Tag Archives: lightroom2

LR2…Love part two


I still use Photoshop but Lightroom takes me over there. Here’s a shot of the options. Being able to load multiple image as layers is pretty darn cool! I create my masterpiece in Photoshop and then click “save”. No need to click “save as” because Lightroom2 is doing the saving for you. It will then save a copy and stack it (in the catalog) with your original.

For those who still wonder why you would want Lightroom2…..A big advantage is the space you save on your hard drive. If you save a Photoshop file with adjustment layers, you are creating a new file in addition to your original which can fill up your hard drive quickly. Lightroom adjustments are just EXIF taking hardly any room but having the same infinite editing control as adjustment layers.

The main reason I bought Lightroom1 when it first came out, though, was to be able to create a database. What is a database? It’s a visual catalog of all your images that you can view whether you’re connected to the drive with the images or not. Lightroom2 even tells you if you’re connected to the images and if not, tells you which drive they are located on. It creates proxies in a size that you determine. That means I could bring my catalog file to DIG, open it on anyone’s computer that has Lightroom2 installed and we could then see a copy of all the images on my computer at home.

If these things aren’t important to you, then Photoshop and Bridge will work for you.

LR2 How do I love thee….


Let me count the ways! Pictured is the number one reason to buy Lightroom2. You can mask any part of your image. (3 shown here) When you hover over a dot, it shows the mask you’ve drawn in that area. You can then add or delete parts of the mask as needed. You can be precise as you like by increasing or decreasing the size of your brush.

Once your mask is ready, you can then use any of the sliders to adjust as needed. If you prefer, you can drag a scrubby slider right on the screen to make the adjustments! Very cool. So what’s so great about all this? The huge advantage to using LR2 is that all your adjustments are just EXIF!