Lightroom Quick Start Guide

DIGITAL DARKROOM ACADEMY

Ahmed Shajee Aijazi

www.digitaldarkroomacademy.com

In the old times of analog photography, when you had to put a film in your camera, each photograph had a cost associated to it. The film rolls

cost money, getting them developed cost money then finally getting prints cost money. So, you could imagine that taking photographs was

heavy on the pocket. But as digital photography became popular, and this is probably why it became more popular, taking a photograph

essentially costs nothing. Because of this, we tend to create a lot more photographs than we used to back in the day. These can become a lot

to handle over time. We need a tool that can allow us to not only manage and work on these huge amounts of data that we are capturing with

our cameras.

This is where Lightroom comes in. Lightroom is a tool that essentially allows you to do three things with your photographs:

It is important to keep these three things in mind, because when you open Lightroom for the first time, it can look a bit too intimidating. But if it

is so intimidating then why is it that it's becoming more and more popular with photographers?

01WHAT IS LIGHTROOM AND WHY SHOULD

EVERY PHOTOGRAPHER USE IT01

ORGANIZE RETOUCH SHARE3 IMPORTANT

FUNCTIONS

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It is important to keep these three things in mind, because when you open Lightroom for the first time, it can look a bit too intimidating. But if it

is so intimidating then why is it that it's becoming more and more popular with photographers? The reason for that is, it takes something really

complicated and makes it very simple. The photographic workflow. Without Lightroom, your files were managed and organized somewhere

else, they were edited at another place and shared via another. Lightroom brings these three essential elements of the photographic workflow

and not only makes them simple, but also makes them a lot quicker.

WHICH LIGHTROOM VERSION SHOULD I

PURCHASE?

Lightroom 6 has been released in two different ways, either as a stand-alone app or as part of the Creative Cloud. Getting Lightroom 6 is a perpetual license basically a standalone software and only a one-time purchase. The updates that Lightroom 6 users will receive would only be bug fixes and any lens and camera profile updates. Any new feature updates, Lightroom 6 users will not have access to. On the other hand, you have Lightroom CC, which is a monthly subscription. It not only allows for updates when new features and versions are released, it also provides access to its mobile (Lightroom Mobile) and web (Lightroom Web) versions.

So, given the benefits that Lightroom CC has over the stand-alone Lightroom 6, we recommend going with Lightroom CC.

Lightroom works a bit differently than other softwares Lightroom thinks, then it can land you in a lot of trouble with

02HOW LIGHTROOM REALLY WORKS

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While it is a great tool for retouching, one of the most important features of this software is its image management capabilities. Those image management capabilities are built on what is known as a Catalog-based system.

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We have a detailed post on our website about how, because of the catalog-based system, Lightroom works differently than other photo

softwares and you can read it here: What are Catalogs?

Usually a library would have a database of all the books that are in its shelves. So, when someone comes to you looking for a book, instead of going around the library without any clue about where to find the book, you can simply look in the database exactly which shelf it would be in. Now, your database does not contain the actual book itself, but does contain information about where it's located, who the author is, how many pages it is. It

Lightroom works in a very similar way. When you import a photograph into Lightroom, you are actually bringing only its information and preview into your database. The actual file of the photo you took is sitting somewhere in your hard drive; wherever you decided to place it. The actual photo itself never comes into the Lightroomdatabase. What you are seeing is just the database record of that photo. This overall database is referred to, as a Catalog.

catalog of books, you spilled some ink on one of the pages and now the book listing on that page, that had a yellow book cover, now looks pretty blue. Will the actual book cover sitting in one of the shelves change its colors? Not really. Well, Lightroom is similar.

The advantage this has is that your original always remains intact and you can come back to it any time you want.

OF A HUGE LIBRARY

Any changes that you apply to your images in Lightroom, never actually affect the original file. What Lightroom is working with, is just the preview of the file; and never the actual file itself.

03THE THREE DECISIONS TO MAKE

BEFORE YOU START05

In order to avoid problems later on, it's best to make some decisions before you begin using Lightroom for the first time. If done correctly, this

WHERE TO STORE YOUR CATALOG?

