Lightroom - Question

Hi All,

I was trying out Lightroom in a local store yesterday. Very impressed with all the features and think it may be slightly better at editing/correcting images before moving them into photoshop to add a brand/watermark/border etc.

I closed down Lightroom to see how quickly it loads on this particular computer. Once it opened back up, the image I was messing around with had a little symbol next to it (in the timeline/filmstrip thing at the bottom) to show it had been edited.

Now, my question is - is this permanently edited? The reason I ask is because it never once asked me if I want to change the details etc.

If I were sat at home, is this image edited and "lost" forever? Or was I missing something?

I really liked the look of Lightroom but I am sometimes careless when on the computer and would not look to purchase this if it didn't have a safety feature as simple as asking me if I wanted to save the changes

Thanks!
Amnesia

The beauty of Lightroom is that all your edits are "Non Destructive"

The settings and adjustments you make are recorded in what are known as "Sidecar Files" which have a .XMP extension on your drive.

Therefore, anything you do to an image can be changed, tweaked and / or completely undone as you see fit. You can also create "Virtual Copies" which are nothing more than a different set of instructions allowing you to make alternate crops, black & white conversions, etc without affecting your original, base image.

If you have any Photoshop experience, it's more or less saving an image with layers intact but it's done so "on the fly" and really doesn't take up any more room on your drive (unlike layered .PSD or .TIF files which can become massive!)

Just to add, once you have done all your editing you then have to go to Export to output a file with these edits. This is where you output a .tif or .jpg etc which will have all the edits and corrections applied. You can also specify the pixel size, DPI, add output sharpening etc.
If your so inclined you can also upload directly to Facebook, smugmug and Flickr, all from within LR without having to create a jpg first.

Wow, very handy!

So instead of redoing many actions in photoshop, I can create "virtual copies" (like you said) and instead of layering upon layering and saving more than one copy of the image with different edits, I can just have a virtual copy which I can easily swap between and "export" my final edit (whichever I choose)?!

I've fallen in love all over again. How do you find the editing/cropping works? Are there possibilities to add broders or watermark images etc without changing back and forth to Photoshop?

I might have to pop back into the store and try it out again... Now, can someone pass me my credit card!!

Just to amend slightly what Jay wrote, the editing is recorded to a central database, the "catalog", and as an option it can also be in an xmp.

a watermark can be added at the time of export to a rendered file and there is a free plugin that does borders to exported images.

The editing is excellent but different from PSCS because LR does not use layers. Some tools are better than PS (HSL does a narrower isolation of colors, the noise reduction is as good as it gets) and others are still weak and could use some improvement (clone/heal is limited and brush masking is not as good as PS's selection tools). Batch editing and batch printing are where LR really shines.

You will love it. Download the free 30 day trial, or better still download the release candidate for 3.4 as that wont run out until May (i think)

I find i learn something new almost every time i open LR up.

Ive only just learnt how to properly change the colour of objects using the local correction tool. Been using LR since version 2 and never quite got the hang of it until someone pointed out you need to lower the saturation right down first. Amazing.

Has anyone mentioned how good the library is yet? Its great being able to filter shots based on ISO, lens, camera etc, all that the click (well, a couple i guess) of the mouse.

Thanks for the great posts (as always).

I'll get home and find this trial! I can see me spending far too much money! Haha.