Adobe Lightroom Ebook

The Adobe Lightroom eBook for Digital Photographers
By Scott Kelby
...............................................
Publisher: New Riders
Pub Date: March 21, 2006
Print ISBN-10: 0-321-43736-5
Print ISBN-13: 978-0-321-43736-5
Pages: 177
Table of Contents | Index
You've just downloaded the brand-new, free Beta version of Lightroom, the revolutionary new
workflow application from Adobe. Now what? Pick up this ebook, written by best-selling author
Scott Kelby, to give you all the dirt you need on Lightroom to allow you to work faster,
smarter, and more creatively. You'll learn the essential shortcuts you need to know to save
hours every week, the best ways to import and organize your images, which tools and features
to really hone in on to get the most out of this application, how to manage your photos like a
pro, plus all the inside secrets on processing raw images. You'll also learn how to use Lightroom
together with Photoshop to get the best, most efficient workflow, along with the best images.
Finally, the book is loaded with tips, tricks, and insights that will absolutely transform the way
you work with digital images!
By Scott Kelby
...............................................
Publisher: New Riders
Pub Date: March 21, 2006
Print ISBN-10: 0-321-43736-5
Print ISBN-13: 978-0-321-43736-5
Pages: 177
Table of Contents | Index
Copyright
Acknowledgments
Other Books By Scott Kelby
About the Author
An Unexpected Q & A Section
Chapter 1. Importing Getting Your Photos into Lightroom
Getting Your Photos Into Lightroom
Where Your Photos Wind Up
Chapter 2. Navigation Finding Your Way Around
Working with Lightroom's Modules
Putting the Focus on Your Photos
Adding Your Studio's Identity to Lightroom's Interface
Chapter 3. Library Organizing Your Photos
Separating the Keepers from the Losers
Sorting Your Photos in the Grid View
One-Click Sorting by Using Collections
Staying Organized by Assigning Keywords
Chapter 4. Quick Develop Making Minor Adjustments
Using Quick Develop for Quick Fixes
Editing Multiple Images the Easy Way
Chapter 5. Develop Making Serious Adjustments
The Basic Adjustments Aren't Basic
Using the Tone Curve
Converting to Black and White, and Split Toning
Adjusting Individual Colors Using HSL Color Tuning
Sharpening and Reducing Noise
Fixing Problems Caused by the Camera
Cropping and Straightening
Overcoming Color Problems Inherent in Some Cameras
Creating Your Own Presets
Jumping from Lightroom to Photoshop and Back
Chapter 6. Slideshow Sharing Your Photos Onscreen
Getting Photos Into Your Slide Show
Customizing the Look of Your Slides
Customizing the Background
Adding and Editing Drop Shadows
Adding Text to Your Slides
Saving Your Custom Layout as a Template
Playing Your Slide Show
Exporting Your Slide Show to the Web
Chapter 7. Print Printing Your Photos
Printing Essentials
Printing Contact Sheets (or More Than One Photo on One Page)
Inside Back Cover
Index
Copyright
THE ADOBE LIGHTROOM EBOOK FOR DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHERS
Published by
New Riders
Copyright 2006 by Scott Kelby
First edition: March 2006
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form, by any
means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage
and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher, except for the inclusion of
brief quotations in a review.
Composed in Cronos and Helvetica by NAPP Publishing
Trademarks
All terms mentioned in this book that are known to be trademarks or service marks have been
appropriately capitalized. New Riders cannot attest to the accuracy of this information. Use of a
term in the book should not be regarded as affecting the validity of any trademark or service
mark.
Lightroom is a registered trademark of Adobe Systems, Inc.
Photoshop is a registered trademark of Adobe Systems, Inc.
Windows is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation.
Warning and Disclaimer

This book is designed to provide information about Adobe Lightroom for digital photographers.
Every effort has been made to make this book as complete and as accurate as possible, but no
warranty of fitness is implied.
The information is provided on an as-is basis. The author and New Riders shall have neither
liability nor responsibility to any person or entity with respect to any loss or damages arising from
the information contained in this book or from the use of the discs or programs that may
accompany it.
The Adobe Lightroom eBook for Digital Photographers Team
CREATIVE DIRECTOR
Felix Nelson
TECHNICAL EDITORS
Cindy Snyder
Kim Doty
PRODUCTION EDITOR
Kim Gabriel
PRODUCTION MANAGER
Dave Damstra
COVER DESIGNED BY
Jessica Maldonado
COVER PHOTOS COURTESY OF

iStockphoto.com and Scott Kelby
987654321
www.newriders.com
www.scottkelbybooks.com
Dedication
For the cutest little baby in the whole wide world, Kira Nicole Kelby.
Acknowledgments
First, I want to thank my amazing wife Kalebra. We've been married 16 years, and just looking at
her still makes my heart skip a beat, and again reminds me how much I adore her, how genuinely
beautiful she is, and how I couldn't live without her. She's the type of woman love songs are
written for, and I am, without a doubt, the luckiest man alive to have her as my wife.
Secondly, I want to thank my 9-year-old son Jordan, who spent many afternoons pulling me
away from writing this book so we could play Shadow the Hedgehog or head to the putt-putt
course. God has blessed our family with so many wonderful gifts, and I can see them all reflected
in his eyes. I'm so proud of him, so thrilled to be his dad, and I dearly love watching him grow to
be such a wonderful little guy, with such a tender and loving heart. (You're the greatest, little
buddy.)
I also want to thank my newborn daughter Kira Nicole Kelby for being such a little sweet-ie. My
wife and I knew we were having a baby girl, we just didn't realize that she would in fact be "the
cutest little baby in the whole wide world."
I also want to thank my brother Jeffrey for being such a positive influence in my life, for always
taking the high road, for always knowing the right thing to say, and just the right time to say it,
and for having so much of our dad in you. I'm honored to have you as my brother and my friend.
My heartfelt thanks go to the entire team at KW Media Group, who every day redefine what
teamwork and dedication are all about. They are truly a special group of people, who come
together to do some really amazing things (on really scary deadlines), and they do it with class,
poise, and a can-do attitude that is truly inspiring. I'm so proud to be working with you all.
Thanks to my layout and production crew. In particular, I want to thank my friend and Creative
Director Felix Nelson for his limitless talent, creativity, input, and just for his flat-out great ideas.
Thanks to my in-house editors Kim Doty and Cindy Snyder who put the techniques through
rigorous testing and made sure that I didn't slip any of my famous typos past the goalie. Also,
thanks to Dave Damstra and his amazing crew for giving the book such a tight, clean layout.
Thanks to my compadre Dave Moser, whose tireless dedication to creating a quality product
makes every project we do better than the last. Thanks to Jean A. Kendra for her support, and for
keeping a lot of plates in the air while I'm writing these books. A special thanks to my Executive
Assistant Kathy Siler for all her hard work and dedication, and for showing great restraint when
her Redskins beat my Buccaneers in the playoffs.
Thanks to my Publisher Nancy Ruenzel, and the incredibly dedicated team at Peachpit/New
Riders. You are very special people doing very special things, and it's a real honor to get to work
with people who really just want to make great books. Also many thanks to the awesome Rachel
Tiley, Ted Waitt, and to marketing maverick Scott Cowlin.
I owe a special debt of gratitude to George Jardine, photographic evangelist at Adobe, for all his
help. Getting detailed information on a Beta version of anything is a challenge, but George went
out of his way numerous times, and the book is better because of it. Also thanks to Kevin Connor
and John Nack at Adobe for their help, and for letting me unload on them because Beta 1 didn't
support music with slide shows.
Also thanks to my "Photoshop Guys" Dave Cross and Matt Kloskowski, for being such excellent
sounding boards for the development of this book. You guys are the best!
Thanks to my friends at Adobe Systems: Terry White, Addy Roff, Cari Gushiken, Russell Brady, Jill
Nakashima, Julieanne Kost, and Russell Preston Brown. Gone but not forgotten: Barbara Rice,
Rye Livingston, Bryan Lamkin, and Karen Gauthier.
Thanks to my mentors whose wisdom and whip-cracking have helped me immeasurably, including
John Graden, Jack Lee, Dave Gales, Judy Farmer, and Douglas Poole.
Also, my personal thanks to Patrick Lor at iStockphoto.com for enabling me to use some of their
wonderful photography in this book.
Most importantly, I want to thank God, and His son Jesus Christ, for leading me to the woman of
my dreams, for blessing us with two amazing children, for allowing me to make a living doing
something I truly love, for always being there when I need Him, for blessing me with a wonderful,
fulfilling, and happy life, and such a warm, loving family to share it with.
Other Books By Scott Kelby
The Photoshop CS2 Book for Digital Photographers
The Photoshop Channels Book
Photoshop Down & Dirty Tricks
Photoshop CS2 Killer Tips
Photoshop Classic Effects
The iPod Book
InDesign CS/CS2 Killer Tips
Mac OS X Tiger Killer Tips
Getting Started with Your Mac and Mac OS X Tiger

About the Author
Scott Kelby
Scott is Editor and Publisher of Photoshop User magazine, Editor-in-Chief of Nikon Software User
magazine, and Editor and Publisher of Layers magazine (the how-to magazine for everything
Adobe).
Scott is President and co-founder of the National Association of Photoshop Professionals (NAPP)
and is President of the software training, education, and publishing firm KW Media Group.
Scott is a photographer, designer, and award-winning author of more than 30 books, including
Photoshop Down & Dirty Tricks, The Photoshop CS2 Book for Digital Photographers, Photoshop
Classic Effects, and is Series Editor for the Killer Tips book series from New Riders.
For the past two years, Scott has been awarded with the distinction of being the world's #1 best-
selling author of all computer and technology books, across all categories.
Scott is Training Director for the Adobe Photoshop Seminar Tour and Conference Technical Chair
for the Photoshop World Conference and Expo. He's featured in a series of Adobe Photoshop
training DVDs and has been training Adobe Photoshop users since 1993.
For more information on Scott, visit scottkelby.com.

An Unexpected Q & A Section
Q. I didn't expect to see the book start with a Q&A section. Don't Q&A sections
normally come after a chapter, rather than before the first chapter?
A. Normally they do. That's why this one is so unexpected. But there is a reason it's
here. It's here to take up pages. You see, authors are paid on how many pages they
write, regardless if the pages are actually necessary or if they even relate to the topic
of the book. So, I thought I'd just pick up a few extra bucks right up front and add a
Q&A.
Q. Really?
A. Of course not. That's not the way book publishing really works. It's unfortunate,
because us authors could really cash in, but sadly, you don't get paid on how many
pages you write. You get paid on how many books you sell, and how many books you
sell is dependent on three factors: (1) how many times you can work naughty
double-entendre phrases into your text, (2) how many times you can work French
words into your text, like "double-entendre," but mostly it's (3) how useful people
actually find your book.
Q. So how useful is this book going to be?
A. That depends on whether the person who bought the book (that's you by the way)
takes the time to read the introduction. You see, the introduction of the book is
where the author bares the soul of the bookwhere he (or she) shows how to get the
most out of the book, so readers really maximize their experience. The author
addresses common concerns, gives tips and ideas on how readers should best use
their time, and generally tries to help readers connect with the book.
Q. But this book doesn't have an introduction. Why not?
A. It's because no one reads the introduction of books anymore. No, they'd rather turn
right to the first chapter and fumble around on their own, stumbling from project to
project, rather than spending just two minutes to find out how the book was written,
why it was written that way, what to look out for, and what to avoid.
Q. Are people really that shallow?
A. Yes. But not you. You're not like that. You know why? Because you're reading the
introduction right now. Oh sure, it's called "An Unexpected Q&A Section" but come
on, have you ever heard of an unexpected Q&A section? Especially one that comes
before the first chapter? You knew this was a ruse to get you to read the introduction
but you kept on going. I like you, kid. You've got moxie.
Q. What exactly is moxie?
A. Moxie is an industrial-strength abrasive cleaner that removes lime, rust, and scale
from a variety of surfaces.
Q. I have that? I have moxie?
A. I'm not 100% sure.
Q. Is the rest of the book like this?
A. Thankfully, no. The rest of the book is pretty much step-by-step, without straying too
much from the path. That's why, in this unexpected Q&A, I stray quite a bit from the
path. You see, when you write step-by-step books, there's no room for your own
writing style to come through. It's pretty much "Go under this menu for this" and
"click on that button for that." It's just so "to the point." So, in a step-by-step book
like this, I only get two real writing outlets which keep me from climbing into a tower
with a high-powered rifle and picking off pedestrians. They are: (1) this unexpected
Q&Atroduction, and (2) the chapter intros for each chapter, which by the way, have
little to do with what's actually in said chapter.
Q. But the rest of the book is regular?
A. Absolutely. Thanks to my strict regimen of high fiber. Sorry, that was lame.
Q. Okay, I've been pretty patient now, where are those "helpful tips" you were
talking about earlier?
A. Oh those. Well, here's one: Where should you start? That might seem like kind of a
"duh" question, with the answer being "Start at Chapter 1, followed by Chapter 2,
and so on." However, if you've read any of my other books, you know I generally
write books that are "jump in anywhere" types of books. That's because those books
are written on applications that have been around a while (like Photoshop), so many
people who buy a Photoshop book have a specific topic they're hoping to learn, for
example, sharpening. So, they buy the book and jump straight to the Sharpening
chapter, and that's okay in those Photoshop books.
Q. But this isn't a Photoshop book, right?
A. Right. Adobe Lightroom is a workflow tool. It's designed to take you through the
process of importing your photos, sorting them, processing them (in your digital
darkroom), viewing them in their final version, and then printing them. Lightroom
has been designed that way, as a workflow tool, from the very beginning. So, I
recommend that you learn it that wayin order, starting with Chapter 1 and working
through the book in order.
Q. But what if I bought the book specifically just to learn the Slideshow
features?
A. Too bad, you have to read Chapters 1 through 5 first.
Q. Are you serious?
A. Of course not. These are just guidelines, not steadfast rules carved into stone. So, if
you're kind of loose with money, and getting a good value by learning in the manner
the author suggests isn't of interest to you, then just jump in anywhere. Again, I'm
kidding (kind of). However, I do recommend learning Lightroom's workflow in order.
It's the way the program was designed, and if you learn it that way, you'll have a
better understanding, but heyit's your bookif you decide to hollow out the insides to
safely store your valuables, I'll never know. You'll feel guilty as hell, but again, I'll
never know.
Q. I hate that word "workflow."
A. Everybody does, but that's not a question. Can you restate it in the form of a
question?
Q. Yeah, whatever. Here goes: Don't you hate that term workflow?
A. Not at all.
Q. I thought you said everybody hates it?
A. You can't believe everything you read. Okay, I do hate that term, because it makes
things sound like work. There's definitely a flow to working in Lightroom, but I
wouldn't call it "work." Workflow just means "The order in which you do things."
Since there are no officially sanctioned guidelines for what a proper workflow is,
workflow then is a personal preference. It's the order in which a particular
photographer has chosen to manage and process his or her photos. Most every
photographer has his or her own workflow method.
Q. So whose workflow is right?
A. Mine.
Q. Really? You've got the right workflow?
A. Well, it is for me, but it might not be for you. By the way, if it's not right for you,
that's okayit just makes you wrong (kidding). Actually, it's trueeveryone's workflow is
different, but with Lightroom, Adobe went a long way toward helping photographers
by leading us through what they, and many photographers around the world, feel is a
sensible and quick way to work with digital images. That's what Lightroom is all
about, and I'm here to help you through that process as best I can. So, from here on
out, I'm Mr. Serious, but I do appreciate you taking the time to read this unexpected
Q&A and hope you'll join me for some unexpected chapter intros between all the
Step One, Step Two stuff. See you there!
Q. So we're pretty much done here?
A. Yup. Now turn the page, before I start tearing up.

Chapter 1. Importing Getting Your Photos
into Lightroom
Now, do we really need an entire chapter just on importing photos? Nope. We could just skip it,
but then the book would start with Chapter 2, and you'd be sending emails to the book's publisher
complaining that your book is missing Chapter 1. See, that's the key word theremissing. You
wouldn't think I intentionally skipped ityou'd think that there must have been some mix-up at the
printing plant, and your copy accidentally wound up without a Chapter 1. So, you'd take it back to
the bookstore and you'd ask for a replacement copy. You'd get home and find out that, once
again, Chapter 1 was missing. Then you'd start to think that this is no coincidence. It must be
some sort of a printing conspiracy (orchestrated by a covert government agency), and that right
now, somewhere in the Midwest, there's an unmarked warehouse chock full of Chapter 1s. You'd
then start to call me names. Unspeakable names. Names that would make you feel ashamed and
dirty, but you'd do it anyway because you'd feel so certain that this was all part of a carefully
crafted strategy designed to keep you from knowing the contents of Chapter 1. Obviously, there's
something in Chapter 1 that "they" don't want you to know. Suddenly that missing Chapter 1 is
worth fighting for. You deserve a Chapter 1, and to know exactly what's in it. So, because I care
about you, my reader, the way I do, I stood up to "the man" on your behalf and demanded that
this book have a Chapter 1, and that it would be on importing photos, because there's more to it
than it first seems. See, it all makes perfect sense once you look at it calmly and logically.
Getting Your Photos Into Lightroom
This is where it all startsbringing your photos into Adobe Lightroom so you can begin organizing,
editing, and printing them. Lightroom is set up to let you import from two different sources: (1) it
lets you manage photos that are already on your computer, and it gives you a number of options
of just how it does that; and (2) it lets you import photos directly from your digital camera or a
memory card reader. If you're smart about importing now, it will save you a lot more time and
trouble, and make managing your images that much easier.
Step One
First, we'll start with importing photos that are already on your computer (my guess is, you
probably already have at least some, if not more, already on there). To begin importing, first click
on the Library link (found along the top-right side of the Lightroom window), and then click the
Import button on the lower-right side of the window (shown here circled in red).
Step Two
Lightroom needs to know where the photos are on your hard disk, so when you click the Import
button an Open dialog appears from the top of the Lightroom window (as shown here). Navigate
your way to the folder of images you want to import and click the Import button (of course, you
can import individual photos, not just folders, but for our example we're importing a folder of
images with six photos inside).
[View full size image]