When you open Lightroom for the first time ever, Lightroom will ask you where to store the catalog and how to name it. If you

decide to go along with Lightroom Catalog.lrcat

Pictures folder, which on a Windows machine would be:

C:\Users\[USERNAME]\Pictures\Lightroom

Lightroom catalog on this location:

[USERNAME]\Pictures\Lightroom

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Usually, the drive containing the Pictures folder is also your boot drive and it's not a good idea to keep your data on it. In case you have to

reinstall your operating system and have to format your boot drive, you would end up losing your catalog file too. So, I recommend against

keeping the catalog at its default location.

The only limitation that Lightroom puts on you is that you cannot keep your catalog

keep it anywhere else you like.

Even if Lightroom to

store them somewhere on your hard drive. So, the next thing you should decide before you start using Lightroom is where do you want to

keep your photos?

I keep my catalog file on an external drive, so that if I have to use it on another computer, I can just plug it in and I have my instance of Lightroom show up. But, if you only use one computer then having it on your internal drive, that is not your boot drive, would result in better performance of Lightroom.

WHERE TO STORE YOUR PHOTOS?2

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If you are bringing in photos from your current hard drive, Lightroom will keep them where they were and just add them into the Lightroom

catalog at their existing locations.

As has been mentioned already, it's not a good idea to have your data in your boot drive, which is usually where the Pictures folder is. So, you

may want to store them somewhere else.

drive, but do remember that if you would be using it to store your other data as well, it would get full pretty quick. You can have your photos on

an external drive too.

The other thing you should be thinking about is how would your photos be organized? What would your folder structure be? What would be

your naming convention for your files?

Lightroom r.

best to keep all the folders of photos under a single parent folder, rather than scattering the photos around your hard drives. If they are in a lot

of different locations, or different hard drives, it would become quite a pain to find photos when you need them or to back them up.

Then comes the question of naming your files. If you leave them as it is, the files come into Lightroom usually with the names that the camera

ile DSC_4067,

catalog might be files with the same

On the other hand, if you decide to make your filenames unique, you would never run into such a problem.

WHAT WILL YOUR FILING STRUCTURE BE LIKE?

I have an external drive that is dedicated for just my photography. So, the photos are also portable and if I have to use them on another computer, I can do that. This external drive is the same one that has my catalog in it. So, everything that Lightroom needs, is there. And I can just plug that hard drive to another computer and I can replicate the same instance of Lightroom as my main computer.

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One way to do that would be to add the date into your filename. I would also recommend for you to make these filenames a little more

The naming convention I use for my filenames is this:

YY-MM-DD-Client Name-Project Name-00001

That way, each photos name also contains some information about what was being photographed; and that makes it easier to search it

later on.

One way to do that would be to add the date into your filename. I would also recommend for you

that photograph for.

04IMPORTING PHOTOS

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We have understood that Lightroom is built around a database. So, the first thing you would want to do is to bring in our photos and information

about them into the Lightroom catalog

just create a reference to those files. The photos never actually come into Lightroom

Another thing to note here is that just because these photos have been imported into Lightroom, does not mean that they cannot be accessed

via any other software. Your files will always be accessible and can be read/opened by any other software including your file browser. Though,

once you are using Lightroom as your photo management system, it is not a good practise to make any changes to those files outside of

Lightroom.

Once in Lightroom, Everything Within Lightroom.

REMEMBER THE RULE:

Lightroom?

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You can go to the menu File > Import Photos and Videosthe lower left corner in the Library module. Once that is done, you will see the Import Dialog box.

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phs are in the

folders you have selected, the thumbnails may take some time to appear. If you want to only bring in a selected number of images to come into

Lightroom he Library

module after they are in Lightroom.

WHERE ARE THE PHOTOS COMING FROM?

On the left side of your Import Dialog, you will see a section, which is all about where you want the photos to come from, i.e. the Source. Under

the heading of Files, there will be a list of all the drives on your computer; and if you have any external media, such as a memory card, camera

or a mobile device, connected; that would be listed under the Devices heading.

So, in order to import the photos, you would select the location/folder of where you want your photos to come from. If that location contains subfolders which also has photographs that need

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Now that you have decided where you want the photos to get imported from, you have the option to choose how Lightroom handles your files.

