, edit them selectively or in batches, then export the best images directly into websites like Flickr and Facebook. This type of tagging and indexing is not available in Photoshop, because Photoshop does not keep a database with cataloged images.
Today you will learn the basics and develop a rough workflow for using Lightroom in order to develop your images further. Review the videos below in order to help you process your first image in Lightroom. You can do this either in colour or in black and white.
TRY FIRST EDITING A COLOUR LANDSCAPE IMAGE
|
|
NOW TRY A TURN AN IMAGE INTO A DRAMATIC BLACK & WHITE
|
|
NOW ITS YOUR TURN!
Choose two images from below and using the lightroom tutorials above turn one into a dramatic black and white image and the other into into a vibrant colour image.
Photoshop & Lightroom Short Cut Keys
Below are a series of keyboard short cuts that you can use when working in Photoshop or Lightroom