There are many advantages and possibilities that Lightroom offers you if you are passionate about photography, as it is a program that is specially designed to cover and streamline your workflow in photo processing. For those who want to learn how to use Lightroom, what’s coming is a good starting point to start learning how to get the most out of it.
Beginning to know Lightroom
The importance of interfaces in the programs we often use is by no means a trivial matter. In this sense, the Lightroom interface is one of the best examples I know of where elegance, power, and simplicity come together. Everything seems to be where you’d go to find it, and at every stage of the process, you find just the repertoire of tools you’re going to need.
It’s clear that the Lightroom developer group was made up of photographers, it’s definitely a product designed by photographers and made for photographers.
Lightroom Interface Structure
Lightroom has a modular interface consisting of the following blocks:
Menu Bar
Located at the top of the window, even outside the Lightroom body, so you can see it from all modules. It gives access to menus of options and its shortcuts, which will be of great help to you.
Identity Plate
This is the first block located at the top left of the screen. Personalization lovers will surely like to know that Lightroom allows you to put your own logo in this space. All you have to do is go to Edit > Identity plate setup, and click on Enable Identity Plate [Custom]. When Lightroom is working, this space displays a progress bar that indicates both where it is and what’s left to finish.
Module Picker
Located in the upper right part of the window is one of the blocks that you will use most to navigate through the different tools. Lightroom defines the different workflow actions in 5 large modules: Library, Develop, Slideshow, Print, and Web.
The content of the different blocks of the interface will depend on which of these 5 big sections you are in. I describe to you the operations that you will be able to make from each one of the great modules in Lightroom:
- Library: import, export, sort and manage your photo library.
- Develop: adjustments of improvement and retouching on your photo.
- Slideshow: present your photos in slideshow mode.
- Print: digital printing of your photos.
- Web: if you want to prepare your photos to show them on the web.
Left-Right Panel
These are the panels that appear on the sides of the central block. They give access to multiple functions and controls that depend on the module (Library, Develop, Slideshow, Print, Web) in which you are.
Main Panel
It is the main block of the window on which you can see the photo or collection you are working on. You have different display modes available depending on the type of action you want to perform:
- Grip View [G]: Allows you to view a grid of thumbnail images.
- Loupe View [E]: View a single photo.
- Compare View [C]: Allows you to view two photos at the same time for comparison.
- Survey View [N]: Through which you will be able to compare several photos with the one that is active at any given time.
Toolbar
This is a small toolbar located just below the Central Block (above the Picture Strip). It is contextual, which means that the tools that appear in it depend on the module (Library, Develop, Slideshow, Print, Web) in which you are.
Filmstrip
It is located at the bottom of the screen. It is the main navigation aid for your photos and shows a thumbnail preview of them.
Other Interesting Interface Details
The truth is that it has thousands, but as it is a tutorial on how to use Lightroom for beginners, I will only highlight some high-level details of the interface that may be of interest to you:
- Blocks are Scalable: If you stand on the border between the blocks you will see that the mouse pointer changes shape, allowing you to change the size of the block.
- Blocks can be auto-hidden: There are a series of triangles in the different blocks that allow you to hide the blocks at will. To hide a block, click on the triangle. If you hide a block and place the mouse over the triangle, it becomes visible again until you move the mouse again. If you want the block to stop being permanently hidden, all you have to do is click on the triangle again.
- Tab key Hides Side Panels: This is a very useful option. Try pressing the Tab key several times and you will see how the side panels are hidden and displayed successively.
- Lightroom Remember Your Last Settings: You can play to change the size of the blocks and hide them until you leave them to your liking. The next time you start the program Lightroom will recover the configuration that was left in its last use
How to Import Your Photos into Lightroom
You need to learn how to import your photo file into Lightroom, so you can start working on your file from this fantastic program.
Starting Point: Folder Structure
Although Lightroom allows you to import photos directly from the memory card (if you want, take a look at File > Import Photos from Device) and copy them to a location on your disk from where Lightroom will manage them, I recommend manually managing the download of photos from the card into folders on your hard disk. All this before you even run Lightroom
The reason for this recommendation is that right after downloading the photos from the memory card, it is good to make a backup on an external disk, to avoid, by mistake, losing some awesome photos.
If you prefer Lightroom to take care of the whole process, of course, you can. Launch Lightroom and go to File > Import Photos from Device… and select Copy photos to a new location and add to. This will download the photos from the card to the place on the hard disk that you indicate and generate the necessary records in the database so that your photo is accessible and is manipulable and manageable from Lightroom.
If you already have the photos on your hard drive, Lightroom will not copy your photos: it will simply add them to its internal catalog. You can do this from File > Import Photos from Disk… and selecting the folder where you have the photos.
