The 'Everything Adobe Lightroom' Thread

Psychouk · 15 Sep 2010 at 02:01

Just thought of his

http://kelbytv.com/

Free Photoshop/lightroom/photography videos

Need to get over the in house advertising for kelbytraining and napp but still good tips - I fell for the advertising and did join both

Actually I find them very useful especially the 15% members discount for Adobe software although most of the other discounts are US based.

.:SAmSuNG:. · 15 Sep 2010 at 10:29

I followed a guide about setting up a catalog and getting all my photos imported. It said copy all as DGN or DNG. Is this right or should they be kept as RAW?

blastman · 15 Sep 2010 at 10:33

Cheers Psychouk,

Your links have been added to the first post

footman · 15 Sep 2010 at 10:41

.:SAmSuNG:. said:
I followed a guide about setting up a catalog and getting all my photos imported. It said copy all as DGN or DNG. Is this right or should they be kept as RAW?

.DNG is the Lightroom RAW file extension.

blastman · 15 Sep 2010 at 10:50

didn't know that....

Psychouk · 15 Sep 2010 at 11:29

Take care with DNG. Your actually changing the file format if you convert.

DNG is Adobes raw format. Read up on it before you go down this route to make sure you want to.

Personally I don't as I like to keep the raw files in the camera format - I think of them as being my negatives and like to keep them in their original state.

footman · 15 Sep 2010 at 11:38

I thought that you could only work in Lightroom if your raw files were converted to a format that Lightroom can read, i.e. .dng.

Surely the whole point of Lightroom is that your original files are preserved, so that whatever you do to an image in Lightroom then your "negatives" are still untouched.

Oddly, I also like to think of my original images as negatives! Probably because I've spent most of my life doing film.

greedy123 · 15 Sep 2010 at 12:07

Lightroom reads 99% of raw file types so you shouldn't need to convert anything. What camera do you have?

.:SAmSuNG:. · 15 Sep 2010 at 12:43

If your asking me then a 400D. I was just following the guide that's all.

greedy123 · 15 Sep 2010 at 13:04

.:SAmSuNG:. said:
If your asking me then a 400D. I was just following the guide that's all.

Yeh lightroom will read 400d raw files, no conversion needed, just tell lightroom to import the folder with your photos in and it will sort them all out.

Psychouk · 15 Sep 2010 at 13:34

footman said:
I thought that you could only work in Lightroom if your raw files were converted to a format that Lightroom can read, i.e. .dng.

Surely the whole point of Lightroom is that your original files are preserved, so that whatever you do to an image in Lightroom then your "negatives" are still untouched.

Oddly, I also like to think of my original images as negatives! Probably because I've spent most of my life doing film.

Lightroom will read your original RAW files so no need to convert them - all the worlk you do is stored in your catalogue keeping the original files untouched.

We must be showing our ages by refering to 'negatives' guess many on the forum will never have used film !!

PARUK · 15 Sep 2010 at 17:18

Just want to say thanks to blastman and all the other contributors to this thread. I'd say I'm mostly competent with LR3 and it definitely saves me hours compared to any other PP software I've tried, but I easily get stuck in a rut and don't experiment nearly enough.

Definitely getting inspired by this thread!

blastman · 15 Sep 2010 at 17:23

PARUK said:
Just want to say thanks to blastman and all the other contributors to this thread. I'd say I'm mostly competent with LR3 and it definitely saves me hours compared to any other PP software I've tried, but I easily get stuck in a rut and don't experiment nearly enough.

Definitely getting inspired by this thread!

Arh, nice to hear that you've found it useful. It's my pleasure. Rate the thread if you like

PARUK · 15 Sep 2010 at 17:29

blastman said:
Arh, nice to hear that you've found it useful. It's my pleasure. Rate the thread if you like

Done!

One thing I can contribute, and I think it's worth putting here for newbies because I was using LR for ages before I twigged it, is to 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.

blastman · 15 Sep 2010 at 17:34

Cool.

what's the best way to add these little tips to the 1st post so others can read them without have to go through the whole thread?

another section titled user tips and quote them?

Psychouk · 15 Sep 2010 at 23:25

Couple of quick tips:

'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

drunken fool · 16 Sep 2010 at 09:25

Well, so far i'm enjoying v3 more than i did v1!

Question though. I went from LR into CS3 last night to edit a photo and it asked me if i wanted to stack the PSD with the original which i did. In the LR library it now has a little number 2 on the original but i can't view the stacked PSD. How do i do that?

Rojin · 16 Sep 2010 at 09:39

drunken fool said:
Well, so far i'm enjoying v3 more than i did v1!

Question though. I went from LR into CS3 last night to edit a photo and it asked me if i wanted to stack the PSD with the original which i did. In the LR library it now has a little number 2 on the original but i can't view the stacked PSD. How do i do that?

Erm, from memory; Right click the thumbnail image with the "2" and there's a "stacking" menu item, under that you have a number of options one of which will be "expand". You'll see the images side by side then.

blastman · 16 Sep 2010 at 10:04

tips from users added to first post

Keep em coming....

Oynas · 16 Sep 2010 at 10:11

From what I can gather many of you guys use Lightroom for everything. What do people think of Lightroom ability to sharpen? Do any of you dip into Photoshop for 'output sharpening'?