How long did it take you to get comfortable with Lightroom?

I'm pretty sure I just bought too much crap at once. Switched from PC to Mac, Elements to CS5, then bought LR3. I've always been the guy that organized all my photos manually in Windows Explorer and I did a fairly decent job at it. When I bought CS5, I learned Bridge and loved it because of the GUI. So then I buy LR3 because of all the rave reviews and I can't wrap my head around the workflow of this program. Ready to give up. Does it just take more time? If Bridge seems like the best photo manager man has ever created, will I ever feel any different about LR3?

Has anyone ever gone from not understanding, and therefore not liking, this program to using it every day with a smile?

By the way, in the tradition of buying too much crap, I've got Kelby's LR3 book, a subscription to his training, trials to Lynda.com and anything else I can watch/read for free.

You can organize your files manually and still work with LR3...

The key will be to insure that you synchronize your folders on a regular basis so LR "knows" where stuff is located.

I'm probably a 50/50 split between manually moving stuff via Explorer and moving stuff within LR itself.

still using LR2.7.0.2 (is it me or is that also a stardate?)

still learning something new every time i use it.
Stick with it, it's brilliant.

Jay... I was considering this as well. There are a couple really handy features that I recognize immediately about LR3 that I could use. Was thinking maybe I could get by with managing files in Bridge and using LR3 to do some common exporting.

Andrew... I'll never print my own photos. I'd like to think that one day I could use the Web module to post some online galleries, but thats a ways off at best. Straight away, thats two useless modules for me. I really like some of the export functions but it appears to me I can do similar things with Bridge using Batch and Image Processor.

Thanks for the input. I'd really like to love this program as much as others do, but it seems so counter-intuitive right now.

It's important that you wade through that reading! Lightroom is a whole different workflow from Photoshop and the Kelby book helps walk you through it.

I'm far from a comfort zone, but looking forward to learn, for I just purchased LR3 today.

I've never touched LR until today, when I decided to download the 30-day trial. Pretty neat so far, but it might be a while before I'm comfortable with it. I guess I'm too used to clunking around in Bridge and ACR, but I'm hoping LR will streamline my workflow more.

That's why I demo everything before I buy. Lightroom has a 30 day demo. After 2 weeks I never wanted to look at it again. It may be the industry standard, but I would only use it if forced by an employer. It jut doesn't work the way I think.

I've only used it for a few hours, but it's not really growing on me. I can see how it might appeal to some people - but I guess I may not be one of those people. I'll give it a couple of days.

Hi there..I gave lightroom about 3 days before I started to see the potential. I didnt like it at first because it was different, different from the workflow I had become accustomed. It took me a little over a day of reading and tinkering until I started getting really comfy with adjustments.


Now I've been using it for over 3 weeks and I cant believe I didnt start shooting RAW sooner and post process in LR.

I look back at my Picasa jpg days and just sorta laugh....dont get me wrong I'll probably still use picasa jpg for sheer quickness.

Follow the SK book, step by step, all the way through (and actually DO it! ) and it'll be like second nature in no time. And to answer your title question... about 5 mins.

Side note: Originally I said to myself "I'm not going to bother learning the Develop mode, there's no real use, I do everything in Photoshop..." Now, after actually taking the time to learn and use the Develop mode, I'd say I use Lightroom 85% of the time to using PS 15% for post processing. It's really good stuff!

I've used LR since it launched and love it. I also use CS3 and PSE 9, all on a mac (and still some iphoto holdouts as well). I think it's important to decide though which system is going to be used for organizing, initial uploads, etc. I use LR for all of that as I love it. I use the other software for additional photo enhancements, composition photo pages, etc. Moving OS's can be a learning curve all on its own. I find LR MUCH easier and intuitive than Photoshop of any ilk (even elements) and the bridge/"organinzer" in elements changes just enough to cause me confusion, whereas the library catalog model in LR is consistent and useful for me. Good luck with your choices!

TLDR: Choose your main program and use others to enhance, don't try and manage all files in all programs.

I've been using LR3 for a couple months now and love the program except for the file organization part. I still prefer to use explorer and a directory structure I set up a while ago.

Much of that stems from the way I work I suppose. I shoot raw, but I do not process all my pics. Most stay as raw. So the ones I do process I like to move to a separate directory so I can quickly see which have been processed and which have not. I also process differently for different media. I have a Flickr folder, a print folder, and recently a book folder as I have been putting many pics into a book.

So a quick rundown of my workflow goes something like this:
Copy images from CF card to a directory (and sub-directory Org-Unproc meaning unprocessed pics.)
Import that directory to LR3 and start processing. Sometimes it all processed in LR, sometimes I do the basics there, then do a "edit in" to PS and finish processing there.
Save out the images to their proper directory, (Flickr, Done-Jpeg, Facebook, Book)
When I'm done I just unlink the directory.

It's sort of a really dorky workflow but works for me. It leaves me with a very understandable, fully transportable directory structure with all my images yet allows me to use some of the tools in LR that are much easier to use than the PS or DPP counterparts.

Thanks for all the input. I'm going to try to stick with it, but I have a feeling it won't become my primary image organizer/processor.

Quick question though, why does it seem that I cannot easily rename a file in Lightroom? Am I missing something?

Lighroom 3 took me a couple weeks to wrap my head around. I also had to email some friends who use it before I started having the "light bulb" moment.

Now that I know my way around it, I'd never get rid of it. It is how I manage my photos and I find it very easy. I simply import my RAW files from memory card into Lightroom and tell Lightroom to organize them into folders by month>>day>>year (which isn't really necessary, I just like to keep things clean). From there, I use Lightroom's tagging functionality mostly, but you really have to keep up with it. If you have a huge upload and forget to tag some photos, it makes it more difficult to find them later in LR. If I need to find an image, I simply search by tag and find it. You can also create and organize folders and collections in LR, but I've yet to need to take it that far.

kompressor wrote in post #11564542
Quick question though, why does it seem that I cannot easily rename a file in Lightroom? Am I missing something?

Why would you need to rename the file? Utilize tagging, etc. and while the file is in Lightroom, the name really doesn't matter at all. Once you export the file as .jpg though, you can rename it there. That's what I do anyway. I leave all RAW files named whatever they are in the camera. From there, when I export, I rename files as needed, but I don't keep .jpgs on my machine. I only have the RAW files in LR and then only export when I need a .jpg to upload to facebook or shutterfly. Not need to have BOTH the RAW files and .jpgs sitting on my machine taking up space. That's my work flow anyway, your mileage may vary.