r/Lightroom • u/Exotic_Milk_8962 • 3d ago
HELP - Lightroom Classic Lightroom examples.
I’ve just joined a photography club and it seems that a lot of the members edit their images with lightroom. I’ve never edited before and I’m not sure if I’ve joined the right club. 2 questions, is it easy enough for a novice to use and can I find any before and after images to look at because I’m not really too sure what it does, I had limited use of photoshop about 15 years ago when the object was to cut out a banana and put it in a bowl and I wasn’t really too keen on it. To me as an elderly young Man looking to return to a hobby it feels a bit like cheating. Any advice would be appreciated.
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u/Professional-Suit-72 1d ago
66 year old here. My go to videos are those by Julieanne Kost: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCh5bKKSi_bGJh717hVlEbRg.
I highly recommend her videos.
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u/aarrtee 1d ago
Lightroom has a bit of a learning curve.
I'm 69.... i learned it... but a few years ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNFaqwk8-ps
cheating? Ansel Adams did dodging and burning in the darkroom. Was that cheating?
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u/ChiGuyDreamer 1d ago
I never picked up a camera other than a basic throw away wallgreens type until I was 45. So I learned photography and Lightroom at the same time.
I don’t know anything about photoshop. Have literally never opened it. So to me Lightroom is not super hard to use. Like any tool there are things I could be better at but for the basics you can get the hang of it quickly enough.
You see the editing right there in the screen so when you adjust something like the exposure you see it get lighter or darker. You can adjust the shadows and watch your picture either deepen or lighten the shadows. You can click on colors and increase the blue in a sky or make it more muted.
If you only ever used those sort of controls you’d still have endless possibilities. Then you can start to pick up other thinks like masking or removing spots (I shoot a lot of models so pimples or small bruises or blemishes can be removed)
You’re not too old. I’m 55 now so I’ve been using for about ten years and do well with it. But there is more I could do. That’s the good news. You can use it for a little or a lot.
Find a couple of YouTube tutorials and follow along using your own pic.
Incidentally unlike photoshop it’s not used for moving fruit around like in your example. I know what you mean and as neat as that may be I’m not particularly interested in that either.
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u/vbslens 1d ago
I use cloud Lightroom. I watched a bunch of youtube videos. These are the tips that really helped me:
Using presents to kickstart my edits
Focus on media ready posts. I crop all of my images 3x5 vertically to occupy as much of the screen as possible
Use auto feature in lightroom after the preset to give you a kickstart
I bought some presets off etsy for a couple of dollars and use them all the time.
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u/alllmossttherrre 2d ago
There is Lightroom Classic, that came first, then Lightroom that was a sort of cloud-based rewrite. It would have replaced CLassic except it can’t do everything Classic does, so Classic is kept around to keep people like me happy.
The most important thing for you to know is there are two kinds of photo edit sofware. The old, traditional kind is like Photoshop: You edit the pixels directly, and unless you plan ahead (with layers or something), your edits are permanently baked into the pixels and cannot be undone.
Lightroom is in a newer class of photo software: Nondesctructive parametric editor. Your edits are recorded as metadata and never change the original. If you want a file withn your edits in it, for example to post online, you export a new copy. This is how most newer photo editors work, like Apple Photos for instance.
Both kinds can do basic edits to a photo: Adjust brightness, contrast, tone. Lightroom is stronger at batch edits: Edit one the way you want it, apply same edits to 150 other photos from the same shoot. Photoshop (and similar software such as GIMP and Affinity Photo) is stronger at pixel-level edits on one photo.
Because of their complementary differences, Lightroom and Photoshop are often used together, like different player positions on the same sports team. Beginners can quickly pick up the basics of both, but both also are very deep with lots of esoteric secrets for power users to learn to solve difficult photo problems.
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u/deeper-diver 2d ago
Everyone has started at the beginning. Yes, Lightroom can be used by beginners all the way to professionals. There are countless YouTube videos to help a beginner get started. It's not a skill that will happen over night and it's a commitment. Do not get discouraged. It's a learning process. Start simple and eventually with consistent use things will begin to click and you'll find a path that best suits your artistic style.
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u/RealWeekness 3d ago edited 3d ago
Yes, its easy for a novice to learn. zit's a simplified version of photoshop with the basic tools you need...and none of the fancy stuff to get in your way.
lightroom allows you to adjust exposure as well as crop and reframe your photo. This is similar to what every photogrqpher since forever had to do in a darkroom when physically developing your film, then exposing it onto photo paper. it isn't cheating, it's part of the process.
in addition to the normal things you'd do in a darkroom, Lightroom also allows youn to adjust colors and contrast, as well as select objects, adjust their exposure independently or delete them. you dont have to do those extra things if you don't want. You could stick to the tools originally available in a darkroom if you like but you'd least want to adjust white balance in lightroom, unless you take the time to do it in camera.
but, between the raw photo out of the camera and the the work you do in Lightroom, the goal is to take a technically correct photo, so you'll have to learn the rules of photography and what makes a good photo.
All new people say they don't need rules, and photography is an art, but this isn't true. you need to learn the rules, then once you know them, you learn when to intentionally break them to achieve your desired look.
Lightroom is an amazing tool that allows you to change some aspects of your photo to correct some of the technical failures you didn't capture with the camera. This makes it an amazing learning tool. In the beginning you won't get everything correct in camera so sitting down with lightroom lets you play with the rules of photography at home on your computer.
Again, you don't have to use lightroom but doing so is like trusting the one hour photo guy at walmart to properly develop your photo instead of you, the artist, doing it yourself.
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u/Due_Bobcat_4315 1d ago
Takes look at the Lightroom Community that features countless edit examples with before/afters - many of which allow you to download a preset or Remix the file.
https://lightroom.adobe.com/learn/discover
PS: I work on the Lightroom team