How I Use Lightroom to Edit Faster

One question I see asked a lot by Photographers is - should I use Adobe Photoshop or Adobe Lightroom? I'm pretty convinced you'll need both programs in your tool belt, but I asked the same question up front, too. After using Lightroom for a while I won't go back to just using Photoshop!

I resisted Adobe Lightroom for a long time.. I loved Photoshop and thought that great results could only come from that program. My friend Naomi at Nomi Photography encouraged me to give Lightroom a try. Boy I'm glad I did!

Editing photos in Lightroom is SO easy- and it's fast. I open all the photos from one session, and I can cull quickly by using the "reject" flag on the photos I don't want. (Want to see a video of how I do this? Click here to receive it in your inbox!)

Once I have my photos narrowed down, I can do color adjustments, run presets (equivalent of filters in Photoshop) straighten & crop, and sharpen. Once I get the look I want, I can select several photos from the same sequence - and copy that look to all of the photos in that sequence. This is called "syncing." Once I found out about syncing, I thought this was the best thing that had happened to my editing world! I can edit 10 (or more - however many I want!) photos at one time!

After editing it's easy to select all the photos I've just worked on, and export them to a folder on my computer or external hard drive. I can export them as JPEGs or RAWs - whatever I need! I can even select an option to add a photographer's logo to each photo in the sequence. No more adding a logo image to each and every file!

Now, please don't think I've broken up with Photoshop - I certainly haven't. There are several features that make it an essential part of a Photographer & Editor's workflow. However, for color correcting and basic straightening/sharpening, you really can't beat Lightroom.