Adobe Lightroom Classic Reviews

Adobe Lightroom Classic – Photography Software

The Adobe Lightroom Classic photo editing software is a powerful tool that allows photographers to import, edit, and export images easily. It makes the process involved in editing photos seamless. Based on the Adobe Lightroom review we did, it helps photographers enhance the seeps of their workflow and helps them keep their images well organized. It’s an all-encompassing tool that every photographer should use. The Adobe Lightroom free trial lasts for thirty days. However, its premium plan is quite cheap; it costs 9.99 monthly.

How to use Adobe Lightroom Classic?

In the following, we will look at the Adobe Lightroom Classic interface and decipher how to use it.

Import a photo into Lightroom Classic

When you open Lightroom, you’ll notice a box at the bottom left that says “Import…”

Click it, and you’ll enter what is known as the Import Dialogue.

The Import Dialogue is where you choose which photos to add to your Lightroom catalog to organize and edit them. You’ll probably end up opening the Import Dialogue a lot — each time you’ve returned from a photo shoot and loading images onto your computer.

Within the Import Dialogue, there are plenty of options available. I’ll cover the most important below:

The easiest part of the Import Dialogue is the tab on the left-hand side. Here is where you choose which photos you want to open in Lightroom, simply by clicking on the folder (or memory card) where they currently reside.

There’s not much to say here, except that you may notice something interesting. It’s not just your memory card that shows up here. If you want to import a photo into Lightroom on your hard drive, you can do so without a problem.

The top of the Import Dialogue gives you a few more options. Specifically, there are four different ways to import your photos into Lightroom’s catalog: “Copy as DNG,” “Copy,” “Move,” and “Add.” Each one is there for a reason, depending on what you want Lightroom to do with your photos.

Add is great if you don’t want to move the actual file on your computer to a new location; you simply want the photo to show up when you open Lightroom. It is ideal if you have a photo already in the right place on your computer’s hard drive.

Move is best if you’re trying to add one of your photos to your Lightroom catalog, but it’s not in the right place on your computer. So, if one of your photos is on your desktop but wants it to appear under Photos > 2017 > April, you can move the photo to the proper location while simultaneously telling Lightroom to add it to your catalog.

Copy is best if the photo you want to add to your catalog isn’t in the right location yet, but you still don’t want to delete it from its current location; instead, you just want to duplicate it elsewhere. It might seem odd, but it’s quite useful. For example, when I’m loading photos from someone else’s flash drive, I don’t want to move the photos from their flash drive onto my computer (since that would effectively delete them from their original location). So instead, I simply want to duplicate the photos and put them in the right spot on my computer. Ultimately, the duplicated file is the one that Lightroom adds to your catalog.

Is “Copy as DNG” useful?

Copy as DNG is one that you are less likely to use. This option appeared when the Lightroom developers realized that if you’re copying a photo from one location to another, the new duplicate can be a different file type than the original if there’s a benefit to doing so. So “Copy as DNG” does 100% the same as “Copy,” except that the new, duplicate photo in the proper location will be saved as a DNG file rather than a JPEG, TIFF, CRW, NEF, or whatever it was originally.

Personally, when loading photos from a memory card onto my computer, I prefer to copy them rather than move them. That way, I maintain two versions of each photo: one on my memory card and one on my computer’s new spot. It is nice if my computer’s hard drive breaks before the new photos are backed up. (“Add” isn’t a viable option here because, when I eventually remove the memory card from my computer, the photos wouldn’t appear in my catalog!)

There are many options along the right-hand side of the import dialogue. It can seem overwhelming if you’ve never used Lightroom before.

However, the main purpose of the right-hand bar is just to tell Lightroom where to put the photos that you’re moving, copying, or copying as DNGs. (It doesn’t appear you’re adding photos since Lightroom assumes they’re already in the right place.)

Beyond that, the rest of the options are up to you. For example, you can choose to rename the files you’re adding, which could be helpful for organization purposes. Furthermore, you can apply a set of “develop settings” to the photos you add — say, applying a pre-chosen amount of sharpening and noise reduction to each photo — or a “metadata” setting, such as filling in the copyright section of each photo you open. Finally, you can create a second copy of every photo you import to have a backup (though this may be overkill if you already have a constant backup to an external hard drive or the cloud).

You’ll find yourself personalizing this section significantly over time.

For now, once you’ve chosen the right destination folder, you’re good. Every one of these settings is reversible at any point in the future.

The last bit of the important dialogue is the bar at the bottom. The main option here is the “Import Preset” section. It lets you save all the settings you just chose — the copy/move/add settings, the destination folder, the options on the right-hand sidebar — and use the same ones at some point in the future.

