What is Adobe Photoshop Lightroom?

Many photographers use Adobe Lightroom as their central hub for managing and processing images. One main reason many photographers prefer Lightroom is it's non-destructive approach to image editing. This means that the changes we make to images aren’t saved directly over the original files, but instead stored in the Lightroom catalog.

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom in 60 Seconds

At its heart, Lightroom is the combination of several apps that every photographer needs, divided into workspaces called modules. One of the best tools in Lightroom is an organizer for your digital images, the Library module. It’s a great way to apply metadata such as keywords that help you tame a large image collection. Lightroom also includes a RAW image processor in the Develop module, which is used to correct your images. This learning guide features tutorials to help you learn these two key modules.

Get Organized and Master Metadata

With digital cameras, it's not hard to produce thousands or even tens of thousands of image files each year. Lightroom is a great tool for taming your archive.

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  Post-Processing
  Getting Started With Adobe Lightroom: The Photo Workflow
  Andrew Childress
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  Photography
  How to Set Up Lightroom Classic to Store Your Photo Archive Safely
  Andrew Childress
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  Digital Asset Management
  Implementing a Controlled Vocabulary in Adobe Lightroom
  Andrew Childress

Image Corrections and Image Processing

Another key use for Adobe Lightroom is to correct and process images visually. This means making adjustments to exposure, tone, color, and details. Lightroom is a non-destructive parametric image editor, meaning that the changes you make live in the Lightroom and your original image files are untouched, which is a safe way to work. These tutorials will give you some ideas about what Lightroom can do to help process your images.

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  Black and White
  Creatively Converting Photos to Black and White With Lightroom
  Harry Guinness
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  Post-Processing
  Mastering the Histogram in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom
  Josh Johnson
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  Post-Processing
  A Five Minute Guide to Cropping in Lightroom
  Andrew Childress

Export and Deliver Images from Lightroom

Once you've finished working with your images in Lightroom it's time to export them, either to work with further using the sharp fine-tuning tools in a raster image editor like Adobe Photoshop or to send to your clients and friends. These tutorials will provide guidelines on how to put the finishing touches on your images and export them.

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  Deliverables
  Best Practices: How to Deliver Digital Image Files to Your Clients Over the Internet
  Harry Guinness
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  Compression
  How to Export JPGs for the Web from Adobe Photoshop Lightroom
  Andrew Childress
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  Deliverables
  3 Smart Ways to Deliver Work to Your Photography Clients
  Andrew Childress

Related Course: Adobe Lightroom CC for Photographers

For a complete introduction to correcting and processing images check out our course, Adobe Lightroom CC for Photographers. You'll find out how to start your image collection, how to organize your photos, how to correct them so that they look their best, and more.