Photoshop Lightroom 2 For Dummies

Part I

Setting Yourself Up for Success

In this part . . .

Benjamin Franklin famously said, An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Clearly, he didn’t have Lightroom in mind, but after helping many people out of the same pitfalls over and over again, I implore you to take those words to heart before you jump into Lightroom. It isn’t the things we don’t know that often get us into trouble, but rather the things we think we know but get wrong. In Part I, I try to condense the wisdom of those who have gone before you, and although experience can be an excellent teacher, there’s no harm in starting out on the right foot.

Chapter 1 introduces you to Lightroom and enables you to find your way around while you move forward. From there, I try to demystify what happens under the Lightroom hood and clear up some wrong assumptions that can lead to confusion when working with the Lightroom catalog (database) model. I wrap up Part I with a review of the essential digital imaging concepts that every Lightroom user should be familiar with before getting in too deep.

1

Introducing Lightroom

bullet Understanding what Lightroom does

bullet Getting to know the Lightroom modules

bullet Becoming familiar with the interface

bullet Preparing for installation

bullet Customizing your preferences

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom — from this point, Lightroom, because that’s what everybody really calls it — is a workflow tool for digital photographers. Digital photography has come a long way in recent years. The increasing number of people who are moving from shooting in JPG format — where the camera processes the data captured by the sensor and produces a JPG file — to shooting raw — where you take over processing the raw capture data to create the type of file you need — has created a huge need for tools to help manage the processing of large numbers of raw files. Lightroom is not just a raw processing tool though! You can tweak and adjust JPG, TIF, and PSD files, too. And that’s just the thing. We have so many files and file types that need to be managed, processed, and delivered! Although many raw-processing applications are on the market, few are as ambitious, multifaceted, and well designed as Lightroom. Add to the mix the idea of an integrated workflow application and you have real state-of-the-art software.

Okay, I’ve dropped the term workflow twice now. It’s probably time to get my definition out in the open because you’re going to hear me repeat it quite often throughout this book. The goal of a workflow is to increase efficiency when it comes to carrying out the necessary (but often repeatable and at times unexciting) steps required to complete a task. One way to streamline your process is to increase efficiency in the transitions that occur as you move from task to task. Another way is to develop a repeatable methodology for how you do things, so that you always start with task A, then move to task B, and so on. By developing a well-thought out procedure, you don’t lose time wondering what to do next or forgetting where you’ve been. Lightroom comes to our aid on both counts. By providing a unified interface for the full spectrum of digital photography tasks, you aren’t juggling three or four different applications at the same time. You can literally plug your camera into one end of Lightroom and produce prints, Web galleries, and more from the other. At the same time, each area — called a module — inside of Lightroom is structured to create a logical start to finish flow, which makes it really easy to know where you are and where you go next, and that’s what a workflow is all about.

Adding Lightroom to Your Photo Toolkit

A photographer at any experience level is going to be carting around a serious amount of gear. Even the accessories have accessories! Although some photographers might derive some pleasure from getting new gear (okay, maybe a lot of pleasure), this stuff isn’t cheap! So, each new addition to the family should pass muster and be worthy of being included. Here are some things I try to consider before adding new stuff:

bullet Is it well supported?

bullet Does it play nicely with others?

bullet What can it do?

bullet What can’t it do?

Of course, money is a big factor in any purchasing process, but I assume that if you’re at this stage in the decision-making process you’ve already accounted for your budget. I’m sure you have other considerations as well, but let me address how Lightroom stacks up in my experience.

Is it well supported?

Lightroom first appeared on the scene as a beta release back in January 2006, meaning it was incomplete but functional (although not without bugs) software that was free to use and test drive. Over the course of this beta phase (which lasted a year), Adobe was very keen for feedback and the Lightroom development team was actively engaged with the users of the product in a dedicated online discussion forum. Several improved beta versions were released before the final version 1.0 was made available in February 2007. Not only did a better product emerge from this process, but also a community of highly proficient Lightroom users evolved and is still growing strong. An incredible amount of tips, tricks, tutorials, and troubleshooting help has become available online from both Adobe and various users of the product because of this collaborative process.

You can find out more about how to get involved with the Lightroom community and where to find the best-available Lightroom resources in Chapter 14. Trust me; Lightroom is an incredibly well-supported product!

Does it play nicely with others?

Tools don’t operate in a vacuum. At the very least, any new tools you adopt need to coexist with and complement your existing toolset. At the end of the day, new tools should help you get more from your old tools by helping you become more efficient, producing better results all around.