Aside from that, once you’ve selected all the photos you want to add to your catalog, you’re done! Click the “Import” button at the bottom-right of your screen, and you’re ready to organize and edit the photos you’ve just added.

After Import: How is Adobe Lightroom Classic arranged?

Lightroom Classic is divided into two main sections: the organization half and the post-processing half.

When you’re looking at a photo in Lightroom, these two core features are separated from one another; you can’t see all the organizational features and editing features simultaneously. To organize your photos, you need to enter the Library module. To post-process your photos, you need to enter the Develop module.

On top of the Library and Develop modules, Lightroom also has a Map, Book, Slideshow, Print, and Web module. Each one does, roughly, what it sounds like. So if you want to pinpoint the GPS coordinates of a photo you took, you’d need to open the Map module. We have a full article dedicated to explaining Lightroom modules if you’re interested.

The most important modules in Lightroom, though, are Library and Develop. Very few photographers will use the other modules just as frequently. So, how do the Library and Develop modules work? I’ll give an outline below.

The Library Module

You’ll notice upon entering the Library module that it looks something like this:

What do all the pop-out tabs do? I’ll cover each one below:

Along the left-hand side is the actual file structure on your computer. (If you don’t see it, press the “tab” key on your keyboard, or click the inward-pointing arrow along the far left.) In the example above, you can see a bunch of empty folders – these are standard folders that you can customize as you please.

Near the middle of the screen, you can see a label called “Collections.” I’ll get to that in a bit, but here’s a spoiler alert: Lightroom’s “Collections” section is very important. For many photographers, it forms the backbone of their organizational structure.

At the top of the screen, below the Library/Develop/Map/etc. the module is a thin gray bar called “Library Filter.” Press the “\” key on your keyboard or go to View> Show Filter Bar if you don’t see it. Another spoiler alert: This unassuming tab is the main tool at your disposal if you ever lose a photo and are trying to find it again.

On the right-hand side of your screen is another pop-out tab. This one has a few more options — Quick Develop, Keywording, etc. — and exists mainly to give you information about your photos. The most useful of these options is the “Metadata” section, which lets you look at the behind-the-scenes information about your photos. I use this whenever I’m trying to see when I captured a photo, if I used exposure compensation, or if I used a particular camera/lens rather than another. At the top of the right-hand tab, you can see a summary of this information and a histogram of the selected photo.

Another important option is at the bottom of your screen. Adobe Lightroom Classic calls this your Toolbar. (If it doesn’t appear, press “T,” or go View > Show Toolbar.)

The Toolbar lets you choose how your photos look within the Library module. They could be a set of thumbnails, a single image that fills most of the screen, or a comparison of multiple photos that fill part of the screen. Those options can be seen in the screenshot below:

The thumbnail view — the icon on the far left — is also known as the Grid View. This one is useful if you’re trying to scroll through several photos simultaneously.

The Loupe View is next. It partially fills the screen with your photo, keeping the sidebars open in the meantime. It’s nice if you want to look at each photo in more detail, though I prefer the full-screen View you get by pressing the “F” key. (In older Lightroom versions, press the “L” key instead, or just go to the top menu: Window > Screen Mode > Full-Screen Preview.)

There are also Compare and Survey views if you want to compare multiple photos against one another simultaneously. And, if you take many photos of people, you might find the People view — where Lightroom tries to find people’s faces and group them — to help for certain shoots. I don’t tend to use these views, but you might find them useful, depending on your work. Feel free to experiment.

Also, the tools you’ll have at your disposal in the Toolbar will change depending on which options you click. If you enter “Loupe View,” for example, you’ll be able to give your photos a star rating, which isn’t in the Toolbar in the other views (though you can do this at any time just by pressing a number, 1-5, on your keyboard).

Finally, there’s one more pop-out tab that we haven’t examined yet: the “Filmstrip” at the very bottom of the screen. If it doesn’t appear yet, you’ll need to click the upward-pointing arrow at the bottommost point of Lightroom:

It lets you view a miniature version of each photo at the bottom of your screen. It can be useful on certain occasions — say, you’re in the Loupe View (again, looking at a single photo at a time), and you want to go quickly to a photo much later within the same folder. I don’t use the filmstrip much, but it may be useful for your work.

The Library module does more than just let you view your photos; it also lets you organize them. I’ll cover that briefly, but I’ll give a quick overview of the Develop module first.

The Develop Module

Editing your photos is one of the crucial steps of photography. It is particularly relevant if you shoot with your camera’s RAW mode, where you’re likely to end up with low-contrast photos and low saturation immediately out of the camera. That’s where the Develop module in Adobe Lightroom Classic can help.

