Adobe Lightroom

Few articles ago we came across RAW formats and its importance for perfect photographs. But which software do we use for editing RAW format photographs? There is a wide range of softwares to choose from the market, for RAW photo processing. Lightroom is one of the softwares which help a photographer, whether professional or amateur, in editing his photographs. It’s a very simple tool to use for amateur photographers.

According to Adobe, “Adobe Lightroom is a new, exciting image handler built from the ground up for professional photographers.” It supports a wide range of proprietary image formats like JPEG, TIFF, PNG and open formats like DNG and XMP. Lightroom is certainly not for photographers who would like detailed pixel editing like Photoshop. But this software offers the best processing options from capture to print and presentation.

The window is neatly organized with all the options. Lightroom window gives us: module picker, panels and filmstrip

Module Picker - It consist of Library, Develop, Slideshow, Print and Web. The name suggests each of the functions and the module picker options are arranged in the order of processing.

Panels - Panels consist of tools used during the process module like histogram, advanced photograph settings, navigator, presets and a history of actions. The panels are distributed to left and right of the window. Most of the processing tools are towards the right and it doesn't take much time once you know what each tool does. Each setting uses a slider or the settings can be edited directly in the histogram and the tone curve.

Filmstrip - Like analog photography filmstrips, digital filmstrip is shown to the bottom of the window. It shows all photographs from the selected folder or the complete library. A photograph can be selected for editing.

Lightroom entertains the Undo (Ctrl + Z) and Redo (Ctrl + Y) key strokes. For the list of commands press Ctrl + /. It also has preset key commands for most important features like hide/show panels or show before/after photos. The best part about Lightroom is a feature called Dim light (L). It dims the light only to show the photo and nothing else on the display just like in a film negative processing room. The software also has impressive metadata editing options. All the photographs, with any format, are tagged with all the metadata information imported from the sensor of the camera. Finally after editing the RAW photos and exporting them, the software adds a customized watermark for a copyright.

Adobe Lightroom is the best software one can use for processing of raw formats and professional digital photography. My favorite Lightroom features are: Easy key commands for faster processing, Size Ratios for precise editing, Before/After (Y) photos side by side for comparison, Full screen, Histogram and Tone curve.