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You achieved wonderful depth and color in this. I really like it because of those things and the "look" of it.
I spend so much time in Photoshop I've decided not to try learning Lightroom. That feeling has been reinforced by the number of questions related to its use in Tim Grey's eNewsletter. A search of it might answer your questions, however.
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The soft golds and greens are beautiful, especially in contrast to the lighter tree trunks. The degree of detail is just right. I love the glows of the yellows...the whole image is very inviting.
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Gorgeous!! I love the effects!
Once you move the adjustment sliders in LR they will stay there until you move them again. And it is completely non-destructive. (Works the same as ACR, except I find the LR Develop Module interface is a little more straightforward.) But you don't send the image back to your HD -- your images are NOT IN LR! They are just where you put them on your HD. They are merely cataloged in LR, much as books in a library are indexed in the card catalog. So they can remain there in the "filmstrip" for a folder until you want to edit them in PS> To do that, in either the Library or Develop module go to Photo > Edit IN, or Ctrl/Cmd-E. When done in PS just save it and it will be back in the filmstrip (automatically cataloged), which you can sort by several options.
To me, this is so much handier than working in ACR and Bridge.
Then when you wish, you can simply export and image in any format, right from the filmstrip/folder, to a JPEG, with a saved preset such as for BPN. Those won't go back into the catalog -- they are more like a print -- export again as needed. You can save them in folders if you need or wish, and I use Bridge to look at those folders.
Lightroom was developed by and for photographers and is an overwhelmingly popular tool for organizing and processing, and dovetails perfectly with Photoshop.
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BPN Member
Nice colors and the tree makes a great anchor for the image. I like how you have nice orange tones in two opposite corners and green ones in the other corners.
Lightroom is an amazing bit of software that I couldn't live without. It started out great and got better. The key thing to remember is that LR is never making changes to your master file, just applying your adjustments to the master in its own catalog. By only being able to export from LR, which is not the same as saving, you are guaranteed that you will never lose your original files or overwrite them. It is helpful to remember a couple of easy key commands. Just push the "G" key to get into grid mode, ,where you see your files displayed as a grid. To go to the develop mode, just push "D". You can also use the loupe view, which has the film strip displayed at the bottom of the screen, by using the "E" key. There are lots of great Lightroom tutorials on Adobe's Lightroom page on YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7N...6vdFDHYzDHlteg
"It is an illusion that photos are made with the camera... they are made with the eye, heart, and head." - Henri Cartier Bresson
Please visit me on the web at
http://kerryperkinsphotography.com
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Love the colours and the subtle glow Nancy. A version with the tree less centered would work for me too. I too am quite puzzled by Lightroom.
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Lovely!! I like the look and feel of this image very much. Great processing. Nice depth. Lovely colors. I like it all.
I don't process in Lightroom, using it only for cataloging and keywording my images.
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Anita, I'm curious why. Processing in LR is seamless once you import your raw files. Just click on the Develop module and move sliders -- it's all non-destructive and completely reversible.
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Originally Posted by
Diane Miller
Anita, I'm curious why. Processing in LR is seamless once you import your raw files. Just click on the Develop module and move sliders -- it's all non-destructive and completely reversible.
Photo friends who use Lightroom tell me the same thing. I have tried it a few times. My reason has nothing to do with not liking Lightroom. I am like Dennis, I have mastered Elements and don't want to take the time to learn a new software. I need to go into Elements anyway since I use layers a lot, and for textures.
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Understandable -- I've gotten the same way about many pieces of software. My only point is that the Develop module in LR should be very similar to the one in Elements, but more powerful. You can set the "Photoshop" portion of Elements to be your editor in LR, and have everything in one place. If you're using it for keywording and cataloging, you've learned 90% of it.
I'll root for your friends to show you!! The most important idea behind it is a seamless workflow.
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Hey, thanks everyone for your comments on both my image and my lightroom questions! Diane and Kerry, I see the potential of Lightroom (haha! I've seen the Light!) and am determined to learn it. Anita, it's the keyword/cataloging thing that overwhelms me!
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I had several LR tutorials on the Adorama web site but they have redesigned the site and removed most of the older tutorial content. I'll see if I can put together a summary of the basics, but it may take a while. It is really easy to use, but like anything there are pitfalls to avoid.
Check out the free e-book on the Lightroom Queen web site. It's also a good place for Q&A.
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Originally Posted by
Nancy Bell
Hey, thanks everyone for your comments on both my image and my lightroom questions! Diane and Kerry, I see the potential of Lightroom (haha! I've seen the Light!) and am determined to learn it. Anita, it's the keyword/cataloging thing that overwhelms me!
I just do the very basic organizing using keywords. I started doing this when I couldn't find some photos I wanted.
General question: How do people organize their photos so they can find them in the future? I save my by date and title. But, that isn't always enough information.
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Originally Posted by
Diane Miller
I had several LR tutorials on the Adorama web site but they have redesigned the site and removed most of the older tutorial content. I'll see if I can put together a summary of the basics, but it may take a while. It is really easy to use, but like anything there are pitfalls to avoid.
Check out the free e-book on the Lightroom Queen web site. It's also a good place for Q&A.
Thanks for this link.
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Anita, I organize by country, then species folders. The species can be animals, insects, birds, flowers, etc. For images I take in the US I organize by state, then species. But I now have about 5 external hard drives and since my computer cannot have all those hard drives connected at once, I need to plug them in and out like an old-fashioned telephone operator! And since I lived in Colorado for so long, those species folders are spread out on several different hard drives.
Diane, thanks for the Lightroom Queen info. I know you are also a lightroom queen and always so appreciative with your advice.
