Professional photographers and enthusiasts alike will love this class in the basics and behind-the-scenes secrets of transforming your photos in Adobe Lightroom! It’s the favorite editing tool of Lotus Carroll, and she’s eager to show you how to get started.
Adobe Lightroom is more affordable than Photoshop, offers a database-driven organization system for streamlining your workflow, and, most importantly, has the significant photo editing capabilities to transform your photographs into images that fully realize your creative vision.
In this class, you’ll learn how to navigate and customize view modes, master the core functionality that’s driving the program’s popularity, and learn the secrets of all the develop panels and tools that transform Lightroom into a processing powerhouse.
What You'll Learn
- Introduction to the Lightroom Workspace. Look around the software setup, focusing mostly on the Develop Mode, where processing is done.
- Use the Library to View and Manipulate Photos. Survey large image collections, compare image view modes, and manipulate images with shortcuts.
- Explore Image Editing Essentials. Learn how to use Lightroom to adjust the basics: crop, alignment, tone, tint, exposure, contrast, brightness, clarity, vibrance, and saturation of your photos. Play with extremes to enhance your understanding of the program’s full capabilities.
- Experiment with Advanced Editing Techniques. Go beyond basics and learn to fully develop and transform your RAW images in Lightroom. We’ll cover key adjustments (white balance correction, noise reduction, sharpening, etc.), working with presets, sophisticated filters, useful brushes, split toning, lens corrections, and more.
- Export, Publish, and Share Your Work. Export your work to Photoshop (or elsewhere) for further editing, and share your photos using the power of social media.
What You'll Do
- Deliverable. A series of processed images from Lightroom.
- Brief. Explore about how to integrate Lightroom into your own workflow and creative process.
- Collaboration. As you go through the class, update your project to share your progress with your fellow students.
- Specs. Be sure to share full width images and screenshots with the class in your project.
By the end of the course, students will have the skills to successfully post process their images to suit their individual style, delivering a final product they are proud of.
Whether you already have a large photo collection or are just getting started, this class is the ultimate guide for using Lightroom to transform your photos into compelling images with impact.
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Class Outline
- Software overview. Photographer Lotus Carroll will show you how to use Lightroom, starting with a closer look at the module where you’ll edit your photos. You’ll explore the module’s side panels, which include zoom functions and processing tools like tone curve, split toning, lens correction, and camera calibration.
- Personalize. You’ll learn how to get unnecessary menu bars and panels out of your way when you work, and you’ll learn to adjust the background color of your editing space.
- Manipulating images in library mode. You can work on photo enhancing even in the library module in Lightroom. Lotus will show you how to rotate photos directly in your library, and she’ll walk you through the various functions in the quick develop panel that let you make “quick and dirty” changes to your photographs before starting to post-process in-depth.
- Crop and straighten tool. Making sure your photograph is the size and shape you want comes before any other edits. With the crop and straighten tool, you’ll learn how to manipulate your photograph’s outline, use the slider function, and straighten individual elements within your photograph.
- White balance. You’ll learn how to alter the white balance in your photograph based on both Lightroom presets and your own customized adjustments. You’ll see what a photograph looks like after applying a cool vs. warm tone, and you’ll learn how to find the “target neutral” shade in your photograph.
- Tonal scale. In playing with your photograph’s exposure, you’ll learn to embrace trial and error in achieving the right balance between highlights and shadows in your photograph.
- Presence. Presence is how your image “pops,” and you’ll learn to adjust it using the clarity slider in Lightroom. Lotus will give you some portrait photography tips as you explore saturation.
- Tone curve. You’ll learn how to manipulate the tone curve graph. Lotus will make subtle tonal adjustments to demonstrate best practices for portrait retouching.
- HSL and color. HSL and color control the hue, saturation, and luminance of your photograph. Lotus will offer saturation tips and teach you how to edit color by temporarily setting your image to black and white.
- Detail. You’ll learn to find a happy medium when sharpening your image and how to use a mask when sharpening.
- Lens corrections and effects. Lotus will show you how to change the distortion in your photograph, alter its aspect, and add visual effects like shaded edges.
- Spot correction and red eye. In professional photography, there’s no room for red eye. You’ll learn how to mask red eye and other small blemishes in your photographs.
- Local adjustments: graduated filter, radial filter, and adjustment brushes. You’ve learned how to alter your photograph as a whole; now it’s time to zoom in. Lotus will introduce you to various tools that help you edit your photograph one section at a time.
- Working with develop presets. You’ll use the presets to get photo processing tips by checking out the corresponding panel settings for each preset.
- Export and share. Lotus will go over the export and publishing functions in Lightroom.
