Best Raw Workflow (currently on lightroom 2)

[princeclan]

Hi,

I currently use Photoshop CS3 for all my editing. I downloaded the trial of Lightroom 2 with a view to buying it if i like it and to be honest i find it hard.

All i want to do is put my memory card in my laptop, load all the pics i took, sift through the good ones, ditch the bad and then either edit them im that program or open them in cs3

The problem i have is when i did that in lightroom it took ages to load all the DNG's up. Also does it autosave in lightroom? If so does it save them in dng again or jpeg?

If i did stick with lightroom is there any free lessons on the internet?

Matt

 

[walls]

in lightroom, when it imports the images it'll render a preview. This can speed up the program but initial viewing of the images may be slow for this reason. You can tell lightroom to only render minimal previews though.

Lightroom saves edits etc to a catalogue, it does nothing to the original raw files until you export them.

i think

 

[Craikeybaby]

^ What Walls said is correct, Lightroom does what it you tell it to do. The way I have mine set up on import it converts the files to DNG and puts them where I tell it to and creates the previews, I have selected medium previews as they are about the same size as my monitor, 1:1 previews get created automatically if I need to look at an image at that scale.

Lightroom does not make any changes to your files, it stores a list of what you have changed and applies them to the previews and when you export to a new file. You can set Lightroom to right this list of changes to the DNG file automatically (you can tell if this hasn't been done, as there will be three dots at the top of the thumbnail).

There are loads of tutorials online, all you need to do is Google "Lightroom tutorials"

 

[Chappers]

A quick way to edit your pictures and save time is when the import module starts, you get thumbs of the images on the card. Go through these quickly and delete any obvious rubbish. Also don't convert to dng until after you've reviewed the images. You don't want to waste time converting images that end up in the trash.

For tutorials try the NAPP site.

Also there are some videos over at Adobe TV, Julianne Kost has some which are ideal for new users.

Like all new programes Lightroom takes a short time to get used to, but it's worth the small effort it takes