Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Killer Tips

This week’s video comes directly from a question I get all the time. It’s all about History. See… we have a History palette in Photoshop but Lightroom’s history is a little bit different (and cooler in some ways). First off, Lightroom saves everything! Even when you close the program down and open it back up - your history states are still there. You can always go back to any point in your editing of a photo to a previous history state and you don’t have to do a thing to make it all happen. This is simply the way that Lightroom works. So this week, I’ll take a look at the History panel, where it resides, and how to use it. We’ll even take a look at the Snapshot panel and see how we can use both panels together.
Click here to watch the video. (12 Mb)

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Bet you didn’t think you’d get a dose of Friday news did you? Well, it’s just a special day isn’t it
Seriously though, Lightroom 1.2 and Camera Raw 4.2 are out. You can download them from this link. Of notable interest is the support for the new Canon 40D. Tom Hogarty’s blog (the Lightroom Product Manager at Adobe) listed a few things to note about the updates. If you get past the stuff about “Bayer Pattern sensors” and “Demosaicing” and are still awake there’s also some good info in there. Read on for the Friday Tips.

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As you know I always like to wrap the week up with a tip (or two). First off, I’ve gotta say thanks to all of you that came out to my Lightroom session at Photoshop World last week. It was amazing and the feedback was outstanding. Thanks!
Tip #1: Here’s a neat one to use when cropping or straightening. See, when you crop an image Lightroom pops up a grid over your photo to help you crop. It’s the Rule of Thirds grid by default, but there are others available. To see them, just press R to get into Crop mode. Then, while cropping, press the letter O to cycle through all of the crop overlays. There are a few quirky ones in there that you’ll probably never use, but one that I really like is the detailed grid. It helps a lot when straightening photos, as oppose to the rule of thirds grid, which is a little too spread out. Give it a try though. By the way, if you’re one of those who just hates the overlay altogether (and I know there is at least one of you out there), just press Ctrl+Shift+H (Mac: Cmd+Shift+H) to hide them.
Tip #2: This is more of a link then a tip actually. Check out Adobe’s Lightroom home page. I typically think of company’s product home pages as lame with just a bunch of marketing, but this one is a bit different. Sure, it does have its fair share of marketing, but it’s also got some free tutorials and stuff. Some tutorials are by yours truly, but there’s plenty of other stuff on there from some great trainers and photographers. Your best bet is to skip down to the 3 tabs at the bottom under “Learn More About Lightroom”. Check it out here. Whew! That’s it for the Friday tips update. Have a great one!

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If you like viewing some killer photography then read on. First up is Dan (Dano) Steinhardt Photography. Dan is the Marketing Manager for Advanced Amateur and Professional Photography Markets at Epson America, Inc. (whew, that’s some title!). Dan’s reputation in the industry is impeccable and well deserved. He’s got some fantastic photography and I frequently visit his site for inspiration.
Next up is Angela Drury Photography. I’m not sure I can exactly categorize her photography other than to say it’s awesome. She’s got a few different areas in her portfolio that range from abstract to portraits and beauty. It’s definitely worth a visit (yes, she’s a Lightroom user too!). Well that’s it for our Wednesday inspirational links. Hope you enjoy and have a great day. (photo credit: Dan Steinhardt)

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Hey folks! Just got back from Photoshop World in Las Vegas and we had a fantastic time. I taught a class called “Lightroom Digital Workflow” to a packed house last Friday. There were over 600 people there and a lot of them visit this site frequently so I just wanted to say thanks for coming by. I got to meet a lot of great people and all of your kind words were incredibly motivating. Oh… one more thing. I mentioned a Sharpening video in the class so here’s the link. Enjoy!

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