Lightroom can copy or move the files to a new location, or just simply add them into the Lightroom catalog at their existing location.

You can decide this at the top of the Import dialog where it would give you four options:

COPY AS DNGThis copies the photos to

the folder you select, and

converts the files into the

DNG format during the

import process. The DNG

stands for the Digital

Negative, which is a RAW

image format devised by

Adobe. Whether you should

convert to DNG or not is a

big debate in photography

circles and needs a detailed

post for itself.

Selecting this option would

just add the photos into

Lightroom at their existing

copied or moved anywhere.

They will just be referenced

by the Lightroom catalog.

This option is great when

your files are already in an

organized structure, and in

the folders they should be;

and you just want to get

them to show in Lightroom.

Choosing this option will also

copy your photos onto the

folder you select, but it will

not convert them to the DNG

format. This option is usually

the option to select when

you are bringing your photos

in from a memory card.

This option will copy the

photos onto the new

location that you selected,

but they will no longer be

there at the original location.

This is a good option to

choose if you are re-

organizing your photos; but

usually not used otherwise.

WHAT DO YOU WANT LIGHTROOM TO DO WITH THE IMAGES?

COPY MOVE ADD

that, Lightroom allows you to perform some other operations on your photos while they are getting imported. You can do all this using the right panel of the Import dialog.

By default, Lightroom copies your photos to the Pictures folder in your user account, but you can

decide to place them somewhere else if you want. What we decided earlier was to have our photos

on an external hard drive. If you have your external hard drive connected to your computer, it should

show in the folder tree. Select the exact location where you would want to copy your files.

The next thing you would need to do is to arrange your photos in the folder structure and filenames

that you had decided earlier. The options under the Destination panel allow you to do that.

1. To copy/move your photos into the exact folder that you have selected, select Into One Folder in

the Organize drop-down menu.

2. Into Subfolder and enter

the name of the subfolder you want to create. This is recommended when you are using a

manually created folder structure. This is also the method I use. I use the same template for my

folder names as my filenames; just without the sequence numbers.

Folder Name Template: YY-MM-DD-Client Name-Project Name

3. To create a date-based folder structure automatically, select the By Date option from the

Organize drop down menu. Once you have that selected, it will show another drop down menu

right under it called Date Format. From this, you can select the date format you prefer. In my

lot of folders, you will not be able to remember what you shot when; but if you prefer this

italics. This is the preview of the folders that will be created with the settings you have selected.

There are three more panels on the right side of the Import dialog. These are completely optional

and if you feel overwhelmed, you can simply leave these at default and just press Import.

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WHERE ARE YOUR PHOTOS GOING?

05UNDERSTANDING THE LIGHTROOM INTERFACE

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Now that we are somewhat familiar with how Lightroom Lightroom interface.

Preview Area

Filmstrip Toolbar

Panel GroupsModule Picker

Identity Plate and Activity Center

1

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Filters

8

Breadcrumbs

5

2

6

4

3

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You can add your own branding to Lightroom using the Identity Plate. We cover the how a little later in this guide.

This same area is also used to display the progress of any active tasks. If you click on the identity plate, it will also show any background

tasks that may be running.

The preview area is where you see all of what happens to the photograph. This is the main work area.

The Module Picker on the top right is a quick way to navigate between the different modules Lightroom has. If you want even faster access,

you can open the Window menu and in there you will see that each module has a shortcut associated to it, which you can use to quickly

navigate through.

The bars on the left and right hand side of the Lightroom interface are called Panel groups. You can show/hide them by clicking on the little

al panels

which we shall discuss later in the guide. You can also show/hide these panel groups by their individual shortcuts [Top: F5, Bottom: F6, Left:

F7, Right: F8]

t view and number

of selected photos.

The filmstrip at the bottom displays all the photos in your current selection of folders/collections. This filmstrip panel is available in all the

modules.

1 IDENTITY PLATE AND ACTIVITY CENTER

2 PREVIEW AREA

3 MODULE PICKER

4 PANEL GROUPS

5 BREADCRUMBS

6 FILMSTRIP

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The toolbar appears at the bottom of the preview area and gives quick access to the most frequently used tools. You can press the T key to

which tools to show on

the toolbar.

