Using Lightroom 3.5, amazing results with little effort, for UW touchups.

[Mark Derail]

Check out this thread: http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/hawaii-ohana/399461-derails-dive-south-maui-lanai.html

Basically I hired Halemano in Maui as a guide/photographer and negotiated a price ahead of time, including that he would give the raw images. I wanted some Lightroom / Photoshop practice.

In essence, I've done so far 3 professional land photoshoots (hundreds of pics each shoot) and processed manually some selected pictures that Halemano took.

The interesting part - some side-by-side comparisons where I redid some of the same pictures.

In short - I have YET to use Photoshop AT ALL since I have Lightroom. I bought both; but for photo retouches - photoshop is not needed.

Too bad Lightroom doesn't do HDR !!! However you can post-process (via Virtual Cloning, very COOL feature) 3x or 6x or 9x from the RAW image, just varying exposures and selected regions to change exposures, export to JPG, and HDR with Photomatix in Photoshop.

So !!!!!!!!!!!

Who else uses Lightroom? Best 200$ I ever spent...

 

[scubamarketing]

I'm a new OS X convert and am having a hard time figuring out what slots iPhoto, Lightroom, Aperture and Photoshop all fall into. I guess I'll play around with Lightroom a bit more, sounds/looks good based on this review, thanks

 

[Mark Derail]

Lightroom is an Adobe product, that Apple stores do not sell as it is an Aperture competitor.

Adobe = Lightroom, Photoshop
Apple = iPhoto (manager), Aperture (fixing)

I like Lightroom better for 1 simple reason :: APPLETS
They are like a Macro, that you build in Photoshop and you can use in Lightroom.

I don't like iPhoto - in that it's a database. So all your pictures need to be imported, and if you want to print "elsewhere" like Costco, you have to "export".
However iPhoto is useful in managing similar pics, organising, and putting your pics on iCloud.
However is separates the advanced user from his pictures.

One major annoyance, iPhoto imports all pictures taken by the iPad2, since it thinks the iPad2 is a camera. But you have to use iTunes to PUT pictures in your iPad2.

But....your pics are now in the iPhoto database, and iTunes only synchronises a FOLDER with JPG images inside...

Apple's over-simplification has created a photo conundrum, it's now hard for a novice user to backup and view his/her pictures when a iMac + iPad are used in tandem.

 

[scubamarketing]

Wow, great explanation, thank you. I'm a fairly long-time Photoshop user, but it seems like overkill for so much of what I'm doing lately.

What are your thoughts/is your process for dealing with auto-syncing of devices? I have an iPhone 4 and iPad 2, both with iCloud enabled for the photo stream and wifi sync to iTunes. It seems like it is auto importing photos via iCloud, yet when I plug in, lock and have iTunes open, it wants to sync everything again, yet when I look in iPhoto it doesn't seem like I'm getting duplicates. I just haven't been worrying about it, pics are backed up but not duplicated so a little odd behavior isn't bothering me.

Now that I think about it, I think I used Lightroom (maybe version 2?) on Windows and never fully embraced it. Time to learn something new

 

[Uncle Pug]

Lightroom actually does a better job working with one image than trying to merge multiple images to HDR in Photoshop if there are moving elements in the image. Here is a thread I posted on the Nikon Cafe showing the difference between LR using the gradient filter tool and Photoshop's HDR.
NikonCafe.com

 

[sloss]

Hey Mark,

You're right for $200 you can't beat Lightroom. And if you also have Photoshop they work seamlessly/perfectly together.

Just read your post and wanted to let you know you can also take your virtual copies and Export them directly to Photomatix Pro right from Lightroom using the Export to command rather than exporting jpegs to then tone map in Photomatix. That way, once you're done your work there, it's easy to just re-import the shot by hitting the process button so your finished images round trips right to Lightroom and is nested right alongside your original. And if your shooting topside this is a great feature too!

Cool shots from Maui. I used to live and dive all the time on the Big Island; great stuff!

 

[sloss]

Hey Nick,

Not sure if you did retry using Lightroom to synch with your iPad and iPhone but you can easily do so using the Publish Services feature in Lightroom 3. It's a great feature and allows you to not only upload to both devices but should you want to tweak a photo in the future (say, increase saturation or exposure) you can update the file at any time, re-synch and the image on your device will then reflect those changes. It's a pretty cool feature.

 

[rickthompson]

I love Lightroom and cannot imagine getting through my workflow without it. I know a lot of people who use

Aperture and say that it's pretty similar, but I think iPhoto is just the worst, ​

especially

if your're shooting in RAW. iPhoto seems to have a habit of making multiple copies of your photos that never seem to ​

actually

get deleted (you have to go into the packaged app files to physically remove the backup/original/edits/trash folders)​

which will fill your HD up before you know it. I like Lightroom because you can keep the edit info and the organization in your catalog even if you take your files offline (i.e. delete them to make room). Usually I clear out my HD every year and store older photos on several external HDs.

 

[Mark Derail]

One thing I've been doing, Tethered Shoots, with a 2nd larger screen attached to my laptop. Lightroom allows a special view on the 2nd screen, so my subjects get to see what they look like without breaking out of pose for the next pic.