Step Three
Once you click the Import button in the Open dialog, the Import Photos dialog appears (shown
here). This is a very important dialog for two reasons: (1) you need to make some simple
decisions on how you want your imported photos treated, and (2) you can save yourself a lot of
work down the road if you spend a few extra moments here now. We'll start in the top-left corner
with File Handling (your first important decision).
Step Four
Here's a close-up of the File Handling pop-up menu. You have four options here. The first,
Reference Files in Existing Location (shown here), lets you leave the photos right where they are
on your computer, but now you can manage and edit them using Lightroom. If you choose Copy
Files to Lightroom Library (also shown here), it makes a copy of your photos and moves them
into one central folder called the Lightroom Library. So this way, you'll have your original files and
then an additional copy. Personally, I don't like this option because it just eats up space on your
computer's hard disk. Another option here is Move Files to Lightroom Library, which doesn't copy
them, it just picks up the images and moves them into the central library.
Step Five
The last option, Copy Photos as Digital Negative (DNG) makes a copy of your photos and puts
them into the central library but it changes their file format to Adobe's DNG (digital negative
format, which is an open source archival format for RAW images. For the full scoop on the Adobe
DNG file format, visit www.adobe.com/products/dng/main.html).
Step Six
So which is the right choice here? There really isn't a right choice. It's up to you how you want to
manage your images: Do you want all your photos in one location, like in the Lightroom Library
(shown here, which is in Hard Drive:Users:Home: Pictures:Lightroom:Photos on your Mac)?
Here's another question: How do you feel about having multiple copies of the same photo on your
hard disk? Personally, I'm always fighting the battle of too little free hard disk space, so I don't
copy my images into the Lightroom Library. Of course, I could use the Move Files to Lightroom
Library option (so there would only be one copy on my hard disk), but I guess I'm just used to
them being where they already are. See what I mean? You have to make the choice that you're
most comfortable with.
Step Seven
Once you get past the only hard part of this dialog (deciding where, or where not, to move your
files), you can start to put this dialog to work. One of the most important things you do for
organizing your photos is to give them usable names, and luckily there's an option that lets you
automatically give your files custom names as they're imported. To enter the custom name you
want, turn on the Rename Files checkbox and then click directly on the downward facing arrows
on the right (as shown here) to reveal the Rename Files options.
Step Eight
Once you reveal the Rename Files options, you'll see a Name field, and a collection of tokens
(think of these tokens as naming templates). You start the renaming process by typing in a
name. When you look in the Name field, you see a light blue pill-shaped token called Filename.
That represents the image's current name. To get rid of the current name, just click directly on
Filename and hit Delete. Now the Name field is blank, so just type in the name you want for all
your imported photos. Then, from the Tokens field, you can add a sequential number by clicking-
and-dragging the Seq# (001) token up to the Name field, after your name. You choose the
starting number by typing a number in the First Sequence Number field.
Step Nine
By dragging Seq# (001) after the name, Lightroom will automatically number your photos,
starting with the number you entered in the First Sequence Number field (so your files would be
named "BrochureShots61," "BrochureShots62," etc.). By the way, you can choose how many
numbers you want for your sequence by clicking directly on the right side of the Seq# (001)
token and choosing your desired numbering schedule from the pop-up menu.
Step Ten
Just to see how it works, drag the Date token up to the Name field, then click-and-hold on the
right side of the Date token (on the down-facing arrow) and a pop-up menu will appear with
different date formats. Choose Date (YY), which adds just the last two digits of the year to the
end of your filename (so now your files would be named "BrochureShots6106," for the 61st shot
from 2006). Now, here's where the tokens are really handy. Since you don't want the numbers to
run together, just click on the Date token and drag it to the first position in the Name field (so the
date comes first, before the name), then from the Date token pop-up menu, choose the full year
format (as shown here). So now, your files will be named "2006 BrochureShots 61." By the way,
to put a space between formats, just press the Spacebar between each token.
Step Eleven
The next section down in the Import Photos dialog gives you the option of segmenting the images
either by folder or date. We'll look at what the folder segmenting means first. Let's say you're
importing a folder of photos, and inside that folder there are three other folders of photos, and
inside one of those three there's yet another folder with photos. When you turn on Segment By, it
keeps all those photos grouped together when they're importedit doesn't just pretend that there
are no folders and lop them all into one big folder in Lightroom (actually, Lightroom calls these
imported folders "shoots"). So in short, when Segment By is turned on and Folder is chosen from
the pop-up menu, we import everything in folders, just as they are on your computer.
Step Twelve
If you choose Date in the Segment By pop-up menu, it separates your imported photos into
groups by date. So if you import a folder, and some of the photos were taken on the 14th of
January, and some were taken on the 24th, they'll be imported as two subgroups within the same
shoot. The Organization pop-up menu simply lets you choose the format for how the date for
these will be displayed within Lightroom. By the way, Segment By is turned on by default. If you
don't want segmenting at all (so everything from this import will all be together in the same
shoot), you can just simply turn off the Segment By checkbox.
Step Thirteen
The next field down lets you embed your copyright information (or other metadata) directly into
the document itself. From the Metadata pop-up menu, choose New. In the resulting New
Metadata Preset dialog, just type in your copyright info in the Copyright field, give it a New Preset
Name, click Create, and that info will automatically be embedded into every imported photo for
this shoot. Simple enough. By the way, you can see this embedded copyright info later, in the
image's metadata fields, once the photos are imported into Lightroom. And if you want to use the
same info for future imports, it is now in your Metadata pop-up menu under the preset name you
assigned.
Step Fourteen
On the right side of the Import Photos dialog is a preview of the images you're about to import.
To see the individual images, just drag the slider to the right. Directly under that slider is a field
for naming the shoot you're about to import (again, Lightroom calls each group of images you
import a shoot), and if you chose segmenting it automatically puts the folder name (or date) in
the Shoot Name field, but you can always just click in the field and type in a new name for the
shoot if you want. This won't change the name of the individual imagesjust the shoot name.
Below the Shoot Name field are fields where you can embed keywords for this shoot (to make
searching for images easiermore on this later) and any custom name you want embedded into
the images. Now, before we look at where your imported photos appear within Lightroom, we
need to briefly look at another scenariowhen you're importing photos directly from your digital
camera's memory card (rather than importing photos already on your computer).
Step Fifteen
If you already have Lightroom open when you plug in your camera or card reader, by default the
Import Photos dialog will appear automatically. There's only one real difference when importing
photos from your memory cardthe File Handling options are limited. That's because the photos
aren't on your computer, so you can't just point to them using the Reference Files in Existing
Location option or Move Files to Lightroom Library because they're not on your computer to move
yet. So, there are just two choices: (1) Copy Files to Lightroom Library, or (2) Copy Photos as
Digital Negative (DNG) (if they're in RAW format). However, another great feature lurks here, and
that's the ability to make a backup copy of your imported photosjust turn on the Backup to
Secondary Location checkbox (as shown here). You can back up to a different location, external
hard disks, or servers by clicking the Choose button and choosing a new backup destination.
Tip
Once you click the Import button in the Import Photos dialog, your photos start
importing (whether from your memory card or from a folder on your computer). But
what if you change your mind and want to cancel the import before all the photos are
done importing? Just press Command-Option-A to bring up the Activity Viewer. You'll
see a status bar showing the import in progress. To stop importing photos, just click the
red X button (as shown here).
Where Your Photos Wind Up
Once you click the Import button in the Import Photos dialog, your photos are imported into
Lightroom, right? Right. But exactly where are they? They're in two different places, and
understanding the difference between these two areas is important.
Step One
Remember how I mentioned that your images come in as shoots? Well you can quickly find just
the photos you imported in two ways. The first is to find your shoot and click on it. You do this on
the left side of the Library module, in the Browse by Shoot panel. Just scroll down until you see
your named shoot, then click on it (as shown here), and the photos from that shoot appear in
your Library window.
SCOTT KELBY
Step Two
Want an even quicker way to see the photos you just imported? In other words, do you want to
see them now, without having to dig through the Browse by Shoot panel, which can be quite long
once you've imported a number of shoots? The top panel on the left side of the Library module is
called Photo Library and if you look in that panel you'll see a one-click button to get you to your
last imported photos. It's called Show Previous Import. Click on it, as shown here, and they'll
appear.
Step Three
When you import your photos, their home within Lightroom is the Library. This Library holds all
your imported photos (not only the ones you just imported). In fact, if you browse through a
shoot, click on a photo, and hit Delete, it only deletes the photo from that shootit doesn't delete it
from Lightroom because that photo is still in the Library. If you really want a photo to be
completely deleted from Lightroom, in the Photo Library panel, first click on Show Entire Library
(which is your master collection of photos), then click on the photo you want to delete, and press
the Delete key on your keyboard. Now it's really gone. For good.
ISTOCKPHOTO/DOUGLAS FREER & FEDOR PATRAKOV

Step Four
So now you knowyou can delete a shoot (click on the shoot then hit the minus button at the top
right of the panel), but that doesn't delete the photos from Lightroomit just deletes the shoot. To
actually delete the photos themselves, click on Show Entire Library, click on the photo, or
Command-click on multiple photos, and hit the Delete key. If you want to see where a photo in
your Library resides on your hard disk, press-and-hold the Control key, click on the photo's
thumbnail, and a contextual menu will appear. Choose Show in Finder (as shown here) and a Mac
OS Finder window will open with your image file. Now you can copy that file to disk, delete it, etc.,
like you would any other file in the Finder.

Chapter 2. Navigation Finding Your Way
Around
Although Adobe Lightroom seems like just one application, it's actually more like four mini-
applications in one. Well, they're not mini, because that makes them sound like they're small or
don't have as many features, but that's certainly not the case, because some of Lightroom's
modules are large and complex. Now, I don't mean large and complex like it's a bad thing. That's
the good large and complex. It's more like a compliment. For example, if you were having dinner
at a friend's house, and he or she brought out a delicious-looking appetizer, you might smile and
say something like, "Hey, that seared yellowfish tuna with Asian cucumber salad looks very large
and complex." See, it's a compliment. By the same token, Lightroom may sometimes seem large
and complex (in a good way) because it has four different modules. Adobe uses the term
"modules" because it sounds so mysterious. For example, "I wonder what's in that module? Could
it be a radioactive isotope?" It could be, especially if this was an episode of Fox's 24, where
virtually every object has a reasonable possibility of being radioactive. Another reason Adobe
chose to use the technical-sounding word modules, rather than calling them regular everyday
words that we all understand like "sections" or "areas," is because the term modules sounds more
large and complex, and as we learned earlier, that's a compliment.
Working with Lightroom's Modules
Lightroom has four separate areas (Adobe calls them modules because an in-house committee
decided that would be the stuffiest, most engineering-like name possible). You're going to be
moving between these four modules quite frequently so we might as well learn the best ways to
get where we want to go, and know why we want to go to each area in the first place.
Step One
The name of each module is listed in the top-right corner of the Lightroom window, but those
aren't just names they're links, so click right on them to move from module to module (go ahead
and click on them now, just so you'll see what I mean). Now, clicking on them is the slow way, so
instead try using the keyboard shortcuts: Command-1 takes you to the Library module (which is
where you do two things: [1] sort and organize your images, and [2] do basic color corrections
and adjustments). Press Command-2 to switch to the Develop module, and press Command-3 to
switch to the Slideshow module. If I have to tell you what Command-4 does, I'm not sure you're
ready for software of any kind. To jump back to the last module you were at, press Command-/
(forward slash). If you switch modules by accident, just press Command-Z to put you right back
where you were. So, from here on out, let's use the keyboard shortcuts to jump from module to
module, simply because it's quicker (and time is money, and all that jazz, right?).
ISTOCKPHOTO/TRACY HEBDEN

Step Two
Now, click on any photo thumbnail in the Library and then press Command-2 to switch to the
Develop module. You can see that everything looks different in this module, except for one
thingthe filmstrip running along the bottom of the window. That filmstrip stays there no matter
which module you're currently using. Press Command-3 and then Command-4, and you'll see the
filmstrip is still there. This is one of my favorite features of Lightroom, because you always have
access to all the photos in the current shoot you're working with. So, if you want to fix the color of
a different image, or use a different image in your slide show, or print a different image, the other
photos are right there, one click awaywithout having to go back to the Library module.

Step Three
While we're on the filmstrip, you can change the size of the thumbnails by clicking on the letters
in the bottom-right corner of Lightroom's window. Clicking on XS gives you extra small thumbnails
(as shown here) and clicking on XL gives you huge thumbnails (you can imagine what S, M, and L
do).
Step Four
If you've got more photos than can be displayed at one time in the filmstrip, there are two ways
to move through them: (1) click-and-drag the shuttle control (shown here) in the direction you
want to go, or (2) click-and-drag the gray scroll bar at the bottom center of the window. In the
Library and Develop modules, you can move individually from photo to photo in the filmstrip by
using the Right and Left Arrow keys on your keyboard.
Step Five
Now we're going to look at how Lightroom organizes its controls. Photoshop (and most other
Adobe programs) uses floating palettes, but Lightroom uses these handy expandable panels
instead of palettes, and I have to sayI love 'em. I always know where they are, they're not
floating in front of my photos, and they tuck out of the way when I don't need them. They
couldn't be simpler to useyou just click on the panel header, and its contents expand into view.
Here on the left, you see the Library's panels all neatly tucked away. Click once on the Browse by
Shoot panel header and the contents expand (as shown on the right).
Step Six
So, now you know how to expand one panelwant to know how to expand them all? Just press-
and-hold the Command key, then click on any panel header, and they all expand (pop
downwhatever). If this causes your panels to extend down so far that you can't see them all, a
gray scroll bar appears on the left side of the panel area (as shown hereit extends along the left
side down to the word "Violins." To scroll down farther, you'd click-and-drag the bar downward).
To tuck them all back up, do the same thingpress-and-hold the Command key and click on any
panel header.
Step Seven
To view just one panel and have all the rest close automatically (which is great for clearing all the
clutter), press-and-hold the Option key and then click on the panel header (as shown here).
Step Eight
The little - (minus) and + (plus) signs on the right side of some of the panels are there to let you
create or delete new things within that panel. For example, if you want to remove a particular
shoot, you'd click on that shoot (you can see the Glassware shoot is selected here) and then click
on the minus sign (as shown) to delete it. Of course, it brings up a warning dialog asking if that's
what you really want to do (as shown here) just in case you clicked the minus sign accidentally. If
you click the plus sign, it just brings up a dialog for you to name your shoot (more on managing
your shoots in the next chapterfor now we're just learning how to get around).

Step Nine
If you want a larger preview of your image, you can make a few moves that will enable your
preview to jump to a larger size. For example, here I have switched over to the Develop module
for a single-image preview in the center of the module. To hide just the filmstrip, click on the
downward-facing arrow at the bottom center of the Lightroom window, and the filmstrip tucks out
of the way (as shown here). It'll stay like that until you click the arrow (which is now upward-
facing) again.

Step Ten
You can also resize the panels on the left and right sides of the window. For example, to make the
panels on the right larger or smaller, click-and-drag within that black divider line between the
photo preview and the panels (as shown here). Just click-and-drag in the direction you want to go
(in the example shown here, I clicked-and-dragged to the left, in toward the photo, which made
the panels wider).
Step Eleven
Now try the left panel. Click-and-drag the divider between the left panel and the photo preview to
the right a bit, to make that panel larger, and as you do you'll see that the preview adjusts its
position, and gets larger or smaller to compensate for your new layout. If you're working with
images that have a landscape orientation, making the panels as thin as possible will have a big
difference in the size of your preview.

Step Twelve
If you want to work with one of the side panels hidden, just click on the arrow on the far edge of
each panel, and they'll stay tucked away until you click on them again (in the example shown
here, I hid the adjustment panels on the right).
Step Thirteen
By default, Lightroom is like many other Macintosh applicationsit floats in its own separate window
(as shown here). However, there are two different modes that let Lightroom take over as much of
your screen real estate as possible. It's great for an application to do this because it makes your
photos the real star of the show.
Step Fourteen
To see the first mode, press the F key on your keyboard and the window expands to fill the entire
screen. This is different than clicking the green zoom button in the title bar on the top-left corner
of the floating window (you can see that green Mac OS X window zoom button in the screen
capture in Step Thirteen), because although that expands your window as far as possible, it's still
a window. You can still see the Mac OS X window title bar across the top of your screen and you
can click-and-drag the window as you normally would. Instead, when you press the F key, it tucks
that title bar away. It's no longer a floating window and gives you the maximum amount of
working space. Well, almost.

Step Fifteen
If you press the F key once again, you have even more focus on your working area. Now even the
menu bar at the top of the screen is goneit's a wall-to-wall application.
Step Sixteen
Now I know what you're thinking, "But what if I need something that's in Lightroom's menu bar?"
(See, I knew you were thinking that.) Just move your cursor up to the top of your screen and the
menu bar will temporarily pop down (as shown here). What's nice is, it doesn't shrink or move the
work area downit literally pops down over the work area (you can see it's cutting off the top of
the letters in the words "Adobe Lightroom" in the top-left corner of the screen). If you like this
full-screen uncluttered look, then you're really going to love what's coming next.

Putting the Focus on Your Photos
Picking the right photo is an art and Lightroom gives you some of the best options for viewing
your photos, and making them the star of the show, while the software's interface and panels can
kind of "step off stage," if you like. You've got a lot of choices, including some I've never seen in
any application before, and I think you'll be surprised at how clever some of them are.
Step One
Press Command-1 to switch to the Library module, then double-click on one of your photo
thumbnails. Press the F key twice, so Lightroom takes up the full screen. Now, press the Tab key
on your keyboard and you'll notice that the panels on both sides of your photo are tucked away
out of sight, putting your photo on center stage. I love this view because the filmstrip is still
visible and you can view other photos in this unobstructed view by just clicking on them in the
filmstrip (or using the filmstrip shortcuts we learned earlier).
Step Two
If you just want to see your photo, all by itself, without any distractions whatsoever, then press
Shift-Tab, which not only hides the panels, but hides the filmstrip at the bottom as well (as shown
here).
Step Three
What's nice about this mode is that although your image is center stage, to get to either of the
hidden panels on the sides, just move your cursor over to where the panels used to be and they
pop right out. In the example shown here, I moved my cursor over to the right side of the screen
and the panels pop out from the right side. Move your cursor away (back near the center of the
screen) and the panels tuck back out of sight.
Step Four
Now, what if you want the panels to stay open and not pop back out of sight when you move your
cursor over to them? Just click directly on the little left-facing arrow that appears on the far right-
center of the Panels area (circled in red here) and the arrow flips to the right (as shown) letting
you know that the panels on that side are now locked into place. To have them tuck back in
again, click the same arrow. You can lock down either the left or right set of panels by clicking on
their respective side center arrows.
Step Five
Okay, press the F key and then Shift-Tab to get back to the regular floating window mode. Click
on a different photo in the filmstrip (just so we don't get bored looking at the same photo over
and over again). Now we'll use one of the out-and-out coolest view features in Lightroom (or in
any program for that matter). There are actually really two view modesthe first is called Dim
mode. Just press the L key and everything but your photo is dimmed, leaving your photo at full
brightness.

Step Six
So, we've dimmed the screenbig deal, right? Well, the big deal part comes in when you find out
that although the panels, filmstrip, and controls are all dimmed, they're also still active. Try it
while we're in this dimmed modego ahead and click on a different photo in the filmstrip and it
appears. Click on a control in one of the panelsopen a panel, close a panel, move a sliderit all
works even though it's dimmed. How slick is that? And if that weren't enough, there's yet another
mode.
Step Seven
The other mode is called Lights Out, where everything is blacked out (not just dimmed, but
blacked out) except for your photo. You get into this mode by pressing the L key again (so
normally, to get here you'd press the L key twice). Although you can't see the panels and filmstrip
in this mode, you can switch to the next photo in the filmstrip by pressing the Left and Right
Arrow keys on your keyboard.
Step Eight
While you can't see any options in Lights Out mode, you still have access to them. Just move your
cursor to the top of the screen, and the menu bar pops down and stays there until you move your
cursor away. To temporarily access all the panels and filmstrip, move your cursor to the bottom
of the screen, and you temporarily enter the regular view mode, so you can see the filmstrip and
make selections from it. When you move your cursor back upward, you re-enter Lights Out mode.
(Note: This temporary view will only work if your filmstrip is minimized before entering Lights Out
mode.) To leave Lights Out mode completely and return to the regular view mode, press the L
key again.

Adding Your Studio's Identity to Lightroom's Interface
There may be another application that has this feature, but I sure haven't seen it. It's called the
Identity Plate, and what it does (among other things that you'll learn later on in this book) is
replace the Adobe Lightroom nameplate (which appears in the upper-left corner of the window)
with either your name, your studio's name, or even a graphic of your logo. It really does a great
job of giving the appearance that you're using a program created especially for your studio.
Step One
Here's the standard Adobe identity nameplate that appears in the top-left corner of the Lightroom
interface. To customize this nameplate, go under the Lightroom menu and choose Identity Plate
Setup.
Step Two
This brings up the Identity Plate Editor (shown here). The first thing you need to do is turn on the
Enable Identity Plate checkbox in the upper-left corner of the dialog. Now, whatever you enter in
the name field (the large black text field on the left) will appear where "Adobe Lightroom" used to
appear in the Lightroom window. By default, whatever you enter in the name field appears in the
font Zapfino, but you can change that (as you'll soon see). By the way, if you change the font,
you can also change the fonts the module names are displayed in (in the text field on the right),
so that they either match or at least complement each other.

Step Three
If you want to change the typeface, just highlight the type (you can choose different fonts for
different words, as shown here where I'm using the same fonts Adobe does: Minion and Myriad)
and then click the Font Panel button, which appears under the type field on the left side of the
dialog. This brings up a Font panel where you can choose your type-face, size, and color.
Step Four
Here's how the new nameplate will look within Lightroom once you click OK, if you just edit the
type and change the font.

Step Five
If you prefer to use a graphic, rather than just text, then turn on the Use a Graphical Identity
Plate radio button above the name field. Then click-and-drag your graphic (most popular file
formats are supported) right into the name field (or click the Locate File button). Just make sure
the graphic is not more than 60 pixels high.

Chapter 3. Library Organizing Your
Photos
The first module you wind up using in Adobe Lightroom is usually the Library moduleit's where
you go to sort and organize your photos. Now, here's the thing. While what you're supposed to do
here is organize your photos, very few people have the intestinal fortitude to actually do itto
actually go through all their images, and tag each and every one with keywords and custom
metadata. My hat's off to these meticulous people (freaks), but I'm not one of them. That's
because as soon as I import my photos, I take a quick look at 'em, separate the good from the
bad, and then start messing with the good ones in the Develop, Slideshow, and Print modules.
Those are the party modules. That's where the fun is, so I hang out there (it's kind of like the
Rain Nightclub in Vegas, only without all the celebrities, flashing lights, music, and liquor. Okay,
there's some liquor, but not all that much). You know who uses the Library module to its fullest
extent? People who have a metabolic predisposition to become serial killersthem and molecular
biologists. I don't know why. Anyway, maybe I'm just speaking for myself here, because honestly,
I couldn't keep track of all my photos if they had my name and phone number embedded in them
with a microchip tracking device. I guess it's because I don't care about my bad photos. I only
care about my good photos (you know, the ones that are "large and complex"), so I don't want to
waste my time tagging photos I'm probably never going to use for anything other than my work
in molecular biology.
Separating the Keepers from the Losers
One of the most important parts of the digital photography workflow happens right after you've
imported your photos, and that is sorting the "keepers" (your best shots from a shoot) from the
"losers" (the shots that hopefully will never be seen by anyone, including your dog). Photo editing
(separating the good from the bad) is an art. In fact, many people make their living at magazines
as professional photo editors, and luckily this is an area where Lightroom really shines, because it
makes what could be a task into an awful lot of fun.
Step One
Sorting takes place in the Library module, so if you're not already there, press Command-1. Then
in the Browse by Shoot panel on the left side of the module, click on one of your recently
imported shoots (as shown here). We'll start by finding the keepers in this shoot. We do this by
starting in the Grid view, which displays small thumbnails of all the shoot's images in the Preview
area in the center of the screen.
ISTOCKPHOTO
Step Two
Here's a close-up of just the Preview area in Grid view. The size of the thumbnails in the Grid view
is determined by the Grid Size slider (shown circled here in red). To shrink the size of the
thumbnails (and fit more thumbnails within the grid), drag the slider to the left. To make the
thumbnails larger, drag it to the right.
ISTOCKPHOTO
Step Three
To check the sharpness of your image, you're going to want to zoom in close, and to do that you'll
use Lightroom's Loupe view. To view your image in Loupe view, just double-click directly on that
photo's thumbnail, or select an image and press either the Loupe view button found beneath the
Panels area on the left side of the window or the E key (the Loupe view shortcut). This makes
your selected photo fill the Preview area (as shown here). If you want to view other photos while
still in Loupe view, just use the Left and Right Arrow keys on your keyboard.

