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DPChallenge Forums >> Hardware and Software >> Why does Lightroom always confuse me?
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07/11/2012 12:09:03 AM · #1
I am working on a dedicated installation of Windows on a new HD for myself. I've installed Photoshop, Premiere, and I'm getting to add ons. I'm at the point where I either install Lightroom 2 as my importer/organizer or Canon Zoombrowser. I keep trying to like Lightroom, but I just find myself getting confused. I then go back to Zoombrowser which is very basic, but very easy to use to download and organize my photos. I have a simple system where folders are organized by year, then by type (challenges, family, nature, etc), then in a folder with the month and name (eg. 2012-07 Hummingbird). That has seemed to work pretty well for five plus years.

Who wants to help me understand how Lightroom works and why I should install it and start using it versus ZoomBrowser?
07/11/2012 12:25:45 AM · #2
Well, I'm not going to try and convince you. I'm one of the folks that didn't like Lightroom. Tried it and sold my copy.

My system is similar to yours.
-Copy pics from memory card to temporary folder
-Sort through images using Canon DPP (This is where lightroom really stunk, being very slow to move from one pic to the next, DPP is almost as fast as I can hit the keys)
-Move keepers to a permanent folder by year, date and short description of the session
-Convert RAW to JPG or Tif with DPP
-Edit in PaintShop Pro, save final images in a folder under the RAW files called "edited".

07/11/2012 12:45:42 AM · #3
Me too, I'm not going to try to convince you either. I don't like it at all. And it's not the concept of LR I don't like, it's the user interface.

Message edited by author 2012-07-11 00:47:25.
07/11/2012 12:56:40 AM · #4
I've had good experience with Creative live so, i would recommend that you take a glance at Jared PLatt's 3 day creative live videos. They will convince you one way or another about both the usability of LR and if its for you. In my experience, its a lot better for mass amounts of picture processing.

Best,
Devinder
07/11/2012 01:01:35 AM · #5
It confuses you because it's confusing. I gave up on it too. My brother-in-law gave up on it. Don't worry about it. Life's too short to waste it learning complicated ways to do simple things.
07/11/2012 01:18:59 AM · #6
Auuughhh!!! Now I can't find my ZoomBrowser CD and when I go to the Canon site it asks for my equipment serial number. OK. I dig the box out. "You don't need to download this" is what I get. Just give me the friggin program people!

Stuff like a little CD that is used once every three years in a paper envelope tends to, uh, get organized into one of a zillion little piles of crap. I haven't located the correct pile yet.
07/11/2012 01:31:31 AM · #7
As Lightroom was the very first edditing tool I tried, now everything else I try seems complicated and poorly done, it really does just depend on what your used to. I use maybe 5% of its library capabilities though as I have quite a simple system, I do tag all my keepers with names before putting them in their respective folder. The other day I was looking for pet photos I'd taken, i was able to find them immidietly by just clicking on their names but I guess every program does that now. It all boils down to habit I think.
07/11/2012 05:19:12 AM · #8
I'm another one who really tried to make friends with her Lightroom, but it just isn't happening.

About Zoombrowser: I have never been able to find a download link from scratch, but any old version seemed to do the trick...... upgrades were easy to get. You just need to find some old version from somewhere.
07/11/2012 07:20:53 AM · #9
Heh. I actually found it pretty intuitive to use. My folder structure is three levels deep
Year/month/description
And this was mostly influenced by initially having a year-month-description folder structure (one level), but I found that unwieldly in lightroom. My current one is perfect though. Just add the new folder and I'm done.

Is it importing or editing in general you find confusing? On import I cycle through the images I have imported. Mark some for deletion. And delete them then. Not complicated.

Download light room 3 trial. It's mostly the same but I find some features are better. Though if you want to stay with 2 the new edthe database is not reverse compatible.

I like light room a lot. Its cloning feature is the only thing I dislike. Its pretty poor for big jobs. I only use Photoshop for layering and masking and merging and experimenting.
07/11/2012 07:28:51 AM · #10
I was confused by lightroom at first too. first thing you have to remember is that it is both an editing and managing software, its really not just one or the other, but it can be.

take the time to watch the video tutorials (at least a few) to see how it works and what the expected workflow is like. otherwise I can see why you'd be lost. I and many other others were at one point too.