Image-editing applications, such as Photoshop or Photoshop Elements, have long been required for working with digital images because you have to push pixels around even when you’re just shooting film and scanning. You might have had to correct for red-eye, crop to a new aspect ratio, enhance colors, remove spots, convert to grayscale, or do any number of other routine tasks. Whenever such a task came up, you always turned to your image editor of choice to get the job done — and you’ll want to continue being able to do so in the future.

To sift through all those photos on your hard drive, you’ve undoubtedly used some type of file browser like Windows Explorer, Finder, or Adobe Bridge. You might have also used that file browser for routine maintenance tasks like renaming, moving, and deleting files. Perhaps you also used one of these applications for copying files from your memory card to your hard drive.

You’ve worked out routines, you know what each tool accomplishes and you know where to find everything. Along comes Lightroom and people rightfully ask, How will this fit into my routine? More to the point, folks want to know whether they have to give up something they like in adopting Lightroom and be stuck with doing some tasks in less-productive ways. In hopes of alleviating some of those worries, here’s a closer look at how Lightroom stacks up against the image editors and file browsers that you know and use every day.

How Lightroom differs from Photoshop and Adobe Bridge

You can get by without Lightroom — I mean, people managed without Lightroom until recently, right? You can switch between Adobe Bridge (file browser) and Photoshop (image editor), can throw in an FTP (File Transfer Protocol) application when you need to upload Web galleries, or even use a third-party printing application when you want more control over print layouts than what Photoshop provides. You can always cobble together something, but wouldn’t it be much more efficient if you could just use a single interface to import your photos from your memory card, add vital metadata, cull the clunkers, rate and group the keepers, throw together a slideshow, upload a Web gallery, and print out a contact sheet? What if you could do all that — and even save steps and settings as reusable shortcuts — from one application?

Wouldn’t that change everything about how you work with your digital photos? Yes, of course! This is where Lightroom comes in. As a workflow tool, Lightroom takes over the management of your photos at the point you’re copying them from your memory card and then brings them all the way to output and delivery.

Since I began using Lightroom, I’ve all but abandoned Adobe Bridge for viewing and interacting with my photos. As a file browser, Bridge is a superior tool to Lightroom in many ways except one; Bridge can only show you what you point it at, as Bridge doesn’t retain any information about what it has seen in the past. Comparatively, Lightroom is database driven, which means that after you introduce it to your photos (via an import process) it remembers everything about them. Being able to leverage the power of a database adds tremendous muscle to the management and processing of your photos.

With regard to editing photos, many people rightly wonder if Lightroom is an adequate replacement for Photoshop. Although I use Photoshop less now that I’m using Lightroom, Photoshop (or another image editor) is still a vital part of my toolkit — as I make clear in a sec. As a raw processor, though, Lightroom is able to leverage its database to work faster and smarter than the combination of Adobe Camera Raw and Photoshop. Because Lightroom and Camera Raw share essentially the same processing engine, you get all the benefits of Camera Raw built into Lightroom.

What kind of benefits, you ask? Okay, time for brass tacks: As an image processor, Lightroom can accomplish many tasks normally done by image editors or other raw photo processors, including the following:

bullet Setting white balance

bullet Making tonal adjustments

bullet Reducing noise

bullet Enhancing colors

bullet Cropping

bullet Applying sharpening

Not bad, right? Yet, although Lightroom covers a lot of ground, it can’t do everything you might want to do with your photos. At times, you might need a pixel-editing application in your digital photo toolbox. If you need to perform any of the following tasks, for example, Lightroom would not be your tool of choice:

bullet Working with selections

bullet Stitching together panoramas

bullet Creating high dynamic range photos

bullet Working with filters

bullet Combining multiple photos into one

Adobe Photoshop is the prime tool to complement Lightroom. It gives you the most power and offers the greatest functionality (and tightest integration with Photoshop CS3). However, if you don’t need that much power (or don’t want to spend that much money), consider Photoshop Elements the next best option. Although not as full featured as its big brother, Elements can push pixels with the best of them. (Truth be told, when you consider all the features in Lightroom against your own needs, you may find that you won’t need anything else for most of your work.)

Checking out the Lightroom Modules

Lightroom was built using a modular architecture, which means that Lightroom comprises a set of unique applications that share a common interface and that access a common database (or catalog, as Lightroom calls it). Each of the applications is referred to as a module, and Lightroom has five.

None of these modules can function outside of Lightroom. Although tightly integrated, they each have a set of unique menus, panels, and tools that tailor to the specific function each module is designed to handle.

I drill down into the specific panels, tools, and menus in the chapters ahead, but for now, I’m going to do the overview thing by taking a stab at what makes each module unique and then showing you how to get the most out of the common interface they all share.

