John P gets to grips with Lightroom!

[Ian]

This is going to be a DPNow forum experiment! John Perriment is representative of many people who are used to the Photoshop (or Paintshop Pro, etc.) way of editing photos, one at a time, loading-editing-saving, taking care not to over-write your originals. So I have encouraged John to try Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. This does require a new mindset as the workflow is very different and the learning curve can be steep. Those that have overcome this hurdle usually never look back, but it is a tough hurdle to overcome.

John has Lightroom 3 installed and is ready to go. I will be helping John get started and to start getting used to the new way of working with Lightroom using this forurm to share experiences and information along the way. Pleae feel free to join in the discussion with your own questions and suggestions .

So, to start off - John should have installed Lightroom 3.6, and he should have a prompt to update to version 3.7. Then we need to choose our preference for the import options and general user interface options.

So, John - have you updated to 3.7 yet? (LR4 is now out and there are detailed differences, but for our purposes the fundamentals are the same).

Ian

[John Perriment]

Re: John P gets to grips with Lightroom!

I'm looking forward to this and thanks Ian for such a great opportunity, though I must admit to being a little nervous! Lightroom 3.6 is on my computer and seem ready to go but I am not getting a prompt to upgrade to 3.7, is there something I should do to force the issue?

[Ian]

Re: John P gets to grips with Lightroom!

Ignore that, I actually think 3.6 is the latest version of Lightroom 3.

Anyway, we need to configure lightroom so that it manages your images the way YOU want it to. So you need to answer these questions:

1. Do you want your images to be moved automatically to a new location that is determined by Lightroom according to your preferences (there are many options, including folders named and arranged according to date and time, for example, or based on the name of the original folder, etc.)

Or if you have a file structure of your own, we can retain that and Lightroom will only add to its database of images known and associated data relating to each image (adjustment history, metadata, etc.).

2. Do you shoot with RAW and JPEG at the same time and if so do you want the library to to display both or just RAW files?

4. Would you like LR to associate metadata preset by you to files imported (Name, contact details, copyright message, etc.)? Remember that LR never changes the original file and only incorporates changes, including metadata once you export a an adjusted version of your original file.

That should do for now.

Ian

[John Perriment]

Re: John P gets to grips with Lightroom!

Ignore that, I actually think 3.6 is the latest version of Lightroom 3.

Anyway, we need to configure lightroom so that it manages your images the way YOU want it to. So you need to answer these questions:

1. Do you want your images to be moved automatically to a new location that is determined by Lightroom according to your preferences (there are many options, including folders named and arranged according to date and time, for example, or based on the name of the original folder, etc.)

Or if you have a file structure of your own, we can retain that and Lightroom will only add to its database of images known and associated data relating to each image (adjustment history, metadata, etc.).

2. Do you shoot with RAW and JPEG at the same time and if so do you want the library to to display both or just RAW files?

4. Would you like LR to associate metadata preset by you to files imported (Name, contact details, copyright message, etc.)? Remember that LR never changes the original file and only incorporates changes, including metadata once you export a an adjusted version of your original file.

That should do for now.

Ian

I've been thinking about this. I probably have an unusual way of storing my pictures in that I use Windows Photo Gallery and just distinguish them by tags rather than creating folders. I've never used the organiser in Elements, although I think some pictures have found there way into it as well as the Windows Gallery. I'm not sure what to do, but I don't mind all pictures being imported into Lightroom so long as it doesn't affect Windows Gallery.

I often do shoot both raw and JPEG, but maybe I'll just display raw files in the library.

Yes, I think it would be a good idea for LR to associate pre-set metadata to adjusted files.

Hope this makes sense.

[John Perriment]

Re: John P gets to grips with Lightroom!

One thing I have noticed. Normally when I want to edit a picture I open it from Windows Gallery and select Elements from the options displayed when I click on the "Open" drop menu; LR is not listed as an option so I guess I'll need to use a different method of importing into LR.

[Phill D]

Re: John P gets to grips with Lightroom!

John I'll be really interested in how you get on with this as I seem to use files in windows pretty much the same as you do.

[John Perriment]

Re: John P gets to grips with Lightroom!

Welcome Phill, yes it will be interesting even if the learning curve is a little steep. I may start running into trouble with hard disk space - before downloading LR I had about 40gb free but now it's down to 26! Better start some drastic pruning!

[escallonia]

Re: John P gets to grips with Light room!

Hi Ian.
I would like to have some guidance with light room 4 I have just down loaded
And have transfered a few photo's from my E3. If this is only for John no worries. I have LR4 on a 30 day try at the moment regards John.

[rogleale]

Re: John P gets to grips with Lightroom!

Hi John,

To get your pictures into Lightroom from a memory card, or camera, and control where they end up - start Lightroom - go to File < Auto import < Autoimport settings and set it up as you like.

To import from somewhere else on your hard disk go to File > Import and in the dialogue which opens point LR to the folder the pictures are in and Click import. LR will ask you if you want to 'Add' them 'Move' them or 'Copy' them. If you select 'Add' LR will add them to a catalogue and leave them where they are. If you intend to move them, into a different folder I recommend setting up a partition for all your images, preferably on a different disk to the 'C' partition. This will greatly ease things if you do have a HD failure or a problem with the 'C' partition, and will also make it easier to back up your catalogue and images.

I hope that helps a little,

Roger

[rogleale]

Re: John P gets to grips with Lightroom!

John,

I forgot to point out the card detect method.

Open LR and go to 'Edit' > 'Preferences' > 'General' tab.
On this tab you can select under 'Import options' - 'Show Import dialogue' this will open the import process whenever you plug in a camera or a memory card.

Roger

[escallonia]

Re: John P gets to grips with Lightroom!

Thanks Roger
I have been learning for about a hour now I imported a few from my camera memory card via the camera and have trying out all the different adjustments.
I need to straighten one of my photo's I don't think it has that adjustment?
regards John.

[mike_j]

Re: John P gets to grips with Lightroom!

I have been using Lightroom since introduction as I got a free copy by virtue of having a predecessor program from a company taken over by Lightroom but I still find that there is a lot to learn.

I simply import everything from cameras, phone etc and let lightroom file it in date order. I rely totally on keyword tags for finding things but have a fairly structured hierarchy of tags so I can label things very quickly when I import. The problem I find with sorting into folders is that unless you keyword as well it's difficult to find pictures which also fall into another category even though they are correctly filed in their folders.

For example a picture might be in a folder called Devon 2011 but if you are looking for a picture of say, a blue boat, the folder is no help. With keywords you can apply several tags so that the picture will be pulled up in various searches.

[OlyPaul]

Re: John P gets to grips with Lightroom!

I need to straighten one of my photo's I don't think it has that adjustment?
regards John.

Click on the crop tool in the right hand panel and in the drop down menu you will see a Angle slider.



Alternatively left click and hold outside the image (the pointer changes into curved double arrow) and rotate it.

[theMusicMan]

Re: John P gets to grips with Lightroom!

Thanks Roger
I have been learning for about a hour now I imported a few from my camera memory card via the camera and have trying out all the different adjustments. I need to straighten one of my photo's I don't think it has that adjustment?
regards John.

Hi John

Yes, Lightroom does have a straighten tool, as Paul mentions. Another way of straightening an image is with the ruler tool, thus

My portrait of Shannon below is not straight, as you can see from the vertical lines in the wooden background. So...




Select the Crop tool as above, then select the ruler tool and draw a line on the image which is your marker to straighten (wherever that is)



... and once you have done that, the image is level! As below...

[escallonia]

Re: John P gets to grips with Lightroom!

Thats great love your screen shot.