Adobe’s Lightroom 5 is a powerful program, but that power comes at the expense of a learning curve that some find pretty steep. In this excellent video shot at B&H, Photographer Robert Rodriguez, Jr. walks photographers through the functions and features of Lightroom’s Develop module in an hour-long hands-on tutorial.
Despite the first few minutes (when attendees are seen still taking their seats), the video soon moves to a view of Rodriguez’s desktop as he works through several images from start-to-finish and covers just about every panel and slider in the Develop module.
The video is part of the B&H Event Space Seminars, a series of free events that teach photographic technique and skills.
I think that this is one of the best tools for photo editing. LR5 is powerful especially for night and landscape photographers. Easy to use, manages your photography, and is easy to adjust into your work flow. A lot of great photographers use LR to create great images.
I'm glad they posted it... I don't have time for reddit, and wouldn't have found out about this video if it weren't for me visiting DPR today and seeing it mentioned here.
Lightroom isn't difficult to use at all, in fact it's really simple, one of the best laid out and user friendly image processing programs out there.
If you find Lightroom difficult to use then it's your photography skills that need improving in the first instance. Once you nail that then Lightroom is easy and very intuitive.
Ditto. I got Lightroom 5 when I bought my Samsung NX300M two months ago. But I've been avoiding the learning curve and just staying with jogs. With this video, I felt able to give it a try with some RAW images, and the results have been good. Thank you, Mr. Rodríguez!
Video looks very useful. Physical problem here...must be able to watch the video in 10-15' intervals. Can it be downloaded & saved to my computer (Mac)?
LR is a very easy tool to learn and I can get output from LR with much less effort than other converters I've tried such as DxO, and C1 Pro. Also flagging, keywording, cataloging are very intuitive.
I must say this is very cool of DPReview to post this type of thread seeing as how DPReview is owned by Amazon; and with B&H being a strong photographic equipment competitor.
I don't think it was ever designed to be easier to use than PS, just more focussed. In any case it is still much easier to use as a package than PS. With PS there are 100's of functions that I don't even know about let alone use whereas with LR I use all of the functions in the modules I am interested in.
no it is not. It is a minor update, unlike from 3 to 4 which was bigger, better engine. The engine here is basically the same, but very few minor features like: straighten your image a little easier and spot heal is from photoshop which is a tad better then before.
the only reason I even upgraded was adobe trick of not updating camera raw on older software and just new one. Got a Sony A7, which wasn't supported in LR4. No, I am not interested in adobe dng converter for any old lightroom versions.
L5 has a some small but crucial enhancement to the perspective correction: aspect ration, without it does not always produce good result. I really like the circular layer, it is very easy and intuitive to use, much easier and faster to use than the brush which. Smartpreviews arw useful if you use external USB drives for images.
Spot healing/removal is much much better. Pre LR5 you got to fix a dot but with LR 5 you can drag the spot removal which is incredibly useful for all sorts of stuff, from removing a hair to a light pole.
Spectro is way underselling the "straighten your image a little easier". The new tools go way way beyond just twisting your picture a bit, it can analyze buildings and correct for some forms of perspective distortion making crooked lines straight. Sometimes it falls on it's face but when it works it can be great. I also find myself resorting to the radial filter a lot. If you take pictures of people it's so easy to just select a face and lighten shadows without affecting the entire picture. You can do this with the adjustment brush in LR 4 but it would take 4evah compared to LR5 with the radial filter. Nice explanation of the "upright" tool https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pVX4za3Y54
Even if LR 6 was released in two weeks, the information given in this video would still be relevant. That's unless Adobe has changed the filing system from previous versions of LR yet again. [LR Update problem from 3/4 to 5... filing system got changed slightly, could result with users thinking that all files were lost .... not a happy state to be in ]
Good information, but I have to comment on the opening "Lightroom 5 is a powerful program, but that power comes at the expense of a learning curve that some find pretty steep." The learning curve describes how quickly the effort of doing something goes down as you do more of it. A steep learning curve means you learn quickly and easily, so the effort drops a lot in a hurry.
If you meant to say that Lightroom can be difficult to learn, this opening has it backwards. The fact that lots of other people have learning curves backwards too doesn't change that.
This has nothing to do with the content of the piece. The problem is that people who know about learning curves will think "if they can't get this right, how much can they know about Lightroom?" A good deal, it seems, but if you turn readers off before they even get to the article, some of them won't make it that far.
Please try to use "learning curve" correctly in the future.
I don't think anyone ever uses it correctly anymore, meaning that the incorrect way is now correct. It's a shame, but that's how it is. Incidentally, I do think Lightroom is one of the easiest programs to learn. Adjusting photos was never as easy before it arrived on the market, so perhaps it's "learning curve" in its original sense, after all...
"Arguably, the common English use is due to metaphorical interpretation of the curve as a hill to climb. (A steeper hill is initially hard, while a gentle slope is less strainful, though sometimes rather tedious. Accordingly, the shape of the curve (hill) may not indicate the total amount of work required. Instead, it can be understood as a matter of preference related to ambition, personality and learning style.)"
Great thread. I will check this out later when I have more time. . LR certainly takes some getting used to. As it is I am probably not using much of what it can do. Thanks again.
If people don't know how to use it, more often than not it's Lightroom's fault for not being "discoverable". There are many hidden features like "T" and "\" in Library - features that are actually essential.
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