Lightroom course or guides?

Mike Jones

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Feb 19, 2013
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I am trying to get better at photography and post processing in lightroom. About a year ago I switched to shooting in RAW qith my A6000 and using lightroom, its been amazing!

But I know there is a lot I do not know or understand about lightroom, I have gotten better over the last year but its mostly just my own experimenting. IF anyone knows of any good guides or books please let me know!

I am interested in detailed descriptions of what all the sliders can do, and when or when not to use certain sliders for different types of photography.
 
I have found Elements good enough and congratulate those who are willing to slog though learning LR. The curve is steep and those who spend hundreds of hours on it (or are very smart) get the best results. The results however are marginal when it comes to "defending your art"...trying to sell it in other words. I live in an art town and know a number of really excellent pros who hardly ever sell anything and that is after spending many thousands of $$ on gear, software, humping photos from cafe to restaurant to MD offices, or collecting dust in galleries.

I am answering a question that was not asked, but I firmly believe at this point that it is the photographer and really not much else that makes all the difference. This lady never sold anything while she was alive (never tried either) yet her stuff is going for the highest prices ever and people are standing in lines to see her work...

http://www.vivianmaier.com/film-finding-vivian-maier/
 
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You can also find high quality coursework online through Lynda.com. Many libraries, including my Salt Lake County Library, provide access for free to their patrons. Recommended.
 
I'm Photoshop and read a 1.5" thick book called Real World Adobe Photoshop paragraph by paragraph many years ago and then just kept up with the new version additions. That does not help you Mike but I think I have something that will.

Of course you have to compose well and catch good, interesting light for 90% of the equation...and you are shooting RAW which is very, very good, getting all the information you can. I check in the in camera histogram to make sure where that information is and if it is all there. Simple but after you process the RAW file, make a Tiff file at the highest quality you can. For my camera files that means 16 bit. They may be higher quality now. Those files will stand up to further processing. When I'm all done I do a Save for Web at around 59% quality for those images intended for the web. For Printing it is a whole other complex Save process. That was another inch thick book. LOL

Anway...

Check out the free Nik Software Collection. Google bought it a while back. It can be used with Photoshop CS4 through CC, PS Elements 9-13 and for you, Lightroom 3 through 6/CC.

There are a overwhelming array of plugins. I normally lightly correct any lighting flaws with Viveza and then work with various contrast tones in Color Efex > Tonal Contrast (I don't even sharpen my images after that). That is normally it and the details out of my old Canon DSLR really pop. Don't over do it and learn to use the sliders and the U-point technology which works very well. For B&W they have the Silver Efex plugin, a great piece of kit for getting some striking monochrome. There are a few other pretty good ones that I used from time to time in Color Efex. You can explore but for the most part those two I told you about will ramp up your processing speed with very good results if you don't go overboard with "too much".

Again it is free so I doubt you'll beat that. Nik used to charge around $200 for each of those plugins. Google bought it up and made them free.
 
Caveat that I haven't actually watched this but I've watched a lot of terrible free tutorials for photo and video software and I would really consider checking out Ming Thein's tutorial https://blog.mingthein.com/2016/08/03/new-workflow-iii-for-photoshop-and-lightroom/. While I haven't bought this tutorial, I read Ming's blog frequently and can say without a doubt that he's a great communicator and is a big advocate of a fast and efficient workflow. Most tutorials are unnecessarily complicated and overwhelming. Just from reading his other workflow posts on his blog you can be sure that you will be getting a fast and efficient way of editing from a dude that relies on that efficiency for his income.

Just personal preference but I'd avoid any plugins until you're pretty comfortable with basic editing. Once you become proficient working with LR or PS you might find that most plugins aren't worth the time and you can do all you need with LR.
 
The Adobe Classroom in a Book series has one for LR. I would buy a used hard copy from Amazon have it as a desk reference.

Also, I have found this site below to be helpful for tutorials. I use Photoshop but it looks like they have stuff related to LR as well. If you can't afford PS you may want to look into Gimp. I'm not sure if it's any good though. It's been almost 10 years since I tried it.

http://photography.tutsplus.com/courses
FYI the books usually mirror the help section of Adobe. So I agree with watching Adobe videos and using free resources like
https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom/topics.html
 
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