Lightroom has a lot of really cool time-saving features. Some of them are excellent for saving time on large numbers of files. Some simply make it easier to "get what you want" without having to work so hard at it.
Individual image time savers:
1) Open up the HSL section. Pick the luminance panel. Click the little round bullet-like icon next to it. Now click anywhere on the image ... the sky for example. Has you drag your mouse up, everything that is that color gets brighter. Drag your mouse down, it gets darker. Same concept works in the Saturation panel, to saturate or desaturate a particular color. Same thing for Hue to adjust the colors. You can do the same thing by moving the sliders. But this way you target the specific color you want to change and make the change instantly.
2) Presets are a godsend. Hover over a preset in the left panel and watch the "preview image" up at the top. You can pretty much visualize what the preset is going to do before you apply it. (not that applying it is slow, but hovering is just so fast and you can slide your mouse up and down the screen briefly pausing over the presets to see what each is doing)
3) Click inside the histogram drag your mouse ... see how easy it is to adjust highlights and shadows and mid tones? Or, same idea, click inside the Tone Curve and do the same thing. As you move your mouse you can see the adjustments real time.
4) History! Don't like what you've done to the image? Back up one step, 10 steps, however many steps you want. Oops, you made the changes and exited Lightroom... no worries, the history is still sitting inside the database (or the external XMP files). Just go back into Lightroom and your entire history is still there.
Large batches of images:
1) At the time I import my images (usually hundreds of images at a time), I apply a preset to the image. This gets most of my images to a state that looks like what I want out of the image. From there, I mostly just need to tweak the images (adjust exposure, crop, white balance).
2) There's no going back and forth between bridge and ACR. When you are in Develop mode you can see not only the image you are working on, but you also have access to all of the images before and after it as well. You can easily move between each image. You can copy/paste your settings from one image to the next.
3) Sync will save you a ton of time. Find the first image in a "series". Adjust it the way you want. Highlight all of the rest and hit sync. (did I say you didn't have to move back and forth between Bridge and ACR to do this?) Talk about a time saver.
4) Adjust some of your images and hit export. While Lightroom is exporting, you can still be working on more images! Or if you prefer, adjust all of your images, hit export and walk away and come back when it finishes. I use both methods depending on whether I'm in a hurry or not.
Lightroom 2.0 is going to be a killer application. With the ability to "paint" your changes onto the image, Lightroom begins to move out of the realm of a raw conversion tool and starts to tread into Photoshop territory.
I love how much time Lightroom saves me. And I love the quality of the images I get out of Lightroom. Can you do all of the same things in ACR? YES. Is it worth the price differential (ACR being included with Photoshop and Lightroom costing extra)? Well, I think that depends on how much your time is worth. For me, the amount of time saved is easily worth the cost of Lightroom. You'll need to weigh that decision on your own. You can download a trial version of Lightroom here. |
