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19195c01.qxd:19195c01 2/21/07 9:11 PM Page 1 Workflow Foundations Adobe Photoshop Lightroom provides an endto-end workflow solution, helping you work more efficiently with your digital photographs. Before you get started working with the many features you’ll find in Lightroom, it is important to understand some of the fundamentals of Lightroom takes to that workflow. Then you’ll be ready to dive in and start getting to know Lightroom, and using it to manage and process your digital photographs.
19195c01.qxd:19195c01 2/21/07 9:11 PM Page 2 Some Background CHAPTER 1: WORKFLOW FOUNDATIONS ■ 2 It still surprises me how quickly so many photographers made a complete switch from film photography to digital photography. Very early in the development of digital photography, it was clear there would be significant benefits. But human nature being what it is, it seemed reasonable to expect that the transition would be slow and cautious. Instead, photographers made the switch with incredible speed.
19195c01.qxd:19195c01 2/21/07 9:11 PM Page 3 the time the images get onto your computer, organize them, optimize them, and share them with others. Many software developers heard the concerns of photographers, and started addressing those concerns in their software applications. Instead of leaving the photographer to move the image through each step of their workflow, applications started offering features that helped move the images through the workflow.
19195c01.qxd:19195c01 2/21/07 9:11 PM Page 4 Designed for a Sensible Workflow Lightroom is best thought of as a workflow tool for digital photography. I think of it as “command central” for managing and processing digital photographs. To understand what Lightroom provides, it is helpful to understand the basic stages of a digital photography workflow. The key stages of such a workflow are as follows: Importing There are various names and approaches to this phase of the workflow.
19195c01.qxd:19195c01 2/21/07 9:11 PM Page 5 5 Figure 1.3 The Develop module is where you’ll make most of your adjustments to images within Lightroom. ■ DESIGNED FOR A SENSIBLE WORKFLOW Figure 1.2 The Library module enables you to import, sort, manage, locate, and apply basic adjustments to your images.
19195c01.qxd:19195c01 2/21/07 9:11 PM Page 6 Slideshow This module allows you to quickly create basic digital slideshows for sharing your images (Figure 1.4). Print This module allows you to print your images with great flexibility and control, producing anything from fine-art prints with a single image filling the page to contact sheets with many images per page (Figure 1.5). Web This module allows you to create web galleries for sharing your images on the Internet very quickly and easily (Figure 1.6).
19195c01.qxd:19195c01 2/21/07 9:11 PM Page 7 7 Figure 1.6 The Web module enables you to create web galleries to showcase your images. ■ DESIGNED FOR A SENSIBLE WORKFLOW Figure 1.5 The Print module provides great flexibility and control for creating printed output with your images.
19195c01.qxd:19195c01 2/21/07 9:11 PM Page 8 Photoshop Replacement? As you review the list of features found in each of the modules, you may wonder how Photoshop fits into the picture. The Library module contains many of the features and capabilities you’ll find in Adobe Bridge and Adobe Camera Raw, both included as part of Photoshop. The Develop module contains tools for optimizing your photos that match many of the capabilities of Photoshop.
19195c01.qxd:19195c01 2/21/07 9:11 PM Page 9 A Typical Workflow To give you a sense of how well suited Lightroom is to enabling an efficient workflow, I think it is helpful to consider how you’ll use Lightroom to work with your images. Imagine that you return from a photo shoot, whether that’s in your own studio or halfway around the world. You launch Lightroom and use it to download your images from your digital media cards and import them all in one step.
19195c01.qxd:19195c01 CHAPTER 1: WORKFLOW FOUNDATIONS ■ 10 2/21/07 9:11 PM Page 10 you even apply some quick adjustments to get them closer to matching your original vision. As you start to decide which are your favorites, you apply star ratings to the images. As you prepare to move on to the next step of the workflow, you might filter the images so you’re looking at only the four- and five-star-rated images from the current photo shoot.
19195c01.qxd:19195c01 2/21/07 9:11 PM Page 11 How I Think about Lightroom (Continued) As a result, Lightroom is a simple and efficient application that enables you to work quickly with your images. After you’ve gone through this book and have become familiar with what Lightroom has to offer, your first reaction is probably to think that Lightroom is a relatively simple application that in some ways doesn’t offer a huge number of features.