Step Four
If you want to zoom in even closer, just click your cursor right on the spot where you want to
zoom in to, and your image instantly zooms in to give you a 1:1 view of that area. To quickly
zoom back out to the standard Loupe view, just click anywhere on the image.
Tip
To return to Grid view (and see all your thumbnails again), just press the G key on your
keyboard (of course, you could also click the Grid view button that appears under the
Panels area on the left side of Lightroom's window, but pressing the G key is faster).
Step Five
Besides just clicking to zoom in on a photo, there's another way to inspect your photo up close,
and that's to pan around your zoomed-in image by clicking-and-dragging the zoom square. The
zoom square appears in the smaller preview window at the top right of Lightroom's interface. Just
click within the square and drag it around in the preview window. As you drag, the area that
appears within the zoom square is displayed at full 1:1 size within the center Preview area.
Remember, if you want to return to the standard Loupe view, just click anywhere on the image
within the center Preview area.
Step Six
Now that you know how to view your image up close (again, that's critical for viewing the
sharpness of your photos), it's time to get down to business and find those keepers. We do this in
Compare view (C), and if you're already in Loupe view (in other words, there's only one image
open in the Preview area), you're just one click away. Just press-and-hold the Command key and
in the filmstrip, click on the photo that you want to compare with the photo you currently have
onscreen. Once you click that photo, the two images appear side-by-side onscreen (as shown
here), so you can easily make comparisons.

Step Seven
Want to add a third, fourth, or more photos to compare onscreen? Just press-and-hold the
Command key and click on those photos in the filmstrip as well, and they'll join the two photos
already being viewed in Compare view.
Step Eight
Stuffing all these photos onscreen at the same time can get pretty crowded. That's why I
recommend hiding the panels and the filmstrip (press Shift-Tab) when reviewing more than two
photos at one time in Compare view. The photos are then large enough for you to really make
smart decisions on which ones make the cut.
Step Nine
All right, now that you've got your photos onscreen at a decent size (thanks to having the panels
and filmstrip hidden), how do you remove one of the photos under review when it doesn't make
the cut? You can do it one of two ways: (1) move your cursor over the photo you want to remove
from contention and click on the tiny X that appears just below the photo's lower-right corner, or
(2) press-and-hold the Command key and click on the photo you want to remove. Now, I'm down
to just three photos (as shown here).

Step Ten
So, that's the processto remove a photo from the Preview area in Compare view, Command-click
on it. To add another photo to be compared (while you're in this panel-and-filmstrip-hidden view),
move your cursor down to the bottom of the screen (so the filmstrip temporarily appears, as
shown here) and Command-click on any photo you want to add. Now, there's another way to
enter this Compare view, and that's to enter it directly from the Grid view, so first let's get back
to the Grid view by pressing the G key, then press Shift-Tab to bring back your panels and
filmstrip.

Step Eleven
To enter Compare view from here in Grid view, you have two choices: (1) you can Command-click
on the thumbnails of the photos you want to compare, then press the letter C, or (2) Command-
click on the photos you want to compare, then press the Compare view button on the lower-left
side of Lightroom's window.
Step Twelve
One last thing about Compare view while you're in Compare view there are going to be times
when you need to take a closer look at one of the photos you're comparing. No sweat, just click
on that photo, press the letter Z, and it takes you to a zoomed Loupe view of the photo. Once
you've seen what you needed to see, press the letter Z again, and you'll return to Compare view
with the same photos selected. Pressing the letter Z is the shortcut for toggling between a
zoomed Loupe view and the previous viewin this case you toggled between Compare view and a
zoomed Loupe view.

Sorting Your Photos in the Grid View
The Grid view in the Library module is where most of your sorting will take place and there are a
few key things you need to know about the sorting process that will keep you from pulling your
hair out. Here's how to start managing your images with ease.
Step One
Lightroom automatically sorts your photos in the Grid view, either by the time and date they were
taken or by star ratings you assign to your photos. By default, it sorts by time and date, but you
can choose whether you want your photos to appear in ascending order (starting with the most
recently taken photo in the top-left corner of the Preview area, followed by the next most recent,
etc.), or you can go under the View menu, under Sort, and choose Descending (as shown here) to
have the oldest photo in the first position.
Step Two
The other method of sorting (since you can't just drag the thumbnails into the order you want at
this point in Lightroom's development) is to give your photos a 1- to 5-star rating (with 5 being
the best). Assigning ratings is easyjust click on the thumbnail, then press either 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5 on
your keyboard to assign a rating. When you do this, you'll see a message appear near the bottom
of the Preview area confirming that your rating has been applied (as shown here). To remove a
rating, press the 0 (zero) key.
Step Three
Now, you're probably wondering why you just assigned a star rating and yet your photo didn't
jump to the top? It's because you have to change your sorting choice to sort by rating. To do
that, go under the View menu, under Sort, and choose Rating (as shown here). Now, if you want
your highest-rated photos to appear first (at the top left of the Preview area), then you'll also
need to make sure the sort is set to Descending (also found in the View menu, under Sort), so the
5-star photos appear first, and then the photos sort in a descending order down to 1 star (with
the unrated photos appearing after the 1-star photos).

Step Four
To save time, you can rate more than one photo at a timejust press-and-hold the Command key,
click on all the photos you want to have the same rating (as shown here), and then press the
number key on your keyboard for the rating you want them all to have.
Step Five
Another way to apply ratings to photos is to make the star ratings visible under each photo's
thumbnail, and then click directly on the rating you want to apply. To have the ratings appear
under the thumbnails, click on the View Options panel header on the left side of the Lightroom
window and the view options will appear (as shown here). Once the view options appear, make
sure the Show Extras checkbox is turned on, and then turn on the Rating checkbox to make the
star ratings appear below the thumbnails. When you move your cursor over photo thumbnails in
the Preview area, photos that haven't been rated yet will have five tiny dots below them. To add a
4-star rating to a photo, click on the fourth dot. To give a photo a 3-star rating, click on the third
dot, and so on. To remove a rating, click on the small circle to the left of the first star.

Step Six
Using ratings can be really handy for sorting your images because once you've assigned ratings,
you can use the Minimum Rating slider (shown circled in red here) so that only your highest-rated
photos are displayed. The slider appears in the Search panel, just below the Search field, and
when the slider is all the way to the left, all your photos, regardless of their rating, are displayed.
As you click-and-drag the slider to the right, it raises the minimum rating. So, click-and-drag the
slider to the right until it shows a 4, and then only your 4-star or higher rated photos will still be
visible in the Preview area (as shown).
Step Seven
You can also apply ratings in Loupe view and even in Compare view, by clicking on the dots in the
Info panel on the right side of the Lightroom window (circled here), or by pressing a number key
on your keyboard. In Compare view, you can also click on the dots beneath each image. Since
right now we're narrowing your photo selections by using the Minimum Rating slider set to 4 or
more stars, when you're in Loupe or Compare view, only the photos that currently have a rating
of 4 stars or more will appear in the filmstrip.
Step Eight
One last thing before we leave this section. If you want to rotate the orientation of your photos
(while you're in Grid view), you have two choices. First, turn on the Rotation checkbox in the View
Options panel. Then when you move your cursor over a thumbnail in the Preview area, two small
rotation icons will appear in both lower corners of the thumbnail (I've blown up two thumb-nails
here, so you can see them better). Click on the left rotation icon and the photo rotates counter-
clockwise. Click the right rotation icon and it rotates clockwise. My advice? Leave this turned off,
because there's a better wayjust press-and-hold the Option key and click on your thumbnail and
each click rotates your thumbnail by 90.
One-Click Sorting by Using Collections
When you're sorting your photos, there are going to be plenty of times where you just want to
focus on a particular group of images. Maybe it's all your best shots from a shoot, or maybe it's
all your black-and-white shots, or maybe you want to decide which photos you want print.
Luckily, you can make all of these groups of photos just one click away by using collections (which
are there every time you fire up Lightroom) or Quick Collections, which are temporary collections
you use just when you need them.
Step One
Another way to quickly separate out your best photos is to create a Quick Collection of just those
photos. Here's how it's done: As you're looking at your photos (in any viewGrid, Loupe, or
Compare), when you come across one you like, just press the B key on your keyboard and that
photo is added to your Quick Collection (it's like flagging your best photos). If you have the Quick
Collection Marker checkbox turned on in the View Options panel, you'll see a black dot appear in
the upper-left corner of your thumbnail (circled here in red) to let you know that it was added to
your Quick Collection.
Step Two
Now, to see just the photos you've flagged, click on Show Quick Collection (as shown here), which
appears in the Photo Library panel on the top-left side of the Lightroom window (or just press
Command-B). To remove a photo from your Quick Collection, just click on the little black dot
again, or click on the photo and press the letter B again, or just click on the photo and press the
Delete key on your keyboard (don't worry, this only deletes the photo from this Quick
Collectionnot from your Library of photos).
Step Three
Quick Collections are great for helping you quickly rate your best photos. Now that your best
photos from your shoot are in this Quick Collection, you can instantly give them all a 5-star rating
by simply pressing Command-A to select all the photos, then pressing the number 5 to assign a
5-star rating to them all. Another cool thing about using Quick Collections is that once you've got
one, you can create an instant slide show of just those photos by going under the Library menu
and choosing Impromptu Slideshow. In just seconds, you'll see a full-screen slide show with
transitions (to cancel this slide show, press the Esc key).

Step Four
Once you've used the trick above to quickly rate your best photos, you can then clear your
temporary Quick Collection (so you can use it later for sorting other photos). You can do this by
either clicking on Options, in the bottom-left corner of Lightroom's window, and choosing Clear
Quick Collection from the pop-up menu, or just pressing Command-Shift-B. You can also use the
Options pop-up menu to add photos to your Quick Collection, but using the keyboard shortcuts is
just so much faster.
Step Five
Quick Collections are temporary collectionsjust a tool to help you temporarily sort your images or
to make an impromptu slide show. But if you've come up with a Quick Collection that you'd like to
keep for future reference, just transfer it to a regular collection so it's always just one click away.
Here's how: Go to the Browse Collections panel (it's in the group of panels on the left side of
Lightroom) and click on the large + (plus sign), as shown here circled in red. This brings up the
Create Collection dialog where you can name your new collection (as shown). Enter a name and
click the Create button.

Step Six
Now, if you're not still viewing it, press Command-B to jump back to your Quick Collection. Press
Command-A (the shortcut for Select All) to select all the photos in your Quick Collection. Next,
click-and-drag on any one of those photos and they all drag together as a group (you'll see a tiny
thumbnail appear as you drag that shows a stack of photos, as shown here circled in red). Click-
and-drag this group of photos over to the Browse Collections panel and drop (release the mouse
button) them right on the collection you created in the previous step.
Step Seven
Now, just to make sure that the transfer from your Quick Collection to a permanent collection
worked, it's not a bad idea to quickly click on Show Entire Library in the Photo Library panel (so
you see all your photos). Then, in the Browse Collections panel, click on your new collection (as
shown here), just to make sure your photos really made it in there. I know, it's kind of paranoid,
but just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you. But I digress. Once
you've confirmed that your photos made it into your new collection, you can clear out the Quick
Collection by pressing Command-Shift-B or by choosing Clear Quick Collection from the Options
pop-up menu on the bottom left of the Lightroom window.
Step Eight
There are a few things you'll want to know about collections. First, as long as you're in the Grid
view, you can add photos to your collection by just dragging-and-dropping them right onto your
collection. To remove a photo from your collection, click on it and press the Delete key. This only
removes the photo from your collectionnot from your main Library. If you do, in fact, want to
remove a photo both from the collection and from your Library (meaning you're going to move
the photo to the Trash and delete it for good), then press Command-Delete. You'll get a warning
dialog (as shown here) just to let you know this photo is really going away for good. To delete a
collection, click on the collection, and then click the (minus sign) on the right side of the Browse
Collections panel. To rename a collection, just double-click directly on its name in the Browse
Collections panel.

Staying Organized by Assigning Keywords
One of the biggest challenges in managing thousands of images is finding the exact photo (or
photos) right when you need it. Luckily, you can stay totally organized, and find the right photos
fast, by simply applying keywords to your photos. It takes just a small amount of time up front,
but it can save you hours every week and potentially extend your life by several years by
removing a special level of frustration and stress that appears after searching for hours to find a
photo you know is in there...somewhere. Ask your doctor.
Step One
To create a keyword, go to the Browse Keywords panel (on the left side of Lightroom's window)
and click on the large + (plus sign), as shown here. This brings up the Create Keyword dialog
where you can type in the keyword you want to assign to one or more photos in your Library,
then click the Create button to create this keyword.
Step Two
You can assign a keyword to a photo in the same way you add a photo to a collection. In Grid
view, just drag-and-drop a photo from the Preview area right onto the keyword you want
assigned to it in the Browse Keywords panel (as shown here). You can do the same select-
multiple-photos-and-drag-and-drop trick as you did with collections.

Step Three
Unlike collections, there's another way to assign keywords and you might actually like this way
better (I certainly do). Instead of dragging the photos to the Browse Keywords panel and trying
to hit that thin little panel, you can actually drag the keyword itself and drop it on your photos, as
shown here (a thick black border appears around your thumbnail letting you know you've
targeted that photo). I like this method better because thumbnails make a much larger and easier
target to hit. You can still select multiple photos (Command-click on them) and drag-and-drop the
keyword on any selected photo, and they'll all be tagged with that keyword.
Step Four
Now when you want to instantly see the photos that are tagged with a particular keyword, just
click on that keyword. In the example shown here, I clicked on Acoustic and now only the guitars
labeled acoustic in my Library appear.
Step Five
Of course, the real strength of keywords is when you add more than just one, so you can quickly
drill down and find just the photos you're looking for. For example, here I've added 10 more
keywords, and dragged-and-dropped them on the appropriate photos. So, if for example, I
wanted to see just my bass guitars, I'd click on the Bass Guitars keyword (as shown here) and
instantly all my bass guitars, and only my bass guitars, are displayed. Even better, since you can
assign multiple keywords to photos, my first bass guitar images show up not only under Bass
Guitars, but also under Black Guitars and Flat Views.

Step Six
Another advantage of creating and assigning keywords is that now you can search your entire
library by simply typing in a name. For example, want to find all the guitars that are red? Go to
the Search panel (shown circled here) and just type in "red." Now every red guitar shows up
instantly. This keywording is great for tagging photos of family members (for example, my son is
named Jordan, so I can instantly find every photo of Jordan just by typing his name in the Search
field).
Step Seven
Just a reminder, you can save yourself some time by assigning some of your keywords when you
first import your photos. For example, if you were importing a shoot of just one guitar, you could
automatically tag all those shots with descriptive keywords from right within Lightroom's Import
Photos dialog (shown here). There's a Keywords field for typing in the keywords you want (it's
circled here in red). Just type in your desired keywords, separated by a comma, and once they're
imported those keywords will be added to your Browse Keywords panel to make sorting easy,
plus you can use the Search field to find images tagged with those keywords.
Step Eight
To see the keywords you have assigned to a photo, just go to the Info panel, on the right side of
Lightroom's interface under the Histogram (you may have to scroll the panels down a bit to reveal
the Info panel). In the Info panel, you'll see a field that not only lists the keywords assigned to
the currently selected photo, you can also add additional keywords by just clicking in the
Keywords field (shown circled in red) and typing in your desired keywords. Also, keywords that
you enter in this field are automatically added to the Browse Keywords panel. Once you get in the
habit of adding keywords to photos, you'll be amazed at how quickly you can get right to the
photo (or photos) you're looking for.

Chapter 4. Quick Develop Making Minor
Adjustments
I know we'd like to think that every shot we take is worthy of the same level of careful color
correction and individual selective sharpening, but the sad reality is some of our photos just don't
require it. Not every photo we take is destined to hang in some famous gallery. Some photos, like
those taken for insurance claim purposes after a fender bender in your car, will only wind up
being shown in some of the smaller galleries, fetching only a few hundred dollarsperhaps a
thousand on rare occasion but they have little chance of competing with your more serious
pieces. It's those instances where you have to decide, "Do I really need to go into the Develop
module and process the living daylights out of this puppy or can I just click a few buttons here in
the Library module's Quick Develop panel and be done with it?" It's an age-old question, but you
can make the decision easier if you take the time to ask yourself a few questions beforehand.
First, ask yourself this, "When this shot of my dented fender is displayed, will it be exposed to
high ultraviolet light content, and will that affect its overall sale price?" If the answer is "No," then
you can safely correct this photo using the Library module's Quick Develop panel. However, if the
answer is "Yes," then in order to maintain consistent color rendition you need to give careful
consideration to the spill and angle of the fill lights in the gallery and whether using an undimmed,
low-voltage 20W dichroic lamp will minimize any potential fluctuation in the color temperature. By
the way, I have no idea what any of that means.
Using Quick Develop for Quick Fixes
Some photos need lots of work, and usually the more important the photo, the more tweaking it
gets. But when you've got photos that need just quick minor adjustments, you can do them from
right within the Library module itself using the Quick Develop panel, which gives you simple one-
click adjustments for everything from Exposure to White Balance to black-and-white conversions.
When you need minor simple changes, this is where to start.
Step One
The Quick Develop panel appears just below the Histogram on the right side of Lightroom's
interface. If you only see the words Quick Develop but don't see a list of controls under it, just
click in the bar with the words Quick Develop (as shown here) and the controls will pop down.
SCOTT KELBY
Step Two
There's a Preset pop-up menu at the top of the Quick Develop panel, but most of these presets
are special effects, like sepia tone effects, grayscale conversions, etc. More on these later, but for
now we're going to focus on the most likely adjustments your photos are going to need: White
Balance and Exposure. Since the photo we're using is so underexposed, we'll start by adjusting
the Exposure first.
Step Three
Each of the Quick Develop adjustment setting controls has three buttons: the left arrow decreases
the adjustment, the right arrow increases it, and the center button resets that particular
adjustment to how it was set before you made any adjustments. We'll start with the Exposure
setting, so click the right arrow once. You can see the image now appears somewhat brighter.
Each time you click the right arrow, the overall exposure of the photo will get brighter. I had to
click on the right arrow six times to get the exposure just about right (as shown here).
Step Four
If you're squeamish about making your own adjustments, there is an Auto button (shown here),
which applies an automatic adjustment, but it only applies the Auto setting to the Exposureit
doesn't affect the Brightness, Contrast, or Saturation settings. Now, I have to be honest with
youI'm not a big fan of this Auto setting (at this point anyway). The changes either seem too
subtle or too extreme, but so far I haven't had one that looked about right. Go ahead and open a
few images, try the Auto button, and see what you think. If it works for you, don't be afraid to
use it, but my guess is you're not going to fall in love with it. In fact, since the Quick Develop
panel gives you kind of crude pushbutton adjustments, I doubt you'll use this entire section for
much more than adjusting snapshots from your vacation taken with your point-and-shoot
camera, rather than images you're shooting with your D2X or 1D Mark II.
Step Five
The other three tonal controls in the Quick Develop panel work the same way, (meaning you click
the right arrow to increase their effect, left to decrease, center button to reset). Under the
Exposure controls is the Brightness, which controls the overall brightness of the photo. Under that
is the Contrast, and increasing the Contrast setting does just thatit increases the contrast (as
shown here), making the shadows darker and the highlights brighter.

Step Six
The last control, Saturation, makes the colors more saturated each time you press the right
arrow, and less saturated when you click the left arrow. If you click the left arrow enough times,
you'll remove all the color, making it a black-and-white photo. However, if that's what you're after
(a black-and-white photo), you'll get better results by turning on the Convert Photograph to
Grayscale check-box (circled in red here).
ISTOCKPHOTO/PAULUS RUSYANTO

Step Seven
By the way, don't worry about trying things like a grayscale conversion, or tweaking your colors,
or any kind of tonal correction, because everything you do in Quick Develop is non-destructive.
You're always just one click away from returning to the original unedited photo by clicking the
Reset button that appears at the bottom of the Quick Develop panel (it's shown circled in red
here).
Step Eight
Another thing you'll wind up using a lot within Quick Develop is the White Balance control. The
reason this control is so important is this: unless you go and set the white balance manually in
your camera to match the lighting conditions of where you're shooting, chances are your white
balance is set to Auto. That means in challenging lighting situations, like this indoor shot under
fluorescent lighting (which makes everything look kind of yellow), having the ability to fix your
white balance after the fact is huge. By default, As Shot (in the camera) white balance is
displayed as the current White Balance setting. If you click on the White Balance pop-up menu (as
shown here), you see the list of white balance settings you can apply.
SCOTT KELBY
Step Nine
If we had set the white balance to Fluorescent in the camera, we wouldn't have that yellow cast,
but that's easy enough to fixjust choose Fluorescent from the White Balance pop-up menu (as
shown here) and you can see how the yellow cast has been neutralized (which is fancy digital talk
for "it's gone"). Compare this photo with the one in the previous step, and you'll see how much
good the right white balance setting can do.

