New to lightroom, any quick tips?

I just acquired lightroom and want to really try and make my photos more stunning that they are straight off of the camera.

Do you have any quick tips/tutorials on how to do this through lightroom. I'd prefer to only use lightroom, no photoshop.

I browsed youtube for tutorials but nothing really came up that was educating to what I was looking for.

Any steps that you take or things you do would greatly help! Thanks in advance!

da9k1ne wrote in post #13157485
Do you have any quick tips

Yes - don't trust the histogram

My first advice right up front is get a monitor calibration device (assuming you don't already) otherwise most of the work that you do in LR (or any other advanced photo editing tool) will be in vain.

1. Shoot in RAW
2. Make sure your computer is fast enough to handle the LR demand.
3. Optimze LR to run faster.
4. Edit photos in LR using the default ProPhoto RGB Color space.
5. Export for web sharing using sRGB
6. If you're going to print learn about ICC print profiles.
7. Read posts on this forum and take time to read the help files in LR.
8. Take all this advice with a grain of salt and experiment on your own for the results that YOU want.

Well, my first suggestion is to get 1,2, or 3 of the good Lightroom "primers", each book authored by Lightroom experts. The names are Scott Kelby, Martin Evening and Victoria Bampton and their books are widely available, just use Amazon.com as a "one stop shop". Make sure you get the current LR3 version -- you can find "outdated versions on sale, but LR 3 has "stuf" that is good to know about. Any one of the three will get you started, both with the overall Lightroom workflow and with the tool/processing in the Develop module. Believe me, at least one of those books, along with a good familiarity with Lightroom help, both the "interactive" help that you get from the menu and with the pdf version (which gets updated) that you can get online, downlod (and have as a desktop icon) will give you loads of needed info and assistance! Check out the pdf here:

http://help.adobe.com …sing/lightroom_​3_help.pdf

And then, there are two good places for online training where for a monthly fee you can receive excellent tutorials in all things Lightroom: Lynda.com and KelbyTraining.com are staffed with great experts and many POTN members have been enriched by spendin some time and a bit of money at one of both of those sites.

And then, there are sites that feature tutorials and helpful articles you can check out. Adobe TV is one:

http://tv.adobe.com/sh​ow/learn-lightroom-3

Scott Kelby's LightroomKillerTips is one:

http://lightroomkiller​tips.com/

And then Victoria Bampton runs the site LightroomQueen:

http://www.lightroomqu​een.com/

Each of those sites has plenty of good stuff!

Another approach you can take is trying some of the various presets that got installed with LR. A lot are B&W/monochrome "effects" but there are ones for color as well. And, the nifty thing is, with Lightroom the presets are all visible adjustments that you can check in the various panels -- you may need to poke around a bit to find out what was done, but it could be well worthwhile!

And then, one more suggestion:

The Canon Raw processing camera that came with your camera, Digital Photo Professional (DPP) is actually a nice quick converter because, among other things, when it opens a Raw file it applies your in-camera Picture Style settings for Contrast, Saturation and Sharpening, also for White Balance and color tone, as well as Noise Reduction and other in-camera settings.

In other words, with DPP you get a Preview that is "like a jpeg"!. And, because it is Raw, you can switch to different Picture Styles, White Balance settings, etc -- you can play around!

Now, as to why I might recommend that you who are starting out with Lightroom install and get to know DPP is simply that DPP can be a reference for you in how you can approach things with Lightroom! Each Canon Picture Style applies a certain "curve" to the Raw data and then some amount of Contrast, Saturation and Sharpening. Lightroom does have "curves" available in the Calibration panel ("profiles") that you can play with, but those curves are a bit more subtle than the Canon Picture Styles. But, if you mess a bit in DPP you can get a feel -- apply a profile of your choosing in LR, and from there you can make your own choices for Contrast/Clarity, Saturation/Vibrance, and the full range of LR tools for fine-tuning tones and colors!

Well, I hope that helps you at least a bit!

A great resource I have used extensively for training besides the Scott Kelby book are all of the tutorial videos on the SLR Lounge. www.slrlounge.com

TTuna Eye wrote in post #13157728
A great resource I have used extensively for training besides the Scott Kelby book are all of the tutorial videos on the SLR Lounge. www.slrlounge.com

Ah, good link there! Have you posted a link to that in the Lightroom Thread sticky here?

I have not. Did not think I had status to do so.

thanks for all the suggestions so far, i didnt even think to look at the software that came with my camera.

i'll try that out tomorrow for sure!

TTuna Eye wrote in post #13157864
I have not. Did not think I had status to do so.

Just open the thread and post a Reply just like here -- I don't think you need a "special status" for that. Some stickies get "closed" to further replies but at this point the LR thread is not one of them.

If you do try and something goofy happens just let us know!

Done!

Heh! I saw, so I'll repeat, good for you!

Although LR is based on the principle that it empowers you to "do your own thing", it also has the ability to make and use "presets" that will apply somebody else's thing, as a shortcut to obtaining a particular "look" that you like. Hundreds of people have created and posted presets and the leading site for downloading them is:
http://www.presetsheav​en.com/

thanks for all the presets, these look like they will work great!

Here is another link. Laura Shoe. She has good free tips as well.

http://laurashoe.com/

thanks, i'll check that site out too.

any more sites with good presets to start and learn from. the one site posted by tzalman is a great start!