What makes each module unique

Lightroom has five modules — but the beauty of modular construction is that the potential exists for more (perhaps many more) to be added. Adobe has opened only limited aspects of Lightroom’s guts to third-party developers (just export functionality so far), and the outcome has been very positive.

The potential for extending Lightroom’s functionality in the future is something to look forward to, but there’s already plenty of power under the hood. Here’s a list of the five modules you find in Lightroom:

bullet The Library module: Your organizational hub, the Library module (see Figure 1-1) is where many of your Lightroom sessions will start and end. Common Library module tasks include

• Keywording and metadata entry

• File moving, deletion, and renaming

• Finding, sorting, and grouping

bullet The Develop module: The bulk of your image processing takes place in the Develop module. Armed with a powerful array of image-adjustment tools, as shown in Figure 1-2, common Develop module tasks include

• Setting white balance and tonal adjustments

• Adjusting contrast and color

• Reducing noise and capture sharpening

• Cropping and adjusting crooked horizons

• Removing red-eye and sensor spots

bullet The Slideshow module: The aptly named Slideshow module, shown in Figure 1-3, is for creating presentations of your photos. The tools in this module allow you to

• Adjust slideshow layout

• Adjust slide transitions

• Set the show to music

bullet The Print module: If you print photos, you’ll soon find the Print module, as shown in Figure 1-4, to be a valuable addition to your printing workflow. Here you find controls for

• Creating layouts and print packages

• Using output-specific color profiles to ensure the best-looking prints (Chapters 3 and 13 cover profiles in greater depth)

• Printing to a local printer or to a JPG file

bullet The Web module: Getting your photos online in some capacity is a requirement these days. The Web module, as shown in Figure 1-5, allows you to manage your Web presence by letting you

• Choose from various photo gallery styles

• Configure the look and feel of your Web gallery

• Upload directly to your Web server

What the modules have in common

Having all modules share parts of a common interface might make it harder (at first glance) to tell which module is which, but I wouldn’t worry too much about that. Clarity will reign supreme when you have Lightroom up and running. Think of it this way: A common interface is in fact one of Lightroom’s greatest strengths because keeping the same interface means you don’t have to spend time learning five different interfaces! The interface behaves the same and shares the same basic structure no matter where you are.

Check out Figure 1-6 to see what I mean. The Library module shown there sports the following standard interface components — components that each module shares:

bullet The Title bar: Provides an at-a-glance view of the name of the catalog and the module you’re in.

bullet The Menu bar: The go-to place for all the commands needed for each module’s tasks.

bullet The Module Picker: An easy method to pick the module you want to work with. This area of the interface is also home to the Identity Plate on the left, which you can customize to insert your own graphic, as well as the progress meter that appears when Lightroom performs a task. (For more on the Identity Plate, check out Chapter 5.)

bullet The Left Panel group: Although the content varies with each module, the panels to the left of the interface are generally functions that involve accessing, grouping, and previewing photos and templates.

bullet The Right Panel group: The panels to the right of the interface also vary with each module, but this is where you find controls for adjusting and tweaking.

bullet The Toolbar: Each module has its own set of tools, but the Toolbar is a staple of every module.

bullet The Filmstrip: At the bottom of every module, you always find the Filmstrip, which displays thumbnails of the image grouping you are working with. It also is home to a row of tools — right there along the top — that put a lot of things at your fingertips no matter what module you are in:

• Main and Second Window controls. Click and hold either of these window icons to access a number of shortcuts for controlling each window (more details on the second window function later in the chapter).

• Jump to Grid view icon. No matter where you are in Lightroom, one click takes you to Grid view in the Library module.

• Go Back and Forward buttons. Allow you to navigate between previously selected image groupings (folders, collections, searches) you have been viewing.

• Filmstrip Source Indicator. Provides an at-a-glance view of the current image grouping and active photo. Click the drop-down arrow at the end for quick access to the special collections found in the Catalog panel as well as a list of recently visited folders and collections.

• Filters. When clicked, the Filter label expands to reveal ways to filter the current image grouping by flag, rating, or color label. The Custom Filter drop-down menu provides quick access to all of the Filter Bar options. The last button on the right toggles filtering on and off.

