Up until recently, I had been using Photoshop Elements 8 to edit and organize all of my pictures. I did a pretty good job of keeping up on the labels and organization, and had a pretty good system down.
Then Adobe came out with CS5, and I had been drooling over that, and sort of drooling over Lightroom.
Well, right after Thanksgiving, I got a Facebook message from one of the people I follow saying that Amazon was offering a "huge" discount on Lightroom 3 for like 8.5 minutes. I looked at Greg and said "I know what I want for Christmas!" and headed over to Amazon to see, sure enough, Lightroom 3 was selling for $125. Typically, it's $300. So, I clicked on "add to cart" and became the proud owner of Lightroom 3. Yay!
Fast forward (or is it fastforward?) to Christmas. I open the box and install the software. I could almost hear angels singing as I'm doing it, I was so excited.
Then, I started to use it and quickly became frustrated and annoyed because wow! was it different. And complicated. And hard.
Oh, also, around this time, I had the opportunity to get Photoshop CS4. Which I did. Which is also confusing. I know. I shouldn't really complain, right? At least I am fortunate enough to even be able have stuff like that. But still. It's confusing.
Anyway, I am finally starting to see the "benfits" of Lightroom, although I can't say I'm a total adict yet. I have figured out the organiaztion part, which is really important for me since I take so many pictures. And the developing part (editing) is cool too. Oh....it's also pushed me back to shooting in raw (different from IN the raw for those of you wondering), which I got away from. I didn't want to at first because I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to get my pictures into jpg form to be able to post here, but once I figured out how to do an export preset, it's super duper easy! The only downside I've figured out now for shooting in raw is that it literally takes like 10 minutes to upload some of my pictures to the place I get prints from. But.....when I finally order them, I bet they look fantastic!
Today, I think Lightroom is more friend than foe, but.....it took a while.
Your thoughts on Lightroom? Easy? Hard? Love? Hate?
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