Step Ten
I mentioned earlier that the Quick Develop controls are kind of crude you can only click a few
times, and the photo either looks good or it doesn't. However, the Develop module of Lightroom
is full-powered, containing all the RAW processing controls of Adobe Photoshop's Camera Raw,
and more! So, if you make some adjustments in Quick Develop and you're not getting the results
you hoped for, you can keep the edits you've applied in Quick Develop and continue editing the
photo over in the more powerful Develop module. To do that, scroll down a little further in the
Quick Develop panel and you'll see the phrase "Continue work in the Develop module." That's not
just a phrase, that phrase is actually a button you can click on (move your cursor over it and
you'll see it highlight). Click on that to continue editing your photo in the Develop module.
Step Eleven
Okay, so now that you've had a chance to edit your images using Quick Develop's Exposure,
Brightness, Contrast, and Saturation controls, along with setting the White Balance and
converting your images to grayscale, you're now ready to use the presets, which give you both
tonal corrections (like you've been doing) and some special effects. These are found at the top of
the Quick Develop paneljust click anywhere to the right of the word Preset and a pop-up menu
will appear (as shown here) with a list of preset corrections and effects (put there by Adobe).
Step Twelve
Just so you can see how the presets work, go ahead and open a photo, and choose Sepia Tone
from the Preset popup menu (as shown here), and you can see the instant results. The photo is
first converted to a black-and-white, and then a sepia tint is added to the photo. There are no
buttons to push, no decisions to makeit's a preset. However, if you want to tweak the photo now,
you canjust click on the Exposure arrows, or the Contrast arrows, etc. What's nice about this is
you can use the presets as a starting point, and then tweak the image to your liking with just a
few quick clicks.

Editing Multiple Images the Easy Way
With digital photography, and "free" film, we're pressing that shutter release more than ever and
instead of just editing 24 or 36 photos, we're importing and editing hundreds. That's why it's so
important to be able to edit one photo and apply those same edits to dozens, or even hundreds,
of photos taken under similar lighting conditions. Here are a few different ways to make an edit
once and have it applied to as many photos as you'd like, quickly and easily.
Step One
If you want to make the exact same change to a number of similar photos, then this couldn't be
easier: you start by Command-clicking on all the photos you want to have the exact same
adjustments applied to (as shown here).
SCOTT KELBY
Step Two
Now, just head over to the Quick Develop panel and any changes you make here will
automatically be applied to every selected photo (here I just simply turned on the Convert
Photograph to Grayscale checkbox, and all the selected photos are then converted to grayscale,
as shown here).
Step Three
More likely, you'll be performing your edits all on one photo, and then if you're happy with some
or all of your edits, you'll choose which other photos you want to have those same edits applied
to. Start by choosing a photo and then make your adjustments in the Quick Develop panel (in the
example shown here, I increased the exposure and contrast by clicking on the right arrow button
for each setting three times. I changed the white balance to Cloudy by choosing it from the White
Balance pop-up menu, and then I lowered the saturation a bit to remove some of the green from
the photo). Now, click on the Copy Settings button (shown circled in red here).

Step Four
This brings up the Copy Settings dialog (shown here). This is where you get to choose which of
the adjustments you applied to the first photo that you want applied to other photos you select.
(Note: If most of the checkboxes here sound unfamiliar, it's because most of them are in the full
Develop module, instead of just Quick Develop.) I want to apply just some of the changes I made
to the other photo, so first click the Check None button (so all the choices are unchecked), then
only turn on the checkboxes for White Balance and Saturation, and then click the Copy button.
Now, only those two edits are copied into memorymy exposure and contrast changes are ignored.
Step Five
Press-and-hold the Command key, go to the Grid view, and click on all the photos that you want
to have the same white balance and saturation changes applied to. Now, near the bottom of the
Quick Develop panel, click on Paste Settings (it's shown circled in red), and just those two
corrections that you applied to the first image will now be applied to all your selected images (as
shown here).

Step Six
If you've got hundreds (or thousands) of photos to process, instead of copying-and-pasting your
changes from one photo to a group of other photos (too slow), try Synchronize, which works
particularly well when all your photos are in the same collection. Here's how it works: You click on
the photo that has the look you like (in this case, I just applied the Antique Grayscale preset to
one image), then press Command-A to select all the other photos in your collection (or Quick
Collection). You'll notice that your selected photo has a thicker white border around it, so you
know which photo is your source for the changes. Now press the Synchronize button (shown here
circled in red).

Step Seven
As you can see, the Synchronize Settings dialog looks exactly like the Copy Settings dialog. In this
case, since we used a preset, I'm not sure which settings where actually used, so click the Check
All button (so we're sure we got everything), then click the Synchronize button (as shown here).
Step Eight
Now those edits are applied to every other photo in your collection (as shown here).

Chapter 5. Develop Making Serious
Adjustments
Everything we have done up to this point every click of a button, every slide of a slider, every
drag of a dragster, has all been leading up to this one single moment. The moment when you
leave the relative safety and comfort of the Library module and venture into a wild, untamed
territory that many seek but only few survive. This, my friends, is the Develop modulea scary and
intimidating place with more complicated-looking buttons, checkboxes, and sliders than the Space
Shuttle and a 747 combined. Now, if you're thinking that all this looks too technical and advanced
for you, you're right. Nobody understands this module. I don't know what it does. Adobe doesn't
know. I think a lot of the sliders are just put there for looks, and moving them doesn't actually
affect anything in the photo whatsoever. For example, try moving the Deflatulator slider all the
way to the right. I'm not sure it really does anything, but it sure took the wind out of me. Okay,
that was pretty lame, but waitI have more. Open an image shot in RAW format, set your
Exposure and Shadows, then try dragging the Cutlery Sharpening Amount to 75%. I'll bet your
image still looks dull, and it just doesn't cut it. Are you getting any of these puns? I hope you are,
because I swear, they're cracking me up.
The Basic Adjustments Aren't Basic
You use the Develop module when you've got some serious adjusting to do, so don't be fooled
just because the first adjustment panel on the right side is named Basic. Those "Basic" controls
are the same controls found in Adobe Photoshop's acclaimed Camera Raw plug-in, and give you
the same power the industry's top pros use to process their RAW images (but in your case, you
can also process JPEGs and TIFFs the same way). This panel should be renamed "Essentials" or
"Critical" or simply "Start Here" because the term Basic is a bit misleading.
Step One
In the Library module, click on the photo you want to do some serious adjusting to, then press
Command-2 to jump to the Develop module. We'll start with the Basic adjustments (make sure
you read the intro above so you understand that these are the most important, and most often
used, adjustmentsnot basic ones). Like the Quick Develop panel, the Basic panel lets you choose
a new white balance setting from the White Balance pop-up menu (as shown here).
SCOTT KELBY AND ISTOCKPHOTO
Step Two
The big difference between Quick Develop's White Balance and the Basic panel's White Balance is
that here in the Develop module, you have more than just a pop-up menuyou can create custom
white balance settings using the two White Balance sliders circled in the close-up of the Basic
panel shown here. The Saturation slider looks like it's part of the White Balance controls, but it's
not (more on that in a moment).
Step Three
Adobe added a very helpful feature to the White Balance sliders, one that even Photoshop doesn't
have, and that is both the Temperature and Tint sliders give you a visual clue what the sliders do.
For example, take a look at the Temperature slidersee the color bar inside the slider? That tells
you which way the temperature of your photo will be affected if you drag in that direction. Here,
we dragged the Temperature slider toward the yellow side of the slider, and as you can see from
the photo, the entire photo is now warmer and more yellow.

Tip
Even if you start by selecting a preset White Balance from the pop-up menu, you can
edit that preset setting by moving the Temperature and Tint sliders.
Step Four
If you want to cool off the white balance a bit, rather than using the Tungsten or Fluorescent
presets on the White Balance pop-up menu, you can get just the amount of cooling you want by
dragging the Temperature slider to the left, toward the blue (as shown here). Again, all you have
to do is look at the color there in the slider itself to see which way to drag. In most cases, you'll
either want to warm up an image (by dragging the Temperature slider to the right, toward
yellow), or cool it down (by dragging the Temperature slider to the left). However, if you want to
have more of a green or magenta white balance (hey, it could happen), then use the Tint slider
and drag toward the color you want.

Step Five
Don't ever hesitate to try different White Balance settings, because you can always return to the
original "as shot" setting by choosing As Shot from the White Balance pop-up menu (as shown
here). Plus, if all you've adjusted at this point is the White Balance, you can click the Reset button
that appears just below the panels themselves in the bottom right-hand corner of the Develop
module's Panels area (shown circled here). This Reset button is always there while you're working
in the Develop module, so anytime you need to start over just click directly on it and all your edits
are undone. That's the whole non-destructive editing thing in action.

Step Six
If you want a more precise way to set the white balance, try the White Balance tool (which looks
like an Eyedropper, and is located at the bottom of the Panels areait's shown circled here). Here's
how it works: Click the White Balance tool, then move your cursor out over your image and click
on an area of your image that is a light gray (I clicked on the door on the left here). I know, you'd
figure that you'd click on something white, right? But that's the way it works, so click on
something light gray. That's itit sets your white balance for you. If you don't like the way your
photo looks after clicking, then either try clicking somewhere else (a different gray area) or
choose As Shot from the White Balance pop-up menu, then try again.
Step Seven
The Saturation slider controls the overall saturation of colors in your document, so if your colors
are looking drab and washed out, you could "pump up the volume" by dragging the Saturation
slider to the right (here I dragged it all the way to the right, and the photo is way oversaturated,
as you can see). If you drag the slider to the left, it makes all the colors in your photo less intense
(it desaturates them).

Step Eight
If you drag the Saturation slider all the way to the left, it removes all the color, and gives you a
black-and-white image. However, this is not the method you'd want to use to create color to
black-and-white conversions because there are much better ways that give you much better
results (as you'll see later in this chapter).
Tip
If you feel like the sliders in Lightroom are too broad and don't give you precise enough
control, then you'll love the finer control you get by using "scrubby sliders." Just move
your cursor directly over the numbers to the right of the sliders, then click, hold, and
drag left or right and the numbers will move one digit at a time.
Step Nine
The next important slider in the Basic panel is the Exposure slider (shown circled here), which lets
you set the white point for your image. Dragging the Exposure slider to the right increases the
overall exposure (as shown here, where the image is much brighter), and dragging to the left
decreases the exposure. Again, you get a visual cue by looking at the sliders themselves, because
white is on the right side of the slider (indicating that dragging that way would make this
adjustment lighter), and black is on the left side of the slider (indicating that dragging to the left
would make your image darker).
Step Ten
To get the best possible highlights, our goal is to drag the Exposure slider as far to the right as
possible without blowing out the highlights (which causes loss of detail). To keep you from doing
that, Lightroom gives you two types of warnings. If you press-and-hold the Option key before you
start dragging the Exposure slider, your image turns black (as shown here) and as you drag to
the right (increasing the exposure) any colors that are blowing out (losing highlight detail) will
appear. If you see red areas (as seen in this image), that lets you know that the red in the image
in that area is blowing out. If this is a sunset photo, and that red area appears in the center of the
sun, you can pretty much ignore itthe center of the sun isn't supposed to have detail. But if you
release the Option key and see that red area is an important area of detail in your image, then
you know you've dragged too far. So, pull the Exposure slider back to the left a little.
Step Eleven
There's another way to make sure you're not clipping off important detail in your highlights (or
shadows), and that's to turn on the Highlights (or Shadows) clipping warnings. You turn these on
right under the Histogram by clicking on either the word "Highlights" or "Shadows." In this case, I
turned on the Highlights warning. When you do this, you no longer have to press-and-hold the
Option key while you drag the Exposure slider, but you get an entirely different type of clipping
warning.
Step Twelve
This clipping warning doesn't turn your screen blackit displays the full-color image, but it also now
displays any areas that are clipping (losing detail) in bright red (as shown here). If you turn on
the Shadows clipping warning, then any areas that have turned solid black (causing you to lose
detail in those areas) will appear in bright blue. So, which clipping warning method should you
use? Whichever you're most comfortable with. The only advantage the pressing-and-holding-the-
Option-key method gives is that you can see exactly which colors in your image are clipping (so if
only a yellow area is clipping, you'll only see yellowif all the colors are clipping, you'll see white),
so it does give you a little more feedback than just the red or blue warning.
Step Thirteen
Now that you know about the different Highlights and Shadows clipping warnings (and why
they're so importantto keep us from overadjusting and losing detail in our images), we'll move on
to the next slider, which is Blacks. This is what you use to set the black point in your image, and if
you look at the slider, once again it gives you a visual cue on what happens when you drag in a
particular direction. Take a look at the Blacks slider. Which way would you drag to make the
shadows darker? Right toward the black (hey, those visual cues save you a lot of guessing).

Step Fourteen
If you press-and-hold the Option key while adjusting the Blacks (shadow) slider, the photo will
turn white, and as you drag to the right, any areas that will turn pure black (and have no detail)
will appear in black. If you see other areas in color (yellow, blue, green, etc.), that's telling you
that the yellows, blues, and greens in that area are being clipped to black. Now, in the image
shown here, the area inside of the doorway is clipping and the shadows in the windows are
clipping. Those are areas that probably wouldn't have significant detail anyway, so I wouldn't
worry about those areas, but it's nice to be able to see what will turn solid black so you can
decide whether you need to back off the amount of blacks or not. Again, you could also use the
Shadows clipping warning (below the left side of the Histogram) to warn you of clipped shadow
areasit's up to you.
Step Fifteen
The next control down is the Brightness slider, which lets you adjust the midtones in your photo.
Look to the slider for a visual cue, and you can see that dragging to the right will lighten your
midtones, and dragging to the left will darken them. You don't have the option of pressing-and-
holding the Option key to see if you're blowing out the highlights or shadows when you're
adjusting the Brightness. So, you could turn on the Shadows and Highlights clipping warnings that
appear directly below the Histogram. But if you move the midtones enough so that you get a
clipping warning, your image will probably look so bad onscreen that the clipping warning isn't
necessary.

Step Sixteen
The last slider in the Basic panel is the Contrast slider and it does exactly what you'd expectwhen
you drag it to the right it adds more contrast to your photo by making the shadows darker and
the highlights brighter. In the image shown here, I dragged the Contrast slider quite a bit to the
right, and you can see the photo has gotten really contrasty (and I'm not sure contrasty is really
even a word, but I'm counting on the book's editors not looking too closely at this step).

Using the Tone Curve
If you're used to working with Photoshop's Curves, then this is going to throw you for a loop,
because it's an entirely different (yet somewhat more intuitive) way of working with curves. The
first thing Photoshop users will notice is that you can't add points to the curveinstead the
adjustments are made with sliders which control the angle of the curve. I know, it sounds freaky,
but once you try it...you'll still think it's freaky, but it works. I don't think Dan Margulis (King of
Curves) would like it, but he doesn't like rainbows, or puppies, or sunny days, or....
Step One
If you scroll down from the Basic panel, you'll find the Tone Curve panel (shown here). First, you
have to get your arms around the fact that the only way to move the curve is to drag the sliders,
so you can think of the curve as more of a histogramit shows you what's happening, it doesn't
make things happen like the curve in Photoshop does. One of the slickest things about the Tone
Curve is how you can determine the range of what those three sets of sliders control.
Step Two
You do that using the two Range sliders (those two sliding triangles under the Tone Curve
graphcircled here in red). Essentially, they let you choose where the black and white points are in
your photo (you determine what's a shadow, what's a midtone, and what's a highlight). For
example, the Range slider on the left represents the shadow areas, and the area that appears to
the left of that triangle will be affected by the Shadows sliders. If you want to expand the range of
what the Shadows sliders control, click-and-drag the dark gray Range slider to the right. Now
your shadow adjustments affect a larger range of the image.
Step Three
The area that appears between the Shadows and Highlights Range sliders (shown circled here) is
the midtones. Dragging that Shadows Range slider to the right decreases the space between the
shadow and highlight areas, so your Midtones sliders now control less of a range. A histogram
appears behind the curve, and if you compare it with the histogram shown in Step One, you can
see how moving the Shadows Range slider to the right has affected the midtones.
Step Four
If you were to drag the Highlights Range slider to the right, you're limiting the control the
Highlights sliders will have over your image. For example, if you moved the slider fairly far over to
the right (like I show here) and then you dragged the Highlights Compression slider all the way to
the right (as far as it will go) it will have hardly any effect on your curve (or on your image).
Same thing with the Shadows Range slider. If you drag it far to the left, there's not much for the
Shadows sliders to affect, so changes you make with those sliders won't have much effect. What
this does give you is the ability to increase the control over any area that needs work, by moving
the sliders closer toward the middle when you need to really tweak your highlights and shadows,
or farther apart when your midtones need some help.
Step Five
Let's return those two Range sliders (the ones under the graph) to their default position by
clicking the Reset button. By the way, if you press-and-hold the Option key while you're moving
those two Range sliders, you can get a clipping warning as well. Now let's start tweaking our
image. We'll start with adjusting the Highlights and Shadows sliders since they pretty much work
the same way. When you drag the Highlights Compression slider to the right, this affects just the
brightest highlights in your image and pushes them toward white (you can see this expressed in
the curve shown here).
SCOTT KELBY

Step Six
Dragging the Highlights Luminance slider to the right pushes the quarter-tones in your photo
toward white, as shown here where the top of the curve is starting to steepen (the way the Tone
Curve is designed, it helps keep you from creating overly steep curves that could potentially
damage your photo. That's one advantage for new users of Curves, because if you're in
Photoshop and you don't understand Curves well, you can really trash your image. But here in
Lightroom, it's harder to do much harm).
Step Seven
If you want to darken the shadow areas of your image, drag the Shadows Compression slider to
the left (as shown here) and you'll see the three-quarter-tone shadow areas of the curve start to
steepen, and the shadow areas are pushed closer to black. What you're basically doing is creating
the classic S-curve that creates contrast, and the steeper the curve, the more extreme the
contrast. Dragging the Shadows Luminance slider to the left steepens the curve even further.
Note: The two Range Sliders under the Tone Curve graph only affect the Luminance sliders for the
Highlights and Shadows, and the Contrast slider for the Midtones.
Step Eight
The last two slidersthe Midtones slidersadjust the midpoint of the curve and the slope of the
curve. For example, dragging the Brightness slider to the right (as shown here) opens up the
midtone areas of your photo by brightening the quarter-tones and darkening the three-quarter
tones. You can see in the curve how the midtones have been affected. The Contrast slider adds
contrast by steepening the position of the middle of the curve. Note: The Midtones sliders in the
Tone Curve panel have exactly the same effect on your photo as the Tone Brightness and
Contrast sliders in the Basic panel. In fact, when you move either the Brightness or Contrast
slider in the Tone Curve panel, those same two sliders are moving in the Basic panel as well, so
there's no reason to do both.

Converting to Black and White, and Split Toning
Since Lightroom is an application just for photographers, you knew it had to have a great way to
convert color images to black and white. Luckily, not only does Lightroom have a powerful
conversion tool, it takes things one step further with its built-in split toning. This lets you add
subtle tints to your black-and-white highlights and shadows to give your converted photos even
more depth. Here's how they both work.
Step One
If you don't want to mess with anything, and get a pretty darn good conversion to black and
white, move your cursor over to the Presets Browser panel on the left side of the Develop module.
Then, just hover your cursor over Grayscale Conversion (which is graphic designer speak for
Black-and-White Conversion. I have no idea why, in a program for photographers, they don't just
call it Black-and-White Conversion, but... well...don't get me started). In a few seconds, you'll see
a preview (the thumbnail just above the Presets Browser panel) of how your converted photo will
look.
SCOTT KELBY
Step Two
The reason this preset conversion usually looks good is because (and this will only make sense if
you're a fairly advanced Photoshop user) it creates a conversion that's similar to using the
Lightness channel of a color image in Lab mode (see, I told you you'd need to be advanced in
Photoshop to get that). If you're not, just understand that it does a good quality conversion for
you. To actually apply that conversion to your image, click on the Grayscale Conversion preset (as
shown).
Step Three
Even if you don't want to use this one-click Preset Browser method, I recommend that you do it
at least once (how about now?), and then look over in the Grayscale Mixer panel, on the right
side of the Lightroom window. This is where you'd go to manually create a grayscale (black-and-
white) conversion. When you click the Grayscale Conversion preset it moves the Grayscale Mixer
sliders into a position that would make a nice grayscale conversion (one similar to Photoshop's
Lab conversion, which is very popular with photographers). If you want to tweak the image
further, just grab a Grayscale Mixer slider and start-a-tweakin'. So, now you know another
methodthe one-click preset, and honestly, it ain't bad.

