LR 5 Arriving in Mail Today - Advice on Where to Start?

[Macmahon]

Sue
I'd start with P22 in this e-book (I'm not affiliated, there's a lot of good stuff in there) and with the specific Q&As here as they crop up for you.
Any of Julianne Kost's videos (which are free) are worthwhile but start right at the beginning.

The first place to start is getting your head around cataloging and importing first. The image manipulation stuff in the Develop module is child's play - literally. You can play about and start over as often as you like while you're learning without damaging a single pixel!

RE cataloging, you need a strategy that works for you: but as you'll have seen there are as many different strategies in use by CiC members as there are members. For my money, Adobe's advice, which is consistent with the way they built the software, is the advice to follow in that respect.

Good luck, and welcome to the LR camp.

Tim

[Macmahon]

Sue
I'd start with P22 in this e-book (I'm not affiliated, there's a lot of good stuff in there) and with the specific Q&As here as they crop up for you.
Any of Julianne Kost's videos (which are free) are worthwhile but start right at the beginning.

The first place to start is getting your head around cataloging and importing first. The image manipulation stuff in the Develop module is child's play - literally. You can play about and start over as often as you like while you're learning without damaging a single pixel!

RE cataloging, you need a strategy that works for you: but as you'll have seen there are as many different strategies in use by CiC members as there are members. For my money, Adobe's advice, which is consistent with the way they built the software, is the advice to follow in that respect.

Good luck, and welcome to the LR camp.

Tim

[Mike Buckley]

Thanks for the tip about that eBook, Tim. If I ever make the switch to LR5, I'll probably purchase it.

Sue: That eBook is the sort of comprehensive learning source that I recommended earlier in the thread that you methodically follow.

[davidedric]

Sue, you've had lots of excellent advice on how to methodically get to grips with Lightroom, but no-one seems to have mentioned having fun

Now, the image management stuff is important: catalogues, keywords, ratings and so on. If you get to grips with it sooner rather than later you'll save yourself some hassle down the road . It is also, in my opinion, desperately dull

So I would get some images imported, then get on over to the Development Module and with guidance from one of Julianne Kost's videos start playing around. Find out just how easy it is to change the appearance of your images. And of course you can play around with complete safety because nothing you can do can ever affect your underlying image.

+1 to signing up with lightroomforums.net They are a very helpful bunch and quick to respond.

Welcome on board

Dave

[Mike Buckley]

no-one seems to have mentioned having fun

I would have mentioned it except for just one teensy weensy problem: learning how to use software is the farthest thing from fun for me. Just in case Sue feels the same way (I have no idea about that), that explains why I hope she settles on a learning process that removes as much of the pain as possible.

[paldon]

I am also learning LR 5 and I think this is a great resource:

http://tv.adobe.com/show/learn-lightroom-5/

Some are better than others but they are all good materials.

[suenewbie]

You are all so kind for sharing your experience and advice with me. I found all the posts helpful (especially the one about getting that check at 1000 posts ) and have started going through some of the materials suggested. I'm sure I'll have questions and may ask some of them here or some on the LR forum mentioned here.

And, odd as it seems, I find learning software to be fun...for a while. I'm sure I'll work my way through several of the training materials and, at some point, get tired of "pretending" to use LR and just start importing some real images to play with.

Thank you all so much. What a great resource this forum is.

[Sponge]

The first thing I'd do, if you haven't already, is set a master folder on your computer called 'Lightroom Photos', for example, and then make a subfolder for this year. That will be where you point Lightroom. Maybe that's obvious but that's "where to start" in my opinion.

As far as rating photos goes, I follow Scott Kelby's method which is to only select your best photos from the day with the P key (which sets it as a 'Pick') and the ones you want to toss with the X key. Personally, I would waste away too much time trying to decide if a photo is a 3 or 4 star photo so I don't bother.

[suenewbie]

Quick question (probably one of many to come): Once I've designated one or more photos to be "published" to Flickr by dragging them to my (pre-set-up) Flickr Photostream in Lightroom's "Publish Services" panel, how do I remove them from this panel? In other words, I dragged them there but HAVE NOT PRESSED THE PUBLISH BUTTON yet. Is there a way to selectively remove photos from this process?

Thanks!

[Macmahon]

Sue
I've not used Publish to Flickr, but assuming the Publish Panel works like the other collections I'm guessing that if you Right-Click on any item you'll get an opportunity to remove the image from there. Because of the way collections work that will have no impact on the original image.
Cheers
Tim

Edit: I just did this using Jeffrey Friedls Flickr Publish Plugin.
Just click (or double click - can't remember) on the photostream to open it, and right-click on the photo you want to remove. (That's as hard as it gets in Lightroom!)

[suenewbie]

Sue
I've not used Publish to Flickr, but assuming the Publish Panel works like the other collections I'm guessing that if you Right-Click on any item you'll get an opportunity to remove the image from there. Because of the way collections work that will have no impact on the original image.
Cheers
Tim

Edit: I just did this using Jeffrey Friedls Flickr Publish Plugin.
Just click (or double click - can't remember) on the photostream to open it, and right-click on the photo you want to remove. (That's as hard as it gets in Lightroom!)

Got it - thanks!!

[LocalHero1953]

+1 to the advice to ignore all the varied advice you will get - not only will learning your own approach be more productive, but you're more likely to remember it.

So I'm not offering advice to be ignored, just my own practice....
- I import (as copies) files direct into LR from the camera memory card which I plug into the computer.
- I place all files in folders labelled with the year; within each year I place them in ad hoc folders named by subject, photo shoot, location: anything that helps me identify it.
- I use an import preset that names each file in the batch with a common name (that I give it on import), date and file number.
- After import I close LR, and back up all images to an external hard drive. Then I will reformat the memory card. I have another hard drive that I occasionally back up to, kept near the front door of the house (I'm paranoid).
- I then skim through the files, deleting any that aren't up to standard. I am fairly ruthless: I don't want to be reminded of failures. Many others do not agree with this approach and keep everything.
- I don't rate files or keyword them. I keep starting out to keyword them, but it becomes too much of an effort.

More generally, I don't want to become too reliant on one piece of software, and when I am doing portrait shoots of the angels I'd like to think that those left behind could see my images. So when I have finished editing the raw file, I create a JPG or TIFF. I keep it in LR (you can set LR to stack all such files so they don't clutter up your view). I have also selected the option in LR that saves your edits with the original file, rather than in LR's catalogue, though I'm less confident that this will help other software to read LR's edits.

[suenewbie]

I've been going through Julieanne Kost's videos and they're really good! The way she explains things works very well for me so, to those of you who recommended her videos, thank you for the great tip!

I find that what I'm doing is playing one or two of her videos in topic order (starting with the very beginning ones). Then I get into LR with some of my own photos and practice. That inevitably brings up questions and problems. At that point, I search through her videos until I find one that addresses my question, even if the video is out of sequence. Once I get an answer to my questions, I try out the answer on my photos, then return to the "proper" sequence of the videos.

Looks like there's a LOT to learn, but I'm impressed and pleased with the range of functionality in LR and am excited to see the impact it will have on my images over time.

Meanwhile, I was out today practicing some of the skills that required this journey into LR in the first place - photographing a polo match to improve my action photography and focusing skills. I'm not particularly interested in polo (though I love horses), so I may not publish any of today's shots in this forum or even on Flickr, but it will give me a bunch of "unimportant" photos on which to practice PP in LR.

Anyway - thanks again, everyone!

[davidedric]

Spot on Sue