On the right side, this bar contains certain filters. These filters allow you to only view photographs that fit a certain criteria, for example, only

d selecting the

criteria by which you want to filter your photos.

7 TOOLBAR

8 FILTERS

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ule. While we are

not going in depth here about what each individual panel does (not just yet), but there are a certain things, like little settings and some

shortcuts, you need to know about Panels in general.

UNDERSTANDING LIGHTROOM PANELS

Open/Close a PanelTo open or close a panel, you can click on the small arrow on the top right of the panel.

Display/Hide a PanelYou can right-click on the dark area next to the panel name to show a menu. In this menu will be listed all the panels available. If you use a particular panel, you can click on the name of that panel and that panel will no longer be visible. You can make it visible again by going to the same place and switching it back on.

Reset a Slider (Develop Module)In the Develop module, if you want to reset a particular slider back to 0 or its original position, just double click on the slider itself or the name

are grouped together, usually by a dark bar above and below them and have a title to them (like Tone, Presence etc.); you can reset that

(Mac) and clicking on the title of the group. You

added to it.

Adjustments (Develop Module)If you want that the adjustments you applied in a particular panel do not show on the photograph, you can toggle the switch on the top left of that panel to turn just

only in the Develop module, only for the Adjustment panels.

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Did you know that you can personalize Lightroom to the point where instead of the Lightroom logo, you can have your own name or logo there

on the top left corner?

Edit > Identity Plate Setup and on a mac Lightroom > Identity Plate Setup.

You can also do that, by right clicking on the Lightroom logo and selecting Edit Identity Plate.

This will open up a dialog box called Identity Plate Editor.

here or you can

add a graphic.

CUSTOMIZING IDENTITY PLATES

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r c

and size, and even a color. When you type something there, you will see a preview of it in the dialog box and also in the top left corner of the

Lightroom interface.

load a graphic. You can

upload your logo or signature using the Locate File

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Lightroom, you want to cut out all the

clutter, minimize the interface and just focus of viewing the photograph as

much as possible. So, here are a few tricks that can help you do that.

VIEWING YOUR PHOTOS BETTER

Hiding PanelsYou can open up some more screen space by hiding the panels that you

see around your main work area. One way to do that is to press the Tab

key. This will hide the panels on the left and the right. If you want to bring

them back, then you can press the Tab key again. Now, if you want to hide

all the panels, i.e. the top, bottom, left and right; the shortcut for that is

Shift+Tab key. Shift+Tab will bring them back again.

If you want to hide individual panels, you can either close them up by

clicking the small triangular arrows on all four sides, or you can close them

by the following shortcuts:

Top: F5 ; Bottom: F6 ; Left: F7 ; Right: F8

Lights OutAnother thing you can do to really focus on just the photograph is that you

can put the lights out so that only the photo shows and the rest of the

Lightroom interface is kind of dimmed out. You can do that by pressing the

L key. Pressing it once will dim it out slightly, pressing it one more time will

dim it out completely so that you only see the photograph and nothing else.

You can still navigate through your photos in this mode using your left and

right arrow keys.

Full ScreenIf you just want to see the image and nothing else, then you have the ability

to go full screen and just see you image. The way to do that is to simply

You can still navigate through your photos using the arrow keys. You can

also cycle through other variations of the full screen mode by pressing

Shift+F; pressing it once just removes the title bar. Pressing it again will also

BASIC KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS

G

E

C

N

D

Tab

Shift + Tab

F

Shift + F

L

T

/

Grid View

Loupe View

Compare View

Survey View

Develop Module

Show/Hide Left & Right Panels

Show/Hide All Panels

Full Screen

Cycle Through Full Screen Modes

Lights Out

Show/Hide Toolbar

Show/Hide Top Filter Bar

As soon as photographers get their images onto the computer, they want to jump right ahead to editing them. You can do that by going into

the Develop module on the top-right area of the top bar. Most of the new photographers tend to get overwhelmed when they see the number

you have to use

all of them.

