Lightroom

When Brian is home, he is great about taking care of Noah and giving me some time to myself.

For me, free time = playing on the computer.

When I say playing on the computer, I mean editing my RAW photographs in Adobe Lightroom and then Photoshop Elements. 

Yes, I am now shooting in RAW...hurray!  
 
And I purchased Lightroom...double hurray! 

To get started in LR, I read this set of tutorials, Learn Lightroom in a Week, along with this blog post: Why Lightroom May Be The Only Photo Editor You Need.

From there, I just jumped in.  Which is big for me.  Normally, I do a bunch of research before trying anything new.  But lots of people had insisted that LR was a fairly easy program to learn, so I gave it a go and it turns out they were right.   

Then, after working in Lightroom for a few weeks, I discovered free presets on this website.

I know some of you might be wondering, what are presets?

Well, they are similar to actions in Photoshop Elements in that they change the look of your photograph with a simple click of your mouse.

For example, here's a photo I took of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial in Washington, D.C.  We happened to be there on April 4, the anniversary of MLK, Jr.'s assassination, so there were tons of people milling about near the monument.  You'd never know that by looking at the photos, though.  The first photo is SOOC (straight out of the camera).  Then, I applied four different presets to this photo, changing its appearance each time.  

SOOC

Preset: Steller Guru GreenGold

Preset: PH Normal Skin

Preset: Surreal Moment

Preset: PH B&W Beach

Which photo/preset do you like best?

I think my favorite is "Surreal Moment."
 
Now that Lightroom 4 is out, Lightroom 3 is much more affordable--it's just over $100 at Amazon.

So, why not give it a try?

I'm sure glad I did.

J

P.S. Even though I know the basics of Lightroom, I'm eager to read this book over the summer to learn more about what it can do.