New Lightroom 4 is here Learn it All — Doug Niedermiller Photography

Lightroom Overview

Before we get in the Lightroom 4, let me explain what Lightroom is. Lightroom is all about photography, speed and workflow. It was designed for the professional photographer along with the advanced amateur who needs a fast way to process their images. For more detailed editing Lightroom works seamlessly with Adobe Photoshop CS5, along with older versions of Photoshop. If you can’t afford Photoshop, consider using Photoshop Elements with Lightroom. There’s a cool plug-in from photographers toolbox that allows you to run Photoshop Elements 8 or newer through Lightroom. The plugin requires a small donation to activate. Not only is Lightroom a great photo organizing tool with its library module, It is also a fast photo editing tool in the develop module. In the web module you can create website flash galleries fast and publish them on your website. In the slideshow module you can create slideshows with sound that you can share on YouTube, Facebook or save as a video file. The print module is all about printing that allows you to print picture packs and individual prints.

What’s New in Lightroom 4

In the new version of Lightroom 4 Adobe has added two new modules. The Map module lets you view and organize your photos by map location with your geo-tagged photos. You can also manually add the GPS locations to your meta data. In the new Book module you can create books right within Lightroom and publish them directly to Blurb, the photo book publisher. You can also save books to a PDF file format to self publish or send off to your favorite book publisher. The hot new feature in Lightroom 4 is the ability to organize, view and edit your videos. Videos can be viewed and played right in Lightroom 4. Videos can also be trimmed at both ends and minor adjustments can be made like color temperature, tinting, exposure, clarity and vibrance. There are many more enhancements in Lightroom 4 and is well worth the upgrade price.

Lightroom 4 Try it Before You Buy

If you have never used Lightroom before you can download a free 30 day trial or you can buy it here Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4

Learn Lightroom 4 and Photoshop

If you are new to Lightroom, or have been using Lightroom for a while, lynda.com is a great resource for learning Lightroom and Photoshop. There are 14 courses on Lightroom and 129 courses on Photoshop. One of my favorite instructors, Chris Orwig, is a photographer and instructor at the Brooks Institute of Photography in Santa Barbara, California. Chris alone has published 37 courses at Lynda.com. What’s really nice is you can try these courses out for free. Just go to Linda.com and find the course you’re interested in and click on any module that is highlighted in blue. It’s that easy! You can also sign up for a 7-day free trial to lynda.com. I’ve been using Lynda.com for software training for a little over a year now. Sign up for Lynda.com for for a small monthly fee and some of the courses are even available on DVD for purchase. Chris is a very enthusiastic instructor and makes learning Lightroom and Photoshop fun, fast and easy. Watch the videos below and see if Chris Orwig is the instructor for you.