New To Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4

Use this software mainly for removing digital noise and cloning. Next step for me is to learn about adding textures to backgrounds. Are there any ebooks or good sites for videos to start me on the process. Thanks for any help with this.

Paul

Hmmm...for cloning; if you need to make precise selections you will need a pixel editor. Also you cannot use it to add textures other than grain (noise); again you'll need a pixel editor like Photoshop Elements, Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro, etc.

A cost-free e-book/tutorial on Lightroom is the User Guide: http://help.adobe.com …sing/lightroom_​4_help.pdf

Agreed. For what you're looking to do, Lightroom really isn't a good choice. It's great for noise reduction and has some limited capabilites for cloning, but Lightroom is essentially intended for photo organization and basic photo editing (though it's actual capabilities are impressive). As PixelMagic said, you need a true pixel level editor like Photoshop if you're looking to manipulate what's actually in the image as opposed to simple global corrections of exposure, contrast, etc.

As per the above posts Lightroom is for RAW development only. For pixel editing such as adding textures you need a package like Photoshop or Photoshop Elements (or one of the many other pixel editing packages).

Thankyou all for the great help. I will look at Photoshop or Photoshop Elements.

If you're just trying to reduce noise, then I'd use the noise slider in LR. Cloning is going to have to be done in photoshop though like Dan said

Get Gimp, it's free and has the features you're looking for. Try Wavelet Denoise and Wavelet Sharpen plugins for Gimp, they are very good.

Go here http://www.luminous-landscape.com/videos/l​r4_combo.shtml and purchase the tutorial video. It was the BEST $50 I've ever spent on photography.