//tv.adobe.com/product/lightroom/episode/most-viewed/playlist/

Once you get used to what it does and how it does it, i wouldn't shocked to see you ditch Photoshop in favor or lightroom for most of your editing.

Message edited by author 2012-07-11 07:30:07.
07/11/2012 08:33:13 AM · #11
Tried Lightroom. Didn't like it.

I have one of those zippered carryalls for music CDs, but I use it to keep the CDs that go with my computers/camera. Makes it easy to find one when I need it. I keep the product key in there, too.
07/11/2012 09:12:55 AM · #12
Lightroom's interface is just... different. Because it's so different, it can be very confusing. Once you wrap your head around why it's different, it really does make sense. There are still a few Lr behaviors that I think have wound up being unintuitive exactly because they tried to make them too easy, but for the most part, I would hate (yes, hate) to go back to working without Lr.
- Lr's Library Module provides me with a first-class organizational tool. All I have to is keyword decently and I can bring up photos related to darn near anything in seconds, from nearly a decade worth of stuff. Importing is dead easy. I tell Lr once how I want photos organized, and it just does it.
- Lr's Develop Module provides best-in-class RAW conversion, and fairly easy synchronization of settings between multiple shots, meaning I only have to do edits once. For instance, should I have a bunch of dust bunnies crop up (not so unusual with the 5D) all I have to do is touch up one photo, then copy the settings to the others. It's that easy.
- Lr can publish directly to most of the major photo sharing sites. Published once, then made more edits? No problem. One click and your gallery is updated with the new edits.
There are so many time-saving features to a Lr-based workflow it's just not funny. But like Ps, Lr does take getting used to. I was in the same place as many of you initially; I just didn't "get" the interface. I finally bought a book and worked through it, and saw the light. I'm glad I made the decision to stick with it.
FWIW, if you're using something earlier than Lr 4.x, try the latest version. At the current price, it's an incredible bargain.
07/11/2012 09:35:59 AM · #13
Originally posted by kirbic:

Lightroom's interface is just... different. Because it's so different, it can be very confusing. Once you wrap your head around why it's different, it really does make sense. There are still a few Lr behaviors that I think have wound up being unintuitive exactly because they tried to make them too easy, but for the most part, I would hate (yes, hate) to go back to working without Lr.


I agree whole-heartedly. I'll admit that Lightroom is far from being be-all-end-all of workflow tools, but I - and my business - live by Lightroom. By the end of this summer I will have my entire digital archives, over 1,000,000 images going back nearly nine years, in Lightroom catalogs. It did take a real effort - a number of starts and restarts - before I had it completely integrated, but it has given me a productivity level that I never came close to before implementing it.

If you are looking for an image manipulation program, it is not Lightroom. If you are looking for a workflow tool, it might be what you are looking for. If you routinely capture 100s and 1000s of images, it probably is what you are looking for. If you are working professionally, I most definitely recommend it.

It really depends on what you are trying to do as to whether or not Lightroom is a suitable tool for your purposes. These are the things I use it for:
* reading cards
* renaming files
* captioning, keywording, & copyrighting
* rating, flagging, & tagging
* creating collections of images without having to duplicate files
* batch applying edits
* individually tweaking edits (including shelling out to Photoshop)
* exporting deliverables for
-> clients (high & low res)
-> online galleries for print sales
-> online galleries for portfolio purposes
-> online social media galleries
-> US Copyright registration
-> video slideshow production
-> dpc challenges ;-)
-> print publication (for book, magazine, marketing collateral, etc)
-> prints

I'm able to do this all non-destructively (meaning that I am never modifying original files).

