Introduction to Lightroom 4

About This Course

Do you have a lot of images to manage? Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4 is a fantastic tool for any digital photographer who needs to edit and sort images quickly. Whether you're a busy parent shooting lots of pictures or a professional photographer with many clients, Lightroom 4 will help you get the results you want in a lot less time.

In this course, you'll see how Lightroom 4 can help you prepare, edit, and organize your photos quickly and effectively. Using Lightroom 4's non-destructive editing, you'll be able to control how you edit your images and make additional alterations later. You'll learn to apply changes to multiple images while developing an efficient image processing workflow. You'll also see how to organize, tag, and make collections with Lightroom's powerful organization tools and create customized slideshows and presentations. You can use Lightroom 4 as a companion to Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, or other digital photo editors, and you can export or print your work in exactly the size or format you need.

So put some polish on your photos, save time, impress clients, and stay organized as you unlock the mysteries of Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4. The hands-on, easy-to-follow exercises in this course will help you perfect your collections of digital photos!

About The Instructor

This course includes a knowledgeable and caring instructor who will guide you through your lessons, facilitate discussions, and answer your questions. The instructor for this course will be Beverly Schulz.

Beverly Schulz is a freelance photographer and a graduate of the New York Institute of Photography's Professional Photographer's program. She teaches a number of classes in digital photography and has more than 25 years of classroom instruction experience. Her writing and photography have been published in a number of magazines. She has traveled extensively and participated in onsite photography workshops as well as independent photo quests. In addition to teaching and photographic work, she provides consulting services for digital photographers and clients.

Syllabus

A new section of each course starts monthly. If enrolling in a series of two or more courses, please be sure to space the start date for each course at least two months apart.

Week 1

Wednesday - Lesson 01

In our first lesson, we'll take some time to be sure you're comfortable with the way the online classroom works, downloading images for class, and where things are in Lightroom 4. You'll learn how to create an organizational system that works with Lightroom and keeps your images easily available to you. With Lightroom's import tools, you'll be able to add keywords to images and add personalized metadata for easy searches and Internet security.

Friday - Lesson 02

As we continue our discussion about libraries and importing images to Lightroom, you'll be pleased to see how many options you have! In this lesson, we'll discuss shortcuts for photographers working with Lightroom and several different ways to speed up the import process. We'll also explore a variety of methods to add keywords and metadata and use them to search and sort your images. By the end of this lesson, you'll have all the tools you need to import, sort, and export images for a clean start to managing your images.

Week 2

Wednesday - Lesson 03

Today we'll explore how Lightroom works behind the scenes—something you'll want to know as we move into developing or making changes to your images with Lightroom. With an understanding of how the Library module works for importing, organizing, and exporting images, you're ready to work with Lightroom's Quick Develop tools. In this lesson, you'll see how to make quick changes, not just to one image, but to groups and large batches of images. This is just the beginning of our journey through Lightroom's Develop tools. You'll also learn how to work with multiple images and make virtual copies—all part of Lightroom's quick and easy developing tools.

Friday - Lesson 04

Today, we'll begin our exploration of the Develop module and the many tools for editing and adjusting images. You'll have lots of hands-on practice with tools for straightening, rotating, and cropping images. It may seem like a straightforward subject, but Lightroom has many variations, so you can perfect both the shape and the size of your image. You may prefer to straighten based on a horizon in the image, or by fine-tuning the alignment against a grid. You can crop to a variety of different preset shapes, create your own custom shape, or crop by hand. You'll be pleased with the results!

Week 3

Wednesday - Lesson 05

Color is an integral part of the perfect print, and it's important to see how Lightroom helps you adjust your overall color tone and lighting with several sophisticated tools. In today's lesson, you'll see how to pick the best white balance for your images, use a histogram to adjust the light, and find and correct problem areas with exposure clippings. These changes may be simple, but the right color and lighting bring your pictures to life, and you'll want to start the development process with these adjustments!

Friday - Lesson 06

With today's lesson, we'll complete our study of the Basic panel, and you'll have quite a collection of tools at your disposal from the Develop module. We'll focus on color today, and you'll see how a subtle adjustment can clear away muted tones. We'll work with contrast, shadows, highlights, saturation, vibrance, and more. You may not know exactly what each of these does as we begin, but you'll find it's easy to experiment until you like what you see—and before you know it, you'll master the tools!

