My Adobe Lightroom experience

I can’t really say much new on the subject of Adobe Lightroom- there are sooo many tutorials out there on how to use it, how to customize it, etc…

But I can tell you why I chose to get it and put it into my workflow.

I’ve been using a full version of Photoshop since Ver4.5 along with the many versions and upgrades since ( using  CS3 since it came out)  and I’ve been pretty happy with BRIDGE, and Adobe Camera Raw- So I didn’t see much use of getting lightroom for processing my images and stuff. ( plus the beta version I tried was “buggy” - imagine that- a buggy beta !)

Anyway- fast forward to present day- I’ve been getting questions regarding Lightroom from other photographers,  camera clubbers, and the like. So I pick up a Scott Kelby Book called  “Lightroom” for Digital Photographers” and the skys suddenly cleared, clouds parted and the sun came out!

Well, I had to get a copyof Lightroom after that and I did! The reason why? It had nothing to do with developing my images or anything like that ( I’m a “power bridge user” remember? ) No, It was HOW Lightroom works with my images that made me do it! ( as opposed to the devil being involved!)

The moment I hook up a image card to my computer, Lightroom is trying to help me organize and become more efficient- being able to incorporate my contact and copyright info, keywords for searching, locations, dates, to putting the images into searchable collections! This puppy has made the days of me popping CD’s of shoots and random searches in my hard drives whenever someone wants a stock image for a calendar or magazine a thing of the past.

Let’s say that  someone from “magazine X” calls and says ” I need a photo of a waterfall.” I can ask  What season ( Spring, Winter Fall, Summer?) and if they want a verticalor horizontal shot, within a a geographic location- well you get the idea! After I get some specific info as to what they are looking for, I can type in key words, like “Water” “Vertical” “Spring” and all images with that criteria will pop up in Lightroom where I can make a slidshow or webpage or contact print or presentation or…again- you get the idea!

It has required me to go back to my images “B.L” ( before lightroom) and put some additional info in the metadata after I’ve imported them  to Lightroom -  But being able to find something in minutes as opposed to hours let’s me spend more time out from behind a computer monitor- and that’s worth every penny to me!

~ by photographicdesign on February 27, 2008.