Step Four
As you can see, turning on the Auto checkbox in the Grayscale Mixer panel gives you a different
conversion, which in some cases will look better, but again it's up to you to decide if you like it
better or not. But here's the thing: with one click (clicking the Grayscale Conversion preset) you
get a pretty good black-and-white conversion. Click once more (the Auto checkbox in the
Grayscale Mixer) and you get a different version, so now you can choose between the two and
decide which you like best.
Step Five
To further fine-tune your black-and-white conversion, of course you can drag the Grayscale Mixer
sliders (to the right to make that color channel lighter, and to the left to make it darker), or use
the Exposure and Blacks sliders in the Basic panel. For a quick way to see your photo with some
subtle tone changes, scroll back up to the White Balance pop-up menu in the Basic panel and try
different white balance settings. Even though your image is now black and white, you can still
effect subtle changes in tone by choosing different White Balance settings from the pop-up menu
(as shown here).
Step Six
There's one more control that can come in real handy for getting those nice high-contrast black-
and-white conversions (after you've done all the other things I've just outlined). Go back to the
Basic panel and increase the overall contrast by dragging the Contrast slider to the right. I know,
that probably seems obvious (dragging the Contrast slider to add more contrast), but sometimes
the most obvious things get overlooked because we think to ourselves, "This must be
complicated." Take a look at our black-and-white conversion now, after I dragged the Contrast
slider to the right (as shown here). So now you've got a number of different ways to convert to
black and white, or you can stack them one on top of another, trying one method, then adding
the next one, and then the next, etc.

Step Seven
Now that you've got a black-and-white photo, you can add a split toning effect (if you like). With
split toning, you apply one tint to the highlight areas of your photo and a different tint to the
shadows, and if done right (in other words, subtly), it can add some nice depth to your photos.
You start by going to the Split Toning panel. If you drag the Highlights Hue slider to the right (as
shown here), not a dang thing happens. That's because you also have to increase the Saturation
amount (on the slider directly below Hue) or you don't see anything onscreen, because the
Saturation slider is set to 0 (zero).

Step Eight
Because you need two different sliders to make this work, you'll want to know about this trick
that makes the Hue slider work. If you press-and-hold the Option key while you drag the Hue
slider, it temporarily shows you the tint color as if the Saturation amount was set to 100%. Now,
I have to tell you, this makes everything look too colorful (as shown here), and the key to this
effect is subtlety, but it beats the heck out of guessing, or having to use two sliders to see one
tint.
Step Nine
Once you find your tint, here's what you have to do next: release the Option key and your photo
returns to a regular black-and-white photo, but your Hue slider is in the right position. Now you
just slowly drag the Saturation slider to the right to bring in the tint in the highlights. Again, this
should be subtle (notice the subtle blue tint in the photo shown here).

Step Ten
Since you used the Hue slider in the Highlights section, you've just affected the highlights in your
image, and split toning is about two tintsone in the highlights and one in the shadows, so now
you're going to do the same thing in the Shadows section of the Split Toning panel. Press-and-
hold the Option key and drag the Shadows Hue slider to choose the tint you want for your shadow
areas (in this case, I chose kind of a sepia tone). Again, your color will look too intense (as shown
here), but don't forget, this is just because it's simulating what the hue would look like if the
saturation was set at 100%.

Step Eleven
Release the Option key and, again, your photo returns to black and white, but your Hue slider is
set at the tint you wanted. Now slowly drag the Saturation slider to the right to bring the tint into
the shadow areas (as shown here).
Tip
If you're not going to be using the Presets Browser panel on the left side of Lightroom's
interface, then you might as well tuck it out of sight, which gives you a much larger
Preview area for your photo (especially when the photo is in landscape orientation). Just
click anywhere along the far-left edge of Lightroom's interface and that panel and its
options will be tucked away. To bring it back, just move your cursor back over that
area.
Step Twelve
Now, in our example, we used blue for the highlights and a sepia tone for the shadows, but you
can just as easily switch the two and apply blue to the shadows (as shown here) by dragging the
Shadows Hue slider to the blue area of the slider and dragging the Highlights Hue slider to the
sepia tone color. Other popular split toning combinations are to use cyan in the highlights and
blue in the shadows; yellow in the highlights and green in the shadows; or red in the highlights
and yellow in the shadows. It's worth trying at least a few of these combinations to find out which
work best with your photo.

Adjusting Individual Colors Using HSL Color Tuning
Since Lightroom doesn't have selection tools (like Adobe Photoshop has), how do you tweak or
change just one individual color? You do it using the HSL Color Tuning panel, which lets you
adjust individual colors within your image. This is great for removing obvious color casts, repairing
skin tone problems, or just changing the color of an object within your photo. Don't let all the
sliders throw you offthis is easy stuff.
Step One
We'll start with one of the most useful things about HSL Color Tuning, and that's the ability to fix
photos where the skin tone is too red. In the shot shown here, the model is oversaturated with
red, so in the Develop module scroll down to the HSL Color Tuning panel on the right. There are
three sets of sliders: the Hue sliders let you adjust the hue range of each individual color, the
Saturation sliders let you control how vivid the color is, and the Luminance sliders control the
overall lightness of each color.
ISTOCKPHOTO
Step Two
Since what we want to do is lower the intensity of the red in the photo, just go to the Saturation
sliders, and drag the Reds slider a little bit to the left. Moving just this one slider lowers the
saturation of just the reds, and instantly gives her a more natural skin tone. If you had too much
yellow in a photo, you'd do this same thinggo straight to the Saturation sliders and drag the
Yellows slider to the left. If a photo with a blue sky needs to be bluer, go to the Blues (and Cyans)
Saturation slider and drag it to the right.
Step Three
Another area where HSL Color Tuning comes in handy is changing the color of individual objects.
This is especially helpful because Lightroom doesn't have a set of selection tools (like Photoshop
does). For example, let's say you want to change the color of the stripes on the blanket the baby
is lying on. By the way, that's not just a baby, that's SuperBaby 2.0my little daughter, Kira
Nicole, and that's her big brother Jordan watching over her just after her birth. Now, back to our
story. So, we want to change the color of the cyan stripes on the blanket without disturbing the
rest of the color in the image. This is when you'd use the Hue sliders in the HSL Color Tuning
panel.
SCOTT KELBY

Step Four
Since the blanket is light blue (almost cyan), to change the hue of the cyan in the photo, you'd go
under the Hue sliders and drag the Cyans slider either to the left (toward green) or to the right
(toward blue). Look at the color bar that appears within each slider and you'll see which color
you'll get when you drag the slider. If you want the stripes to look more purple, just look at the
Blues Hue slider. If you drag the Blues slider to the right (as shown here), now the Blues in the
stripes turn purple. It's easy if you remember to look at the photo for the color you want to
adjust, then look at the color bars in the Hue section. The Luminance sliders control the lightness
of each color, so if you want a color darker or lighter, this is the place to go (again, look at the
color gradient on the sliders for clues).

Sharpening and Reducing Noise
Although the controls for sharpening your image and reducing noise are not as powerful as the
ones in Photoshop CS2 (like the Unsharp Mask filter and CS2's Noise Reduction filter), they're at
least as powerful (and have pretty much the same functionality) as those in Photoshop CS2's
Camera Raw plug-in.
Step One
Sharpening is applied in the Develop module's Detail panel. So, on the right side of the Lightroom
window, scroll down to the Detail panel, and you'll see a Sharpen slider (as shown here). In the
example shown here, the slider is set to 0 (zero, the default setting), with no sharpening applied.
To add sharpening to your image, just drag the slider to the right.
SCOTT KELBY
Step Two
In the example shown here, I dragged the slider all the way to the right so you could easily see
the effects of sharpening. Now, if at some point you're going to take your image into Photoshop
for further editing, I'd recommend applying the sharpening in Photoshop instead of here in
Lightroom, for two reasons: (1) Photoshop offers better sharpening with more control, and (2)
sharpening should be added as the last thing you do to the photo before you save it. So, if you're
for sure going to Photoshop at some point, personally I'd skip the sharpening here.
Step Three
Another downside of sharpening in general is that if your photo has any noise in it (those
annoying red, green, and blue spots that sometimes appear in shots taken either in low light, with
a high ISO setting, or with a really cheap digital camera), adding sharpening makes that noise
stand out even more. That's why you'll be glad there's a De-noise slider. It's in the Detail panel as
well. Here it's set at 0, so the noise in this image is very visible in the roof, in the white area
above the doors, on the doorsheck, it's visible everywhere.
SCOTT KELBY

Step Four
To lessen the noise, just drag the De-noise slider to the right (as shown here) until the noise is no
longer visible. You can see that the red, green, and blue spots are nearly gone just by dragging
the slider to the right. If the noise in your photo seems to mostly be in just shadow areas (or it's
high ISO noise), then instead of using the De-noise slider, leave that set at zero and try the
Smooth slider instead (it's right above the De-noise slider). However, be careful not to overdo the
Smooth filter, because it can tend to make your entire photo look soft if you apply too much. So,
it's okay to use Smooth (in fact, sometimes it works best), just keep an eye on the rest of your
photo when you do.

Fixing Problems Caused by the Camera
Believe it or not, there are two whole panels just for this. The first panel does two things: (1) it
helps you deal with problems caused by some digital camera lenses (the cheaper the lens, the
more likely you're going to encounter problems), and (2) it helps hide any color fringe that
appears on edges within your photo (called chromatic aberrations). The second panel helps you
address any miscalibration in your camera (some cameras produce photos that always have a
blue or cyan tint, some always have a red tint, etc.).
Step One
First, we'll look at reducing color fringe using the Lens Corrections panel (shown here). Color
fringe usually appears as a color lineusually red, green, or blue that sometimes appears along the
edges of objects.
DAVE MOSER
Step Two
If you zoom in tight on the bike rider's arm, you can see there is a line of red fringe along the
rider's left arm (as shown here). Finding out the color of the fringe is the first step in reducing the
fringe (we'll need to know this for our next step).
Step Three
Once you've identified which color the fringe is (red, in this case), find that color in the Reduce
Fringe section of the Lens Corrections panel (if the fringe is red or cyan, you'll use the top slider;
if the fringe is blue or yellow, you'll use the next slider down), and then you'll drag away from that
color (as shown here, where we're dragging to the right, away from the Red side and toward the
Cyan side). That's how easy it is to reduce color fringe.
Step Four
Here's what the arm looks like (zoomed in tight again), and as you can see, we've been able to
reduce the red fringe quite a bit. Now on to the other most common lens problemvignetting.
Tip
Another way to get finer control of the sliders in the Develop module panels is to make
the panels widerthen the sliders are longer and the controls are not as broad when you
drag them. Just click directly on the three dots that appear to the immediate left of the
panels and drag to the left to drag the panels out wider. Now try the sliders and you'll
see what I mean.
Step Five
Edge vignetting is where the corners of your photo look darkened or shadowed (as shown here)
and what the Lens Vignetting adjustment in Lightroom does is basically lighten those corner areas
so the vignetting isn't noticeable. The reason there are two controls is so you can control the
amount of correction and adjust how far in toward the center of your photo the corners will be
brightened.
ISTOCKPHOTO/VASCO MIOKOVIC
Step Six
To remove the edge vignetting, scroll down to the Lens Corrections panel, and simply drag the
Amount slider to the right until the corner vignetting disappears (as shown here).

Step Seven
Although the Lens Vignetting controls are used for removing lens vignetting, they can also be
used for adding a darkened edges effect, which makes it look like a soft spotlight has been aimed
at the center of your photo. For years, I've been adding this effect to my photos manually in
Photoshop, but once Adobe included the Camera Raw plug-in with Photoshop (with its built-in
Vignetting controls), I started using it there instead. Now, you've got the same control in
Lightroom. To darken the edges, just drag the Lens Vignetting Amount slider (shown here) to the
left. The farther to the left you drag, the darker the edge areas of your photo will appear.
SCOTT KELBY

Step Eight
As I mentioned earlier, the Midpoint slider determines how far in toward the center of the photo
your darkening extends, so if you drag the Midpoint slider to the left (as shown here) it enhances
the spotlight effect by putting the focus on the center of your photo.

Cropping and Straightening
You should be happy that Lightroom now has the ability to crop and straighten photos, because
when it first came out (Beta 1), it didn't have either. We would all just sit around and say stuff
like, "I love this program, but I can't believe you can't crop a photo." I guess Adobe heard our
plaintive wails because in Beta 2 they added cropping, and although it's an entirely different way
of cropping than in Photoshop, you might find that you like it even better. Hey, I said, "you might
find," so it gives me a pretty big out if you don't like it.
Step One
To crop your photo, click on the Crop icon (circled here in red) and two things happen: (1) a
cropping border appears around your photo, and (2) the Crop & Straighten panel appears in the
list of panels on the right side of Lightroom. (Well, it doesn't "appear." It basically scrolls down
there in a jiffy.)
SCOTT KELBY
Step Two
To crop your photo, just grab one of the corners (or the sides, or anywhere on that border for
that matter) and drag inward. As you drag, you'll notice that a grid appears dividing your cropped
area into thirds, giving you a "rule of thirds" overlay as you drag (how sweet is that?!). If you
press-and-hold the Shift key while you drag, the cropping border will stay proportional. If you
don't press-and-hold the Shift key, it's a freeform crop, and you can move any side, top, or
bottom without disturbing the other sides.
Step Three
Once you let go of the borders, you can reposition your photo within the cropping border by
moving your cursor inside the border (as shown here), and just clicking-and-dragging the photo
around right where you want it.
Step Four
You also have the option of using preset crop sizes by choosing them from the Crop & Straighten
panel's pop-up menu (as shown here). When you choose one of these presets, your cropping
border resizes to fit your choice, and the area that falls inside that border will be the size you
chose (so, for example, here we chose 4x6, so the area inside the cropping border will be exactly
4x6"). If you choose Enter Custom from this pop-up menu, it brings up a dialog where you can
type in the cropping aspect ratio you'd like.
Step Five
If at any time you want to cancel your cropping, just press the Reset button in the Crop &
Straighten panel (as shown here).
Step Six
If you need to straighten your photo, you do that in a similar way. You can do it while you're
cropping by just moving your cursor outside the cropping border, and you'll notice it turns into a
curved, two-headed arrow. Just click, hold, and rotate. A grid will appear over your cropping area
to help you with visually straightening your photo. You can also just drag the Straighten Settings
Angle slider in the Crop & Straighten panel (as shown here). No matter which method you
choose, as you rotate the photo, Lightroom automatically adjusts the size of the photo, so that
when you're done straightening there are no white gaps in the corners (like there would be if you
did this in Photoshop. Very helpful).
Step Seven
Once you're done with your cropping and straightening, you can just move on with your work,
and from now on, only the cropped and straightened view of your photo will appear. For example,
when you return to the Library module, you can see that the thumbnail (top center) now displays
just your cropped and straightened version.

Step Eight
Now, because of the non-destructive nature of Lightroom, this crop can always be removed, and
your original photo brought back unscathed by going back to the Develop module, scrolling down
to the Crop & Straighten panel, and clicking the Reset button to the right of the Show Crop
Overlay checkbox. If you just want to change your crop (rather than remove it), then turn on the
Show Crop Overlay checkbox, and your cropping border returns over your photo for easy editing.

Step Nine
Once your cropping edits have been made, just turn off the Show Crop Overlay checkbox (as
shown) and the newly cropped version now appears, and you can then return to working as
normal, all with the peace of mind of knowing that this cropping is not destructive and can be
undone at anytime (in Lightroom).

Overcoming Color Problems Inherent in Some Cameras
Some cameras (okay, a lot of cameras) put their own color signature on your photos. Some
cameras produce every shot with a slight red color bias, some have a slight cyan color bias, some
have a different color balance, and if your camera does any of these, you can compensate for that
in Lightroom's Camera Calibration panel.
Step One
There are two parts to the Camera Calibration panel (shown here). The first (topmost) slider
controls any tint in the shadow areas of your image, and this may be enough to calibrate the
image for your camera if your tint problems appear in just the shadow areas. If your problems
appear in other areas, then you'll have to go on to the next set of calibration sliders.
SCOTT KELBY
Step Two
There are three sets of sliders (for the Red, Green, and Blue Primaries). The top slider in each
color controls the hue, and the slider below each controls the amount of saturation. In this
example, the camera gives each photo a bit of a cyan cast, so in the close-up of the Camera
Calibration panel shown here, we're dragging the Blue Primary Hue slider away from cyan, and to
reduce the overall saturation of cyan, we're dragging the Blue Primary Saturation slider to the left
just a little bit. At this point in the Beta development cycle of Lightroom, you can't save these
settings for your particular camera and apply them with one click, but it appears as though that's
Adobe's intent in a future release.
Creating Your Own Presets
Lightroom comes with a handful of presets. The real power of presets, though, is not just to use
the ones Adobe included in Lightroom, but to create and apply your own custom presets, so you
can correct your photos, your way, with just one click. It may sound complicated, but it's much
easier than you'd think.
Step One
First, just for example purposes, let's create a one-click preset that makes a split-toned black-
and-white conversion. So, click on a photo, turn on the Grayscale Mixer checkbox, turn on the
Auto checkbox, then go to the Split Toning panel, make the highlights a yellow hue, and increase
the Saturation a bit. Then for the shadows, set the Hue to blue, and increase the Saturation (as
shown here). Then increase the Contrast quite a bit in the Basic panel. Basically, just tweak the
settings until you have something you like.
SCOTT KELBY
Step Two
To save these exact settings as a preset, click the Add Preset button on the lower-left side of
Lightroom's interface (below the Presets Browser). A dialog will pop up where you get to
determine which of Lightroom's Develop module settings will be copied into this preset (and you
get to name your preset here as well). In the example shown here, I only left checked the areas
that I adjusted, and I recommend that you do the same so you always get just the results you
see onscreen, and not any other settings you didn't want applied.
Step Three
When you click OK in the Save Named Settings dialog, it adds your newly created preset to the
Presets Browser (as shown here, where our new preset appears at the bottom of the list).
Step Four
Now let's put our preset to work. First, open another image that you want to apply this same
effect to. In the example shown here, once I opened the photo I wanted, I needed to do a quick
tone correction, so I first clicked on the Lightroom Defaults preset that appears in the Presets
Browser. It's fine to choose a preset first, because if you apply one preset, adding another preset
on top of it doesn't erase what you did previously, so the split toning preset I'm about to apply
will be added on top of the tone correction preset I just applied here.
SCOTT KELBY

Step Five
Now click on the split toning preset you created a few steps back (it appears in the Presets
Browser, as shown here). It immediately applies the grayscale conversion, the added contrast,
and split toning effect, just as you had created earlierall with just that one click. That's what is so
great about creating your own custom presets.
Step Six
Another nice thing about creating your own presets is that you now have access to them while
you're in the Library module in the Quick Develop panel. Just click on the Preset pop-up menu and
a list of all your presets appear, including the one you just created (as shown here). Nice.

Jumping from Lightroom to Photoshop and Back
While Lightroom is great for organizing your photos and processing RAW images, it's not
Photoshopit doesn't do special effects, or photo retouching, or one of the bazillion (yes, bazillion)
things that Adobe Photoshop CS2 does. So, there will be numerous times where you'll want to
take your photo and jump directly over to Photoshop to do some retouching, and then jump right
back to Lightroom. Luckily, the two applications were born to work together.
Step One
To edit the photo you're currently working on in Photoshop, just go under the Photo menu (in
either the Develop module or the Library module) and choose Edit in Adobe Photoshop CS2 (as
shown here). This will bring up a dialog (shown in the next step) that asks how you want to edit
the photo.
SCOTT KELBY
Step Two
The first two choices, Edit Original and Edit a Copy, ignore any of the changes you've made thus
far in Lightroom (these two choices are not available if your photo is in RAW or DNG format). If
you pick the third choice, Edit a Copy with Lightroom Adjustments (as shown), then it creates a
copy of your photo (so you're not editing the original), but that copy does contain any edits you
made to the photo in Lightroom. So, if you adjusted the white balance, or shadows, or exposure,
all those changes will be applied to the copy that will open in Photoshop.
Step Three
When you click the Edit button, it launches Adobe Photoshop CS2 and opens your photo within
Photoshop. Now you can make your edits (in this case, I applied a quadtone effect to my photo in
Photoshop CS2 to add depth and make it look warmer overall). When you're done editing in
Photoshop, close the file and save your changes (that's important). Now, when you return to
Lightroom and look in the Library, you'll see you now have two versions of your photothe original
(shown in the second row down, on the far left), and the edited version with the quadtone effect
applied in Photoshop (circled in red here). Notice that the edited version has the word "Edit"
added after its name.
SCOTT KELBY

Step Four
If you want to quickly compare the original with your version just edited in Photoshop, click on the
original, press-and-hold the Command key and then click on the edited version. Then click on the
Compare button on the bottom-left side of the Lightroom Library module, and both photos will
appear for your review (as shown here).

