Lightroom continued

I have only a short time to finish this review before it's time is up. You will find loads of tips and stuff about image editing programs on the internet. I am not setting myself up as a "guru" but I can give you the benefit of my experience. Computer programmers and software developers dont often see the problems confronting the end user. There are changes I would make to some of these programs -if asked. Likewise there are changes to the hardware that would make everyones life easier - but life aint like that. Lightroom seems to be very well thought out and is an ideal tool for the busy pro-photographer. It gives a degree of control over all aspects of the image that are simply amazing. There are some things that need the power of the parent Photoshop, but, for colour correction and general image correction I dont think you could do much better. This image of the control panel for image "Development" shows just the basic settings that can control the colour and tone of the image.

Don't forget that all these images can be seen at full size by clicking on them to open them in a new screen.

The panel on the left shows the left side of the screen just to show the complete picture. This is the Navigator panel and shows some of the other panels and modes that there are. I am really impressed by the cropping tool which, if you choose, can provide a grid based on the mythic Golden Rule (as I mentioned in my composition blog). A word about saving your work. Lightroom saves your work in a special catalogue file - it doesnt re-save your jpegs causing compression problems. Lightroom does, however, ask you to back your catalogue files up. This is very important. Once you have done all your corrections and saved them, made prints,etc, You can do further editing of your images by exporting them to an external image editor (such as Photoshop) you can do this by sending a copy of your image with or without your edits. I could list all the possibilitied that Lightroom is capable of but perhaps you should find out for yourself. I recommend downloading a trial copy.