One of my biggest fears when I got into photography was what happened after I took pictures…what about the editing?! I had done some minor adjustments for red eyes in iphoto (blast from the past there- I miss that program!), but that was about it!  Michael was using Picasa at the time and had done a little more than me, and we still recommend that for early beginners with no budget.  I was afraid that in order to edit images in a professional way, I was going to have to get Photoshop and become a head swapping and cloning wiz!  And while those skills are useful (and left to my husband who IS a wiz at both!), and Photoshop is an extremely powerful piece of software…it really isn’t meant for individual photo editing. Many many photographers use it as such, and that is great if it works for them! But it might not be the best option for you…especially if you are a new photographer or a mom with a camera who is looking for a program that has a smaller learning curve and still a lot of power- but without some of the features you might never use!  And then I met Adobe Photoshop LightRoom!

3 things I love most about LightRoom:

1). You can edit multiple photos at one time!  When you take a picture, you often take a few (or a bunch, if you are me and try to maximize each space and tend to overshoot! 😉 photos in the same spot.  So if there might be the same lighting issue, or the same thing you want to adjust, in 10 pictures in the same spot, LR allows you do the edits to one image…and copy and paste them to as many more as you want!  This is what my main LightRoom “module” looks like (and a little sneak peek of last week’s gorgeous maternity session, coming to the blog TOMORROW!)

All of those images were taken in front of the same fence.  That is what they looked like out of camera, but if they had all been a little dark, or a little too warm, I could make an adjustment to just one of them and copy it to all the rest! In a program like Photoshop, you can only work with one image at a time!

2). It is non-destructive to your files. I am not a super techy person, so in normal person terms, I will explain it like this! Many of the other programs change your actual file– the edits go into the file and change it permanently.  LightRoom makes the adjustment to a preview file that is attached to your file- but it isn’t your file. So then you can go back and change it again and again- and it isn’t permanent! Once you export your changes as a jpg or anything else, then they are written in to that export- but the original file stays untouched for as long as you want it to!

3). There is so so much easy literature out there to use to learn it!  With the internet now, I know there are tutorials you can dig through for anything.  When we chose to go with LR, I was also strongly considering using Macs version, called Aperture. I liked the general interface better and it had some features I liked more…but there was so much less content available to learn, and I knew I was going to self teach and needed to do it quickly! There are so many resources for LightRoom that teach you the things you NEED to know- and not a lot else until you are ready, and that was something I was looking for! Now, I am pretty clear on what every slider and option does- but in the beginning, I just needed to know how to make basic adjustments and that was very easy to learn with LR!

I think a lot of photographers were/are very hesitant to switch from the program they have been using because it is a learning curve, like for anything else. But it is SO SO worth it!  I absolutely love this program and don’t see myself ever using anything else for the majority of my editing! You can use a trial version from Adobe, and the cost to buy it on disc runs about that of a hefty birthday or Christmas present (or Mother’s Day, if you are really lucky ;-)).  I totally recommend it!

To read about my other top recommendation for newer photographers, click here!

For lots of other free small business and photography education, click here!