Posted: 4/24/2008 12:56:18 AM EDT
| is Lightroom really the game-changer people say it is? is there some trick to setting up a solid workflow with it? |
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I pretty much use it exclusively now. Don't know that I can really lay out much of a workflow for you. Basically I ingest the images with Downloader Pro because I'm used to it and like how it works. Next I import the images into LR and create a collection. I stick in the Library module while I cull the images and/or make sub-collections. Once I've got a collection ready to work on I jump over to the Develop module. I don't use the Slideshow module much and I've never used the Print module. I'll use the Web module for a quick gallery that's not going on my website for public consumption. |
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Lightroom does what Photoshop can do (90% of it) but you can do it 10x faster. You can process entire batches of photos at once. Set the WB, contrast, color for 100's of photos at once if you wish. Then you can go to each photo and edit it to your hearts content. Chance the levels/curves/color info (color info for all colors or individual colors). Personally i love it. |
so it's like a photoshop light then? |
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I use it as a first step when I have a bunch of images to sort through and output. I'll import and flag them as keep or dump, make simple PP corrections and adjustments. from there is to PS for more work, use actions and automations for,resizing, sharpening, borders, etc., and I'll either watermark there or with imageready. What do you want it to do for you? ETA-
Not really, there are some similar capabilities, but LR isn't the pixel level editing tool like Photoshop is. Download the LR demo and take it for a test drive. www.adobe.com/products/photoshoplightroom/productinfo/faq/ www.adobe.com/cfusion/tdrc/index.cfm?product=photoshop%5Flightroom |
Not really, it's meant to be a useful tool for working with large amounts of photos. It's aptly named because it's a lot like working in a light room. Which assumes that the photos are basically how you want them and all you do in the lightroom is tweak them for printing, or whatever other presentation method you want. But instead of having to do each photo one at a time, you can do all of them or groups of them at once, making your process time much much lower. |
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So for cropping and being a little creative, it is still photoshop, but fixing, say, a red tint from a stage light on a set of pics use lightroom? Would you go in and do all the different crops and sizing with photoshop then use lightroom to fix the levels and such? Does it work for cataloging and tagging the photos alreay on the PC? I guess I need to d/l it and take a look. ByteTheBullet (-: |
Right.
Right again. You can do basic cropping (non-destructive unlike PS) within LR. And you can do curves adjustments. It makes a lot of the common tasks easier. For example, let's say you're adjusting hue/saturation. You can put the target on the face and it samples what's underneath and adjusts those colors rather than you having to manually adjust each color. The batch changes are much easier than PS as well. You don't have to create an action to run in batch mode. You simply make the changes to one image, select the others, and sync. You're done. So you like filters/actions eh? Check out the presets. What's cool about LR presets is that you can mouse over them in the palette and watch your image change w/o applying the preset. In PS you might have to run an action or filter and either delete layers, revert to a snapshot, etc if you don't like the results. Not so here. And you say you've created this amazing duotone conversion? Just click and save the preset and use it over and over. No need to record steps in an action. Here's another good thing. You can create a million (well, maybe not that many) versions of an image and never increase the file size (like layers do) or create multiple physical versions. The changes you're making are all being made to the metadata, not the actual file. You can have as-shot, b&w, sepia, grunge, etc and the file itself doesn't change. You can also stack similar images together. Maybe you have several poses that are very similar. Stack them together to make reviewing/picking eaisier.
Sure. You just need to import them to add them to your library. I also create multiple libraries. I have one for my business work, another for personal, and one for misc stuff (namely trying out new things). Basically think of LR as a product written from the ground up for photographers. PS on the other hand was written for designers and photographers are using it. |
| You might want to wait for Lightroom 2, the beta version is available from Adobe. For those who have Lightroom it's a trial until the full release. If you don't already have Lightrom it's a 30 day trial. The new version lets you open photos as "smart objects" in Photoshop. |
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I tried it in beta and I was hooked. I use it to import and maintain all the photos. If one needs lots of Photoshop attention I export it to Photoshop, work and my work is then saved there as a stack with the original shot. Lightroom takes care of 99% of my needs and I now can not live without it. It's still a bit bug filled and you have to be careful of upgrades, but it is a great program to do most of the digital processing needed in my photos. |
They were. Mac users were not affected by the bug I ran into. I'll have to try 1.4.1 and see how it goes. |
Not really. Photoshop is a photo editing software. It is closer to Bridge which is a file manager, it allows you to preview, edit, caption, etc.. photos. Lightroom is more of a Digital Asset Manager. It allows you to do light editing like PS but does not do it was well. It allows you to organize photos like Bridge but is limited in some ways such as it doesn't allow you to (easily) move photos around your hard drive. Where it really shines IMO is for captioning and previewing. Because it's built using a database architecture, it is MUCH faster than Bridge if you want to caption photos which is a big plus for me. It also renders previews much faster than Bridge. Typically when I come back from a travel assignment, I will have taken ~7000 photos. Just for Bridge to cache them would mean I have to let it run for a few hours and then working with Bridge would be VERY slow and unstable. With Lightroom I can start browsing, culling, and captioning my photos in a few minutes. If you want to edit photos, PS is stil the way to go although LR is great for making basic edits and spitting out jpegs easily. |