Note: The only reason we have two copies of our file is because we chose to work on a copy in the
Edit Photo dialog that appears in Step Two. If you have a JPEG or TIFF file and choose to work on
the original, then you're doing just that working on the original in Photoshop. So when you return
to Lightroom, you've edited that one original photo.
Chapter 6. Slideshow Sharing Your
Photos Onscreen
It's kind of funny that in this digital day and age, we still use the term "slide show," even though
traditional slides are nearly as outdated as records. For example, my 9-year-old son has never
seen a record album. For him, music has always come from either CDs or iPods. Although I have
many photographic slides, my son has never seen a real slide show using real conventional color
slides. But it's not just him. I speak at conferences and tradeshows, and if I walked into the room
where I was scheduled to speak and asked the class moderator where the slide projector was,
he'd look at me like I was from Mars. Yet, Adobe Lightroom still uses this term. So, today, in this
very book I'm suggesting that not only should we, in the photography industry, use a different
term for what was previously called a slide show, but I actually want to propose the new term. I
have crafted a new word that I feel better represents the experience of viewing photographic
images onscreen, and thus I'm quite certain this term will be quickly and unilaterally embraced by
the worldwide photographic community. It's "flobotnor" (flowbotnore). So, once it's officially
adopted (any day now, I'm sure), you'll see future releases of Lightroom where the Slideshow
module will have been renamed the Flobotnor module. Of course, you'll have the satisfaction of
knowing that not only were you there when it all happenedyou helped shape modern history.
These are amazing times, my friend. Amazing times, indeed.
Getting Photos Into Your Slide Show
Well, the first step is figuring out which photos you want to include in your slide show, and easy
ways to add photos to it, and delete photos from it. Lightroom gives you lots of different options,
so we'll start here and build on it as we move through this chapter.
Step One
There are a number of different ways to get the photos you want into a slide show. You start in
the Library module by going to the Grid view and Command-clicking on the photos you want in
your slide show (you can also Command-click on the thumbnails right in the filmstrip at the
bottom of Lightroom's window). Once the photos you want are selected (as shown here), press
Command-3 or click on the Slideshow module in the upper right-hand corner of the Lightroom
window (as shown).
SCOTT KELBY
Step Two
Once you switch over to the Slideshow module, the photos you selected now appear in Slideshow
Grid view. These are the photos that will appear in your slide show. If you look at the filmstrip at
the bottom of the window, you'll see all the photos in the collection or shoot you chose your
photos from. A thin white line appears around the photos that you selected to be in your slide
show.
Step Three
To remove a photo from your slide show (in this case, the flowers), just Command-click on it
within the filmstrip and it's removed from the Grid view (but that photo will still appear in your
filmstrip, just in case you need it again).

Step Four
To add a photo from the filmstrip to your slide show (in this case, the boats), just Command-click
on its thumbnail and it's added to the Grid (as shown here).

Customizing the Look of Your Slides
The defaults are okay, but after you create a slide show or two with them, you're going to be
saying stuff like, "I wish I could change the background color" or "I wish I could add some text at
the bottom" or "I wish my slide show looked better." (Note: You're not saying you wish your
photos looked betteryou wish your slide show looked better.) Well, this is where you start to
create your own custom look for your slides, so it looks just the way you want it, every time.
Step One
Once the photos you want in your slide show are in place, now it's time to focus on the look of
your slide show. Lightroom comes with several pre-designed templates, and you can apply any of
them by just clicking on them in the Template Browser on the left side of the Lightroom window
(as shown here, where I've clicked on the Default template, which puts your photos over a gray
background with a thin white border and a hard drop shadow, and makes your Identity Plate
appear in the upper-left corner. More on this later).
Step Two
If you move your cursor over each template name in the Template Browser, you'll see a preview
(up in the preview window above the Template Browser) of how a slide in your slide show will look
if you use that particular template. Besides the Grid view, there's also a Slide view so you can see
your slide layouts up close. To switch to Slide view, either double-click on a slide, or click the Slide
button (shown circled here). Once in Slide view, click on the EXIF Metadata template to put your
photo on a black background with your photo's metadata printed below it.
Step Three
If you decide that you'd prefer to create your own custom look for your slides, rather than using
Adobe's templates, then you might as well tuck the Template Browser out of sight so you have a
larger work area. To do that, just click once on the far-left side of Lightroom's window (as shown)
and the panel will tuck itself away. Look how much larger your work area is now, and all the
essential adjustment panels are still on the far-right side of the window. Now, let's get to
customizing your look.

Step Four
To create your own custom look, you can use the current template as a starting place (if you
like), or you can switch to a different template and use that (if you move your cursor to the left
side of the screen, your Template Browser will pop back out). For our example here, we'll just use
that EXIF Metadata template as a starting place to customize our slide show. First, let's look at
sizing your photos on the slide (basically, determining how large your photos will appear). You do
this by clicking-and-dragging on the margin grid lines that appear around your photo. If you click-
and-drag inward, it shrinks your photo (as shown here).
Step Five
You can move the margins by dragging them, or you can use the Margins sliders in the Slide
Layout Tools panel (shown here). As you can see, the margins are all set at exactly the same
amount201 pixels. That's because by default they're linked together (see the checkbox at the end
of each Margins slider? They're all checked, so your margins move as one unitif you click-and-
drag one margin, they all move in unison. Same thing with the slidersmove the Left Margins slider
and all the other Margins sliders move as well).
Step Six
Now, what if you want to change just one margin's size while leaving the other margins
unchanged? Then just turn off the Link checkbox beside the margin you want to adjust. For
example, if you want to create more room below your photo (so you can create a gallery print
effect), turn off the checkbox beside the Top slider (as shown here), then within the Slide view
area, click on the top margin grid line and drag it straight upward. As you can see, this gives you
a smaller margin at the top of the slide, and the photo increases in size until it hits the side and
bottom margins. Remember, as the margins get smaller, the photo gets larger (and vice versa).
By the way, anytime you want to hide those margin grid lines, just press Command-Shift-H.
Step Seven
Now, there's still that EXIF data under the photo. Before you delete all that text (you'd just click
on it, then press the Delete key on your keyboard), you'll want to know how to edit that text, in
case on a different project you actually do want that info to appear on the slide. First, click on the
block of text you want to edit (as shown here). When you do this, the controls that appear below
the slide become active. These controls let you decide which text is visible and where it winds up
on your slide.
Step Eight
On the bottom-right side of the Slide view area are some controls for the placement of your text.
For example, if you want your text to appear on the edge of your slide, it's a two-click process:
(1) click directly on the words Edge of the Slide, then (2) pick a black dot in the nine-dot grid to
the right of your placement choices. You use these dots to choose on which edge your text
appears. By default, your text appears on the edge of the slide in the same grid position it was in
to begin with (that's why the lower right-hand corner dot was filled in). If, instead, you wanted
that text to appear on the upper left-hand corner of the slide, you'd click the upper-left grid dot.

Step Nine
Now let's change the position of the text. In the Placement controls, click on Outside the Image so
it appears just outside the edge of your photo, then click the right-center dot (on the dot grid) so
your text appears centered on the right side of your image. If you need to rotate your text, then
you'll use the Rotate Left and Rotate Right buttons to the right of the dot grid (shown circled
here). By default, the Auto Rotate checkbox is turned on. While your text is highlighted, click the
Edit button at the bottom left of the Slide view window. This brings up the Edit Text Adornment
dialog where you can change the font, font style (bold, italic, etc.), and point size using the popup
menus in the center of the dialog. To change the color of your type, click on the button to the
immediate right of the Point Size pop-up menu.

Step Ten
Okay, so now that you know how to work with type on your slide, let's get rid of those blocks of
type. Click on either one and then press the Delete key on your keyboard. Now click on the other
block, and delete it as well. You'll also need to click on the rating stars (if your image had any) in
the upper-left corner of the photo and delete them. Now there should be no text visiblejust your
photo, with a thin white stroke around it, on a black background, with no visible text (and, of
course, the margin guides are still visible).

Step Eleven
Let's hide the margin guides from view (press Command-Shift-H), so now you see just your photo
on a black background. However, the reason your photo has that thin white border around it is
because that feature was included in the EXIF Metadata template we originally started with (you
can see the white border in the previous step). To turn off this thin white border, go to the Image
Settings panel on the right side of the window and turn off the checkbox beside Stroke Photo
Border (as shown circled in red here).
Step Twelve
While we're up there in the Image Settings panel, turning off the Stroke Photo Border checkbox,
take a look at the checkbox right above it called Zoom and Crop Photos to Fit Grid Cells. Here's
what this very handy checkbox does: First, go back two steps and look at how the photo doesn't
fill the margins on the sides. Although the photo touches the top and bottom, there's an empty
gap on the left and right sides. Turn this check-box on, and your photo will increase in size
(zoom) until there are absolutely no gaps whatsoever, as shown here (make the margin guides
visible by pressing Command-Shift-H, then turn on the Zoom and Crop checkbox, and you'll see
what I mean). The little lines that appear above the top and bottom margins when you click on
the image show the area of your photo that extends beyond the margins, but is hidden from view.

Customizing the Background
I don't want to say the background is as important as the photo, but it's important enough that if
you don't use one that complements the photo, it can pretty much wreck your slide show. Luckily,
Lightroom gives you lots of control over how the Backdrop (that's what Lightroom calls it) behind
your photos looks. Unfortunately, it doesn't come with a built-in "good taste" button, but if you
stick with classic backgrounds (like black, white, or gray), you can have your Backdrop support
and complement your photos, instead of competing with them.
Step One
The background on our slide is black (because we started customizing a slide by using the EXIF
Metadata template as our starting place). But you can change that to any color you'd like (like a
nice gray perhaps) by going to the Backdrop Settings panel and clicking on the black color swatch
to the right of the Set Backdrop Color checkbox (as shown here). This brings up the Colors panel
where you can choose which color you'd like (for a light gray, just drag the slider up above the
center, as shown here). Now hide the margin guides to see how things look.
Step Two
Another built-in background choice found in the Backdrop Settings panel is the Color Wash. When
you turn on the Apply Color Wash checkbox (as shown here), it applies a diagonal gradient as
your background. Luckily, you have lots of control over how that gradient is applied, as well as
the color of the gradient (as you'll see in the next step).

Step Three
The colors that appear in this gradient come from two places: (1) the first color comes from the
current color chosen as your Backdrop color in the Backdrop Settings panel (look at the first small
color swatch), and (2) the color set as your Color Wash color (which by default is set to a dark
gray). So when you first apply this Color Wash, you get a gradient that goes from a light gray to a
dark gray. If you want to change the light gray color to say...red, then click on the tiny color
swatch next to the Set Backdrop Color checkbox, choose a red from the Colors panel, then close
the panel by clicking on the round red button in the top-left corner. As you can see, this red-to-
gray color gradient looks really awful. Luckily, it's not permanent.
Step Four
To change the gray part of the gradient, click on the gray color swatch to the right of the Apply
Color Wash checkbox and when the Colors panel appears, pick a more suitable color to go with
red. I picked white here, but what this really tells us is that red to white makes a pretty stinky
background gradient. You'll certainly want to pick two colors that don't get in the way of your
photography (which is why the gray gradients work so well). You can also change the angle of the
gradient by using either the Angle slider or the Angle wheel (they're tied together, so it doesn't
matter which one you choose). Here I moved the angle so the white is on the left, and it
graduates over to the red. Yecch!
Step Five
Besides the solid color Backdrop and the Color Wash, you can also add an image as the
background for your slides by turning on the Apply Image to Backdrop checkbox (circled in red
here). For example, I imported two wedding photos into Lightroom: a photo of the bride and
groom, and a close-up photo of a rose that I want to use as a Backdrop image. You can see them
both in the filmstrip at the bottom of the Slideshow window.
STOCKPHOTO/SANDRA O'CLAIRE AND ROB SYLVAN

Step Six
Now all you do is click-and-drag the rose photo from the filmstrip and drop it on the gray
background that's currently surrounding the photo (as shown here), and that photo becomes the
Backdrop. My only problem with what you see here (besides the total clich cheesiness) is that
the background photo tends to overwhelm the subject. It should be a background element not
competing with the foreground, but luckily there are two ways to have it take a step back from
the front of the stage.
Step Seven
The first is to lower the Opacity setting of the Backdrop image using the slider at the bottom of
the Backdrop Settings panel (as shown here, where I lowered it to 30%). This kind of fades the
Backdrop photo a bit, and lets the main image stand out more. But there's another method I like
even better, and that's to create a backscreened effect (as shown in the next step).
Step Eight
To create the backscreen effect, click on the Set Backdrop Color swatch, and when the Colors
panel appears, choose white, and then close the panel. Use the Opacity slider (at the bottom of
the Backdrop Settings panel) to lower the opacity of the Backdrop image to 50%. You can see
how much different this looks, as opposed to just lowering the opacity of the Backdrop image
itself. A third option is to use the Color Wash, and lower the opacity of it, so your tinted Backdrop
image graduates from one color to the other (it looks better than it sounds. Unless you pick red
and white, of course). Now let's look at adding and editing a drop shadow behind your photo.

Adding and Editing Drop Shadows
Lightroom has the ability to add soft drop shadows behind your photos with just one click.
However, what if you don't like the direction your shadow is casting? Or what if you think the
shadow is too soft (or not soft enough), or it's not close enough to the photo (or it needs to be
further away), or it's too dark (or too light)? Do you see where I'm going with this? That's right,
although you add the shadow with one click, you're surely going to want to mess with it once
you've added it. Here's how.
Step One
As long as your photos don't take up the whole slide, you'll be able to add a shadow behind your
photo that casts onto your Backdrop. You do this by turning on the Cast a Shadow Behind Images
checkbox (as shown here) in the Image Settings panel. There are four controls. Opacity
determines how dark your shadow looksthe lower the number the lighter (and more transparent)
your shadow will appear. Offset determines how far away the shadow will appear from the photo.
The Radius slider controls how soft the shadow will be (the higher the number, the softer the
shadow), and Angle determines where the light source is coming from, which determines which
direction the shadow falls.
Step Two
The default shadow is fairly hard-edged, fairly dark, and appears quite close to the photo itself (as
shown here). By the way, as a rule of thumb, the closer the shadow appears to the photo, the
closer the photo is to the background. So if you move the shadow farther away, it makes the
photo appear as though it is farther above the background.

Step Three
Generally, I like drop shadows to be softer and a little further away. I also lower the opacity quite
a bit because I like the shadow to be so subtle that you barely notice it's there. In fact, if the
person doesn't actually notice the shadow, I like it best. I feel like it should create a subtle depth,
and not really be part of the composition. But hey, that's just me. So, if you feel like I do (and
Peter Frampton does), then increase the Radius (to make the shadow softer), increase the Offset
(to move it farther away), and lower the Opacity (to make it lighter), as shown here.
Step Four
Another look you might try is to turn off the white stroke around the photo (as shown here) by
turning off the Stroke Photo Border checkbox that appears above the Shadow controls. This
makes your shadow stand out a little more while still maintaining a decent degree of subtlety.

Adding Text to Your Slides
Adding text to your slides isn't hard, but I have to say I've never run across an application that
handles text the way Lightroom does. It's not hard, but it's not real obvious either, so this tutorial
will certainly come in handy when it's time to add some type.
Step One
Adding text to your photos is easy, it just takes a minute or two to understand how Lightroom
handles text. Once you get that, it's fairly easy. The first thing we'll look at is how to add your
Identity Plate text to your photo ( remember we talked about this briefly in Chapter 2, where we
showed you how to customize the program by replacing the words "Adobe Lightroom" with your
name or the name of your studio?). To have your Identity Plate added to your slides, go to the
Overlay Options panel and turn on the Show Identity Plate checkbox. You'll see the text that's
entered in your Identity Plate appear in the top-left corner of your slide (as shown here), using
the default Identity Plate font, Zapfino.
Step Two
If you're wondering how to change what appears on your Identity Plate, just go under the
Lightroom menu and choose Identity Plate Setup to bring up the dialog you see here. Highlight
your name in the name field (as shown here). Then you can choose a different font or change font
sizes by clicking on the Font Panel button (as shown), which brings up the Font panel with a list of
your installed fonts.

Step Three
Another way to quickly edit the text and font that appears in your Identity Plate is to click on the
pop-up menu that appears immediately to the right of the Show Identity Plate checkbox in the
Overlay Options panel. Choose Edit from the pop-up menu that appears. This brings up the
Identity Plate Editor dialog where you can edit your text or access the Font panel. Another thing
you can do in the Overlay Options is control the Opacity and Scale (size) of your Identity Plate
text. In the example shown here, I lowered the opacity to 44% to make the text lighter, and then
scaled the text down in size using the Scale slider (as shown here). I also clicked-and-dragged the
Identity Plate text itself and I moved it above the top-left corner of my photo.
Step Four
If you don't want to use the whole Identity Plate thing, and you just want to add regular text,
then turn the Show Identity Plate checkbox off, and instead click on the Add Text button that
appears on the left side of the Slide view window under your slide (as shown here).

Step Five
This brings up the Add Text Adornment dialog (shown here). You just type in the text you want to
appear on your slide in the field at the top, and you get a preview of how your text will look at the
bottom of the dialog. You can choose your font, style, font size, and color here as well. Now, one
feature that isn't in Lightroom is the ability to add spacing (positive tracking) between letters, so I
pulled a fast one hereI just typed the first letter, hit the Spacebar two times, then typed the
second letter, hit the Spacebar two times, and so on. So, the letters appear to have positive
tracking (extra space) between them.

Step Six
There are also some things here to help you automate at least part of the process. For example, if
you wanted to add the year after your text, just click-and-drag the light blue Date (YYYY) token
up after your text and it automatically adds the year the photo was taken (as shown here). The
only problem is, it adds it directly next to your last typed letter, so there's no space between the
date and your text. But there's a way around that.
Step Seven
Just click your cursor between the last letter you typed and the Date token, and then press the
Spacebar. In this case, because I manually added so much space between the letters, I pressed
the Spacebar four times to add more space.

Step Eight
If you wanted to add the month and year, you would just drag another Date (YYYY) token up to
the text field at the top, but drag it so it appears before the year token. By default, all date
tokens are year tokens, but if you click on the downward facing arrow that appears on the right
side of the token, a menu pops up and you can choose Date (Month), as shown here. So, now it
will add the month and year after your type. Again, you'll need to click your cursor and add some
extra space between your Date (Month) and Date (YYYY) tokens. I also added a large dash
between my text and the date, with four spaces on either side. When the text looks the way you
want it, click the Create button.

Step Nine
By the way, before I clicked the Create button, I clicked on both of the Date tokens and hit the
Delete key on my keyboard. I didn't actually want them on my slides, but I wanted you to know
how they work. See, I care. Once your text appears, you can click-and-drag it where you want it
to appear or you can use the Placement controls at the bottom right of the Slide view. To use the
Placement controls, under Placement, click on Outside the Image to put your text outside the
photo, but inside the slide area. Then click on the bottom-center dot (in the nine-dot grid to the
right) so the text will appear centered under your photo.

Step Ten
So, what's the advantage of doing it this way, using the Placement controls, rather than just
dragging it where you want it? Well, if you use the Placement controls, and then you wind up
resizing your image (by dragging the margin guides), your text automatically moves right along
with your photo. Here I clicked-and-dragged out the margins, making the photo larger, and the
text moved down right along with it. You may prefer the freewheeling drag-it-where-you-want-it
style, but at least you know there is another option, and why it exists. By the way, to get the
clean, uncluttered look you see here, I turned off the drop shadow and the border stroke, so it's
just the photo on the Color Wash backdrop.
Step Eleven
So you can see how easy it is to change your setup, let's tweak this layout. First, go to the
Backdrop Settings panel, turn off the Apply Color Wash checkbox, and change your Backdrop
color to white. Now, your text is white against a white background, and you can't see it. So click
where your text was (centered under the photo) and the text controls will become active. Click on
the Edit button to get the Edit Text Adornment dialog. Click on the color swatch (to the right of
the Font Size pop-up menu) and choose black from the Colors panel. Press Change to finalize
your edits. Then, click-and-drag your text down just a bit, so it's no longer using the Placement
controls.

Step Twelve
Grab any margin guide and drag inward, shrinking your image and leaving more room on the
bottom. Now you can drag your text down further. Then, go to the Slide Layout Tools panel, turn
off the Top Link checkbox, and click-and-drag the top margin up to create a gallery print effect. In
the Image Settings panel, turn on the Zoom and Crop Photos to Fill Grid Cells checkbox, so your
photo completely fills the margins. Then turn on the Stroke Photo Border checkbox, but change
the stroke color to black by clicking on the color swatch to the right. Lastly, in Overlay Options,
turn on the Show Ratings checkbox, and any star ratings you assigned (in the Library module),
will now appear in the upper left-hand corner of your photo. You control the stars' size using the
Scale slider, and change the color by clicking on the color swatch to the right.

Saving Your Custom Layout as a Template
Now that you've taken all this time to create your own custom look, you want to make sure you
don't have to jump through all these hoops the next time you want the same look. The solution?
Save this "look" as a template. Then, the next time you want this custom look for your slide
show, you're just one simple click away.
Step One
First, go and make the Template Browser visible again by clicking on the thin black border on the
far-left side of the Lightroom window. Click on the Grid button (as shown here) and you'll see that
the custom layout you created earlier has automatically been applied to all the other photos in
your slide show. Now, let's save this layout as a template so we can apply it later to other
collections of photos.
Step Two
Click on the Add Template button at the bottom-right corner of the Template Browser. This adds a
new line to the Template Browser list, and the text field is already highlighted for youall you have
to do is type in a name (as shown here). That's ityou created a template. Now, let's put it to use.
Step Three
Go back to the Library module and choose a different set of photos (in this case, I chose two
photos that we added a split toning effect to earlier in the book). Now switch to the Slideshow
module and click on the Default template in the Template Browser (as shown here), which adds
the default slide layout.

