Adobe Lightroom & Another Contest!

The contest to try and win one of 3 Picnik Premium Memberships ends at 6pm CST today and winners will be announced tomorrow.

Lightroom is the photo editing software I use to catalog and edit all my images. For me, it’s quicker, easier, more intuitive, and more enjoyable than Photoshop (tho, I will acknowledge, less powerful than PS). It’s the first photo software I bought after I graduated from iPhoto. I was way intimidated by the intricacy, expense and learning curve of Photoshop. I knew I could probably find my way around in Lightroom (especially with the help of my handy dandy Scott Kelby book). And I could. And you can, too. Here’s Lightroom:

Isn’t it pretty? This is where I begin in Lightroom. In the Library mode. This is where I import and tag all my photos. If I’m diligent to tag (label, categorize, etc.) my images, I reap the benefits of being able to very quickly find my desired picture in a flash in the future. For example, down the road I might want to create a scrapbook page of our family hikes. I can open a collection of all our photos tagged “hike” or “canyon”. What about a scrapbook page of my darling 8yo son? Just as easy, pull up a collection of every picture tagged with his name. Incredibly powerful and helpful and wonderful and speedy.

But, do you know what the real magic of Lightroom is?

The ease of edits. Super simple, quick, [oftentimes] one-button-click edits. Even to really poorly exposed images. Case in point (the first image is SOOC):

And it works even better with a properly exposed image (again, first image is SOOC).

To do this fun editing, I move on over to the Develop mode.

Here’s a screen shot of Lightroom’s Develop mode with my SOOC (straight out of the camera) Salton Sea image. To the left are all the [free!] edits (called “presets”) that I have downloaded. I need only scroll over these presets to see the different ways they change the original image – so I can visualize the changes without ever having to “apply” the preset. This makes it quick and easy to see a bunch of different picture possibilities and choose which I like best.

With just a single click I created each of the following artsy images:

So, there’s a cursory tour through my beloved Lightroom.

Susan is a natural-light, on-location photographer living in Southern California with her husband, three boys, and a dog. You can view her portfolio here or visit her blog to see & read about her daily family hi-jinx.

Darcy here! I’m a huge fan of Lightroom. I’ve mentioned before, but I also use Lightroom to organize and run through exposure issues. I’m not a pro like Susan, so I rely quite a bit (read, too much!) on post-production. And everything I learned about Lightroom I learned from Scott Kelby. His book is called “Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Book for Digital Photographers.” I have a copy (that I’m keeping!).

But, I’m giving one lwm3b reader a chance to learn everything there is to know about Lightroom and win a copy of Scott Kelby’s book. If you own LR, this will revolutionize your workflow and editing. If you don’t own LR but you’re thinking about, this will help you decide and when you read it, you’ll know it’s worth saving your pennies. **Also – if you’re an educator or homeschooler, you qualify for greatly reduced pricing on all Adobe software… including Lightroom!**

Rules to enter:

-leave a comment to enter.
- one entry per IP
- contest runs until Thursday at 6 PM CST.
- 1 winner will be chosen via random.org and announced Friday.

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