Adobe Lightroom

I started playing with Lightroom recently and really like it so far. Before I picked up Lightroom, I was confused what Lightroom is vs. Photoshop. Is it just a dumbed down version of Photoshop for photographers? Sort of.

I find that Lightroom is much more intuitive to use for the common adjustments used in photography such as white balance, exposure, brightness, contrast, tone, hue/ saturation/ luminance, lens vingnetting, sharpening, cropping, straightening, etc. Adjustment are made in a non-destructive manner; the original photo is untouched and modifications made may be exported to a separate file when you're ready. Modifications are carried over between sessions so if you're not done tweaking a photo, there's no need to export and re-import to continue in another seating; changes are automatically recorded (but not exported to a file until you're ready). Outside of the core photo optimization stuff, Lightroom has built in flagging and filtering for easy organization of photos, which I've found useful to sift through and organize photos; while this functionality is not available inside Photoshop, it exists in Adobe Bridge though I never used it much before. Furthermore, Lightroom also has print optimization and several output formats including slideshow, PDF, and several very nifty web formats. Check out the web output example I created of a recent album, uploaded via the included-ftp client inside Adobe Lightroom.

Lightroom doesn't replace Photoshop, however. Any touch-ups, such as removal of distractions on Photo, blemishes-removal, or creative masking/treatments of different parts of the photo still needs to be done within Photoshop. Layers are also only available within Photoshop.

In the photo at the top of this post, I used Lightroom to adjust exposure and colors in the photo; then I opened a copy of the Lightroom-edited-photo in Photoshop and removed the distracting elements on the bottom left and right. Click on the photo to see a larger image.

Resources for learning Lightroom:

• Video tutorials provided by Adobe
• Free Lightroom video tutorial from Scott Kelby's photo walk site
• Lightroom Killer Tips
• More on the topic of Photoshop vs. Lighroom - see video from the Lightroom 2 Learning Center