A few years there was an anti-drug television commercial that tried to illustrate your brain on drugs by showing a fried egg. Well the image above was my brain when I first started to learn Lightroom. Late last year I purchased LR2 at a great price from Amazon.com and then loaded it up just in time for my trip to Kenya. While I was there, I didn’t really use it because it was so new to me and frankly we didn’t have much time to process our images. When I returned home, I used the LR presets but mostly for the split-tone photographs. Eventually I sat down to learn Lightroom with Scott Kelby’s book as a handy reference and I came to a screeching halt.
Normally I would crack open the software and play to figure out how it works but the whole Import and Catalog thing threw me for a loop. So off I went on to the Web to try to learn more. With all the reading I did, I felt that it was important to start out understanding the fundamentals because of the nightmare of moving things around after you’ve downloaded thousands of digital files and worked on several hundreds. Hands down one of the best explanations of how LR catalogs work can be found on Laura Shoe’s blog. My friends and I were discussing learning our craft of photography and one of them mentioned that adults learn through association. I think this is why Laura’s explanation worked for me. Rather than summarize it, I recommend that you read the post here.
I was so impressed with Laura’s clear, succinct written explanations that I decided to attend one of her workshops last month. She holds a two-day workshop in Seattle that focuses on the Library Module and the Develop Module and she also does a five-day workshop through the Rocky Mountain School of Photography. Laura is an excellent teacher and I felt that the class was worth the trip to Seattle. I came away with a much clearer understanding of how to set up my Lightoom catalog, import my files and in general integrate LR into my workflow. Today I bring my images into the Lightroom catalog first and move my files over to my external hard drive at the same time. My LR catalog is stored on the same external drive as my actual image files. Then I work on the images in the Develop module and take them into Photoshop if I need to do more complicated work. It is certainly much faster to process images using Lightroom but I feel that I still do a better job of converting to black and white in Photoshop. Perhaps it is because I learnt how to do the conversion using David Nightingale’s Photoshop Tutorials and I’ve been happy with the results.
There is still lots to learn within Lightroom but I feel I have gotten over the initial hurdle and that will make learning Lightroom 3 a whole lot easier.
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I am going through the same thing right now as I just downloaded LR 3 beta 2.2. The compounding factor is that I also just switched to Apple as I bought a 27″ iMac two weeks ago. My biggest concern right now is where to put the images and build the catalog from that I work on, on the iMac HD, or on a new external HD. I will also have to back them up on another HD too. These are all things I need to consider before rebuilding my workflow which I am presuming will be much like this:
CF Card images to internal or external HD1
Import to LR
Library, Develop etc.
Save to HD1
Back up external HD2/RAID1 or Drobo on finishing.
Any suggestions on any of the above would be welcome. Thanks for posting this Sabrina right when I needed the advice.
Thank you very much, Sabrina, for the great review of my blog and workshop!
Ed, Lightroom doesn’t care if your images and catalog are on an internal drive or an external one. Sometimes the internal drive reads and writes faster, so there may be an advantage there. On the other hand, if both are on an external drive, you can move that drive from your desktop to your laptop, or any other computer, and be up and running with your entire library immediate. Here’s an article on that:
Working on two computers with one hard drive:
http://digitaldailydose.wordpress.com/2009/04/03/lightroom-working-on-two-or-more-computers/
I have a Photo Library folder, with my Lightroom Catalog folder and Images folder within this. Within Images I have year folders, and individual shoot folders within these. The Photo Library folder can also be your Pictures folder on your internal HD … this is actually where the catalog is stored by default. The advantage of having the catalog and images in one folder, is that if you backup that folder, you are completely covered. Do backup to your Drobo, but also create at least one offsite back up … an external drive you store offsite, or an online service.
I am not sure what you meant when you said above that after your work you save to HD1. If you mean you export copies for back up purposes, there is no need to do this … just back up the original images+catalog and you are covered.
Backup strategy:
http://digitaldailydose.wordpress.com/2010/04/15/i-would-cry-if-i-lost-the-work-i-did-today/
Laura, thanks for a really productive and enlightening discussion on the Facebook group.
Ed
Wow, fabulous resource. Thanks for pointing us there Sabrina.
The web’s been my best friend when it comes to learning software related things, and it was the same with Lightroom. I use Lightroom 2 for all of my processing now. Photoshop gets fired up for watermarking and that’s about it these days.
(I can’t believe I’ve never come across Laura Shoe though!)
I know Charlene! When I discovered Laura’s website, I felt like I had won the Lightroom Lottery–if there is such a thing and if there isn’t, I just created one!
You can imagine what it was like when I got spend two days learning from her in person. I’m thinking of doing the one day Printing class when I get a chance.
Sounds like you won’t be using PS at all, Charlene, once Lightroom 3 comes out. Watermarking improves by leaps and bounds.
Ahhh… I wish I’d had your common sense when I started out, Sabrina. I know just enough about LR to cause trouble, and have only made tiny stabs at organization. And the thought of going back to the beginning… ugh. I know I have to face it eventually. Thanks for point the way to a great resource.
ps. that nest is amazing!
LOL Erin, I wish it were common sense. Just between you and me, it was pure, unadulterated FEAR.
Thanks for the comment about the nest. I figure if birds can make sense of something like that, I should be able to tackle Lightroom.
Your choice of image and those first 2 sentences really made me chuckle. That’s also exactly how I felt when trying to unravel Lightroom.
I think I’ve got it mostly sussed these days, but as with any software, there’s always something new to learn or find out.
Welcome Cathy! Glad I could give you a chuckle. We’ll have to stay in touch when LR3 comes out. Maybe I’ll need you to help me figure out the changes