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$: Using Lightroom - Charlevoix Photography Club › ... › using_lightroom.pdfUsing Lightroom lightroom\using Lightroom.doc Rick Malamed Page 1 I highly recommend buying Scott Kelby’s$
Using Lightroom

lightroom\using Lightroom.doc Rick Malamed Page 1

I highly recommend buying Scott Kelby’s book – “the Adobe Photoshop Lightroom CC book for digital photographers”. It covers step by step procedures on how to use Lightroom CC. I also recommend Fast Stone Image Viewer. You can use it to quickly review all your photos, no matter what format they are in. You can download it for free from http://www.faststone.org/FSViewerDetail.htm. Lightroom is broken down into seven (7) modules:

• Library • Develop • Map • Book • Slideshow • Print • Web

Getting Started

1. Where to store your photos 2. Set up your folder organization 3. Getting photos from your camera into Lightroom 4. Importing photos already on your computer 5. The Adobe DNG file format 6. Getting around the Lightroom interface 7. Rating your photos 8. A few words about Collections

http://www.faststone.org/FSViewerDetail.htm

Using Lightroom


9. The Develop module 10. Shortcut Keys Where to Store Your Photos

• Computer hard drive – OK, but I don’t recommend it. • External hard drive – get lots of space 500 GB or more.

1 – 2 terabytes is even better and the prices have come way down. On Amazon.com you can get a 1 TB portable for $90. A 2 TB portable is $130.

• Always make a backup of your photos before you start editing them, which probably means a second external hard drive or

• Consider using a “cloud” based backup service like Carbonite.

Using Lightroom


Using Lightroom


Getting Your Photos From Your Camera Into Lightroom

Using Lightroom


What if Your Photos are Already on Your Computer?

Lightroom lets you Import your photos without having to move them. It also allows you to add Keywords during the process. • The left side of the screen shows the Source list. Find the folder that contains the photos you want to bring into

Lightroom. • When you select the Folder, all the photos will be selected for Import. If you don’t want a picture imported, uncheck it. • By default, Lightroom assumes that you just want them imported, so the option at the top of the screen will be Add. • If however, you want to move them from their current location to another location, select the Move option. Then, on the

right side of the screen, tell Lightroom where you want the photos moved. • Also, on the right side of the screen, under File Handling, there is a check box for not importing duplicate photos. I

suggest you leave that checked. As you can see here, duplicates are grayed out and won’t be imported a second time.

Using Lightroom


A Word about Adobe DNG

Quoting Scott Kelby, “DNG was created by Adobe because today each camera manufacturer has its own proprietary RAW file format, and Adobe was (is) concerned that, one day, one or more manufactures might abandon an older format for something new. With DNG, it’s not proprietary. Adobe made it an open format, so anyone can write to that specification. While ensuring that your negative could be opened in the future was the main goal, DNG brings other advantages, as well.”

• DNG files are smaller than RAW files so they take up less disk space • DNG files don’t need a separate sidecar file. If you are not aware of it, when you edit a RAW file, the metadata is

stored in a separate file called an XMP sidecar file. If you want to give someone your RAW file, you will also need to give them the sidecar file.

Using Lightroom


Getting Around the Lightroom Interface

Using Lightroom


Press the Shift – Tab keys and it will hide everything but the Preview Area. Press them again to see all the panels.

Using Lightroom


The scroll bars take some getting used to as they are rather small and are associated with each panel area and not the overall display. Grid view (press G) verses

Loupe view (press E).

Using Lightroom


Rating Your Photos

Lightroom gives you three different ways to rate or rank your photos.

• Click on any photo and then type a ranking of 1 – 5 stars. 1 would represents your worst photo; while 5 would be your best. To change the number of stars, simply select the photo and type a new number. To remove the stars, type a zero. To see only your 5 star photos, you would set a filter.

Using Lightroom


• You can also mark your photos with color labels •

Using Lightroom


• You can flag your photos as Picks or Rejects. To mark your photo as a Pick, type the letter P. To mark your photo as a

reject, type the letter X. To unflag you photo, type a letter U.

Using Lightroom


So why go to all this trouble? The short answer is that you should only keep those photos that you will actually do something with, such as print, use in a book or in a slide show. By marking the photos, you can easily delete them from Lightroom’s catalog and, if you want, from your hard drive. To get rid of your rejected photos, from the Photo menu, choose Delete Rejected Photos.

Collections

If you have an iPod, iPhone, iPad or similar device, you probably have iTunes on your computer or laptop. Apple has certainly spent a lot of time and effort to have you use their software to store your music on one of these devices. When you started working with iTunes, you either bought music from the iTunes store and/or you copied your CD’s onto the computer. So what did you get, a bunch of songs and albums in one big library. You probably found that there were too many songs, from too many artists, with too many different styles to really enjoy. So you quickly learned that making a “play list” was the way to go. Some songs were only on one play list, while other songs might be on several play lists. The really nice feature was that the original song was only on your computer once. Well, Lightroom has taken the same concept to heart and has created Collections. Benefits of Collections

• You can have the same photo in many different Collections. • Within a Collection, you can sort (rearrange) your photos in any order you wish. This is especially helpful when you

create a slideshow or a book. • Collections are available in the Develop module; Folders are not

How to Create a Collection

Now that you have deleted all your rejected photos from your computer, you can select all the remaining photos by pressing the Ctrl + A (MAC: Command-A) to select them all. On the left side panel, next to the Collection header is a small +. Click on it to create your new collection or press Ctrl + N (MAC: Command-N). Give the Collection a name and press the Create button.

Using Lightroom


Using Lightroom


The Develop Module

Now that you have all your pictures in Lightroom and in Collections, it’s time to look at the Develop module. Select a picture that you want to enhance or tweek, then select Develop. There are, of course, many, many options in this module.

Using Lightroom


I was probably a bit drunk when I took this picture. As you can see the ship is sliding off to the right. You can easily fix that by using the Crop & Straighten tools. When you are happy with your alignment and cropping changes, click on Done.

Using Lightroom


You can also choose to jump into Photoshop or Viveza right from the picture. Of course, these options are only available if you have purchased those software products. Just use your right mouse button and select the software you want to use.

Using Lightroom


Keyboard Shortcuts (MAC Equivalent)

Description

J Each time you press J, it toggles you through the three different cell views T Hides the gray toolbar below the center Preview area L Press L once to dim around picture, twice to enter lights out mode R In the Develop module, press R to toggle crop mode on and off F1 Opens help F2 Opens Rename dialog box F5 Opens/Closes the top task bar F6 Hides the filmstrip F7 Hides the left side Panel F8 Hides the right side Panel

Tab Hides both left and right side Panels Shift-Tab Hides all Panels

P Flag a photo as a Pick X Flag a photo as a Reject.

To delete Rejected photos, from the Menu choose Photo | Delete Rejected Photos U Unflag a photo N Survey view

1 , 2, 3, 4, 5 Mark photos with 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5 Stars Ctrl A (Command-A) Select all the pictures displayed on the screen Ctrl D (Command-D) Select none Ctrl N (Command-N) Create a new Collection

Using Lightroom


Ctrl # (1 – 8) In Develop Module, takes you to the areas within the module: 1 – Basic; 2 – Tone Curve; 3 – Adjustments 4 – Split Toning 5 - Detail 6 – Lens Correction 7 - Effects 8 – Camera Calibration

G Switch to Grid view E Switch to Loupe view F Toggle full screen mode \ Toggle before and after in Develop module

Settings Menu Copy and Paste settings from one photo to another Settings Menu Sync settings – this is different than Copy and Paste or Previous as it tries to simulate

the settings from one picture to another

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