A very useful addition to Lightroom 2 is a new tool called the Adjustment Brush. Consider it a sibling to the Graduated Filter, but in the form of a versatile brush that allows for a great deal of creativity while making non-destructive local adjustments right… Read More »Tutorial: Introduction to the Adjustment Brush
Using the Painter tool requires a little bit of imagination. You see, you need to imagine you have a spray paint can that doesn’t use paint. Instead of paint you can load the Painter tool with a color label, flag state, star rating, metadata template,… Read More »Tutorial: The Painter Tool
You may hear them referred to as either presets or templates interchangeably and you can find some form of preset/template in every Lightroom module. No matter what you call them they have a single purpose, which is to speed up your workflow by keeping you… Read More »Tutorial: Managing Presets and Templates
Even if you only shoot raw the reality is that we all still have a lot of rendered files on our systems too. What are rendered files? These are the photos rendered in pixels as opposed to the raw capture data produced by our cameras.… Read More »Tutorial: Rendered vs. Raw in Lightroom
One of Lightroom’s greatest strengths is the database (known as the catalog file) that records everything you do when working in Lightroom. When you import photos all the information contained in the metadata gets added to the catalog, such as exposure, ISO, time and… Read More »Tutorial: Working with Smart Collections
Lightroom’s Secondary Display option allows you to make the most efficient use of your screen real estate when you are working with your photos. Ordinarily, when you open Lightroom you are greeted with Lightroom’s primary window. This is where you do all your work on… Read More »Tutorial: Using the Secondary Display in Lightroom 2
Another significant yet subtle improvement in Lightroom 2 is the means to reconnect missing and offline folders and photos. While preventing your photos from being inadvertently disconnected from the Lightroom catalog is still just as important as it was in Lightroom 1, it’s good to know there are tools to help you get things back in order if you find yourself looking at a catalog full of question marks.
Creating new folders and moving photos from folder to folder is a fundamental aspect of file management. It is also a fundamental task that should only be performed from within Lightroom in order to maintain the connection between the Lightroom catalog and the imported photos.
The Folders panel may be one of the most used panels in all of Lightroom, but it may also be one of the least understood. There’s actually quite a bit of functionality in this little panel, and with the addition of the Volume Browser in… Read More »Tutorial: Managing Photos with the Folders Panel
In Lightroom 2 Adobe combined the Find and Metadata Browser panels from Lightroom 1, added some new functionality, moved them to center stage in Grid view and named it the Library Filter bar. The result is a tremendous boost in usefulness when you want to… Read More »Tutorial: Finding Photos with the Library Filter Bar