Lightroom’s Develop module looks like this:

Once again, I’ll cover what each of these pop-out tabs does below:

As you can see, there are plenty of post-processing options on the right-hand side of the screen. Most of those are considered global adjustments — in other words. They affect the entire photograph simultaneously.

The other adjustment category is called a local edit; it only affects part of your photo. The options at the top of this sidebar are the local edit options.

You’ll end up using this right-hand sidebar far more often than any of the other options when you’re post-processing photos in Lightroom. This is because it’s the home base. So almost any time you want to make an edit, this is where you’ll go.

The other crucial tab in Lightroom’s Develop module is the left-hand tab. This section has a few separate options that are each equally useful.

First is the “Presets” section. It lets you apply a set of pre-fixed edits to your photos. Since every photo is different, why would you want to do this? I have a sharpening preset that I apply to most of my photos. Since most of my photos are taken at similar ISO and aperture values, I frequently use the same sharpening settings, which quickens the process. Read more here: How to Create a Lightroom Develop Preset.

Next is the “Snapshots” section. We have a useful video tutorial about Lightroom snapshots that you may want to check out. Still, the main point is this: a snapshot is a way to remember the exact post-processing settings you used at a particular time. If you like the look of an edit you made and want to return to those settings easily (i.e., without undoing all of them manually), you can take a snapshot and return to it at any time.

The “History” option is next, and it’s a very useful one. Here, Adobe Lightroom Classic essentially takes a snapshot every time you make an edit. So, you can go back chronologically to see how the photo looked at any point in its history. I use this all the time to compare my recent edits to an earlier version of the photo. However, if you’ve made a lot of edits to a particular image, this section can get crowded and difficult to navigate exactly where you want.

Finally, the “Collections” option is last. As I mentioned earlier, this section also appears in the normal Library module, and I’m not sure it’s necessary here. But, if you have the filmstrip pop-out enabled, you can drag any photo into any Collection you want, even within the Develop module. Some photographers may find that useful.

The last part of the Develop module’s layout is the Toolbar at the bottom. There are only a few options, and you won’t use them frequently.

The first option is the view mode of the Develop module. You can view your images with a single photo taking up the screen — the most typical way to use the Develop module — or with two photos taking up the screen (Compare). In this case, the second photo is the original appearance of the photo out-of-camera.

It can be useful if you’re trying to see how drastic your edits were, but it’s not something that most people use very often. However, you can do something similar without showing both photos by pressing the “\” key on your keyboard.

The other option in the Toolbar is called “Soft Proofing”, and this is a relatively advanced topic. If you’re trying to print a photo, it can be difficult (i.e., really difficult and expensive) to get your image’s colors/contrast/brightness to look the same between your screen and your print. The Soft Proofing option lets you load profiles from your printer and see roughly how the photo will look when printed.

Personally, even though I enjoy printing my photos, I rarely use this option. However, depending on how closely you care about one-to-one accuracy between your print and screen, you should know whether it will be useful.

And now that you know the layout of Lightroom, it’s time to dive into the first main function of the software: sorting and organizing your pictures.

Details of Adobe Lightroom Features

Lightroom Classic gets new features continuously. For example, using the photo editing app will get you tools like color grading to change the hue, saturation, and luminance, free presets that enable you to transform colors and tones in a click, and many more.

Let’s dive into some of the key features of Adobe Lightroom Classic.

You can batch process and apply presets to multiple images using the Quick Develop panel. For example, have a group of images that are all overexposed. Select them all and correct them simultaneously. Also, by roughly batch-processing your images using the Quick Develop panel, you can save time later when you’re fine-tuning them in the Develop module. Who doesn’t like saving time?

It’s super easy to move from photo to photo in the Develop module and view contact sheets in the Library grid view.

If you’ve spent some time adjusting one image and the next image is similar, you can transfer the settings from the original image with a single click! Just click the “Previous” button in the Develop module, and it’s done. This one feature alone allows you to cruise through groups of images effortlessly. You can also copy settings to multiple images at once for extra power.

Presets allow you to easily save configurations of the adjustment sliders in the Develop module. You can then apply the effect to other photos with just one click! The presets can save you mega time with your processing. Did you spend a lot of time perfecting a black & white? Save it as a preset to be used on another image! You can create a wide variety of presets to save time and quickly experiment with different looks.

Presets can also help you develop a style. By using the presets, you create your images will have a more consistent look. That’s a hugely important part of creating a recognizable editing style.

Lightroom is a fantastic RAW file editor. The RAW format is the highest quality setting on most DSLR cameras (and here’s why you should shoot in RAW), and with Lightroom, you can take advantage of that.

