Newer users often don’t realize that the Folders panel in the Lightroom Library module can be used to rearrange your photos and folders. Below are some tips for using it. Note that whatever you do with this panel is in fact affecting your hard drive — you are just doing the work from within Lightroom. If [...]
Something in Lightroom isn’t working, or you can’t figure out how to do something and your deadline is approaching. You have googled the issue, to no avail. Who can you turn to for free troubleshooting help? I highly recommend lightroomforums.net — when Lightroom has me stumped, this is where I go. The moderators are excellent and [...]
I love Lightroom’s adjustment brush, because it allows me to make local changes to my photos very precisely. I can lighten or darken a particular area, add or reduce contrast or saturation, add or reduce clarity, sharpen or blur. I can even add or change the color of an area. Or I can do a combination [...]
As you are working on a photo up close, it can sometimes be useful to see a second copy of the photo zoomed out so that you have a better perspective on your work. For example, while brightening the whites of eyes or teeth in portraits, it is hard to know if you are brightening too [...]
When you are trying to match the appearance of two photos in Lightroom, it sure would be nice to be able to see them side by side as you work on one or both. In my last post, I talked about Compare View — but it is in the Library module, not the Develop module. [...]
In my tutorial on jpeg quality, I displayed two photos side by side and zoomed in on them together to compare them up close. A reader asked me how I did this — thanks to this reader for giving me the idea for Friday’s Lightroom Quick Tip. In the Library module, select your two photos (click [...]
Ever loved a photo you took, but threw it away because it was blurry due to camera shake? Well, stop doing that!! Adobe demonstrated its new Photoshop technology for removing camera-shake blur from photos at Adobe Max 2011. Will this make it into Photoshop CS6? I have absolutely no idea. They even qualify this by saying [...]
Anytime you create a JPEG file using Lightroom’s Export dialog (or any other method), the file is compressed — information is thrown away in order to make the file smaller. How much is determined by the Quality setting or, in Lightroom 3 or later, if you choose instead, the Limit File Size setting. The big benefit [...]
Anywhere you see a color selection square in Lightroom, such as for page background color in the Print module, you can choose a color not only from the color picker that comes up when you click on it, but also a color from one of your photos. How? Simply click in the main color selection area [...]
I got this question from readers twice in one day last week, so I thought a blog post was in order. It’s the ultimate in Fall/Spring cleaning — essentially you will build a new closet, put copies of everything in it ( nicely organized), and then throw everything away from the old one. This may not [...]
Lightroom 3 is the latest version of Adobe's image management and enhancement program designed specifically for photographers. With its streamlined workflow, database capabilities and powerful global and local image enhancement tools, it has become a very powerful yet relatively intuitive program that can benefit most photographers. In this lecture I will discuss what makes Lightroom so [...]
I wrote about basic techniques of fixing color casts / setting white balance in Lightroom in my Getting Rid of the Winter Blues post. I thought I would show you some additional tricks for dealing with mixed lighting, using the photo below. It is from a Lightroom workshop student of mine, Jim Levitt (thanks, Jim!). [...]