The 'Everything Adobe Lightroom' Thread

[blastman]

Hey guys,

Welcome to ‘Everything Adobe Lightroom’ thread.

In here I hope (with your help) to give tips on the use lightroom, share pre-sets, discuss features and your workflows as well as anything else lightroom related.

I’ll kick things off with the download link of my pre-sets. All were found on websites offering them for free and I spent a good 4 or 5 hours hunting them all down.

please feel free to add your own tips, ideas and pre-sets below.

If enough people contribute I'll update this first post with the download links provided by others.

Adobe Lightroom 14 Day trail - http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshoplightroom/

-------------- Forum members contributions -------------------

Shared Pre-sets;

Blastman; 436 presets - http://www.megaupload.com/?d=6NJ4PN3Q
greedy123; presets - http://www.megaupload.com/?d=ME5W64SB
Rojin; free presets from Onone - http://www.ononesoftware.com/detail.php?prodLine_id=33



Shared tut and links;

Schizophonic; Basic Tut's and how to's - http://www.photoshopsupport.com/lightroom/tutorials.html
neil_g; Workflow Guide - http://fallenlightphotography.wordpress.com/2010/04/26/our-workflow-explained/
blastman; some nice how-to's for 3.2 http://www.photoshopuser.com/lightroom3
blastman; Keyboard Shortcuts http://help.adobe.com/en_US/Lightroom/3.0/Using/WS18e2013dd74eab5fe275e2711d1b186fe9-8000.html
Psychouk; Free Photoshop/lightroom/photography videos http://kelbytv.com
Psychouk; great site for LR presets and tips on using LR http://www.lightroomkillertips.com
aj_4176; Great ligthroom Blog http://www.lightroomqueen.com/blog
aj_4176; Another Lightroom site detailing tip and tricks http://thelightroomlab.com/



User Tips;

Khaaan!
The bets feature in Lightroom for me is the Create Virtual Copy (CTRL+') feature, I absolutely love this feature!

I've set up my Owner/Copyright and IPTC info slabs too which are saved with each import/export


PARUK
use the ALT key (in Windows, not sure about Mac equivalent) when setting the mask value during sharpening.

It gives you a visual way to balance out the sharpening so that you get the definition you need without overly contributing to noise.


Psychouk
'shift & tab' to close/reopen all of the side panels

'L' to cycle through the 'light out modes'

Right click on the small greyed out arrows on the side panels to change the way they open/close automatically.

'H' to hide/show the adjustment brush pins


Psychouk
selective colouring.

use the adjustment brush, turn the saturation right down and paint in the b&w leaving the area you want to highlight in colour.

 

[blastman]

My LR workflow looks like this…

Import images from camera or CF card to \My Pictures\lightroom images\ where each year has its own folder and each day a subfolder.

Then, once all imported images are displayed on the film strip I go through each one (starting from left to right) either rating the images I like with 1 star or flagging the image as rejected if it’s rubbish. There are normally loads of images that I dont rate or reject as thier family shapshots and not worth processing but I want to keep anyway.

After I’ve rated all the images I like and reject flagged all the ones I don’t I delete all the rejected photos and switch to the develop section.

I then use the filter to show only 1 stared images and take each one in turn and develop them using the pre-sets I included above (as well as tinkering with the settings) and when done I rate the photo with 2 stars.

I then use the filter to only show me the images with 2 stars and export them to a ‘keepers’ folder.

I can then use the filter on the folder ‘2010’ to see all 2 stared images taken this year and give them a colour category depending on the image style. Landscape, Portrait, macro and Family all get different colours.

This allows me to easily see different types of Photography by using the filter.

I normally assign 5 stars to images I believe to be portfolio quality.

Lightroom has changed my life and without it I wouldn’t use my camera as often as I do as doing all this in Bridge and PS would take an age.


Love it

 

[mingeroonie]

Will be keeping an eye on this thread, my lightroom workflow is a bit haphazard to say the least, looking forward to trying a few of the presets as well

 

[Kadafi]

excellent thread. Ive only just started out in lightroom, and so far ive been overwhelmed by its capabilities, so this thread will help me no end!

 

[blastman]

first post updated. download link included enjoy...

 

[footman]

This looks interesting. I'm on the verge of buying Lightroom but I'm caught up in the "do I need it when I've got DPP and Elements 6?" conundrum.

I've always taken the view that I don't need to worry about workflow as I'm not a pro but I now realise that my organisation of pictures, the PP and then what to do with all the files I accumulate is absolute rubbish.

I still can't work out whether Lightroom will help me organise my work but will simply duplicate the PP capabilities of the other 2 programs.

 

[blastman]

This looks interesting. I'm on the verge of buying Lightroom but I'm caught up in the "do I need it when I've got DPP and Elements 6?" conundrum.

I've always taken the view that I don't need to worry about workflow as I'm not a pro but I now realise that my organisation of pictures, the PP and then what to do with all the files I accumulate is absolute rubbish.

I still can't work out whether Lightroom will help me organise my work but will duplicate the PP capabilities of the other 2 programs.

Ease of use is the key here.

I also own adobe CS4 master so have all the tools to do everything lightroom can in other apps, but to be able to do it in one place quickly is a god-send.

As i said above, I simply wouldn't use my camera that much if i knew that i had to PP each image in PS afterwards. I'm not great in PS and each image would take 20-30 minutes. Using the pre-sets is awesome.

