Lessons

Lesson Info

9:00 am - Introduction: Why Lightroom®?

my primary goal for you guys is to give you the strongest possible foundation in the core of the light room program. To me, that's library and developed. That's where you manage and organize and add information to your photos and then, of course, developed where you fix and enhance your photos. I throw in map is part of the core because that's where you can add one additional piece of information, which is location. So that's the focus of the workshop now, even focusing on just this part of light room and not the output modules, I still can't cover every way of doing things and every button and possible feature. It's just such a, you know, a power packed program that I'm focusing on the fundamentals or the core now, as can I mentioned. This is just a zap, clickable or almost is Africa Balto Light from three users as toe light room four users and even light room to users as well. So light Room four adds a lot of additional features, but most of the fundamentals are exactly the same in b...

oth programs, and where they're not, I'll be pointing out how the light room three version is different On the third day, I also I'm going to cover what else is new in light room four. That's not part of the core curriculum, so I'll give you exposure to the book module to video editing some of the additional features as well. So today is gonna be the heavy lifting day on the library module. Tomorrow is gonna be diving mostly into the develop module, and then the third day will be some additional develop and then exporting, sharing uploading copies of your photos and then getting into what's new with light room for. So before we get started, let me go ahead and show you where you would find me out on the Web because I'm hoping to hear from you guys after the workshop. So here's where to find me so you can email me at Laura at laura shoe dot com, and you can find my website at www dot laura shoe dot com. I'm gonna show you my website and in a minute, Facebook. If you search for Laura Shoe digital workshops or you type that all in with those spaces to get to my Facebook page and then Twitter at light room Underscore Laura. Now I know that there are a lot of people out there because Kenna and Italian I've already said that, but I'd love to have evidence myself. Direct evidence and the way that I know that you guys are out there on the Web is if you go to twitter dot com right now or facebook dot com and you search for light room Laura on Twitter or flourish your digital workshops and you follow me or you like my page because during a break, I'm gonna turn on my phone and I'm gonna see if there's really anybody out there. So I really want I want to just see those emails of follows and likes just pouring in. So that way I can keep in touch with you with, you know, upcoming webinars with you blogged posts, etcetera as well as other resource is that I find useful, okay? And I always neglect to mention Google Plus, because I'm still getting into that myself. But search for Laure issue on Google plus is well okay, let me just go ahead and briefly show you my website because I want you to know what kind of resource is I have out there. So where? Here we go. Okay, so I'm on laura shoe dot com, and it's It's a blogged format, so I try to post once or twice a week. Depends on what's going on, but of course, it's a traditional blawg. Whereas you scroll down, you'll get into sequential posts. I mostly post about light room, but I occasionally post about Photoshopped as well. Just like most of my work is in white room. But some of it is in Photoshopped as well. So recent ones have been on the photo shop CS six beta, but I post light room tutorials. I post light from videos, etcetera. Now, if you don't want to go sequentially through my posts, there's a search box right here. So I'm gonna be saying in this workshop that's more involved that I can cover, But it was a post on my website search for it, searching this box here and then as I scroll down here on the right hand side, you'll see some links to some videos. Um, but then I get down into some featured posts and then the most important thing categories. So if you're ready to learn more about the develop module, for example, you can just click on the develop module category to get to some posts specifically on those topics up on the top here. Last thing, I'll point out just the tabs. So I've got some additional resource is for you here an additional information about my offerings. So I've got some light room DVD training. Resource is here. I offer Webinars 90 minute webinars. Many of them are free. So check those out Seattle workshops that I'm running either on my own or through photographic center northwest. And then I also offer worldwide private instruction. So this is done with Go to meeting on the Web, um, and using the phone or Skype or go to meeting audio. And I've actually done troubleshooting or instruction in various parts of light room with people around the world, which is just cool. I just love technology. We're about me and some photos here as well. And here's the contact button. So that's my website. I hope you'll you'll check it out. Let's go ahead and go back to, um, keynote here. I'm a PC user, so I'm using a Mac today and I'm you know, going to be a little shaking out it for a while, but in light room, there's really not much difference at all. Okay, so that's enough about me. Let's actually start talking about why you know why you guys are really here. Which is to talk about light room. So a little bit more on the agenda. So you know where we're going. I'm going to give you a quick introduction toe light room. You know why? Why? Light room. Why is it so great? How does it work with a catalogue? It works very differently. And that can really mess up a lot of users. Then I'm gonna go into suggestions on how to organize your photos on your hard drive, and and I'm gonna talk about how to back everything up there. That's that. That's kind of a complicated topic that people don't understand that it leads to a lot of sob stories. So I want to make sure you guys understand what needs to be backed up and how. Then I'll get into the library module. So managing your photos of the library module, how to import photos from the hard drive from memory cards will go through preferences, Always a dry topic. I hate to take people through, but an important one to get you set up right that will go into how to manage and reorganize your files and folders using folders. Drive