Lightroom Tips

Tips I Learned at Scott's Lightroom Tour

Yesterday, I finally got the chance to watch Scott Kelby teach his Lightroom Live tour (click here if you want to see some photos I took). He’s always on the road teaching the tour and I’m always working so I’ve never been able to catch it. He was in our backyard the other day (Tampa Convention Center) so I went over to watch. I get really psyched when I see others speak because that means I can steal (I mean learn) a few things from them. Here’s a few tips I picked up for our Friday tip post:

1) Scott’s approach to collections is great. I used to Flag all of my picks, or the best photos (see the video here). Then I’d rate the best of the best with 5 stars and save them to a collection. Scott does something similar but he saves the Picks into one collection and then he saves the 5-star photos into a child collection. Just click on the Collection name and press the plus icon. When the New Collection dialog opens check the “Create as Child of Collection” option. That’s the way I’ll use from now on.

2) When I used to edit a Lightroom Photo in Photoshop (Photo > Edit in Photoshop menu) I used to preserve the ProPhoto RGB color space into Photoshop. I’m sure I had a reason for this, but for the life of me I don’t know why now. Scott suggests to edit in Photoshop’s assigned color space (usually AdobeRGB 1998 for photographers) which makes total sense. Since no monitors display ProPhoto RGB and no printers print ProPhoto RGB then you might as well switch to the output color space now. I’ve now switched my settings to do just that.

3) There’s a little Grayscale option right under the Basic panel name. I used to scroll down to the HSL/Grayscale panel to change to Grayscale but the option at the top is a really quick way to see your photo as a black and white. It’s a tiny thing I know, but I’ve been using it more since I saw it.

4) I totally forgot about the Impromtu Slideshow option. See, if you follow Scott’s line of thinking (and I do), that you should create a collection of your selects right away, then chances are you’ll only be developing those selects. Well, sometimes a client or friend may walk up and want to quickly see your photos. No sweat. Just press Ctrl-Return (Mac: Cmd-Enter) to launch into an Impromtu Slideshow. No need to switch modules and all that stuff. One shortcut and you’re there.

As always, whenever I watch another instructor teach I learn things (big or small). More so with Scott though because he’s just go such a down-to-earth/realistic way of approaching things. I know I picked up lots of other things that I’ll share in the coming weeks. Also, if you’re not able to make it out to one of the Photoshop or Lightroom seminars but like to learn by watching then make sure you check out my Lightroom Basic Training DVD/Online training course. It covers all the newest enhancements in Lightroom 1.1 and is probably the next best thing to watching Scott teach it live.
Get the DVD here.
See the Online Training Course here.

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