Lightroom 3: Streamlining Your Digital Photography Process

By Nat Coalson

"I’ve worked my entire adult life in digital imaging, frommanaging high-volume production departments to running my ownphotography and printing businesses. And for many years, I’vebeen teaching photographers how to be self-sufficient when it comesto working with their digital images.

Having used all major image editing software released over the pasttwenty years, I now choose to use Lightroom because it allows me towork quickly, helps me deal with large numbers of images and letsme get back to enjoying the creative aspects of photography.

From my experience, I know how hard it can be to learn new ways ofdoing things–especially computer stuff. Unfortunately for alot of photographers, struggling with digital processing can takethe fun out of photography. Trying to figure out the intricacies offile formats, resolution, color management, etc., and even simplywhere to put all the files can be daunting tasks. Worse yet,sometimes it’s hard just to know the right steps to get thebest quality from a single photo!

It’s my mission to ease your pain; to show you that youreally can be in control of your entire imaging process, and helpyou develop a personalized workflow that fits your style and needs.My students frequently tell me how liberating this is: tocomfortably handle all the files coming off the camera and residingon hard disks, to work methodically through a known sequence ofsteps and to produce finished pictures that you’re proud toshow other people. This is at the heart of the photographer’sexperience, and I want you to know this sense of confidence andcapability.

I’ve taught large groups and individual photographers alike.Over the years I’ve learned where people get stuck. Iunderstand the pitfalls new users face when first starting to useLightroom as well as the concerns of more experienced users lookingfor ways to tweak their workflow for better performance. I want tohelp you overcome these challenges.

My goal for this book is to teach you to effectively use Lightroom3 as quickly and easily as possible. My writing has been heavilyinfluenced by my experiences working with clients and students, andI’ve approached the content of this book as I would tutorsomeone in a one-on-one training session. The order in whichconcepts are presented and the emphasis I give to certain aspectsof the workflow are unique among books of its kind.

We’ll start by reviewing some important, basic principles,such as working with Lightroom catalogs, the Lightroom workflow,color management, and an introduction to Lightroom 3’supdated tools and screen interface. From there, we jump right in toimporting images into Lightroom. This is followed by a step-by-stepediting tutorial that will make your work much easier. Then we moveon to in-depth explanations of how to perfect each photo for tone,color, contrast, sharpness and much more. After a detailed look atexporting images out of Lightroom, the next three chapters dealwith presenting your work to others with prints, Web sites andslideshows. Finally, we’ll wrap up with an in-depth look atadvanced techniques for integrating Lightroom with othersoftware.

The material presented in this book is appropriate for digitalphotographers working in all disciplines, at all skill levels. Theinformation and tutorials are applicable to every kind ofphotography: from weddings and portraits to fine art landscapework, everyone can learn to streamline their digital photographyprocess using Lightroom 3."

Nat Coalson
Conifer, CO
2010

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wiley
• Release date: Jun 24, 2010
• ISBN: 9780470907979

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