:: Photography Tips + Tricks: editing in Adobe Lightroom, part 1 ::

First, I'd like to thank EvolvedMommy.com for sharing my iPhonography tips and tricks in this article! As much as I love the portability of my iPhone and the one-of-a-kind look of iPhonography images, I still believe the SLR gives me a lot more flexibility. When edited with Adobe Lightroom, your images be so much more.

SOOC (straight out of camera): Canon 5D Mark ii | Canon 24-70mm L | 67mm/f2.8/ISO 800

Edited using Adobe Lightroom only, no Photoshop. I thought this moody, grainy image would be better in BW, so I custom converted it into a grayscale image, crop/straighten for better framing, increased clarity/contrast. I liked the exposure SOOC, so I did not modify it in LR.

For professionals and amateurs alike, Adobe's Lightroom has quickly become the program of choice for editing, organizing and printing digital images.

Why Lightroom, as opposed to Photoshop? LR has a lot of the capabilities of PS, with these added features (but not limited to):

1) smaller file sizes - since LR saves your edits as previews, there's no large, unwieldy .PSD files to wrangle.

2) real-time editing - the results of your edits are shown in real time, you don't need to wait for your computer to process/render your edits.

3) faster editing - the LR tools are designed in such a way that glaring mistakes, such as over/under exposure or color/lens distortion can be easily corrected within seconds.

4) more intuitive - the interface is quite different from PS, it is somehow more user-friendly and easier to navigate (in my opinion).

5) batch processing - once you've edited one image, you can process the rest of your images in the same series by syncing them to the edited image.

6) presets - similar to actions in PS, LR presets allow you to program and save a customized sequence of processes to be used in future edits.

7) batch export - once you've finished editing, you could export the images all at once into a myriad of file types using customizable settings (medium, size, resolution, water-mark etc.)

8) less expensive - instead of paying hundreds of dollars for a copy of the PS program, you can purchase a fully licensed copy of LR for less than $140.00.

Generally, I import, edit and export in LR. However, I still use PS for more intricate touch-ups and to get the finished "look" that I want. Overall, for each image, I spend about 2 minutes in LR, export it as a JPEG, and spend another 2 minutes in PS to put on the finishing touches.

Come back next week to see how to import your images into the Lightroom catalog.