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One very basic thing: on each HD, you want a parent folder that contains all the image folders, for LR’s housekeeping.
From pre-LR days I had a set of hierarchical folders for things like Flowers > Roses, Places > San Francisco, Trips > wherever, etc., some with subfolders as needed. And then there are many shoots that are hard to categorize that I have just left by the dates (LR’s default import folder naming) and added some description to the name. I can refine that organization any time using the Folders panel in the Library module, moving folders and individual files around.
When I shoot something I import the pictures from the camera card using LR’s import dialog, which I have set to come up automatically when I insert a card into the reader. (LR needs to be running first.) Sometimes it doesn’t come up and I just click Import in the LL of the Library module. By doing this, LR does the cataloging – which adds a folder to the Folders panel and makes previews of the images. You don’t even need to know there is such a thing as cataloging. Your images just magically appear for you!
When I started using LR I did an initial import of my existing folders, without copying or moving the files, to let LR index (catalog) all those pictures. It didn’t change anything about those pictures on the hard drive. Then as I had time I began to add keywords. A folder of roses can have all the images selected and the KW added to all – just select all and go to Grid view to make it apply to all. (That’s a bit of a quirk – needing to both select all and going to Grid view.)
Now, to import new shoots, I leave the LR default to copy the files to my HD and import into folders named by date. I can browse to any existing HD folder where I want to put them. To go into an existing folder, be sure to highlight that folder in the import dialog. Or I can just let it go into a new one named by date, and rename or move it later. But that needs to be done from the Folders panel in LR (Lib module), not in the operating system. LR will move the folders on your hard drive wherever you tell it, but it won’t know if the system moved them, and won’t be able to find them. (You can show it where it went, but it’s far easier to let LR do it.)
I can go to the Library module’s Folders panel and look for a certain folder, but as you say, that can be tedious after you get a lot of pictures, even if you rename them more meaningfully.
To find things beyond rummaging through folders, I rely on keywords. It takes some discipline to keyword just after I import, but it pays off later. And the keywords are so flexible – if you misspelled one, just change it in the list – LR takes care of the housekeeping. You can move them into a hierarchical structure, reassign them on the images if you got a rose labeled as a petunia, etc.
Click the small right-pointing arrow to the right of each keyword to see all the pictures with that keyword. (That always leads me to a lot of deleting!)
One small pitfall (really just a quirk) is that if you are in this “search view” is that if you send a picture to PS to edit it, you won’t find the PS file back in the filmstrip. Go to the metadata panel (below the keyword panel) and near the top is the folder the picture was in. Click the right arrow to the right of its name and you will see the new PS file there. It will have the keywords(s) from the original raw file. And the next time you go back to display all the images with that keyword, it will be there.
Tim Grey is a great proponent of LR and has a number of video tutorials. I haven’t look at any of them, but I would imagine they are very good.
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I love the simplicity of the image and the glow achieved with the post processing. I find this discussion interesting and informative. Thanks for the info Dianne.
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Lifetime Member
Nancy,
Greetings. Missed this one but I have a few comments. The solid trunk really grabs the attention of the viewer. Interesting that in such a colorful image the bright white really comes to the fore. Thanks for posting.
As regarding LR. The downside of virtual edits is losing something you like to downstream edits. You can backtrack in History like in PS but you want to preserve an edited version one way is to take a Snaphot (look in Develop mode for Snapshots panel). This collects your virtual edits into, well, a snapshot and preserves the settings until you make additional changes starting with the snapshot. I mostly make them for crop variations (I don't do much editing in LR). Take as may snapshots as you like (they are just a list of change instructions from the original image).
Or make a new "master" - I select edit in PS and "Edit a copy with Lightroom Adjustments" and save in PS. In LR be sure to set the External Editing choices as you prefer. I have mine to launch PS with TIFF, ProPhoto RGB, and 16 bits/component, None compression. Once you save in PS a new TIFF is created and can be stacked in LR (or not stacked as you wish). Nothing virtual about the Tiff.
I've used LR since it first came out. Mostly good news. Moving to a new computer is a trying experience (in the middle of that now), though to be fair I am moving over 200,000 images. I arrange photos by date use keywording (sparingly) and use smart collections to find images I need... allows for reasonable database queries on photo metadata. One downside is the management of disk space used for previews is not to my knowledge available. This cache grows unbounded. If anyone knows how to manage this pile I'd like to hear about it.
Happy to answer questions. There is a lot to absorb and lots of choices in how to do things.
Cheers,
-Michael-
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Couple of thoughts, after a probably too-quick read. To try different crops or adjustments just in LR, I just make Virtual Copies of the raw files -- no need for a PS file unless it's for PS adjustments. VCs are a very small text file of the slider settings -- no significant disk space usage.
Previews do take some disk space but the default is to remove the large 1:1 previews after 30 days, and revert to the much smaller standard ones. You can always rebuild the 1:1s for a folder as needed, or just wait to have them rendered on the fly for older images you're looking at at 1:1.
I have never watched the previews file for growth -- assumed it was self-limiting somehow. I have 124,000 images in my main catalog and the previews file is about 77G. Not small, but I have LR render 1:1 previews on import, and maybe a dozen folders with maybe several hundred images are < 30 days old.
Each time you back up the catalog it will make a new backup, and I go in and manually delete the older ones every so often, and just leave the last couple.
Last edited by Diane Miller; 10-29-2015 at 11:43 PM.
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Wow...you guys are a wealth of LR info! Thanks and I'll probably have to query again about something. But this is great to get started. Phew...now to practice all that stuff.
