Adobe Photoshop Lightroom – a MUST HAVE for digital photographers

About 2 years ago, while attending an internal Adobe show and tell, I got my first sneak peak at a very little known product within Adobe called Lightroom. About 5 minutes into the presentation, I saw tremendous value and got into the early beta. Now, Lightroom is at version 1.2 and has a rapidly growing user base and gets rave reviews from digital photographers of every level .

For me, the timing was great. My aerial business was starting to take off and some weekends I would shoot over 600 digital images. I was still doing my little home-grown routine of Bridge/Photoshop/Save/etc. When doing 10 pictures, you don’t see too much difference, but multiplied by several hundred, the seconds start adding up into serious weekend time!

So, here are a few links to introduce Lightroom:

• http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshoplightroom/ – Main Product Page – download a 30 day eval, see demo movies, etc.
• http://www.photoshopuser.com/lightroom/index.html – NAPP’s Lightroom page – includes tips, tricks, resources, etc.
• http://blogs.adobe.com/lightroomjournal/ – Lightroom Journal / Blog
• http://www.seanmcfoto.com/lightroom/ – Sean McCormack’s Blog on Lightroom
• http://inside-lightroom.com/ – Inside Lightroom – presets, tips, tricks, resources
• http://lightroom-news.com/ – Lightroom News – tons of info
• http://www.adobeforums.com/cgi-bin/webx/.3bc2cf0a/ – Lightroom User’s Forum
• http://www.photoshopsupport.com/lightroom/index.html – PhotoshopSupport.com Lightroom Resource Center – training, tips, etc.

I’ll post some of my own Lightroom tips and tricks over the next few weeks, including a few pics where I think Lightroom made a HUGE difference. I’ve also started documenting my current workflow which allows me to handle several thousand images per sitting.