if you're like me. When I was fairly new light room, my folders were a complete mess, so I had a lot of reorganizing to do. And you want to do that from within light room, so we'll learn how to do that. Next, we'll go into how to evaluate and rate a photo shoot. How to sort through, figure out which ones they're picks, which rejects. Had a zoo man look at photos side by side, etcetera. Next we'll go into assigning keywords and other information to your photos. And then once you have all that great for Mitt information assigned, how do you search for your photos? How do you find them? And then how do you group them into what are called collections? So that's the plan for the day. I think that's the end of the plan. Okay, that's the end of the plan that's already a tongue. Now again, this is the heavy lifting day right? I mean, the sexy part of light room is the develop module, and that's tomorrow. So I think of this is kind of a roller coaster ride. So today we're on the slow, you know, hard upward climb. We know it's worth it. Right? But then tomorrow we get to take that adrenaline rush exhilarating dive into the develop module, and then the third day will just be having that soft landing of, you know, um, of additional topics. And my goal is that you get off the ride wanting more right that you're you're all worked up and excited about light room and want to just dive into it. So, um, let's go ahead and get started then. So the first question is, why consider light room and I'm gonna keep this very brief. Most of you have already made a choice for light room. Um, but for those of you that are just curious about light, we haven't started using it yet. The first reason to consider light room is that it's customized for photographers. I tend to compare things to photo shop. Photo shop has to meet the needs of so many different groups. Right. Graphic designers, illustrators, Web designers, etcetera. Adobe decided to start from scratch, build something that understands that photographers workflow and that meets our needs exclusively. We don't have to sort through a lot of tools and old ways of doing things that that Aaron Photoshopped. So it's an all in one program designed to meet most of our needs so that we have various modules for accomplishing things that we need to achieve. So I minute I mentioned library and developed for organizing, fixing enhancing. Then we can move into various modes of output. So all of one program began compared to photo shop, where you you have Adobe Bridge, then you have camera, and then you have Photoshopped and then you still need a slide show program. So again, and only one program now it's meant for serious amateurs and pros. Now, don't get intimidated by the serious amateur. You know, quote serious to me, just means that either either you have a lot of photos Teoh to manage and or that you want to take the time to get the most out of your photos. So a simple crop and bump in saturation is not enough for you. You want to do more with your photos. You care more about what they look like, and photography is important to you. There's a steeper learning curve than some of the really cheaper free programs. It's a It's a fairly complicated program, but it's worth it. It's so powerful that it's worth that. And that's why you guys really are here. It's easier to master than Photoshop. It's more intuitive, but still not easy and completely intuitive. Or again we wouldn't be having this three day workshop. Okay, the second reason to consider light room is because it has very powerful and forgiving tools for fixing and enhancing your images. I'm not gonna walk through the develop module now and convince you that there's a lot of powerful tools here. We'll do that tomorrow, but the point is that there's a professional level set of tools here so you can do a ton with your photos. Um, and it will give you the utmost in quality. Now they're very forgiving, and that's where we can just kind of relax and enjoy light room. No matter what I do to my photo in the develop module so I could turn it purple I could accidentally crop it down to one pixel, walk away for five weeks and come back and look at it and go, Oh, my gosh, I can't believe I just did that to my photo. And it's OK. You can always undo your work in light room. Light room works non destructively. It never touches your original photo, and I'll get mawr into how that happens later. But if you're a new user in your little bit intimidated by it, don't worry. There's nothing you can do to run your photo now kind of lying to you. There's still one thing you can do to bring your photo. Okay, what is that? You can still delete your photo, right, But But, like, room will warn you before you do that. So it will say I told you so. And you know, and hopefully it will still be in your trash. But otherwise you can You can relax on that. The next thing about why light room is that you can do more faster. It does very fast searches, Aiken, say toe light room. Find my winter tree photos. It will find those before I consent my fingers. If you've used bridge. You know that you could basically go out to dinner and hopefully by the time you get back, it's because they work very differently. I don't mean to to smash bridge. It's powerful, too. But I'll explain to you what the difference is and why things are so fast in light room. You can also work on multiple photos at once. Saves you a lot of time. You can save settings, save particular looks that you like his presets. Apply them later, saves you more time. So it's a very efficient program. Which, of course, just makes it more enjoyable. A swell now, the last point in terms of wide light room. I don't mean this to be a sales pitch, but the price is great. I mean, light room for they just cut the price in half. So the full version to the $150 instead of 300 the upgrades 80 instead of, um, 1 99 So it's much more accessible now than it used to be. All right, so I want to get into Yeah, great question on that topic from net ingenuity is what about I photo versus light room? Why would you just select if you would like from over I photo. Now I have to say that I'm not a Mac user, so I don't have deep experience with I photo. But light room is going to give you much more powerful organizing and developing tools as well as more features for sharing your photos. So I photo is a great program to start out with. But when you're ready to graduate to the next level, that's that's the light room level. It's kind of going from amateur to serious amateur. Yes, thank you.