Controlling the interface

Lightroom’s interface has a number of options for reducing and simplifying the workspace. Here’s an example: My publishers forced me to capture the images of Lightroom in this book at a screen resolution of 1024 x 768 (don’t ask me why), so things are looking a little cramped. No way would I work at this resolution, though — I’d naturally bump it up to the highest resolution my monitor supports so I could have as much space to work with as possible. However, sometimes there’s just not enough room for everything the interface has to offer — usually those times when you really just want to give as much screen real estate to your photos as possible. Imagine trying to work on a project in your shop and being forced to lay all your tools in neat rows on the workbench — I guess it’s handy, but you surely won’t have as much space as you’d like for the project you’re working on. Lightroom has some pretty clever ways of tweaking how your tools are displayed so you can maximize the size of your workspace.

The simplest way to maximize space is to take advantage of working in Full Screen mode. Just like any application you currently use, you’re just a keystroke away from maximizing Lightroom to fill the available screen. The neat thing about Lightroom, though, is that it takes this maximizing business a step further by providing two separate Full Screen modes in addition to the Standard Screen mode:

bullet Full Screen with Menu: With this option, Lightroom expands to fill the screen and hide its title bar to gain more space. The Menu bar jumps to the top of the screen. Note that the standard Minimize, Maximize, and Close buttons vanish from the top of the window in this mode.

bullet Full Screen: With this option, Lightroom expands to take over the screen completely. The Menu bar disappears and the taskbar in Windows (the Dock on a Mac) isn’t accessible.

bullet Standard Screen: All options are visible and the Lightroom interface can be resized and moved by grabbing the edge of the window just like any other application.

To switch between the three screen modes just press the F key to jump from one view to another. Keep in mind, though, that if it appears as if you lost the Minimize, Maximize, and Close buttons at the top of the window (the horror!), what’s really happened is that you’ve simply entered one of the Full Screen modes. (I can’t tell you how many panicked e-mails I’ve received from folks who believe they’ve somehow lopped off said buttons by mistake, asking whether I could please help them get back their buttons.)

If you still want more space, you can take advantage of the collapsible nature of the Module Picker, Panel groups, and Filmstrip. Refer back to Figure 1-6 for a sec. Do you see the small arrow in the center of the outer edge of each side of the interface? Clicking an arrow once causes that panel to hide from view. Now, move your cursor away and then back over any part of that edge and the hidden panel returns, giving you access to the contents of the panel until you move the cursor away again! This is called Auto Hide & Show. Right-click (Control+click on a Mac) an arrow and you can see the other possible choices:

bullet Auto Hide: When enabled, that panel automatically hides when you move your cursor away from it, but it won’t show again until you click the arrow. I personally like this option because the Auto Show kicking in every time I get to close to the edge tends to drive me nuts.

bullet Manual: No Auto Hiding or Showing. Click an arrow to hide and it stays that way until you click again.

bullet Sync with opposite panel: When checked, the settings you apply to one panel will be equally applied to the panel on the opposite side.

I find a more convenient method for showing and hiding these screen elements is the keyboard shortcuts:

bullet F5: Show/hide the Module Picker.

bullet F6: Show/hide the Filmstrip.

bullet F7: Show/hide the Left Panel group.

bullet F8: Show/hide the Right Panel group.

bullet Tab: Show/hide both the Left and Right panel groups.

bullet Shift+Tab: Show/hide the Left, Right, Top and Bottom.

When it comes to clearing the clutter and focusing on your photos, Lightroom has one further cool trick up its sleeve. It’s called Lights Out mode and has three states:

bullet Lights On: The normal operating condition, where everything is visible.

bullet Lights Dim: In this mode, your selected photos remain unchanged but the surrounding interface dims. Although dimmed, the interface is accessible and functional (if you know where things are).

bullet Lights Out: Taking the dim view to the extreme, the entire interface is blacked out and only your photos are visible. The ultimate way to reduce clutter!

You can jump through each Lights Out mode by pressing the L key. You set the amount of dimming and the color the screen dims to in the preferences (I cover all the preference settings a little later in the chapter).

Using the secondary display view

The ultimate way to gain more screen real estate is to add another screen! Dual monitor support is a new addition in Lightroom 2.0 and a most welcome one at that. Lightroom’s approach to dual monitor support is the addition of a second Lightroom window that you can move to your second monitor. The result is that you have the same primary Lightroom window on one monitor (this is where you access all the modules and do your work) and then your secondary display window provides additional ways to view the photos you are working on. (While it’s possible to enable the secondary window on a single monitor system, it is limited in its usefulness as it competes for the same screen real estate as the primary window.)

The secondary display window functions in the same manner with all Lightroom modules. Here are the options available in the secondary window:

bullet Grid: By using the Grid option, you essentially extend the Filmstrip to the second window so that it provides greater access to all the thumbnails of the current group of photos. The secondary window Grid view functions the same as Grid view in the Library module (see Chapter 5 for more information on Grid view).

bullet Loupe: Allows for viewing a single image in its entirety or zoomed in close within the second window. Loupe has three options:

• Normal: Always displays the active photo selected in the primary window.

