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Introduction to Adobe Lightroom Beta
Article
6 of 100
Adobe
Lightroom is basically a digital photography image viewing
and processing application that is geared towards advanced
amateur and professional photographers who shoot in the RAW
image format, although it does handle JPEG,TIFF and PSD images
as well. The four basic modules of Adobe Lightroom are Library,
Develop, Slideshow and Print.
Library Module
In
the Library module you can view your photographic images in
a traditional grid pattern, enlarged loupe mode and in the
Compare mode where you can pick any number of images to compare
side by side. The film strip at the bottom of the window gives
you access to all the images in a shoot at all times, even
when you are in the Loupe mode. The tools panel provides you
with easy access to Quick Develop tools (exposure, brightness,
contrast, saturation), Info tools for Keywords and Image Rating,
and Metadata tools for camera, lens and exposure information.
The
library module has the ability to Import and Export individual
images and groups of images in a variety of formats. Image
files can be copied to the Lightroom library, moved to the
Lightroom library, or indexed to be accessed from an existing
file location, including external hard disk drives or DVDs.
Develop Module
The
Develop module starts where Adobe Camera Raw leaves off (over
100 RAW file formats supported) and adds to it practically
all the tools that you will need to enhance and correct your
digital photo image files. Retouching and other high end image
manipulations will still require Photoshop CS2 but most photographers
will probably find that Lightroom satisfies well over 90 percent
of their image processing needs.
Basic
tools included are White Balance, Range and Tone. More advanced
tools include Tone Curve, Crop & Straighten, Grayscale
Mixer, Split Toning, HSL Color Tuning, Detail, Lens Corrections
and Camera Calibrations. All the tools can be used for correcting
and adjusting JPEG, TIFF and PSD image files as well as RAW.
There is a range of existing presets for converting images
to grayscale, sepia and a number of contrast ranges plus a
provision for setting up your own custom presets to ease the
process of converting a large number of similar images or
applying a known range of custom adjustments.
Slideshow Module
The
Slideshow module is fairly simple but very elegant in execution.
It allows you to set borders and backgrounds, transition times
and overlay a signature for any number of slides. The slide
shows can be previewed in Lightroom, played on the computer
screen or exported as HTML, PDF or Flash files.
Print Module
The
Print module is really nice, without being insulting to professionals.
Too many image management applications get either incredibly
lazy or overly cute in the print setup stage of their application.
Lightroom gives you complete and easy control over the printing
of your images without having to go through stacks of dialogue
boxes and wasting time with useless options.
There
is a short list of template options and the ability to add
your own templates on the left hand panel. The right hand
panel gives you Image Settings, Page Layout Tools, Overlay
Options, and Print Job Settings. At the bottom of the settings
panel are two buttons for Page Setup and Print, how much easier
can it get?
P.S.
Please do not get upset if your personal experience and views
are different from my own. These opinions are mine exclusively
and do not reflect the views or policies of any of the manufacturers
mentioned in this article...... George
Mann |
