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Lightroom is very hard to comprehend!

Z

zoran

macrumors 601
Original poster
Jun 30, 2005
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Believe it or not, one application that is giving me a very hard time to understand, how one can work with, is LightRoom! Very hard menu to understand and its not only that but the interface has nothing to do with Adobe's other products.
Im trying to find a good tutorial so i can have a look at and comprehend this very hard application.
If only there was such a tutorial of explaining things about LightRoom and also showing how one works with it efficiently.
 
Its a steep learning curve but great when you 'get it' I used scott kelby's book it really helped me
 
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zoran said:
Believe it or not, one application that is giving me a very hard time to understand, how one can work with, is LightRoom! Very hard menu to understand and its not only that but the interface has nothing to do with Adobe's other products.
Im trying to find a good tutorial so i can have a look at and comprehend this very hard application.
If only there was such a tutorial of explaining things about LightRoom and also showing how one works with it efficiently.
Click to expand...
Tbh I learnt myself through trial and error.
Saw this yesterday that might be useful.

http://froknowsphoto.com/how-i-learned-lightroom/
But Scott Kelby is probably the one I hear most recommend.
 
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Don't give up on Lightroom. As TheDrift mentioned, it's great when you get it. There is tons of free information around the net with some great tutorials on YouTube. Try Photography Life. They have a long list of great reference articles for beginners to advanced users.
 
Thanks guys, im mainly looking for video tutorials though!
 
Ok not trying to hijack but I have what I think is a Lightroom question.

My wife has recently started a photography business. After she has a session she imports the photos to her windows 10 comp just using the auto import feature. Then she looks at all the images to pick the ones she wants to edit and makes a handwritten list of the file names before editing. I have absolutely no photography skills but isn’t there an easier way? I thought Lightroom did this organization stuff.
 
nrvna76 said:
Ok not trying to hijack but I have what I think is a Lightroom question.

My wife has recently started a photography business. After she has a session she imports the photos to her windows 10 comp just using the auto import feature. Then she looks at all the images to pick the ones she wants to edit and makes a handwritten list of the file names before editing. I have absolutely no photography skills but isn’t there an easier way? I thought Lightroom did this organization stuff.
Click to expand...
X for rejects. P for picks. Or 1-5 for a star rating. Then filter to show just picks or 5 stars or whatever. No need to write file names.
 
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Apple fanboy said:
X for rejects. P for picks. Or 1-5 for a star rating. Then filter to show just picks or 5 stars or whatever. No need to write file names.
Click to expand...

+1 for this
[doublepost=1508101697][/doublepost]
zoran said:
Believe it or not, one application that is giving me a very hard time to understand, how one can work with, is LightRoom! Very hard menu to understand and its not only that but the interface has nothing to do with Adobe's other products.
Im trying to find a good tutorial so i can have a look at and comprehend this very hard application.
If only there was such a tutorial of explaining things about LightRoom and also showing how one works with it efficiently.
Click to expand...

I have learned by watching youtube videos and 100s of hours of reading books and practice.

Try you tube searching for things like "workflow lightroom" "dramatic landscape lightroom" there are usually loads of videos there for whatvyou are rrying to achieve.
 
If you get more specific about what you're trying to do and having trouble with, there's plenty of knowledge around on here too.

See if there's any Lightroom courses around you as well, camera stores, photographers, colleges etc. I couldn't get my head around it til a couple short courses put it all together for me.
 
nrvna76 said:
Ok not trying to hijack but I have what I think is a Lightroom question.

My wife has recently started a photography business. After she has a session she imports the photos to her windows 10 comp just using the auto import feature. Then she looks at all the images to pick the ones she wants to edit and makes a handwritten list of the file names before editing. I have absolutely no photography skills but isn’t there an easier way? I thought Lightroom did this organization stuff.
Click to expand...

A handwritten list is unnecessary and very cumbersome. There are rating features, color coding, and other ways to "flag" the photos you wish to keep and use. Collections are also a very good way of organizing and tagging photos. I would suggest to your wife that she get Scott Kelby's Lightroom book for Digital photographs and spend an hour a day or so with it. it will save her a load of time down the road and make the whole Lightroom experience much more enjoyable!
 