06BASIC RETOUCHING (DEVELOP MODULE)

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true when your exposure or white balance or some other camera settings, are not what they should be.

Lightroomfor them. With the settings available in Lightroom, there is a lot more room in a RAW file than a JPEG file. With a RAW file, if you move a particular slider (e.g. Exposure) too much, it will go

RAW OR JPEG?

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When it comes to editing your photographs, there will be two things that you could be doing.

The JPEG will start to deteriorate after you move the sliders beyond a certain point. Other than that, when working with JPEGs, some of controls become more limited than what they are working with RAW files.

CORRECTIONSSomething's not right in the photograph and you want to fix that. The photo is too dark? too yellow? Too much noise? No detail in the shadows?

THE TWO TYPES OF EDITS

ENHANCEMENTSThe photo is okay, but would look much better if you just enhanced some things about it. Could the sky be more blue? Could the photo have more sharpness? More contrast? Would it be better in black and white?

analyse it, you might end up spending a lot of time moving different sliders without getting anywhere.

Most of the time, what you would want to do can be done with the Basic panel. So, what are the

different options that we have available in the Basic Panel. In this guide, we will only be taking a look at

out about the other sliders and panels on our website.

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If your photo is too warm, or too blue, that means your white balance was not what it should have been when you were shooting.

There are three ways in which you can adjust your white balance. You will find White Balance adjustments right on top in the Basic panel.

CORRECTIONS

1 WHITE BALANCE

which can result in your photos being either too warm, or too cold. The idea is to neutralize the colors in the photo, so that they come closest to what your eye was seeing.

1 - WB DropdownIf you open the dropdown menu for WB, you will find that it has all the same White Balance presets that

your camera had. They include As Shot, Daylight, Cloudy, Shade, and Tungsten, Fluorescent and

Flash settings. Do note that these would only be available for RAW files, and not JPEGs. You can

select the option for the lighting conditions you were shooting in, for example, if you were shooting

outside, you would choose Daylight. Or you could also select Auto, which aims to neutralize the colors

and sometimes works really well.

2 - Temperature and Tint SlidersAuto setting in there, and

you want some more control over the temperature of your photo, you can move the Temperature and

Tint sliders to get to a look which looks closer to what your eye was seeing. Moving the Temperature

colors cooler, and to the right will make it warmer. The Tint slider

adjusts any green or magenta tint if there is any. Moving the Tint slider to the left will make the photo

greener, and to the right will make it more magenta. In this case, you would just have to keep looking

at the photo as you move the sliders and make a judgement about when it looks neutral.

3 - White Balance PickerThe last, and perhaps the easiest, way to correct the white balance of your photo is to use the

eyedropper tool that appears alongside the sliders of the White Balance section. With this eyedropper

tool selected, you can go over the photograph and click on an area that should have been a neutral

grey. This will automatically neutralize any color

incorrect white balance.

White Balance Picker

3

WB Dropdown

1

Temperature and Tint Sliders

2

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2 EXPOSURE

I - Exposure: The exposure slider will adjust the overall brightness of the photograph. You can move the slider to

increments that your camera does; so, for example, a +1.0 of Exposure in Lightroom, would be the same as if you had overexposed the photo by 1 stop in the camera. The exposure slide works really well with photographs that are overall dark or bright. Since it affects the entire photograph, this slider falls short when it comes to photographs for which only some areas are dark or bright. For those, we have the other sliders.

II - Highlights: The Highlights slider only affect the bright areas of the photograph. If your highlights are too bright and

start seeing some detail.

III - Shadows: The Shadows slider works similar to the Highlights slider, just that it affects only the dark areas of the

up by moving the slider to the right, until you start seeing some detail.

IV - Whites: The Whites slider affects the brightest tone of the photograph. If some part of your photo is getting overexposed and getting clipped (i.e. going outside the range of what your camera could capture), then moving this slider to the left can bring it back. If you press Shift and double click on the word Whites, it will try to adjust the setting automatically, which sometimes does a pretty good job.

