I happened to stumble upon an incredible price for Lightroom 3 on an Amazon Lightning Deal a few weeks back. For a while now I have overheard my friend Jenna talk about using Lightroom to edit her photos. Now Jenna is UBER talented behind a camera so I take her advice very seriously. When I saw this great deal on the Lightroom software pop up on Amazon I didn’t even hesitate. I pounced. Lucky for me I got it just at the right time, because it sold out within minutes after I placed my order. Talk about a hot commodity. Let me take a moment to say that I retract any and all statements I’ve ever made about Amazon here on this blog. I no longer wish you any ill will, Amazon. You and your lightning deals are my hero this Christmas season.
Y’all know I have never claimed to be a professional photographer. What I do is strictly a hobby for me because it’s enjoyable, challenging and rewarding. It gets my creative juices flowing and I love that I am documenting Garrett’s life in pictures. If I am my only client then there is no pressure if I screw something up. I have spent a few years fiddling around with Photoshop to help out my pictures. I’m self taught for the most part. Pioneer Woman taught me how to do any of the more complicated stuff. Just in the tiny amount of photos I’ve edited since 2007 I’ve seen what a burden Photoshop can be. Layer after painstaking layer, trying to find the right balance and thinking you’ve got things just right, so you flatten out the image and BOOM, there is a big fat ugly spot glaring right at you, and you have no idea how to fix it after the layers have been flattened.
Lightroom erases all of that. Non-destructive editing they call it. I can photochop my pictures to my hearts content, and with one click of a button in the history browser it will take me right back to where I wanted to be.
And get this! You can batch edit your photos. Let’s say you have a certain process that you really love. Maybe you like your pics a little warmer (like me) or a little more high-key or maybe you love a canary yellow hue to all your pics… Whatever it is, you just have to create it on one photo, then save it as a User Preset and you can repeat that process over and over and over on an entire batch of photos.
If you’re wondering how easy it is to use, let me say this. I loaded it onto my computer tonight and within minutes of fiddling with it and reading a few online tutorials I turned this image: 
Into this: 
That, my friends, is pretty dang impressive if you have ever spent a minute playing around with Photoshop and gotten NOWHERE with your image. I know that the second photo isn’t perfect, but I was able to figure out how to change some of the things that bugged me about the first image within minutes of using it. I washed out the background to make G stand out more, then I painted over that to make his face really POP against that white background. Then I edited the tree a little to make it brighter and sparklier… All in all a brighter, more saturated photo than the one that was SOOC.
The moral of the story? If you ever happen to stumble upon this software at a discounted rate, be sure to snatch up a copy quick, fast and in a hurry.
I feel like I have struck amateur photography GOLD with this one!
Happy Lightrooming, y’all!
Awesome! You are never gonna wanna go back to Photoshop. And thank you for the kind words 🙂
Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh…I SO have to check this out!!!
m ^..^
Dannngg it! I saw this on Amazon for $150 on Cyber Monday and was *this close* to buying it but wasn’t sure how user friendly it would be (also coming from a fellow photoshop hater)
Boo. 🙁
I’ve always been too scared to try Photoshop, but you make this sound awesome. Maybe I should try it.
I already had Lightroom and took one look at Photoshop and went RUNNING back to my Lightroom!!!
Holy cow! That is awesome!
[…] When I first purchased Lightroom I had a hard time using the program because it just wasn’t very intuitive for me, but after I took a Lightroom class I now use Lightroom for editing every single blog photo that I post. I love using it for editing my interior photos because I can turn a dark, dreary picture into something magazine worthy. I could go on and on about the benefits of using Lightroom over Photoshop, but I don’t want this to become an essay. Let’s just say that I started out using Photoshop for edits, and now I use Lightroom almost exclusively. Once I understood how to use it (and my photos improved to the point that I didn’t need a huge amount of editing to make them decent) I never looked back. […]
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