Adobe Lightroom

If you remember, back in July I talked about a new course I was going to take in Adobe Lightroom at the Ontario College of Art and Design. I finally finished the course this weekend! That means I can now apply for my Certificate of Digital Media Skills from the college! Yay!

The course itself was amazing and I totally recommend it to anyone in the city looking to improve their photo editing skills. It was $200 and lasted 4 weeks. The lessons were rather short (about an hour or two a week) and then plenty of time for practice in class. This was the first class in Lightroom that they offered and it was small- only 6 people signed up! But for me that meant lots of opportunity to ask questions and more one-on-one time.

As for the program, I LOVE Lightroom. It is just a fabulous option for someone who isn't looking to become a Photoshop star, but would like to be able to lightly edit their photographs (for perhaps a certain blog?). The software is about $150, so it is loads cheaper than buying Photoshop and because I was a student at the school, I was able to buy it from the student bookstore for $96 with tax. Woohoo!

Now, back to my love of Lightroom. The program is amazing because it is so much simpler than Photoshop and it allows you to MASS EDIT. I mean, hello? You've all seen the terrible light in my condo that requires mass light adjustments once I upload them to my computer. With Lightroom, you can select all your photos and click "auto white balance" and shazzam- all at them seem more normal. Then I can mass "warm" them to make the colour look more normal and less blue.

Another bonus that I enjoy is that you can look at two photos side by side and see which looks better. Like, if you took 10 photos of something while adjusting your camera, you can flip through those 10 by putting two side by side and seeing which one turned out best! Plus Lightroom remembers the settings on your camera so you can go back if you are shooting in that light again (what f-stop did I have? etc).

I also like being able to put metadata into my photos with my copyright so I don't have to worry about people stealing my photos. AND it makes putting watermarks on easy!

Anyway, I am not pro in showing anyone how to use the software, especially since I am still learning as I go. But if you are interested in Lightroom for yourself, please click on the link below for some great tutorials. You can also download a trial version of Adobe Lightroom on their website.

Tutorial Videos Click Here

Adobe Lightroom Trial Click Here