Lightroom Rocks!
Adobe Photoshop Lightroom by Adobe
By Otto Rascon
10 November 2007
I have been using Adobe Photoshop for about 8 years now (wow, has it been that long!). It is an awesome program that allows you to do so many things with a photograph. The possibilities seem pretty endless at times, your knowledge/ understanding of the program seems to be the only thing that hinders its possibilities. But you all know about this wonderful software.
Up to about 3 months ago I was editing all of my photos in Photoshop. I used Bridge a lot and loved it. But image how long it takes to edit a wedding, which can consist of about 500 to 1,500 photos per event. Each photo has to be opened and edited via curves, sharpening, etc. Of course you can batch process all of those edits, but that still takes a long time and you do not have the control over every photograph that is batched processed. Here is where Lightroom comes in and shines.
Lightroom allows you to edit one, or 1,000 photos, all with ease. And it is all done in an non-destructive editing environment. That means that every edit you make can always be changed or altered, even when you close the program. You can always go back to the photo and change your sharpening, contrast, saturation, etc. This is great, but what is even better is that you can work with RAW files and JPG files all the same! What I mean is that Lightroom handles the editing the same for these two files, via an XML sidecar that has all of your edits stored away. So you essentially change the data to this XML file and Lightroom applies the change to your file.
I love this way of editing for many reasons. One is that you can work on one photograph (file) and then apply those edits to an entire photoshoot. So your white balance, exposure, and color can all stay consistent throughout your shoot. But you only made edited one photograph! That is awesome.
Another reason I love editing in Lightroom is that you no longer have to depend on Photoshop to do all of the editing. They work together to give you even more control over the final product. You can make all of your tonal adjustments and exposure adjustments in Lightroom. Then export the file to Photoshop, if you so desire, and finish it there with by either adding a lighting effect, smoothening skin smoothing, masking out an object, etc.
I am still learning all of the different aspects of Lightroom. But I would highly recommend it to any photographer that deals with high volumes of photographs. I hope that this info was helpful. Keep shootin'!
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