Video Training Review – Photoshop Lightroom Essential Training With Chris Orwig From Lynda.com.

With the release of Adobe's Photoshop Lightroom in the spring of 2007, there are a lot of people who are trying to get a handle on learning Lightroom. Lightroom acts as a library and workbench to store, catalog, modify, and present your photographs. It is a wonderful product and one that, to me at least, is a must have for photographic work. Not just for professionals, but for anyone who shoots a lot of pictures, and is in need of managing them.

Your instructor for Photoshop Lightroom Essential Training is Chris Orwig, a faculty member of the Brooks Institute of Photography in Santa Barbara. He has an infectious teaching method that works well to get the point across. The training is divided into 18 lessons and runs five and a half hours.

Lesson 1, "Getting Started" starts off by explaining what Lightroom is, and how it fits in to your world. It also explains the Photographic workflow puzzle. Lesson 2, "Setting the Stage" gets you into Lightroom by touring you around the interface, explaining hardware options, showing you what the essential preferences are, and ways to customize the interface.

Lesson 3, "Importing Images" helps you get your images into Lightroom in a number of ways; using drag and drop, importing from a folder, and getting them from a memory card. Lesson 4, "Library Module Overview" gives you an overview of the Library module by showing you the navigator, grid view options, loupe view options, as well as how to work with zoom, and other tools.

Lesson 5, "Library Module Keywords" will show you everything you wanted to know about using Keywords in Lightroom. Lesson 6, "Library Module Organization" does the same thing with rating, and building collections within the library. Lesson 7, "Library Module Metadata" again does the same thing, this time with the metadata that you can embed with your image in the database.

Lesson 8, "Library Module Processing" examines how to do some quick developing from within the Library module. This is real handy if you need to get some quick proofs out without a lot of processing time. Lesson 9, "Library Module Exporting and Editing" finishes up the Library Module by showing you how to export images, or editing them in Photoshop.

Lesson 10, "Develop Module Overview" begins work in the Develop Module by showing you around what this module has to offer. You will see features like shortcuts, preset, rating, comparing, and the histogram. Lesson 11, "Develop Module – Color and Tone" gets you started with the basic adjustments. Things like white balance, exposure, color, tone, HSL, split toning, and Black-and-White conversion.

Lesson 12, "Develop Module Details" continues with the Develop Module by showing you how to work with camera calibration, lens correction, cropping, Spot Healing, Red-eye removal, and how to undo your work. Lesson 13, "Develop Module Creativity" finishes up the Develop Module by showing you how to use some additional techniques to your Lightroom toolbox with fill light, color and tone, graphic black-and-white, and presets.

Lesson 14, "Slideshow Module" takes you down the road to building your own presentation via the Slideshow Module. Here you will cover templates, options, layouts and background modifications. Lesson 15, "Print Module" takes you through what is needed to print quality prints from within Lightroom. This includes settings, layouts, overlays, and printing itself.

Lesson 16, "Web Module" shows you how to put a presentation on the web. You will work with labels, color, appearance, and output to a web gallery. Lesson 17, "Photographic Workflow" helps you put it all together into a cohesive workflow from import to output. Lesson 18, "Resource Highlights" finishes up the training by talking about Lightroom resources, and an advance topic of working with the Library Database; where the changes you make to your images are stored.

I really like the way that Chris Orwig presents his information on Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. He comes at it from a photographer's perspective, it is well organized, and you get a lot of great tips throughout. He has an exciting teaching style and a wonderful presentation.

You can get Photoshop Lightroom Essential Training two ways. One is as a DVD training package Photoshop Lightroom Essential Training and the other is part of the online training experience at Lynda.com. The DVD Training Package is $99 USD and contains everything you need.

The online training Photoshop Lightroom Essential Training comes in three flavors. Monthly at $25 USD/month gets you all of the videos that are available online (approximately 21,811 videos on 318 topics at this time). Annually at $250 USD per year or Premium at $375 USD per year which get all the videos as well as all of the exercise files. Take note that the exercise files are not included with the monthly or annual subscriptions. They are included on the DVD and Premium subscriptions.

You can use Photoshop Lightroom Essential Training as a training program for the individual student, as well as the college or vocational teacher looking to supplement their educational materials. It is of benefit to anyone who needs help understanding the Lightroom workflow. You can also try out the first two lessons for free at Lynda.com.

Photoshop Lightroom Essential Training Lesson Listing:

Introduction
Getting Started
Setting the Stage
Importing Images
Library Module Overview
Library Module Keywords
Library Module Organization
Library Module Metadata
Library Module Processing
Library Module Exporting and Editing
Develop Module Overview
Develop Module Color and Tone
Develop Module Details
Develop Module Creativity
Slideshow Module
Print Module
Web Module
Photographic Workflow
Resource Highlights
Conclusion
Closing thoughts