Week 28 - Lightroom 3

I don't think I've done a post yet about how I am storing, sorting and post-processing my images.  Well the answer is Lightroom 3.  Okay, that isn't the complete answer.  First I get the images from my camera, save them to a portable hard drive, save them again to a networked drive and then finally import them into Lightroom.  Do I really need that many backups?  I have one backup on the network to guard against hard drive failure and another portable backup to guard against fire or theft.  That feels like the right number for me.

That finally brings us back to Lightroom.  For years I just used the Canon software that came with the camera to sort and edit photo but found I was too limited by the tagging and sorting options and also needed better photo editing software.  I started reading reviews and blog posts on the subject and decided that, for my needs, Lightroom 3 and Photoshop Elements would be good.  So far, things have worked out well.  I still think about Photoshop CS5 but I need the capabilities of Elements so rarely that it's hard to justify the expense.  Lightroom manages my library and does almost all of my post-processing as well.  Only occasionally do I want an effect like in my recent post about false miniatures that requires Elements.

Here is a before and after example of a simple change in Lightroom that creates a great effect.  I simply used the saturation sliders which are split by colour and removed every colour except red and orange.  By the way, the before and after comparison is a feature of Lightroom, this is just a screen capture.

In addition to all the manual work that can be done in Lightroom, there are also some pre-sets that come with or can be added to Lightroom that can create some very interesting effects.  For example this picture is straight out of the camera.

 And here it is after applying on of the presets.