• listen

I’m always surprised by the number of people in my classes that assume image editing is difficult. Sure, there are some tough to fix problems, but if you start off with a good exposure, you can do most or all of your adjustments in minutes. I try to encourage students to experiment. One of the great things about Lightroom is that you can try different adjustments without worrying about ruining a photo. If you don’t like the result, just undo! Also remember that nothing in Lightroom is a permanent change. Your original image information is always available to you.

Lightroom offers a great number of options - at first glance the Develop module can be a bit overwhelming to the new user. But, not every image needs to use all of these controls. In fact, you’ll find that many images use the same small set of adjustments - White Balance, Tone, Presence.

Combined with the comparison views (press the Y key to toggle between compare and standard views), you can quickly see what the effect of your adjustments are. In short order you’ll have a very good understanding of how these controls work together.

You’ll notice that most of these basic controls are also available in the Quick Develop panel, but it’s worth your time to learn how these controls work and interact with each other since they are the fundamental adjustments you’ll find yourself going back to time after time.

After making these basic edits, I like to put a little pop into my images with the Tone Curve before heading to the Print module. I've found that with these adjustments I spend much less time in Photoshop which has really helped my workflow.