Photoshop CS6 started shipping yesterday, so I anticipate that a lot of photographers not currently using Photoshop are wondering if they should consider it.  I am assuming for the sake of this article that you are already using Lightroom.  (If not, you may want to read this post, which talks about why I think pro’s as well as amateurs who really care about their photography should.) The question here is, do you need Photoshop too? There is certainly much that you can do in Photoshop that you can’t do in Lightroom.  The key questions are, do you need or want to do enough of those things to justify the $699 price tag, and are you willing and able to invest [...more]

I was flattered when David over at Seven by Five (sevenbyfive.net) asked if I would contribute to his popular blog.  We were thrilled when Adobe featured the article on their Facebook page yesterday.  If you haven’t yet read my 10+ Little Lightroom Tips That Can Make a Big Difference, head on over.   Check out more of his great content, and then come back!

I highly recommend to Lightroom users that you learn at least a handful of Lightroom shortcuts.  They can greatly improve the efficiency of your workflow and make using Lightroom more pleasant. In any module you can get a close-to-complete list of shortcuts by going to Help>… Module Shortcuts.    Because this can be kind of overwhelming,  here is a PDF of my favorite shortcuts.  After opening the file, right-click on it and choose Save As, to save it to your computer.

I get emails from around the world  from people in panic-mode over Lightroom-related issues.  Some of these can be easily cured, but sadly, some are fatal.    I do consulting in-person and over the web and phone/Skype, so you can always contact me to help you work through your issues (sorry, yes, that was a blatant plug), but I thought I would recommend some preventative medicine first.  It is a chance for me to pull together some older posts that you might not otherwise come across. Once you understand how Lightroom works you may think some of these are silly, but they are real misconceptions, and many real tears have been shed.  It is understandable, given that Lightroom works differently from other photo programs people [...more]

You may be using a lot more hard drive space with Lightroom than you need to be.  There are three major opportunity areas:  catalog backups, 1:1 previews, and deleting rejects. Catalog Backups My Lightroom catalog is about 500 MB.  (To see how large yours is, go to Edit>Catalog Settings on the PC, or Lightroom>Catalog Settings on the Mac.  The size is listed on the General tab.)  If I do a catalog backup once a week, that is 26 GB of catalog copies that I am adding to my hard drive every year.  If I do a backup every day, that is 182 GB per year!    It is important, therefore, to go in and clean out old backups.  I like [...more]

Since I’m taking the next week off, I thought I would repost what is by far my most popular article of 2009 — “About Your Images and the Lightroom Catalog — the Library Analogy.” If you have already read this, scroll down to the archives at the bottom of this page and check out what else you may have missed.

I hear this all the time — new users import their photos successfully, see the images in Lightroom and  see the name of their imported folder in the Folders panel, but from the Folders panel they cannot figure out  “where Lightroom has put that folder”.  The folder certainly doesn’t seem to be where they told Lightroom to put it during the import process. This issue is very basic for those who know what’s going on, but for those that don’t, I know that it is driving you crazy.  Your folders seem to be a total mess, with no hierarchy. Here’s the scoop:  Lightroom has in fact put your folder exactly where you told it to — it is just not [...more]

When you print images  yourself or send them out to a printing service, do your prints look like what you see on your monitor?  If not, there may be many reasons for this, but the first to consider is that your monitor is very possibly  off in terms of color, brightness and contrast.   If, for example, your monitor is too bright, then your prints will come out darker than you expect.  If your monitor is too blue, your prints will look too yellow (the opposite of blue).    The solution is to calibrate and profile your monitor on a regular basis, using what is called a colorimeter.  I recommend the Eye One Display 2, though I am sure there are other [...more]

I often look to see how readers get to my blog, and I have noticed that one post  in particular that I wrote about understanding the Lightroom catalog often gets referred to on digital forums.  Thank you to everyone who links to it.  For those who haven’t read it, I thought I would call your attention to it:  click here to read.

In Lightroom you can hide the top, bottom, left and right panels so that you have more room to show your images.  To hide a panel, click on the triangle at the outside center edge of the panel.  Click on it again to show it again.   There are shortcuts, of course:  Tab hides and shows the left and right panels;  Shift-Tab hides and shows all four panels. Have you ever closed your Lightroom panels,  and then been annoyed when they pop open again when you hover over that area with your mouse?    If so, you can take control over this situation:  right-click (Ctl-click if you have a a one-button mouse) on the panel triangle and choose Manual.  Now they will [...more]