I love Lightroom, but it’s not without a few pitfalls. After years of real-world studio and classroom experience, I’ve identified a bunch of booby traps that consistently derail new and old users alike. Booby Trap: “Default Catalog” at start up When you first launch Lightroom, a new “default” catalog (.lrcat file) is created in your…
Do’s and Don’ts of Editing Wreck Photos Whether moody or magnificent, wreck shots can be a real challenge to edit. Typically taken in less-than-optimal conditions, most wreck photos need help in post to achieve maximum impact. Lightroom and Photoshop offer an impressive array of tools to tease out texture and contrast, but missing the target…
There’s nothing worse than discovering you’re missing a critical piece of gear on a long-awaited dive adventure. Most underwater photographers stress out before a trip, checking and re-checking their camera and dive equipment to make sure all the required bits and pieces are packed and in working order, but they often forget to prepare their…
Many people get off on the wrong foot with Lightroom. They jump straight into the Develop Module, hoping to attain instant editing wizardry. They suffer through the drudgery of folder organization at the most superficial level possible, and only then because it’s required to reliably locate and manage images. But in giving the Library module…
Finding the Perfect Punch for Your Pictures I simultaneously love and fear the addition of any significant new feature in Lightroom or Photoshop. Love, because it potentially enriches my editing bag of tricks. Fear, because for a time after its initial introduction it’s used to excess by pros and enthusiastic amateurs alike, resulting in a…
There’s a yin-yang involved with post-production in Lightroom. In the Library Module, building an asset management strategy often seems more like a chore than a creative endeavor, while editing in the Develop Module requires creativity and artistic vision. Despite their differences, both sides of the Lightroom coin are essential to provide the best environment for…
I don’t know a single Lightroom user (me included) who hasn’t noticed alarming exclamation point or question mark icons sullying their Lightroom Library. It can be downright scary to get a warning message on the screen that files are offline or missing, but the truth of the matter is usually no cause for panic. The…
Lightroom is Adobe’s professional level one-stop-shop for organizing, editing, and sharing images. It’s the perfect companion to Photoshop, and has been the photo editing industry standard for more than a decade. In October of 2017, Adobe significantly changed the Lightroom lineup, offering multiple versions of its subscription-based Creative Cloud Photography Plan, and effectively discontinuing Lightroom…
As Lightroom evolves, new functionality is added to what’s already a stunningly deep piece of software. Showy new features get lots of exposure, but subtler components of an update may go unheralded, quickly becoming “hidden” features that only the most avid users are hip to. In addition, common tools in each module often have a…
Digital Asset Management 101 for Lightroom The single most common question I’m asked about Lightroom is “Where the #$&! are my images?”. Understanding how Lightroom manages and displays information can help you stay organized and out of DAM (Digital Asset Management) trouble. The Lightroom Catalog The Lightroom Catalog is an immensely powerful database that…
I wish I had a magic bullet for backscatter removal, but the truth of the matter is that to get spots out of your shots, you’ve got to master more than one technique. The Lightroom Spot Removal Tool In Lightroom, you’re limited to a single, rather clumsy Spot Removal tool. Click once on a piece…
It’s easy to customize the Lightroom Library’s Grid and Loupe Views to display useful information. Searching, sorting, and rating are much easier when you can see specific metadata right on the image thumbnail, and being able to toggle through additional information like camera settings helps when analyzing your photos in Loupe (single image) View. By…
Using a single catalog makes the most of Lightroom’s superpowers A Lightroom catalog is much like an old-school card catalog in a brick-and-mortar library. It contains all kinds of information (metadata) about your images — their physical location on a drive, keywords, ratings and even Develop Module changes, but it does not contain the actual…
Using Lightroom’s filter tools to reposition your strobes in post One of the most difficult skills to master in underwater photography is lighting. While it’s always best to get it right in camera, Lightroom provides powerful local tools to help finesse your lighting after the fact. My favorites are Lightroom’s Graduated and Radial Filter tools….
Sharks are a favorite photographic subject of mine. Over the years, I’ve developed a few post-production techniques that help to mitigate common problems and emphasize desirable details in shark images. Desaturate with an Adjustment Brush to remove unwanted cyan color on your shark. In the Develop module of Lightroom, click on the Adjustment…
The right white balance can make or break an underwater photo. Some shots need just a single click with the White Balance eyedropper in Lightroom or Adobe Camera Raw to restore color and knock out unwanted ambient light. Others, in which the white balance isn’t the same across the entire image, require more specific editing….
How to make Sexy B&W Conversions in Lightroom The first step to making a good black and white image is implicit in its name.You’ve got to have clean black and real white somewhere in your photo. For the best black and white conversion, you should shoot in RAW, which delivers up to 65,536 shades of…
Lightroom is a deep program with amazing functionality. Despite (or maybe because of) the enormous amount of documentation available online and elsewhere, it can be tough to unearth some often overlooked but otherwise useful features. Here are ten of my favorites. Library Module Secrets Do you know where your images are? Select “All Photographs”…