• Live: Continually displays the photo under the cursor as you move over photos in the main window.

• Locked: Allows you to choose one photo to display continuously in the second window while you view a different photo in the primary window.

bullet Compare: Allows you to compare two or more photos side by side. The secondary window Compare view functions the same way as Compare view in the Library module. (See Chapter 6 for more information on Compare view.)

bullet Survey: Allows you to view multiple photos side by side within the secondary window. The secondary window Survey view functions the same way as Survey view in the Library module. (See Chapter 6 for more information on Survey view.)

bullet Slideshow: Only available when you have the secondary window set to full screen (not possible on a single monitor system). This option allows you to run the slideshow on the secondary display.

There is one other cool option related to the secondary window called Show Second Monitor Preview. (It only works when the secondary window is in full screen mode.) When enabled, it provides a small preview window showing what’s being displayed in the secondary window. Huh? It’s intended for situations where you might have your secondary monitor facing away from you and toward an audience. This way you can be showing photos to an audience on the secondary display while you work on the primary display, and the preview window lets you have a peek at what your audience is seeing.

You can enable and disable the second window by clicking its icon on the Filmstrip, choosing Window⇒Second Window⇒Enable from the main menu, or by pressing F11 (Ô+F11 on a Mac).

Getting Up and Running

I’m sure you’re chomping at the bit for the opportunity to roll up your sleeves and start putting Lightroom through its paces. I don’t blame you! You’re gonna love it. However, if you take the time to lay the groundwork so that you get all your ducks in a row, you’re sure to start on the right foot (could I cram in any more metaphors?).

Preparing for installation

Don’t think of an application installation as being a tiresome chore. Rather, think of it is a perfect excuse to do a little hard disk housekeeping. What better time to do tasks like the following:

bullet Freeing up disk space by deleting unused files, clearing caches, moving files to another disk, and emptying the Trash

bullet Running an error-checking application

bullet Running a defragmentation application (Windows only)

The best reason to clean house before installing is that it might just prevent problems that you’d likely blame on the new application you just installed. So save yourself some aggravation and run those programs now while you’re busy reading this book!

I assume you’ve confirmed that your system meets the posted minimum requirements before you purchased Lightroom (or downloaded the trial), but generally, it’s always in your best interest to exceed the minimum whenever possible for best performance. Here’s what matters most:

bullet RAM: Maximizing the amount of installed RAM is probably going to give you the most bang for your buck. It’s more than likely that you’ll be running other applications alongside Lightroom, so the more RAM you have the better for everyone.

bullet Processor: Processing large volumes of huge files takes horsepower. Lightroom is able to take advantage of multi-core processors, so if an upgrade is in your future, put that under consideration.

bullet Disk space: When working with digital images, you just can’t have enough disk space. If you’re shooting raw on a 10-, 12-, 17+-megapixel camera, you don’t want to worry about running out of storage space. Beyond storage, you need ample free space on your startup drive so that all your applications and your operating system have enough elbow room to function. I like using 500 GB external drives because they are relatively inexpensive, and easy to add and remove.

bullet Monitor: You might think you’re looking at your photos, but you are in fact looking at your monitor. (I actually don’t want to think about how many hours in a day I spend basking in its glow.) For the benefit of your eyes and the quality of your editing, consider a monitor upgrade in your future. The truth is, the monitors that typically come bundled with most computers are better suited to word processing, Web browsing, and e-mail. Your choices will be limited to LCD-type monitors (the thin flat kind) as they just don’t make the CRT-type monitors (the big TV-like kind) anymore. This is probably a good time to call in a friend to help you shop if you’re not sure where to start, but here are a few things to keep in mind:

• Price: Quality in a monitor doesn’t come cheap. At the high end, you could look at models from Eizo and LaCie, although many people I know are quite happy on the higher end with Dell and Apple. The technology is improving and prices are falling.

• Size: Bigger is usually better. Your monitor is your desk space. The bigger your desk, the easier it is to work. 19 - 30 are pretty typical for photo work.

• Resolution: A monitor’s resolution is expressed by how many pixels across by how many pixels down it can display (such as 1024 x 768). The larger the number, the more pixels will be displayed, which means the more room you have to work, but it also means things will appear smaller. Huh? Here’s why. The actual size of the monitor (the inches across) can’t change, right? So the only thing that can change is the size of the pixels. The more