Just a little program called Lightroom

Today was an all day seminar on Lightroom put on by that famous Calgary photographer Neil Zeller. I'd seen some of this before in previous photography sessions with him, but there was always something else on the agenda. Today was full on Lightroom.

We started right at the beginning, getting images into Lightroom from a disc he supplied. I even learned a trick there I hadn't known. I will want to go through and tweak how I've got things set up. Then into image editing.

For those who haven't seen Lightroom, here's a screen shot, un-embiggended.

There's a lot of controls that do a lot of tweaking. It can be very intimidating to look at, especially since sometimes you see things, and sometimes you don't, depending on what else is selected. I'm glad I've had a chance to work quite a bit with the basic panel; it freed up brain power for some of the more detailed panels. I think the trick is to do a little at a time, either with someone helping you or looking at one of the tutor videos. Then go away and get that nailed down in your brain. Repeat, and keep on repeating as they add new functionality.

There are a lot of settings that let you apply changes to many photos at once. For example, suppose you did a series of head and shoulders shots for a corporate client. All shot in the same light, same lens, same background. You can tweak the settings in one photo, and copy those to all the other photos you select with one command. You might still want to go into individual photos and tweak them, perhaps to tone down that bright red tie, or fix where someone cut himself shaving that morning. Very handy. I could go on and on.

Now I'm even more tempted to go back and tweak some of my existing exports, now that I know more about how sharpening works. This one below, however, wouldn't benefit from sharpening, though I suppose I could go back and tweak the shadows to bring up more detail.

Neil does a super job walking people through a complex program, and giving them a chance to work with images right from importing to exporting. If you get a chance to take one of his courses, they are excellent value for money, you'll learn a ton, and you'll have lots of fun.