Lightroom 3 101: Core Lightroom 3

47 videos | 176 minutes | by Dan Moughamian

Simplify your photography from start to finish…Dan Moughamian shows you how!

Whether you’re a professional photographer or a passionate amateur, you want three things: perfect images, effortlessly organized, with great publishing and delivery options. Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 is the industry-leading digital darkroom that delivers all three.

In this three-hour tutorial, fine-art photographer and veteran Photoshop instructor Dan Moughamion shows you how to use Lightroom to quickly and effortlessly import, organize, edit, and showcase your images.

Dan dives first into the new Tethered Capture and Import features, showing you how to make your photography workflow more efficient from the start. You’ll learn to capture shots directly from Lightroom, or quickly browse all of your drives to add selected shots to your catalog while effortlessly including metadata and keywords.

Next, Dan shows you how to organize your image catalog so you can sort, find, and group specific images-or types of images--fast. Learn the best ways to compare similar photos while making selections for clients or personal projects. Create Smart
Collections that automatically find and gather the images that meet your criteria. You'll learn key pointers for handling metadata, synchronizing your folders, and updating your library.

When it's time to edit and adjust your images, Lightroom's Develop module offers state-of-the-art image processing, including new noise reduction and lens correction tools. Dan shows you how to easily alter contrast, tune color, convert to black-and-white, add grain, reduce noise, adjust sharpness, and perfect the finest details of your image. You’ll learn to obliterate Luminance Noise from high ISO shots and nail down your exposure with the new custom point Curves. You’ll define color relationships with the powerful Targeted Adjustment tool and the HSL panel, and style your black and white compositions with elegant Split Toning controls. You'll even learn to prepare your bracketed exposures for Photoshop CS5's HDR Pro feature (which you can learn all about in Photoshop 105: Image Retouching & Adjustment.)

Finally, Lightroom offers many options for creatively sharing your finished
shots in print, online, and in presentations. Dan shows you how to get started with elegant web galleries, customized print layouts, dynamic slide show videos with music, and even how to integrate with photo-sharing sites like Flikr.