I do free two-hour Lightroom demonstrations here in Seattle, and towards the end of these, a question I often get is: how do I get my iPhoto images into Lightroom? I take this as as a good sign -- I figure that what they have seen of Lightroom from my demo has convinced them to move [...]
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 [...]
As you may have guessed, I love Lightroom. Its design is efficient and elegant, and the library/catalog model really works. However, in my humble opinion as an instructor who sees students struggle time after time, what doesn’t work is the language around this model. Specifically, what doesn’t work is the idea that you “Import” images into Lightroom, [...]
If you plan to print your image, I recommend that you do all of your clean up work zoomed into 1:1. You should also review all of your local adjustments at this zoom ratio to make sure that your edges aren't obvious. Here's an easy way to move through your image while you are [...]
Just a quick tip today — it is 92 in my office and 103 outside — the hottest day in recorded Seattle history. (I realize that this is nothing for some of you!) My folders are arranged in a hierarchy — Picturesyearshoot, with ocassional subfolders within a shoot. By default the Lightroom folder panel shows an [...]
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 [...]
Selecting images seems to be a fairly straightforward task, but Lightroom can actually be pretty finicky about how you do it. Here's a video I put together to show you how to select individual images and groups of images, and to help you avoid unintended consequences. Watch This Video on How to Select Images in Lightroom
When you import a folder of images, the folder will show in the Folders panel, but you may not see the parent folder that it lives in. For example, when I imported my first 2009 shoot folder, Lightroom did not show me that it lives inside my 2009 folder, which lives inside my Pictures folder. That's [...]
A lot of people have a hard time understanding where their images are in the Lightroom environment, what the catalog is, and how it all fits together. This is completely understandable, as the terminology is confusing. Think of a public library — you have stacks and stacks of books everywhere — the main floor, 2nd floor, [...]
If you regularly work on two or more computers and carrying an external hard drive is not a problem, then consider putting your images and your Lightroom catalog on the external drive, so that you can move easily between the two. If your catalog is currently on your internal hard drive, you will need to move [...]
When you import images into the Lightroom Catalog, Lightroom keeps track of where those images live -- in what folder, on what hard drive. This shows in the Folders panel in the Library Module. Imagine moving the car while your family or friends are inside the convenience store. (I confess to having done this once !) [...]
I wrote a post recently about making snapshots while you work so that you can explore different versions of your image -- for example, a black and white and a color version -- with the goal of having just one version in the end. If you want to end up with two or more versions -- [...]