Why not download the free trail and see for yourself

 

[footman]

Why not download the free trail and see for yourself

Just downloaded it, cheers.

 

[Raymond Lin]

This looks interesting. I'm on the verge of buying Lightroom but I'm caught up in the "do I need it when I've got DPP and Elements 6?" conundrum.

I've always taken the view that I don't need to worry about workflow as I'm not a pro but I now realise that my organisation of pictures, the PP and then what to do with all the files I accumulate is absolute rubbish.

I still can't work out whether Lightroom will help me organise my work but will simply duplicate the PP capabilities of the other 2 programs.

Depends, and if you like me, import literally thousands of photos in 1 go then try opening that in PS. You can in LR.

 

[p0ss3s3d]

My workflow is as follows...
Football?Basketball/BeachBall:
Card reader...photo mechanic..ingest with basic caption and all location/copyright info...rate...crop...caption*...send....

Motorsports/Trying to be creative!
Card reader...lightroom... import with the copyrightrate...contrast slider...saturation slider...crop... caption..send.


Captioning is IMO the most important part for me...
* why photmechanic rules over lightroom.

Nice Town - Saturday, September 11th, 2010: Joe Bloggs of football team a (Pic left) is tackled by Joseph Blaggs during the Important Football match at the house, Housedown. (Pic by J.Emerson/SportsImages)

The bit in bold is done prematch and on ingest and to type this in photomechanic I type...

/10t1/l/itb/102/

TRANSLATION:
Player 10 of team 1 with team name/left/is tackled by/ Player 10 of team 2 (no team name).

 

[blastman]

^^ cool. I haven't played with the copyright and caption options yet. Are they easy to setup and use?

 

[slothmeister]

Just remember who introduced you to lightroom, where's my thanks?

 

[mrk]

Been using Lightroom ever since the first versions and am glad I kept up to date with it because version 3 really shines above the rest.

My workflow has not changed at all, I still employ the same workflow as I do in Photoshop:

The directory structore is cloned one level above where I export all the RAWs to JPEGs so LAN users can browser the 'Albums' and so I can put processed 100% quality JPEG images.

I have some custom presets (vignettes, tones etc) but I prefer to use LR 3's presets and tweak them individually for each picture.

The bets feature in Lightroom for me is the Create Virtual Copy (CTRL+') feature, I absolutely love this feature!

I've set up my Owner/Copyright and IPTC info slabs too which are saved with each import/export.

 

[neil_g]

my workflow containing lightroom..

http://fallenlightphotography.wordpress.com/2010/04/26/our-workflow-explained/

a little out of date but mostly still applies..

 

[Wedge]

Like some others my workflow is a little ruff, great idea for a thread, Fantastic program!!

 

[Rojin]

Depends, and if you like me, import literally thousands of photos in 1 go then try opening that in PS. You can in LR.

Well to be fair that's where Adobe Bridge comes in. I like LR but I like the results you get out of PS better.

OnOne software do a load of free LR presets, the OP probably has those in his most generous set. Nice one.

 

[mrk]

Well to be fair that's where Adobe Bridge comes in. I like LR but I like the results you get out of PS better.

OnOne software do a load of free LR presets, the OP probably has those in his most generous set. Nice one.

You get the exact same effects, they both use the same Adobe Camera RAW engine (and settings) for one.

If your output stage is different then you've applied Photoshop edits into your work but that can also be done in LR, just right click an image then Edit > In Photoshop CS5 and LR will create a PSD copy, stack it with the original and migrate the edited version as the primary in the stack once you're done editing and have closed Photoshop again.

Everything is beautifully streamlined and logical, they just work well together.

 

[Rojin]

You get the exact same effects, they both use the same Adobe Camera RAW engine (and settings) for one.

If your output stage is different then you've applied Photoshop edits into your work but that can also be done in LR, just right click an image then Edit > In Photoshop CS5 and LR will create a PSD copy, stack it with the original and migrate the edited version as the primary in the stack once you're done editing and have closed Photoshop again.

Everything is beautifully streamlined and logical, they just work well together.

It's not quite though, just look at auto tone. Very different results, just depends on what you prefer. Resize and sharpen is also far better in PS, you have much more control. I used LR3 all through the beta and loved it, the sync to Flickr being a great feature. However I found I used it best when passing from LR to PS for further tweaking. Which to be honest is the same as you said

 

[panthro]

As someone starting out who wants to get into post processing more, would you guys recommend Lightroom? Im willing to spend the money providing it will offer me everything I need.

 

[blastman]

As someone starting out who wants to get into post processing more, would you guys recommend Lightroom? Im willing to spend the money providing it will offer me everything I need.

Personally, I think lightroom is perfect for your use. It can be as easy or as advanced to use as you like. The presets make PP a doddle turning some good images into great images!

I recently upgraded to 3.2 and love Publishing stuff to facebook. I do kinda wish they would have allowed to create a custom site, where you can slap in a ftp site and your login details and add it to the publishing list. I could stick alamy in there and save some time

Anyone else willing to share some presets?

It's nice to see other peoples workflows. I thought I had a good one but Khaaan! your's is off the scale! FAAARRRR too advanced for little old me


@slothmeister; how could I ever forget you.... You still up for Sunday?