Lightroom 4: Guide to Organisation

For anyone with over 1,000 digital photos, keeping them organised starts to become a challenge. Finding any particular image can take hours if not days as you sort through flash cards and miscellaneous folders on your laptop or external drives. Adobe Lightroom was created just for you, but it does much more than just catalogue photos.

In many ways, Lightroom has become a replacement for Photoshop. It’s my go-to tool for 95% of my photo editing. This month Version Four hit the store shelves and luckily a complete guide to this newest version is also available. Written by Scott Kelby, the foremost author on all things Adobe, The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4 Book for Digital Photographers is a 490 page bible for this software.

Realising that most newcomers to the program don’t want to be overwhelmed with its capabilities, Kelby has organised this book into convenient lessons – usually just four to six steps for each. With a profuse index, it’s easy to find just the information you need when you need it. Need to know how to add specific keywords to your images, it’s on page 78. Need to know how to properly change names of your digital files already in the catalogue, it’s on page 82.

Started as a cataloguing tool, Lightroom is still the best way to save your photos and Kelby starts off with 107 pages on the best way to input and organise your photos. Whether you shoot tethered or to a memory card, he gives tips on getting those images into the catalogue and suggestions for backing up your files at the same time. Why so many pages? So you can find your files when you want them.

You’ll discover more ways to search than you ever imagined. How about that one crazy fisheye photo you shot with your friends Nikon 10.5mm lens? You can find it in a snap using the metadata search by lens type used when the photo was shot.

We all know we should back up our work, but honestly, how many times do we do it? With Lightroom it can all be done at the same time you are downloading into your laptop or desktop. No more excuses now!

Shooting video with your DSLR? Lightroom will import that to. Starting with Version 4, it also acts as a very decent editor. In addition to trimming your video, you can now apply special effects like applying curves, adding contrast, changing hues or matching colours across multiple videos.

Once your photos have been imported into the catalogue, it’s time to select the winners and make any final adjustments. Chapters five through eight cover common problems and their solutions.  Need to make your sky bluer – see page 226. Got dust spots – turn to page 244. Not enough contrast to make your photo ‘pop’ off the page – fix it on page 161.

After fixing those best shots, Lightroom continues to make your life easier outputting them however you choose. Learn how to automatically upload them to your social media site with just two clicks – page 288.  Create customisable slide shows starting on page 354. Make fantastic collage prints in a snap by turning to page 386.

This book is for Lightroom beginners and advanced users. It’s available in spiral bind and regular binding from KelbyTraining.com.

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