Be careful when moving or renaming your photos on the disc
If you make any changes to the location of the photos, their names, or the names of the folders that contain them, Lightroom will lose the reference to where the photo is located. That’s why one of the most important recommendations in this regard is that once you’ve imported a photo into Lightroom, don’t move it. Otherwise, you’ll have to ask Lightroom to try to relocate it.
Basic controls of the Develop Module in Lightroom
Lightroom has made it much easier and more intuitive to process photos. But no matter how simple it may have been, no matter how intuitive its interface, you still need to understand what is the purpose of certain controls and when is the right time to use them.
You can always play the trial-and-error method: try to go up and down a certain control and try to figure out what it’s for (with some it’s easier than with others). Or you can continue reading and discover a little more about the basic controls of the Develop module.
The Basic Controls Block
This is the first block of controls you’ll see in the right panel in Lightroom’s Develop module. If you take a look at the Library module, you’ll see that the control block called Quick Develop is also present. These are the same controls, but from the Develop module, you can make a more detailed adjustment. They are grouped into three sets of colors: White Balance, Tone, and Presence.
How to use White Balance in Lightroom
There you will find three groups of controls:
- A drop-down menu at the top allows you to make the adjustment by defining the type of light that was in the scenario in which you took the picture: daylight, cloudy, shadow, etc. or select the white balance made at the time of the shooting. When selecting the different options in this menu you will see that the Temperature and Hue cursors are modified to represent this type of light.
- The white balance selector tool (which can also be selected with the keyboard shortcut w): The point you select with it will be the point that will be identified as the neutral reference point and the rest of the points in the image will be adjusted relatively. It is very interesting to make use of this tool with the left panel displayed since you will be able to obtain a preview of how the image would look in real time as you go through different points in the photo. One of the possible ways of working with this tool is to detect areas of the image of tones that should be white, but have a tendency to be blue (cold) or orange (warm) and click on them. As in the previous case, every time you use the tool, you will see that the Temperature and Hue cursors change.
- Temperature and Tint Controls: In case you don’t want to perform the balance control through the two previous options or you want to make a more detailed adjustment. They allow you to search for balance in blue and orange-yellow with the Temperature or green and purple with the Tint.
How to use Tone in Lightroom
The tone controls are in turn divided into two subgroups:
- Exposure, Recovery, Fill Light, and Blacks: Allows you to play with the brightness of certain subsegments of the histogram. The best way to discover the part of the histogram to which they refer is to place the mouse cursor over the histogram itself: you will see that the different areas are enhanced and a legend appears just below indicating the specific area in which you are.
- Brightness and Contrast: Unlike the previous ones, they do not focus on one area of the histogram, but work it as a whole. The brightness, shifts “laterally” the histogram to play with the general luminous intensity, and the contrast “widening” the histogram, increasing the difference in brightness between the lightest and darkest areas.
At the top of this block, you can see that there is an option to make an automatic adjustment of the tones that you can use as a starting point and then, finally, make the fine control until the photo is to your liking.
Presence
This is probably the most diffuse and difficult group of controls to differentiate. To teach you how to use Lightroom correctly, I will explain:
- Intensity and Saturation: Both controls work on the saturation of an image, only in a different way. Saturation increases full-color saturation regardless of its original saturation. However, Intensity does not work independently of the starting saturation level: it saturates more the originally less saturated colors, and less the originally more saturated colors. It’s a bit difficult to explain in words. I suggest that you take a picture in which you clearly perceive that there are areas that are very saturated and other areas that are not very saturated. And try setting Intensity to 100, Saturation to 0, and vice versa, Intensity to 0 and Saturation to 100, and check. It is very interesting to be able to play with saturation in your photos by means of two controls that allow you to selectively vary its effect on saturation without altering the general level.
- Clarity: Increasing clarity means increasing the contrast of intermediate tones, providing a local contrast adjustment type result. By raising the clarity you will see the shapes and volume accentuated in intermediate tones.
To Finish Understanding It Is Necessary to Experiment
Understanding what I just told you just by reading is a complicated thing. It’s time to take action. Select some photos and start experimenting with the controls, trying to predict the results you’re going to get and observe what you really get. Play without fear with the controls and don’t worry, because with Lightroom you won’t damage the original files no matter how much you modify them.
Undoing changes
This is how you can return the photo you work with to its original state:
- If you double-click on the name of the control you want to reset, it will return to the starting position.
- If you press Alt, you will see Restore Tone and Restore Presence options to reset the controls.
This software is very complete, and it is quite easy to master if you compare it with other editing programs: it is easier to learn how to use Lightroom than to learn others, such as Photoshop. With a little practice and the freedoms offered by Lightroom’s non-destructive editing system (i.e., everything is reversible and nothing is permanent), you’ll master it in no time.