Week 4

Wednesday - Lesson 07

Next in our study of Lightroom, you'll have fun seeing the difference when you sharpen an image. Photographers work hard to shoot crisp images, but at times . . . things don't go as planned, and you'll be able to put the snap back into your images with Lightroom's tools. We'll work with sharpening and noise reduction tools today, and then you'll see how to apply any of the editing options to batches of images, bringing Lightroom's two best features together. It just gets better and better!

Friday - Lesson 08

We'll continue our discussion on synchronizing or copying changes from one image to many in this lesson. But not all changes are meant to be copied, and you'll work with several tools like Red Eye Correction, Spot Removal, and the Adjustment Brush so that you can see how Lightroom corrects subtle issues in selected areas. This lesson will wrap up our study of the editing tools in Lightroom, and you won't be disappointed!

Week 5

Wednesday - Lesson 09

We've taken the first few weeks to see how to import images to Lightroom and develop them with an amazing array of tools. Now it's time to see what we can do with these images outside of Lightroom. Today's lesson is on exporting Lightroom's images, and you'll see that there are many options for size, shape, and further editing. Whether you're working with raw or JPEG, Lightroom will efficiently process your images, save your changes, and provide you images you can upload to printers, create scrapbooks with, or use with Adobe's companion products: Photoshop and Photoshop Elements.

Friday - Lesson 10

In today's lesson, you'll see how to use Lightroom's Print module to create a variety of output options. Whether you print at home or send your images out to print, Lightroom has a number of menus you'll want to be familiar with. You'll see how to print single images, create contact sheets, and customize layouts for many purposes. Once you've mastered the Print module, you'll be ready to print with all the advantages of using Lightroom.

Week 6

Wednesday - Lesson 11

Lightroom has fans in two different areas: developing and organization. Today we'll go back to the organizational side and see how to rate images with star ratings and color labels, and we'll also look at how to create collections. With all these tools, you'll be able to categorize and find things with very little effort. It makes Lightroom a fast tool for locating images and moving forward in your workflow. You can work simply with Quick Collection and Target Collection, or you can create a sophisticated network of your own collections!

Friday - Lesson 12

In our last lesson, we'll show off a bit with Lightroom's slideshow and identity plates. You'll see how to create both a PDF presentation and an MP4 Slideshow with music and special effects from your Lightroom collections. You'll also build an Identity Plate that you can use both in printing and presentations. With all the things you've learned in Lightroom, this is a great way to share your images with friends, family, and clients!

Requirements

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4 or an updated version of 4 (for example: 4.3). (Software must be installed and fully operational before the course begins.) If you have any difficulty updating to 4.3, please visit this Adobe Help screen for assistance: http://forums.adobe.com/message/4836075.

Windows

• Intel® Pentium® 4 or AMD Athlon® 64 processor
• Microsoft® Windows Vista or Windows 7 with Service Pack 1 or Windows 8
• 2GB of RAM
• 1GB of available hard-disk space
• 1024x768 display
• DVD-ROM drive (if installing from DVD)
• Internet connection required for Internet-based services*

Mac OS

• Multicore Intel processor with 64-bit support
• Mac OS X v10.6.8, 10.7, or v10.8
• 2GB of RAM
• 1GB of available hard-disk space
• 1024x768 display
• DVD-ROM drive (if installing from DVD)
• Internet connection required for Internet-based services*

Internet access, e-mail, the Microsoft Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox Web browser, and the Adobe Flash and PDF plug-ins (two free and simple downloads you obtain at http://www.adobe.com/downloads by clicking Get Adobe Flash Player and Get Adobe Reader).
Note: Students will need to download zip files and extract images for use in class. We provide basic directions for this, but students should be comfortable with downloading files, saving them on their computers, and locating them for use. Both Macintosh and PC users are welcome, but Mac users should be aware that the course is written using a PC. Mac-PC differences are minimal and students with Macs will only need to make a few standard PC-to-Mac conversions, and we include notes when those need to be made. Instructors have Mac computers and software available to answer questions. The software runs nearly the same on both.