Articles
While Photoshop frequently offers a bewildering choice of ways to achieve the same end result – almost 20 black and white techniques for example – Lightroom is dedicated to a more narrowly-defined range of tasks. So there is often only one right way to do something.
Lightroom does occasionally offer choices though – 2 or 3 ways to do B&W – and so there is a risk that we’ll readily slip into the kind of mindset you see with Photoshop where poor practice is often hidden behind YMMV or excused with “whatever works for you”, “different strokes for different folks” and so on. With Lightroom all ways are not equal, and some methods are not good general advice.
So these articles are opinion pieces, and I do phrase them a little controversially to help crystallize your thoughts about Lightroom and decide for yourself the right way to work.
Moving from Aperture to Lightroom
Moving your workflow from Aperture to Lightroom is not difficult, and it doesn't mean losing all the keywords and other metadata you've entered in Aperture. It just requires a little bit of thought and care. Where do you begin?
10 tips for new users
It was interesting to read Scott Kelby’s 10 Things I Would Tell New Lightroom Users. In fact, I was a little surprised to see how many of his points would also be on my list. So items 1, 2, 3, . . .
Keywording – a 3 phase approach
Without being too fancy about it, my goal is “the maximum number of relevant keywords in the time I think it’s worth spending” – which is intentionally a pretty elastic phrase – and I’ll do it in 3 passes.
More than one catalogue?
Until you really know what you're doing, you should only use one Lightroom catalogue. But even then, why fragment control of your workflow?
Using more than one catalogue
There are ways to use more than one catalogue, but each has disadvantages. First be sure you know what you're doing.
The 20 minute wow
What Lightroom features do you show a group of photographers - including existing Lightroom users - when you're allowed just 20 minutes?
Workflow smart collections
This is a technique for managing your workflow with a system of smart collections (sample catalogue included)
Panel end markers
Lightroom’s panel end decorations - so frequently derided as a waste of programming time - can be made to serve more than their trivial decorative purpose
Essential keyboard shortcuts
One trick to working at speed with Lightroom is to know a few essential keyboard shortcuts. But a command that’s essential to one user is something that another person might never require!
Luckily Lightroom’s menus show the keyboard shortcuts so you . . .