Lightrrom and Luminous Landscape

[The_Traveler]

I have been watching the Hi-def video about Lightroom done by the two guys at Luminous Landscape and it is amazing.

No, not the video, although it is excellent, LR is an amazing program. The amount of control one has over the image is amazing. (The video is $14.95, downloadable, and well worth it)

The part of the video on importing does leave out an important issue that can be corrected later but with a great deal of work. Develop a structure for your keywords before you start adding pictures and sort the keywords into that structure as you add them. Doing this afterwards, altho dragging and dropping is allowed, is very tedious because you can't drag above or below the existing screen page. So if you want to drag a keywod 'zebra' into the group 'animals' and you have more than one full screen for your keyword list, you have to rename your keyword 'zebra' to 'animal-zebra' to get it resorted near the 'animal' group, then drag it into the group and rename it. This is a clear pain in the butt.

I have this group list:
Animals
Background
Events
Family
People
Places
Plants
Structures
Things
Transport
Types

and am gradually sorting my ~170 keywords in this structure. It is a pain. Set up your main keyword structure first before starting to import. As you add keywords, sort them into the list.

 

[THORHAMMER]

alas, Ive been trying to tell everyone here how sweet LR is for like a month..

Im loving it, its freed me up a lot..

 

[Garbz]

I can never get into the storage and sorting features of these programs. Mind you I keep my computer very organised, and I could easily find any of my thousands of photos quite quickly.

That said lightroom is amazing even if I only use it for processing and then remove all images from the gallery after exporting them to JPEG.

 

[elsaspet]

I ordered mine last Friday. I'm hoping to get it today. I can't wait.

 

[The_Traveler]

I ordered mine last Friday. I'm hoping to get it today. I can't wait.

Please remember what I said about developing a sorting scheme before you import.
Consider getting the Luminous Landscape tutoring tools - well worth it.

I am using two databases - one for 'jobs' and one for fun shots. (my 'jobs' on has 3 jobs in it so far - what a wimp )

 

[elsaspet]

Will do, and thanks for the tip. I heard it was hard to set up at first.
Hey, for all you PPA members, if you are thinking of getting this, there is a big discount at Adobe for us!

 

[Iron Flatline]

Yeah, I downoaded the LL Tutorial six weeks ago, but only now had the time to watch it.

I like LR a lot.

Can I do a dodge and burn in Lightroom? I can't see it.

 

[The_Traveler]

No, except for healing blemishes and red-eye, pixel level stuff is out.

 

[Iron Flatline]

I dunno, I'm disappointed. It's a basic photography component. Now I'm considering not buying it (still on my 30-day demo.) I do pretty much only the functions available in LR, but d&b is pretty important in my work. I gather it can be done non-destructively in CS3, so I will have to evaluate that. Of course, In CS2 (and prior) I would just d&b in a layer.

Any knowledge of that? What else is not is LR?

 

[The_Traveler]

IMO, it's a great tool, especially for organization and treatment of lots of images. I had a 160 shot shoot, cropped and edited down to 45 final images and sychronized color temp and adjustments in about 40 minutes for presentation to client.

I do 90% of my work in it and then finalize in CS2. Save lots of room with virtual copies, lots of time with synch settings.