Lightroom 2 

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom  is my program of choice for my photography work-flow.  Is it perfect? absolutely not,  I have a long list of things I would like to see changed and features added.  Overall however I feel it is the best thing going right now.  I have spent a great deal of time learning the ins and outs of making the most of Lightroom.  I will try to pass on what I have learned by research, and  the most valuable teacher of all, “trial and error”.  I will try (meaning that I really won’t) to post every week a new lesson or tip on using Lightroom.

I would first like to explain how Lightroom works and what it does.  Lightroom does what it does by combining Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) and a database and then tossing in a lot of “magic”.  What this gives us is a way to organize our photos and then do a great deal of sophisticated editing all in a totally non destructive (this means you can not ruin your original image) environment.  Lightroom does not replace Photoshop or any other image editing program which lets you use layers and actually change pixels.

The use of a database gives us to ability to organize our photos, (which you could do by putting them in different folders by content, or shoot, or subject, or location, or the color of the sky) and then sort them buy any of many different criteria including standard metadata and IPTC information.  This ability to sort very quickly on the entire catalog is what makes Lightroom great for organizing, or should I say finding your photos.  The other cool thing about using a database, is that instead of changing all of our pixels and then throwing away the old pixel information, Lightroom simply saves an instruction to change the pixels.  The program then reads this instruction and applies it to the image on screen but not to the actual file.  We can then continue to add instructions and if we wish remove instructions and never change a single pixel in our original file.

Lightroom is a very powerful work-flow tool, however Adobe has done a good job of hiding much of the functionality of the software.  I will try to explain some of this on the pages of this blog.

All the information in this post was believed to be accurate at the time it was published.  Please be sure to double check with the location before relying on this information as everything changes over time, especially hours, prices, and whether the location is still open.  

Great Places for Great Photos

 

Let me help you to find a great location for your next photography adventure.  I will list many lesser-known destinations, as well as the famous "Icon Locations" for photography.  I will provide photos (Lots of Photos), location information, consisting of what there is to photograph as well as other information about the destination.  I will give costs, maps, directions, contact information, and other essential information for a successful photo trip.  I will only post for locations that I have personally photographed to ensure a quality guide to great locations for photography. If you know of great places that are not posted, please send me the details, I may just decide that is a place I need to go!

 
 

Greg Disch is a freelance photographer located in Arkansas. Greg specializes in nature, scenic, wildlife, and other outdoor subjects in Arkansas and other areas of the country.  Most of the images on this site are available for sale as prints, personal use, or rights managed stock photos.

Greg offers both classroom instruction and in the field hands on photographic workshops. Classroom sessions are normally held in Fort Smith Arkansas, but arrangements can be made to bring a class to your group.

All classes and workshops have small class sizes designed to provide an optimum student to instructor ratio, where you can get the personal attention, you need.  Most classes and workshops are limited to a maximum of six participants and will be held with a minimum of only two.

If you are looking for a wonderful opportunity to get personal individual instruction, I do private workshops and classes at a location of your choice, whether doing a location photo shoot, coming to your home or business, traveling across the country on a road trip, or at my classroom.  This is a fantastic way to learn digital workflow and be sure that your computer equipment is properly configured for optimum performance.

1 Comment
  1. Like your tips on lightroom Keep them comming. injoy your blog .