V - Blacks: The Blacks slider affects the darkest tone of the photograph. If some part of your photo is really underexposed and is clipping on the dark side, then moving the Blacks slider to the right would stop it from clipping. The same Auto thing works with this one as well; press Shift and double click on the word Blacks and it will apply the settings it thinks work best.

If your photo is over or underexposed, i.e. too bright or too dark, then you need to work on its Exposure to get it right. You can do this in the

t what those are and

what they do:

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To add a little punch to your photograph, and make them stand out, you have two sliders to help you with it.

I - Clarity: The Clarity slider adds a little punch to your photographs. Basically, it adds local area contrast, mostly on any

edges in your photograph, which when seen at full size makes the photo appear sharper and gives it a crisper

look. It is not recommended to go high on Clarity with portraits; as that accentuates any wrinkles or spots on

in it. Architecture and landscape photos are a good example of that.

II - Contrast: While the slider for this sits along with the exposure slider, it lifts your photograph right up. What it really does

is brightens up the highlights and darkens the shadow areas. How much should you do it, will depend entirely

know that if you begin to start losing detail in your highlights and shadow areas.

colors of your photograph to be more vivid and dynamic, you have two sliders that can help

you do that.

I - Vibrance: Increasing the Vibrance slider will enhance the colors in the photograph, making them more vibrant and

saturated. This slider is much more effective than the Saturation slider as it increases the saturation of the

lower-saturated colors more than those that already pretty saturated. I would recommend using this slider

instead of Saturation if you want to enhance the colors.

II - Saturation: The Saturation slider adjusts the saturation of all colors equally. So increasing it sometimes means that the

colors that were already very vivid, start clipping and losing detail in them. The Vibrance slider is much more

intelligent than this, hence using the Saturation slider is not recommended.

For your most basic corrections, these sliders would be more than enough to get you through. In order to

learn more about how you can really enhance your photographs, keep checking the blog.

ENHANCEMENTS

1 CONTRAST

2 COLOR

07EXPORTING YOUR PHOTOS

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Lightroom is a non-destructive editor, which

means that any of the changes we apply in Lightroom are never really getting applied to the original photos. So, how do we see those changes

onto our photographs? How do you get your photos outside of Lightroom to be able to share them online or print them?

softwares.

To export your finished photos, select them and then go to File menu > Export or press the Export button at the bottom of the left panel group in Library module.

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This will open up the Export dialog box and you will select the different settings from there based on how you want to use the i

a look at these settings and what they do:

Choose the destination location of the exported photos. You can select the folder by clicking on the Choose button and navigating to that

folder.

You can rename your files upon export. If you want to rename it to something simpler than what we had named them earlier, you can create a

filename template or choose from the existing ones to rename your files.

1 EXPORT LOCATION

2 FILE NAMING

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This lets you choose between JPEG, TIFF, PSD, DNG or Original. For most uses, a JPEG would be the way to go. You will need to select a

quality setting, which will also affect the file size. Anything below 60 on the quality setting would mean that small artefacts will start showing on

your photo. In other file formats, you would choose TIFF or PSD if you want to work on it in another software such as Photoshop. Original would

just create another RAW file with the metadata exported along with it as a sidecar file, while choosing DNG would create a RAW file with the

metadata embedded into it.

If you are exporting for screen/web, printing at a lab, this should be at sRGB. If you are printing at home, check with your printer's manual and

choose the color space it specifies.

This allows you to specify the dimensions

Exporting for Print: The size would depend on the

dimensions you want to print it at. So, you would check the Resize to Fit checkbox. Then from the dropdown right next to it, you would select

Width and Height. After that, from the units dropdown, you should select in since printing dimensions are mostly calculated in inches instead of

Exporting for Web: , you should

reduce the resolution to 72. Along with that, you should also reduce the pixel dimensions of the photo. You can do that by checking the Resize

to Fit checkbox, then from the dropdown menu, choose Long Edge, and add something between 800-1200px, as those are the good sizes for

the web ur photo

from the internet.

3 IMAGE FORMAT

4 COLOR SPACE

5 IMAGE SIZE

CONGRATULATIONS!Congratulations on having started your journey with Lightroom. There is much more to learn

stuck anywhere, you can do a quick search on our website, and you are sure to find a solution

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