Alexander.Of.Oz said:
This guy from PiXImperfect on YouTube is amazing with his knowledge as well as how simply and thoroughly he explains things.
Click to expand...
Thanks for this link Alex. I watched a couple videos this morning and learned a few things to make processing easier and faster. Amazing thing about Lr is that just when you think you've got it all figured-out, someone comes along and points-out things like some keyboard shortcuts that you didn't know existed.

~ Peter
 
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I just have to drop in and say that Lightroom has been my primary image handling program for two years now. Yes, it took me a while, but admittedly I'd been using Photoshop for long enough that it was most of the adjustments were the same-just in different places.

I will say that I'm STILL learning new shortcuts and capabilities all the time, but it's such a powerful software package that it's worth it. When people ask me what LR is, I sum it up with "It's Photoshop for photographers, basically an image browser that makes sorting, flagging and rating easy and with all the stuff you use in PS right in front of you, and the stuff you never use either not there or buried in menus." I always use the example of setting curves in PS requiring you to go Image->Adjustment->Curves while in Lightroom levels and curves are just in the right hand tool bar.
 
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YouTube and Google are my main resources. I think Adobe has tutorials for subscribers.
 
Cheese&Apple said:
Thanks for this link Alex. I watched a couple videos this morning and learned a few things to make processing easier and faster. Amazing thing about Lr is that just when you think you've got it all figured-out, someone comes along and points-out things like some keyboard shortcuts that you didn't know existed.

~ Peter
Click to expand...
You're welcome, Peter! I use Lightroom with selective adjustments for probably 95% of my images now, and then go to Photoshop when I need the use of layers or some of the heavier tools. I find Lightroom is so fast in getting an image edited as compared to using Photoshop to do the same adjustments. I purchased Lightroom and Photoshop sleeves for my keyboard with all the keyboard shortcuts there for me to see! I'm slowly learning them off by heart.
 
Look up Terry Whote and Julianne Kost on Youtube. They both have a good mix of beginners and improvers tutorials. Well worth sticking at it and won’t take long to start being productive and get some good results.
 
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You can search around youtube for videos. I recently looked at the Book module in LR. It was frustrating because it wasn't doing what I want it to do. But eventually I found a video which helped.

Someone posted Jared Polin's videos. He has a series of editing photos that he has shot. You can download the RAW files and try to edit them too. If you are starting in LR, one of Jared's buddies, Adam Lerner, has a youtube channel with a series of LR tutorials to help you get started. Go to link below and find the LR playlist.

https://www.youtube.com/user/AdamLernerPhoto/playlists


Also Terry White (which someone also posted).
 
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Guys, here is something i dont get. Ive begun to edit a pic using LR and as expected the history tab is filling up.
I close LR and open it back a different day, i continue to make edits to the pic, the history tab continues to populate even more. Suppose i want to delete a few of those edits and leave the pic with only the latest 5 edits in history because they are the ones that look ok to me. What do i do? How do i keep only the changes i want to and not the whole bunch that i have done?
 
zoran said:
Guys, here is something i dont get. Ive begun to edit a pic using LR and as expected the history tab is filling up.
I close LR and open it back a different day, i continue to make edits to the pic, the history tab continues to populate even more. Suppose i want to delete a few of those edits and leave the pic with only the latest 5 edits in history because they are the ones that look ok to me. What do i do? How do i keep only the changes i want to and not the whole bunch that i have done?
Click to expand...

The history is linear, so one builds on top of the other, so to speak. Sort of like a list of un-dos. And it records each change, so that if you changed exposure five times, each is recorded. So it's rather hard just to go back to say +.33, since that might be number 3. Better to just look at the steps and go, "oh, .33 was best" and do that as a new step. Not only that, but the order you make adjustments can affect the ultimate image. For example, you might have denoised, but then you decide to bring up shadows, and oops, now more denoising is needed. The order can affect performance too.

Going forward, better with a long session of edits to do them in some order that makes sense to you, and use either snapshots you can go back to, or forking. The latter is done by say making a virtual copy at some point. Like say after lighting adjustments, then make a VC to use for BW, while using the original for color. Each then has a separate history going forward. In your case, another thing to do might be to make a VC and reset it. Then go to say your last adjustment, and use copy to copy just that last adjustment, or maybe the last five. It's bit more general, but might work depending on the adjustments.
 
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Is there a way to delete some of my History steps so that he History Tab is not so populated with steps etc.?
 
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