Step Four
To apply your new custom template to these photos is now a one-click processjust click on your
named template (as shown here). Remember what we went through to create this whole thing?
Now you're applying it with just one click. Life is good. Again, you get an instant preview (up in
the preview window above the Template Browser) of how any of these templates would look on
your photos by just hovering your cursor over the templates in the list. Sweet.

Playing Your Slide Show
Okay, you've spent all this time customizing your slide show so it looks just the way you want it
tonow it's time to see what it actually will look like. Luckily you can choose from seeing either a
small preview, or you can have the whole full-blown, full-screen slide show play right on your
screen. Here's what you need to know to take the final stepplaying your slide show.
Step One
First, I have some wonderful news: although you can't just drag-and-drop photos into the order
you want them when you're in the Library module's Grid view, you actually can do that here in
the Slideshow module. So let's start therein the Slideshow Grid view, click-and-drag the photos
into the order you want them to appear in your slide show.
Step Two
If you scroll down to the bottom of the Slideshow panels, you'll find the Playback Settings panel
(shown here). This is where you set how long each slide will appear onscreen (using the top
slider) and how long the dissolve transition between slides will last (using the bottom slider). If
you don't care which order your slides are displayed in, you can turn on the Randomize Slides
checkbox.
Step Three
If you want to add music to your slide show (and believe me, you do), then in the Playback
Settings panel turn on the Play Music checkbox, and click-and-hold on the down-facing arrow to
the right of the checkbox. What appears is a pop-up menu of the playlists in your installation of
Apple's iTunes software, where you can choose which playlist you'd like to play during your slide
show. By the way, if you don't have Apple's iTunes software (which means you don't have an
iPod, which means you may well be the only person left on earth without an iPod, which is just
sad), then you can go and download it (free) from Apple.com.
Tip
Unfortunately, you can only choose playlists of songs, not individual songs, to add to
your slide show. So if you want just one song to play, create a playlist in iTunes with
just that one song.
Step Four
To see a preview of how your slide show will look, click the Preview button that appears below the
panels on the right side of the Lightroom window (as shown here). The preview appears in the
center, where the Grid used to be. (Note: If you want a larger preview of your slide show, just
hide the Template Browser before you click the Preview button.) To quit Preview and return to
Slide view, press the Esc key on your keyboard. If you have added music to your slide show,
clicking the Preview button will launch iTunes.
Step Five
Directly under the Preview button is a set of controls for moving through your slide show, and
they're pretty much like any standard video controls. You've got (from L to R) a Rewind to the
Beginning button, a Rewind button, a Play (full screen)/Escape button, a Pause/Play button, and a
Fast Forward button.
Step Six
Here's the larger preview layout with the Template Browser panel hidden. Okay, so you've chosen
the photos, applied your template, watched a preview of your slide show, tweaked any other
things that needed tweakingnow it's time to see your slide show in its full-screen glory. To do
that, just click the center Play button (on the right side of the window, as shown here).
Step Seven
When you click that Play button, your slide show appears full-screen (as shown here) and moves
automatically through the rest of the slides based on the settings you chose in the Playback
Settings panel. You can also use the keyboard shortcut Command-Return to start the full-screen
slide show. To pause a running slide show, press the Spacebar, and to resume, press the
Spacebar again. To exit the full-screen slide show and return to the Slideshow module at any
time, press the Esc key on your keyboard (go ahead and hit Esc now to exit your slide show).

Step Eight
Let's finish up by doing a quick variation on the slide show we've created. Go back to the
Backdrop Settings panel and change the Backdrop color to black. Then scroll back up to the
Image Settings panel and change your Stroke color to a medium gray. Next, click directly on your
text to select it and then click the Edit button. In the Edit Text Adornment dialog, click on the
color swatch and choose white for your text color. Now, make the Template Browser panel visible
and click the Add Template button, then name this template "Gallery Print Black," and press
Return. Now, run your slide show using this new modified look. See how easy it is to change the
look of your slide show? And better yet, we've saved this new look as a template so we can apply
it in the future with just one click.
Exporting Your Slide Show to the Web
Well, this really should be called "exporting your slide show to a webpage or to a PDF for
emailing" but I couldn't fit all that. The reason exporting is important is because without it you
can only show slide shows from within Lightroom. That's great if the person you want to show
your slide show to is sitting right beside you, but what if it's a client across town or across the
country? Ahhh. See, you knew you'd need this one day. Luckily, Lightroom does all the hard
work. In fact, it actually builds the HTML webpage for you. Sweet!
Step One
To export your slide show to another format (so you can show your slide show outside of
Lightroom), click on the Export button (as shown here), which appears below the panels on the
right side of Lightroom's window.
Step Two
This brings up the Export dialog, shown here. The Choose button (up top) lets you choose where
your slide show will be saved (I chose my Desktop so I could find it easily). When you export, all
your files wind up in a folder, and the next field down lets you choose the name of the folder that
Lightroom creates for you. So, go ahead and type in what you'd like that folder to be named (as
shown here).
Step Three
The next section down is for people who manage their own websites manually, and want to
transfer (via FTP) this new Web-based slide show directly to their Web server. If you're asking
yourself, "What's an FTP server?" or "Why would I want to do an FTP transfer?" then you can skip
right over this part of the dialog, and move on to the next step.
Step Four
The section at the bottom of the Export dialog is pretty important because this is where you
choose which kind of Web-based slide show you're going to create. The Slideshow Format pop-up
menu is where you make that choice. The default choice is HTML, which creates a standard
webpage using the standard Web formatting, or you can choose PDF or Flash. You get to choose a
Quality setting for your images, and if you want your slide show to be an exact size, then go to
the Size section (bottom left of the dialog), turn on the Constrain Size checkbox, then type in the
size (in pixels) you want for your slide show. There's also a Render Slides with Adornments
checkbox that lets you choose whether or not you want text added in the slide show to appear on
your slides. If you click OK at this point, Lightroom will create a folder on your Desktop with all
the necessary files to make a webpage. If you want to see a preview of your finished webpage,
double-click on the file in that folder named index.html and it will launch your Web browser and
open that page (shown here). The finished page doesn't have dissolve transitions (you'll need to
choose Flash from the Slideshow Format pop-up menu for that).

Step Five
If you choose PDF as your Slideshow Format, the Quality and Size sections are still there, but in
the Settings section (on the right) you have some new controls: one for Full Screen, if you want
your PDF to go full screen while playing, and another to determine the duration of the slide show.
If you click OK at this point, Slideshow saves a PDF to your Desktop, ready to be emailed (you
just attach it to your email like any other photo) or uploaded to a website where people can
download it. Note: The slide show only works if the person you're sending the PDF to opens it in
Adobe's Acrobat Readerit won't play as a slide show with transitions in Apple's Preview
application, even though it reads PDF files.

Step Six
Here's one of the benefits of Adobe's acquisition of Macromediathe ability to save your slide show
in Flash format for the Web. From the Slideshow Format pop-up menu choose Flash, and in the
Settings section on the lower right of the dialog a number of new settings appear. There are three
fields that let you type in information that you want to appear on your Flash-based webpage. The
Draft Mode checkbox uses the preview files to make your slide show, rather than the full high-res
images, so it's much faster. The same duration slider that was there for the PDF export is here for
the Flash slide show as well. If exporting to a Flash-based website is what you're looking for, then
just click the OK button (as shown here).
Step Seven
When you click OK, Lightroom gathers everything together for you and puts it neatly in your
named folder. Here's a look inside that folder (the one I saved to my Desktop) and inside it you'll
see a file named index.html. That's your web-page. Although you'll need to upload the entire
contents of this folder to the Web, if you just want a preview of the final page (before you upload
it), double-click on the index.html file and it will open in your Web browser.
Step Eight
Here's a look at the final Flash-based webpage. You can see the title you entered in the Export
dialog now appears at the top of the page. Visitors to your page can click on individual thumbnails
to see the image, or they can press the Play button to see the Flash-based slide show. There's
even a button (in the bottom-right corner of the page) for viewing the slide show in Full Screen
mode.

Chapter 7. Print Printing Your Photos
It could be argued that this is the single most important module of all Lightroom's modules,
because it's all about "the print." Everything we do is, ultimately, to produce a final printed image.
In fact, one of my friends, the award-winning nature photographer Vincent Versace, has a saying
he's quite fond of: "We are in service of the print." He must be right, because he's a brilliant
photographer, and one heck of a Photoshop instructor, too. However, Vincent himself will be the
first one to tell you he's a better chef than he is a photographer. Now, if you've seen any of
Vincent's photography (some of his original prints go for upwards of $5,000 a pop), you know
he's got to be one hell of a cook. Vincent has invited me over to his house for dinner on numerous
occasions, but I've never gone. You know why? Because I'm afraid Vincent will slip hallucinogenic
drugs into my food. Why do I think that? It's because I think Vincent slips hallucinogenic drugs
into his own food. Always. So, it only stands to reason that if he's cooking dinner, I'm going to
wind up singing "Purple Haze" while staring intently at a ball of yarn. Maybe that's why everybody
loves Vincent's cooking so much. By the time the main course comes around, they're all hopped
up on crank and everything tastes yummy. Of course, I could be wrong. But if you get a chance
to hear Vincent speak at a conference, see if you don't subscribe to my "don't eat the brownies
theory" afterwards. However, I think Vincent's statement that "We are in service of the print" has
some merit. Not that I really understand it, but I've noticed it really starts to sound good after a
few appetizers.
Printing Essentials
Ahhh, finally we get to move from just viewing our photos onscreen to actually printing them out.
Luckily, Lightroom has about the best printing setup of any program I've ever seen. We're going
to start with using one of the built-in printing templates. I'm generally not a big fan of the default
templates that ship with any program, but Adobe broke the mold a bit with the templates in the
Print module and provided some very useful templatesat the very least, ones that can be easily
tweaked to fit your needs. So, we'll start here.
Step One
Printing is done in the Print module, so press Command-4 to switch to the Print module. You don't
even have to have a photo selected to enter the Print module, and the reason isyou've got that
nice filmstrip across the bottom, so you can choose which photos you want to print right from
there. Start by clicking on the Maximize Size template in the Template Browser (as shown), then
click on a photo in the filmstrip, and that photo now appears as large as possible on the page to
be printed.
ISTOCKPHOTO/ANDRZEJ BURAK

Step Two
If you want to print more than one photo, press-and-hold the Command key and, in the filmstrip,
click on any other photos you want printed (as shown here). As you click on other photos,
Lightroom automatically adds pages for you (the number of pages you're printing appears directly
below your current photo, so it shows that you're looking at the first page of six to be printed). If
you press Command-A (Select All), then it would automatically add as many pages as necessary.
To remove a photo from your print selection, Command-click on it in the filmstrip.
Step Three
This is more of a timesaving shortcut than a step, but you know that number of pages appearing
under your main photo? Well if you have just a small number of photos set up for printing (like we
do here), you can view those pages by using the left and right arrows on either side of the page
numbers. However, when you've got a lot of photos, you can jump forward or backward much
faster by placing your cursor right over the first number (your cursor will change into a text I-
beam cursor) and then click, hold, and drag to the left or right to quickly jump through the page
numbers. It makes getting to photo page number 42 much, much faster. Now, back to our story
already in progress.

Step Four
Remember when we chose the Maximize Size template? Well, what that template does is it tries
to print your photo as large as possible, and to do that it had to turn your photo sideways, so it
prints wide, rather than trying to fit on a tall page. So how did it know to do that? Because the
option Rotate Photos to Best Fit Cells was turned on. If, instead, you wanted to print your wide
photo on a tall page (like the one shown here), you'd go up to the Image Settings panel (top
right) and turn off the Rotate Photos to Best Fit Cells checkbox (as shown heremore on this
feature later when we get into contact sheets). All right, so far we learned how to print one or
more photos, and how to change the photo's orientation on the page. Now, it's resizing time.

Step Five
Before we head straight into the sizing issue, I do want to mention that by default there are two
onscreen rulers that appear on the left side and bottom of your photo (as shown here). The
default unit of measure is inches, although the bottom side of the ruler is always in centimeters (I
have no idea why). If you want to change the top measurement, go to the Page Layout Tools
panel, and next to the Show Rulers checkbox, you'll see the word "Inches." Click-and-hold on that
word and a pop-up menu of units of measurement appears (as shown here)just choose your
desired unit from this menu.

Step Six
By the way, if you find those rulers distracting, you can turn them off (as I have here) by turning
off the Show Rulers checkbox in the Page Layout Tools panel. Now, first off, how do we determine
how large a print we're going to print? That is actually done not in Lightroom, but in the Page
Setup dialog for your printer. Conveniently, Adobe added a Page Setup button (shown circled
here) at the bottom of the Panels area on the right side of the window, so click that now and we
can set up the size of the paper we want to print on.

Step Seven
Once you click that button, the Page Setup dialog will pop down from the top of Lightroom's
window. From the Settings pop-up menu at the top of the dialog, choose Page Attributes. In the
Format For pop-up menu, choose your printer (in the dialog shown here, I picked my personal
printer, the Epson Stylus Photo R2400, which I think is the best pro-quality 13x19" printer out
there). The Paper Size pop-up menu is where you ultimately choose which size paper you'll be
printing to, so go ahead and choose that from the menu (here I chose to print 8x10" borderless
prints). Also, for orientation, choose Portrait (the first icon from the left) because you can auto
rotate your photos to print correctly in Lightroom.

Step Eight
Now click OK, and you're set (you can turn the Rulers on for just a second or two to confirm that,
yes indeed, you are printing 8x10s, but that's only necessary if you're fairly paranoid). Now let's
get to sizingchoosing how large our photos will appear on our 8x10" prints. There are two ways to
do this: The first is to go to the Page Layout Tools panel and use the Margins sliders. As you
change the margins, the size of the photo changes to accommodate the new margins. In this
instance, I dragged the Top Margins slider to the right a little bit (increasing the top margin) and
the top margin moved down. I then dragged the Bottom Margins slider further to the right and
you can see how the photo resized (which created lots of space below the photo).

Step Nine
As you move these Margins sliders, the photos resize live onscreen, so you can always see exactly
where, and how large, your photo will be. Here I increased the left and right margins (by dragging
their sliders to the right), and you can see how it repositioned the image on the page.

Step Ten
Okay, are you ready for a "Gotcha!"? If you drag all of the Margins sliders back to 0 (all the way
to the left) your photo doesn't always jump back up to size. Why? I have no idea, but it just
doesn't sometimes. So if you decide you want to start over, you may really need to start overgo
back over to the Template Browser and click on the Maximize Size template (as shown here).
Now your photo is back up to filling as much of your 8x10 as it can. Well, technically, you could fill
more of that 8x10, right? Because there are white margins on each side of the image. If you
really wanted to fill every square inch, then you could turn on the Zoom and Crop Photos to Fill
Grid Cells checkbox at the top of the Image Settings panel.
Step Eleven
When you turn on the Zoom and Crop Photos to Fill Grid Cells checkbox (as shown here),
Lightroom zooms in until the photo fills as much of the cell area as possible (in this case, the
whole page because you chose the Maximize Size template). Now, once your photo is zoomed in
like that, if you move your cursor over the image, your cursor turns into a Grabber Hand (as
shown circled here). This lets you click-and-drag to move your image around within the borders of
your page (or cell), so you can position it (basically cropping it) just the way you want it. So now
that you see how Zoom and Crop works, turn that checkbox off for now.

Step Twelve
The second method of sizing and setting your margins is to just click-and-drag the margins right
where you want them. Now, we started with the Maximize Size template and our margins are at
the very edge of the page so, for example, if you had a printer that required a 1/4" margin at the
top, you'd move your cursor to the very top of the page, and you'd see it change into a bar with
two arrows. Just click-and-drag downward and the margin line will appear, and your photo will
shrink to accommodate this new height restriction. As you drag, the exact position of this top
margin appears in inches (shown circled here) so you can easily see how far you're dragging
down. That's pretty darn slick.

Step Thirteen
Here, to add more space at the bottom, grab the bottom margin (which is at the very bottom
edge of the page) and drag upward (as shown here). Again, you'll see a measurement as to how
far you're dragging up appear right above the margin line as you drag. As you can see here, the
photo resizes accordingly.

Step Fourteen
Are you ready for another "Gotcha!"? Okay, so you're dragging the bottom margin upward, the
photo is scaling down in size as you drag, and all of a sudden the photo flips over on its side (as
shown here). Why is it doing that? It's because the Rotate Photos to Best Fit Cells feature is
turned on, and when you dragged upward far enough that the photo would actually be larger if
printed sideways, Lightroom automatically flipped it. Depending on how you look at this, this is
either utterly brilliant or incredibly annoying. Either way, it's easy to changejust turn off the
Rotate Photos to Best Fit Cells checkbox in the Image Settings panel (go ahead and turn that off
now, so we can increase the margins and shrink the photo's size a bit more).
Step Fifteen
Now grab the side margins (remember to click-and-drag from the edges) and drag them inward
until there's a nice open area below your photo (as shown here).

Step Sixteen
Now that we have that big open area, we can add some text there. In the Panels area on the
right, scroll down to the Overlay Options panel, and turn on the Print Identity Plate checkbox. This
makes your Identity Plate text visible, as shown here (if you can't see your text, try dragging the
Scale slider to the right, as shown here, to make your text bigger. Also, if your text appears in
white, choose Edit from the pop-up menu that appears to the right of the Print Identity Plate
checkbox. Then highlight your text, click on the Font Panel button to bring up the Font panel, click
on the color swatch at the top left, and choose black as your text color).

Step Seventeen
Click-and-drag your Identity Plate text down so it appears under your photo in the open area of
space (as shown here). Now, so we can get a good clean look at our photo layout before we print
it, go ahead and hide the page margins by turning off the Show Guides checkbox in the Page
Layout Tools panel (as shown here).

Step Eighteen
Now remember, although we're setting up this one photo for printing, this layout you just created
is also applied to any other photos you have selected. So, go ahead and press Command-A to
select all your photos in the filmstrip, then click the right-facing arrow below the center Preview
area (as shown here) to move through your group of photos to be printed. As you can see, they
each have your custom layout.
Step Nineteen
Click to move on to another photo, and let's tweak things a little while we're here. One thing I like
to do with the Identity Plate is to lower the Opacity setting to around 40% (as shown here in the
Overlay Options panel), so the text looks gray and doesn't draw as much attention or compete as
much with the photo. Another option you might like (depending on the photo and the
background) is to have Lightroom automatically add a thin border around your photo. To do that,
turn on the Print Other Options checkbox (in the Overlay Options panel) and then turn on the
Border checkbox below that (as shown here). If you want the photo's name, caption, date, or
EXIF data also printed on the photo, turn on the Print Photo Information checkbox, also in the
Overlay Options panel, and turn on the checkboxes below it for the data you want to print.

Step Twenty
Now that we've gone through all this trouble to create a custom layout for our printing, let's save
it as a template so the next time we want this exact same layout, it's just one click away. Below
the Template Browser on the left side of the window, click the Add Template button (as shown
here), which adds a template to the list with the text field already highlightedjust type in the
name you want. Now, we're ready to print (well, once we tweak a few settings, anyway).

Step Twenty-One
Before we actually hit the Print button, there's a couple of controls you'll want to adjust in the
Print Job Settings panel. First, there's the Print Resolution setting. The default resolution is 240
dpi, but you can raise or lower that amount by clicking directly on the number and dragging your
mouse to the left or right (240 dpi is fine for printing an 8x10 to a color inkjet printer). In the
Color Management section, for Profile, ideally you'd want to load a profile of the exact paper
you're going to be printing on (download these from the paper manufacturer's web-site). If
you've downloaded the printing profiles from the Web (they're free), click-and-hold where it says
Managed by Printer and a pop-up menu will appear. Choose Other from this menu.
Step Twenty-Two
A Printing Profile dialog will pop down from the top of Lightroom's window. Click on the pop-up
menu in this dialog and a list of your installed printing profiles will appear. I'm printing to an
Epson Stylus Photo R2400, and I'm printing on Epson's Premium Luster paper, so I downloaded
and installed Epson's free profiles (the installation only took a double-clickit does the rest for
you). Now the SPR2400 PremiumLuster profile appears in my profile list (as shown here). By
choosing this, you're letting Lightroom manage your color, instead of your printer (which is what
you want). If you want the best results from your printing, you'll definitely want to download,
install, and use these profiles.