If you need to do these things and are struggling with Lightroom, feel free to post here or pm me. If you are dead-set against it, I'm not going to try to sell you on it. I just haven't found anything else that will support either the full range of my workflow requirements or the volume of images I shoot.
07/11/2012 09:39:07 AM · #14


Message edited by author 2012-07-24 16:19:15.
07/11/2012 09:49:07 AM · #15
Originally posted by Skip:

If you are looking for an image manipulation program, it is not Lightroom. If you are looking for a workflow tool, it might be what you are looking for. If you routinely capture 100s and 1000s of images, it probably is what you are looking for. If you are working professionally, I most definitely recommend it.

There's the difference. I suspect if I were a pro phorotgrapher, I would certainly want the cataloging capabilities. But for what I do, it was more hassle than it was worth and I would have to change a workflow that suits me to fit how LR wanted it done.

About my only complaint with my DPP/PSP workflow is DPP cannot send the converted RAW image directly into PaintShop Pro, so I have to save an intermediate step of a JPG of TIF. Not a biggie.
07/11/2012 10:42:29 AM · #16
I use iPhoto for family snaps and such. I use Lightroom for "creative" work. The interface isn't the most intuitive, but I've used much worse. I can do nearly everything I want in LR. Since I upgraded OSX, I no longer have support for my version of PhotoShop (CS2), which I rarely used anyway.
07/11/2012 10:48:33 AM · #17
I really like LR, but I have an unusual, pain in the butt reason as well as to why I use it.

I have CS3, it won't read my Olympus E-30 ORF files. So I open in LR, sort as mentioned and any file destined for photoshopping has to be converted to DNG.

Another feature I can't figure out, is when I print from LR I get exactly what I expect as far as colour goes. If I print from CS3 the colours are off. Both programs are set to the same printer/paper profile files. I gave up trying to figure it out and print from LR. It works!
07/11/2012 10:51:26 AM · #18
To piggy back off Skip and Kirbic, now that i am getting into doing photography fro more than just a hobby, i honestly could not see how i could live without lightroom. If i had only Photoshop to work with, I'd shoot myself.

Its amazing how well it automates task that tend to be repetitive.

07/12/2012 11:51:23 PM · #19
I fired it up and then did remember how slow it does cycle through images. There's got to be a way to improve this. ZB slide show basically is instant and was a good way to evaluate shots on a full screen quickly to pick out the good ones.
07/13/2012 12:21:47 AM · #20
Originally posted by DrAchoo:

I fired it up and then did remember how slow it does cycle through images. There's got to be a way to improve this. ZB slide show basically is instant and was a good way to evaluate shots on a full screen quickly to pick out the good ones.

i found lr3 faster than lr2 and lr4 faster than lr3...maybe try a trial of lr4 :P
07/13/2012 12:34:22 AM · #21
I like being able to sort and proof 500-1500 images in a very short time. Export to web sized jpgs with sharpening and wala, proofs for posting. Often I can avoid PS altogether. That said, the interface and speed can be a little clumsy... Like Skip, I also found LR3 to be a nice speed improvement over 1 and 2.
07/13/2012 01:05:19 AM · #22
Originally posted by DrAchoo:

I fired it up and then did remember how slow it does cycle through images.

Good to know I'm not the only one who thought that about it.
07/13/2012 06:11:49 AM · #23
Originally posted by Yo_Spiff:

Originally posted by DrAchoo:

I fired it up and then did remember how slow it does cycle through images.

Good to know I'm not the only one who thought that about it.


i think lr3 was faster than 4. I use it a lot, the speed issue are something you get used to.
07/13/2012 08:09:26 AM · #24
Speed is pretty much all up to the hardware. I'm using Lr 4.1 on a pretty fast machine, but with slower rotating hard disks. The speed is pretty much fine, but I could improve my lot in life with an SSD.
FWIW, the reason some programs like ACDSee, ZoomBrowser, etc. can display previews so fast is they are working with the embedded JPEGs in the RAW files, not the RAW files themselves.
07/13/2012 08:17:38 AM · #25
one thing i do like is they load a low res version so you can quickly get to an image, however that small delay while it finishes loads can be a put off, ultimately you learn to live with it.

when pressing "L" you can grey and then black out the screen, but is there any way to increase the size when do so. my biggest complaint is that it is hard to see details at a smaller size (yes i like to pixel peep). i'd like it to fill my screen for proofing.
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