If you’ve seen YouTube videos on professional photographers giving Lightroom tips, this is for you. Adobe Lightroom Classic, the industry-standard software for photo editing and management is a powerful tool. With its intuitive interface and array of tools, Lightroom Classic can help you achieve your vision for your photos.
Let’s start with importing your photos. You can do this by selecting File > Import Photos and Video, or by dragging and dropping your photos into the Library module. Once your photos are imported, you can organize them using keywords, ratings, and other metadata. The more effort you put into labeling images, the easier they will be to find later.
Lightroom Classic’s Develop module is where you’ll spend most of your time editing your photos. Here, you can adjust exposure, contrast, color, and other aspects of your photos to bring out their best. You can also apply presets, which are pre-made edits that can save you time and give your photos a consistent look. Most of the tools are controlled with sliders so you can see a preview of what each does, which makes it SUPER handy in figuring it out.
Once you’ve edited your photos to your liking, you can export them in various formats and sizes. Lightroom Classic makes it easy to export your photos for web, print, or other purposes. You can also share your photos directly to social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram.
Above are just some general overviews, here are some tips and tricks to help you get the most out of Lightroom Classic:
- Use the histogram: The histogram in Lightroom Classic shows you the distribution of tones in your photo. By using the histogram, you can make sure your photos are properly exposed and avoid losing detail in the shadows or highlights.
- Use the adjustment brush: The adjustment brush in Lightroom Classic allows you to make selective edits to specific areas of your photo. This can be useful for things like brightening up a subject’s face or adding clarity to certain parts of the photo.
- Use keyboard shortcuts: Lightroom Classic has a ton of keyboard shortcuts that can save you time and make your workflow more efficient. For example, you can press “D” to switch to the Develop module or “G” to switch to the Library module.
- Use online resources: There are many online resources available to help you learn Lightroom Classic. Adobe offers a variety of tutorials and guides on their website, and there are also many third-party resources like those YouTube tutorials I mentioned earlier and online courses.
Lightroom classic can take a significant commitment to learn. As a user of the software since it came out in 2006, I can tell you it is worthwhile learning how it works. Many other softwares out there use similar controls and user interfaces so understanding how Lightroom works can unlock other systems. (Psst, check out Darktable).