Step Twenty-Three
For the Rendering Intent, if you're printing to a color inkjet printer (and I imagine that you are), I
recommend choosing Perceptual from the pop-up menu (as shown here) because it seems to give
the most consistent color.
Step Twenty-Four
We're going to skip Draft Mode printing for now (we'll talk about that in the Contact Sheet
section), but we can discuss Print Sharpening. This is a modified Unsharp Mask that you can add if
you feel your images need additional sharpening. The Low setting (the default) works pretty well
for images 8x10" or smaller, but if you're printing larger images, you'll probably need to use
Medium (for 13x19") or High (for 16x20" or larger). You choose these by turning on the Enable
Print Sharpening checkbox, and then clicking directly on the word Low and a pop-up menu
appears (as shown here). Okay, we're almost done. Click the Print button that appears under the
Print Job Settings panel.
Step Twenty-Five
When the Print dialog appears, choose your printer from the Printer pop-up menu at the top of
the dialog (here I've chosen my Epson R2400 again).
Step Twenty-Six
From the third pop-up menu down, choose Print Settings (shown circled here) to make the
printing options visible. (The choices on this menu may vary depending on your printer, so if you
don't have Print Settings, look for the menu or menus that will allow you to make the following
choices.) For Media Type, choose the exact paper you're going to be printing on (if you don't see
your paper here, you probably haven't gone to Epson's, or your paper manufacturer's, website
and downloaded the profile for your paper). For Mode, choose Advanced, and for Print Quality
choose the highest quality your printer will allow. Don't click the Print button quite yetthere's one
more dialog to go.
Step Twenty-Seven
Again, from the third pop-up menu down, choose Color Management, and then turn your printer's
color management off (as shown here). This is critically important, because you've chosen to
have Lightroom manage your color. If you let Lightroom manage it one way, and then also let
your printer manage it another, there's almost no chance that what you see onscreen and what
comes out of the printer will match. The key to color management is consistency, so you'll need
to turn your printer's color management off, as shown here.

Step Twenty-Eight
Now you can click the Print button, and as long as you started out with a calibrated monitor, and
you followed the steps shown here (including downloading and installing the proper profiles), then
what you see in print will match what you saw onscreen, and life is good.
Printing Contact Sheets (or More Than One Photo on
One Page)
I really can't explain why, but to this day getting multiple photos on one page has always been a
struggle. I mean, we can send men to the moon, but...(don't get me started). Anyway, the good
news isLightroom has changed all that, and I doubt there's a program on the planet that does a
better job of creating contact sheets than it. Finally, printing multiple photos (or the same photo
multiple times) is done right. This is a great day in the land of digital photography, so please join
me in raising a glass to those valiant engineers who made the undoable, doable.
Step One
To get a feel for how this all works, in the filmstrip select a number of different photos, and then
click on the Maximize Size template so your photo takes up the entire page. With this one-photo-
per-page setup, even though you have a number of photos selected to print you only see the first
photo to be printed (as shown here).
ISTOCKPHOTO
Step Two
If you want to print more than one photo per page, you can set that up in the Page Layout Tools
panel, shown here. You get to choose how many rows and how many columns you want printed
on your page (using the Page Grid sliders); you get to determine the space between them (using
the Cell Spacing sliders); and you get to determine how close to the edges of your page these
photos get (using the Margins sliders).
Step Three
Let's start by adding two photos to the same page. Go to the Page Layout Tools panel and in the
Page Grid section, click-and-drag the Rows slider to the right until you see two photos appear
onscreen (Lightroom updates live as you move the slider, which really makes this process very
easy). Here you can see the results of dragging the Rows slider to the right just a little bityou
have two rows of photos, each in its own adjustable cell. Now, as you can see, although there's a
little white margin on the sides of the two photos, in the middle they're touching. You may be fine
with them touching, but you might also want some room between them.

Step Four
Now, it's helpful if you start thinking about your two photos as if they were in individual cells (kind
of like cells in a spreadsheet) because that's how Lightroom treats them. For example, to add
some space between your two photos you'd need to increase the spacing between the two cells.
You do that (get ready for a shocker) using the Cell Spacing sliders. In this case, you need to
increase the Vertical spacing, so click-and-drag the Vertical Cell Spacing slider to the right just a
little bit (as shown here). As you drag it, you'll see the spacing increase live, so you can see just
how much you want. By the way, we started this project with four photos, each on its own page.
Now, you've got only two pages, with two photos on eachall the pages update automatically as
you add rows and columns, and change the spacing.

Step Five
So, now you have space between your photos, but if you look back at Step Four, you can see that
the photos still touch the top and bottom of the page. If you want to put a little margin in there,
you'd move the Margins sliders, so grab the Bottom Margins slider and drag it a little bit to the
right (as shown here) and drag the Top Margins slider to the right the same amount. Of course, if
you don't feel like dragging sliders, you can just drag the margins themselves, right on the page
(as shown earlier in the book).

Step Six
Now, let's put four photos on the same page. Just slide the Page Grid Rows slider over until you
see four photos. Now, notice that we're down to just one page. We started with four photos
selected one on each pagethen we added a row, which gave us two photos on two pages, and
now all four photos are on one page, so there's only one page to print. Let's look at some options
for what we can do with our multi-photo page.

Step Seven
If you scroll up to the Image Settings panel and turn on the checkbox for Zoom and Crop Photos
to Fill Grid Cells, it zooms in on your photos so they fill as much of the cells as possible (as shown
here). When this option is turned on, you can reposition your photos within each cell by just
moving your cursor over the photo, then clicking-and-dragging it around within the cell until it's
cropped the way you want it. Now, let's turn that feature off again (in other words, uncheck the
checkbox).
Step Eight
If you want the same photo to appear multiple times on the same page, then you'll want to go to
the Image Settings panel and turn on the checkbox for Repeat One Photo Every Cell Per Page (as
shown here). That gives you the look you see here. Now, you might be wondering to yourself,
"Why in the world would I want to do that?" Well, with this photo of a flower you might not want
to, but if it was a portrait of your daughter, and you wanted to quickly create some wallet-size
photos and print them all on one page, it would make perfect sense. Okay, now you can turn off
that checkbox, too.

Step Nine
Go back to the Page Layout Tools panel and drag the Page Grid Rows slider back to 2, so you only
have two rows again. Of course, besides adding vertical rows, you can also add columns (so you
have rows of photos side-by-side). To do this, in the Page Grid section, drag the Columns slider
over to the right until a second column appears (as shown here). So, you're still displaying four
photos per page, but now you've got two columns.

Step Ten
Now let's add some more rows, so we can add more photos on the same page. Drag the Rows
slider until you have four rows again, giving you the layout you see here (four rows in two neat
columns). The reason I was able to add more rows and have them automatically fill up with
photos is because when you weren't looking, I went to the filmstrip and selected more photos,
until I had 15 selected in all. So, if you don't have at least 15 photos selected, go ahead and do so
(by the way, if you don't have 15 photos handy, you're just not shootin' enough).
Step Eleven
If you want to turn this multi-photo page into a contact sheet, then there's another option you'll
want to use. Scroll down to the Overlay Options panel and turn on the checkbox for Print Photo
Information, then directly under that turn on the checkboxes for Name (to have it print the name
of the photo under each image) and Dates (if you also want the date the photo was taken
included). In the example shown here, both the file's name and date are displayed under each
photo.

Step Twelve
If you're just going for the artistic effect, then you might want to turn off the Print Photo
Information checkbox, and instead turn on the Print Other Options check-box, then turn on the
Border checkbox below it, which puts a thin black border around all your photos (as shown here).
You may also want to scroll back up to the Page Layout Tools panel and turn off the Show Guides
checkbox so you can see an uncluttered view of your multi-photo layout (shown here). Okay, on
to more contact sheet stuff.

Step Thirteen
If you're going to be creating contact sheets, you should consider using the contact sheet
templates Adobe included with Lightroom, at least as a starting place until you create your own.
Start by clicking on the 4x5 Contact Sheet template (as shown here). By the way, that doesn't
give you 4x5" photos. It creates a grid that is four columns wide by five rows deep (as shown
here).
ISTOCKPHOTO

Step Fourteen
What's nice about using this 4x5 Contact Sheet template, besides the fact that it takes just one
click to get to four columns by five rows with some decent cell spacing already in place, is the fact
that it's set up to put the image names under the photos as well. It's just darn handy. My only
gripe is that the photos print right to the edges of the page (you can see that in the previous
step), so I usually wind up increasing the margins a bit (as shown here), so they're not right
smack up against the edges. Once you've tweaked these margins a bit, I'd recommend clicking
the Add Template button (on the left side of the window, at the bottom of the Template Browser)
and saving this setup as your own custom 4x5 contact sheet. That way, you won't have to tweak
the margins every time.

Step Fifteen
There are some other nice printing templates here (they're not all contact sheets). Try the one
called 4 Wide (as shown here) which gives you four nice wide rows, zoomed and cropped, and
includes your Identity Plate at the bottom (as shown here), ready to print. Also try the one called
Fine Art Mat, which I particularly like for photos you plan on framing. Okay, just to show you how
easy it is to tweak a template, click back on your custom 4x5 contact sheet (the one you just
saved as a template in the previous step), then go to the Page Layout Tools panel and decrease
the number of columns to just three, so you get the layout shown in the next step.

Step Sixteen
Okay, one last thing. Now we've got a nice contact sheet ready to print, but isn't it going to take a
long time to process and print 15 high-resolution photos (even if they are on one page)? Nopein
fact it's going to print so fast you'll be stunned, because you're going to scroll down to the Print
Job Settings panel, and at the bottom you're going to turn on the checkbox for Enable Draft Mode
Printing (as shown here). Now, instead of rendering 15 high-res photos to create these small
contact sheet thumbnails, Lightroom instead uses the lower resolution preview versions, which
does two things: (1) it makes your contact sheet print in a fraction of the time, and (2) the
photos still look absolutely crisp and clear, because you don't need any more resolution for
images this small.

Inside Back Cover
The best way to organize, correct, print, and show your digital images
Digital photography has made shooting photos more fun than ever, but the process of sorting,
managing, editing, and printing those images had still been too time consuming, too complicated,
and too much of a hassle. Then came Adobe Lightroom, the workflow application for professional
photographers, and all that changed.
Award-winning, best-selling author Scott Kelby (Editor-in-Chief of Photoshop User magazine)

shows you how to unlock the amazing power of Adobe Lightroom and really start using it like a
pro. This isn't just a book of theory and technical jargon, this is a step-by-step, project-based
book that will teach you not only exactly how it's all done, but the precise order it should be done
in (it makes a big difference in both your efficiency and in the final print).
This is the book that will show you, in plain English, how to put Lightroom to use today in your
everyday work. You'll learn:
How a few extra steps on import can save hours later on.
When it's okay to quick-edit photos, and when you need "the big guns."
Essential shortcuts to speed your work and make you even faster!
The easy way to process RAW photos, which controls you need to learn, and which ones you
can usually ignore.
How to quickly sort your images, get down to the "keepers" fast, and how to deal with the
rest.
How to manage your photo library so the photo you need is always just two clicks away.
How to create your own custom slide shows with your studio's branding.
How to create gallery prints, custom contact sheets, and your own custom templates to
work faster and smarter than your competition.
Plus dozens of little tips, tricks, insights, and workarounds to give you a serious competitive
advantage.
If you're ready to start using Lightroom like a pro, there's no easier, faster, or more fun way than
with the book you're holding right now. If you're one of those people who learn by doing, then
this is definitely the book for you.
Scott Kelby is Editor-in-Chief of Photoshop User magazine, President of the National Association of
Photoshop Professionals, Training Director for the Adobe Photoshop Seminar Tour, and one of the
leading seminar instructors in the country today. Scott is author of the best-selling books
Photoshop Classic Effects, Photoshop Down&Dirty Tricks, and The Photoshop CS2 Book for Digital
Photographers. His easygoing, plain-English style of teaching makes learning Photoshop and
Lightroom fun. He trains thousands in his live seminars each year and knows firsthand which
techniques are in hot demand, and now he shares them here in his latest book.
Index
[SYMBOL] [A] [B] [C] [D] [E] [F] [G] [H] [I] [K] [L] [M] [N] [O] [P] [Q] [R] [S] [T] [V] [W] [Z]
Index
4 Wide template
4x5 Contact Sheet template
Index
Activity Viewer
Add Text Adornment dialog
Adobe Lightroom
Identity Plate feature
importing photos into
jumping to/from Photoshop
locating photos in
module navigation
screen modes
Adobe Photoshop
editing photos in
jumping to/from Lightroom
Apple iTunes software
ascending order sort
Index
Backdrop Settings panel 2nd

backgrounds for slide shows
color selection for 2nd
images added to
backing up photos
Basic panel
Blacks slider
Brightness slider
Contrast slider
Exposure slider
Saturation slider
White Balance sliders
black-and-white conversions
Quick Develop panel
Tone Curve panel
Blacks slider
Brightness setting, Quick Develop
Brightness sliders
Basic panel
Tone Curve panel
Browse by Shoot panel
Browse Keywords panel 2nd
Index
Camera Calibration panel

cameras
fixing problems caused by 2nd
importing photos from
Cell Spacing sliders
clipping warnings 2nd 3rd
collections
adding photos 2nd
creating
deleting
Quick
removing photos 2nd
renaming
Color Management 2nd
Color Wash
colors
adjusting individual
fringe reduction
slide show background 2nd
Colors panel 2nd
Compare view
applying ratings in
entering from Grid view
Compression sliders 2nd 3rd
contact sheets
setup process for
templates used for
Contrast setting, Quick Develop
Contrast sliders
Basic panel 2nd
Tone Curve panel
controls
Copy Settings dialog
copyright information
Create Keyword dialog
Crop & Straighten panel
cropping photos
Index
date settings 2nd

Date tokens
De-noise slider
descending order sort 2nd
Detail panel
Develop module 2nd
Basic panel
Camera Calibration panel
Detail panel
entering from Quick Develop panel
grayscale conversions
HSL Color Tuning panel
Lens Corrections panel
Photo menu
preset creation
Presets Browser panel 2nd
Reset button
Split Toning panel
Tone Curve panel
Digital Negative (DNG) format
Dim mode
draft mode printing
drop shadows
Index
edge vignetting
Edit photo dialog
Edit Text Adornment dialog 2nd 3rd
editing
multiple images
photos in Photoshop
text in slide shows 2nd
Enable Draft Mode Printing checkbox
EXIF Metadata template 2nd 3rd
Export dialog
exporting slide shows
Exposure setting, Quick Develop
Exposure slider, Basic panel
Index
File Handling pop-up menu

files
copying to Library
naming and renaming
filmstrip
Fine Art Mat template
Flash-based slide shows
folders, importing photos in
FTP Transfer dialog
full-screen slide show
Index
Grayscale Conversion preset

Quick Develop panel
Tone Curve panel
Grayscale Mixer panel
Grid view
applying ratings in
Compare view from
keyboard shortcut for
Slideshow module and 2nd
sorting photos in 2nd
Index
hiding panels
Highlights clipping warning 2nd
Highlights Compression slider 2nd
Highlights Luminance slider
Highlights Range slider
Histogram
Hue sliders
Split Toning panel
Index
Identity Plate
adding to slide shows
contact sheets with
printing photos with
Image Settings panel
Print module
Slideshow module
images [See photos.]
Import Photos dialog 2nd 3rd
importing photos
backup process
file handling options
folder options
from memory cards
keyword assignments
locating imported photos
Metadata options
previewing images
renaming options
stopping import process
stored on your computer
Info panel
iTunes software
Index
keyboard shortcuts
Grid view
module navigation
keywords
assigning 2nd
creating
searching
Index
Lens Corrections panel

Lens Vignetting sliders
Reduce Fringe sliders
Lens Vignetting sliders
Library module
collections in
Compare view
copying files to
Grid view 2nd 3rd
keywords used in
locating photos in
Loupe view 2nd
Photo menu
Quick Develop panel
sorting photos in
Lightroom [See Adobe Lightroom.]
Lights Out mode
locating photos
Loupe view
applying ratings in
Compare view from
Luminance sliders
Tone Curve panel 2nd
Index
Margins sliders 2nd 3rd

Maximize Size template 2nd
memory cards, importing photos from
Metadata pop-up menu
Midtones sliders
Minimum Rating slider
modules [See also specific modules.]
navigating
multiple image editing
music in slide shows
Index
nameplate
navigating modules
New Metadata Preset dialog
noise reduction
numbering photos
Index
Opacity setting, Identity Plate

Overlay Options panel 2nd 3rd
Index
Page Grid Rows slider 2nd

Page Layout Tools panel 2nd 3rd 4th
Page Setup dialog
panels
expanding
hiding
minus and plus signs
resizing
viewing
panning photos
Paste Settings button
PDF slide shows
photos
backing up
cropping
editing multiple
importing
numbering
previewing
printing
rating
renaming
resizing
rotating 2nd
sharpening
sorting
straightening
Photoshop [See Adobe Photoshop.]
Playback Settings panel 2nd
playing slide shows
presets
creating your own
Grayscale Conversion
Quick Develop panel 2nd
Presets Browser panel 2nd
previewing
imported photos
resizing images for
slide shows
Print dialog
Print Identity Plate checkbox
Print Job Settings panel 2nd
Print module
Image Settings panel 2nd
Overlay Options panel 2nd 3rd
Page Layout Tools panel 2nd 3rd 4th
Page Setup dialog
Print Job Settings panel 2nd
Print Other Options checkbox
Print Photo Information checkbox
Print Resolution setting
Print Settings pop-up menu
printing
contact sheets
Identity Plate text 2nd
multiple photos per page
paper selection for 2nd
printer selection for
saving custom layouts for
selecting photos for
setting options for
sharpening photos for
sizing photos for
Printing Profile dialog
Index
Quick Collections
adding/removing photos
assigning ratings to
clearing out
permanent collections from
Quick Develop panel 2nd
Auto setting
Brightness setting
Contrast setting
Develop module access
editing multiple images
Exposure setting
grayscale conversion
presets 2nd
Reset button
Saturation setting
White Balance control
Index
Randomize Slides checkbox

Range sliders
rating photos
Reduce Fringe sliders
renaming
collections
files
Rendering Intent options
Reset button
Crop & Straighten panel 2nd
Develop module
Quick Develop panel
resizing [See sizing and resizing.]
Rotate Photos to Best Fit Cells feature
rotating
photos 2nd
text
Rows slider 2nd
rulers 2nd
Index
Saturation settings, Quick Develop

Saturation sliders
Basic panel
Split Toning panel
screen display modes
scrubby sliders
Search panel
searching keywords
segmenting photos
Sepia Tone preset
shadows
clipping warning 2nd
drop
Shadows Compression slider
Shadows Luminance slider
Shadows Range slider
Sharpen slider
sharpening images 2nd
Show Crop Overlay checkbox
sizing and resizing
panels
photos 2nd
thumbnails
Slide Layout Tools panel 2nd
slide shows
backgrounds for 2nd
controls used for
customizing slides for
date display in
drop shadows in
exporting
Flash-based
full-screen
Identity Plate in
music added to
PDF format
playing
previewing
Quick Collections
removing photos from
saving custom layouts
selecting photos for
templates for 2nd
text used in 2nd
Web-based
Slideshow Format pop-up menu
Slideshow module
Backdrop Settings panel 2nd 3rd
Image Settings panel
Overlay Options panel
Playback Settings panel 2nd
Slide Layout Tools panel 2nd
Slideshow Grid view 2nd
Smooth slider
sorting photos
collections for
Compare view
Grid view 2nd
keywords for
Loupe view
star ratings for
Split Toning panel
star ratings
Straighten Settings Angle slider
straightening photos
Stroke Photo Border checkbox
Synchronize button 2nd
Synchronize Settings dialog
Index
Temperature slider
Template Browser 2nd
templates
contact sheet
saving custom layouts as 2nd
slide show
text
adding
deleting
editing 2nd
printing
rotating
thumbnails, resizing
Tint slider
tinting photos
Tone Curve panel
Highlights sliders
Midtones sliders
Range sliders
Shadows sliders
type [See text.]
Index
Versace, Vincent
view modes
Index
Web-based slide shows

White Balance controls
Basic panel
Quick Develop panel
White Balance tool
Index
Zoom and Crop feature

zoom square

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The Adobe Lightroom eBook for Digital Photographers

Table of Contents | Index

Table of Contents | Index

Copyright 2006 by Scott Kelby

First edition: March 2006

Composed in Cronos and Helvetica by NAPP Publishing

Lightroom is a registered trademark of Adobe Systems, Inc.

Photoshop is a registered trademark of Adobe Systems, Inc.

Windows is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation.

Warning and Disclaimer

The Adobe Lightroom eBook for Digital Photographers Team

COVER PHOTOS COURTESY OF

The Photoshop Channels Book

Photoshop Down & Dirty Tricks

Photoshop CS2 Killer Tips

Photoshop Classic Effects

The iPod Book

InDesign CS/CS2 Killer Tips

Mac OS X Tiger Killer Tips

Getting Started with Your Mac and Mac OS X Tiger

For more information on Scott, visit scottkelby.com.

Q. So how useful is this book going to be?

Q. But this book doesn't have an introduction. Why not?

Q. Are people really that shallow?

Q. What exactly is moxie?

A. I'm not 100% sure.

Q. Is the rest of the book like this?

Q. But the rest of the book is regular?

Q. But this isn't a Photoshop book, right?

A. Too bad, you have to read Chapters 1 through 5 first.

Q. Are you serious?

Q. I hate that word "workflow."

Q. I thought you said everybody hates it?

Q. So whose workflow is right?

Q. Really? You've got the right workflow?

Q. So we're pretty much done here?

A. Yup. Now turn the page, before I start tearing up.

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