When shooting in the RAW format, it’s easy to correct exposure and white balance in Lightroom.

With Lightroom’s Crop tool, it’s super easy to crop photos to any aspect ratio creatively. Straightening your photos is also a snap with the straighten tool. You can click and drag along any vertical or horizontal line, and your image will automatically be rotated and cropped.

It seems simple, but you’ll find that you use the straighten tool a LOT.

The free Lightroom presets save you a lot of time editing images. Here are some of the free Lightroom presets:

Lightroom presets for wedding photography

This Adobe Lightroom Classic presets for wedding photography helps photographers to edit wedding photos easily.

It is a free Lightroom preset that gives your images a nice film look. It works very well for photography like weddings, cityscapes, social media, landscapes, travel, and portraits.

This package contains thirty amazing Lightroom presets that are great for any wedding event. These preset work perfectly on desktop and mobile, improving your wedding images by giving them a distinctly artistic feel and look.

The Elegant wedding preset was created to improve,  brighten and minimize the temperature of your images for the best wedding day shot. It ends up giving your images a professional look that is best for blog posts and social media.

Wedding day is another free Lightroom preset developed for adjusting wedding images. It helps fine-tune the saturation and vibrance of your wedding images to bring excellent results that look enthusiastic and brilliant. This preset is best for wedding photographers.

The bouquet preset is created to enhance your images by including clarity and subtle and sharpening split toning.

Fashion Vintage is a group of ten Lightroom presets best for wedding or portrait photographers. Each one is made to give a unique retro look to your images.

It is a set of eight wedding Lightroom presets that help your wedding images to pop out. In addition, these presets aid wedding photographers in retouching the photos in a single click.

“Weddings Look” is a set of two Lightroom wedding presets that increase exposure/brightness and add warmth, contrast, vibrance, slight vignetting, and portrait sharpening. These presets are especially useful when applied to underexposed photos that need some brightening.

Photography Concentrate includes ten presets, groups in two pairs of 5 each, and is designed to showcase Lightroom’s creative possibilities. Use Photography Concentrate to create infinite custom color tones ranging from subtle warming and cooling to more intense color effects.

The Quantum Collection is a set of 16 free Lightroom presets that will blow you away. They allow you to create high-quality conversions without leaving Lightroom. This package contains over a hundred effects refined and organized into the ultimate standard and dynamic toolkit.

Lightroom Presets For Baby and Family Photography

To enhance your baby and family photos so that they look clean, light, and soft, check out these free Lightroom presets for infant photography and family photos:

Color Print Film Emulation is a set of 18 presets in two volumes of 9 each. It converts photos into different color print film emulations that look stunning.

New Life is a free Lightroom preset that captures newborn infants’ and children’s warmth and delicate beauty. It gives photos a light, airy softness that complements skin tones and adds to the overall charm.

MCP Mini Enlighten has 15 photographer-recommended Lightroom presets and custom presets for various shooting situations. These presets can be used separately or stacked together for an amazing variety of looks.

Analog Look brings dramatic, creative effects to your photos. It is a Lightroom preset that adds the touch of hours of professional editing of portraits in seconds.

Matt Kloskowski’s Spotlight is a preset pack that takes advantage of the Radial Filter effect in Lightroom. You should use it to spotlight a particular area in your photographs. With this preset pack, you can draw attention to what’s important!

Newborn Baby is a free Lightroom preset that will increase your photos’ dynamic range and leave you with a soft, subtle, natural look.

Sun Flare is an amazing free Lightroom preset that warms your photo dramatically. This preset adds a sunlight effect to your photos to stand out.

Lightroom Presets For Headshots

Maybe you’d like to change out the background of your headshots. In that case, check out our tutorial on changing the background in Photoshop.

But, for a quick effect that will make your headshots look stunning, you should edit them in Lightroom and use one of these amazing free presets for headshots:

Legacy Pro 1600 simulates the look of a discontinued black-and-white slide film. It produces a beautiful texture and medium contrast. In addition, this free Lightroom preset has a distinct look thanks to the creative rendering of gray tones.

Magic Moments has muted colors that help make your subjects pop. In addition, this free preset produces attractive and vivid tones that bring out the detail of your picture, especially in facial expressions. This is a great preset if you take a lot of family portraits.

CatchingSand Black and White Pack 1 comes with three amazing color shades. Consider using this pack of 3 Lightroom presets to change your photos into a great black-and-white texture. Though it would normally take hours of fiddling with Lightroom to achieve, the magnificent professional black and whites this preset give are super fast.

Movie Star adds a soft retro warmth and a cinematic atmosphere to your photos. In addition, it applies dramatic tones that are ideal for all types of portraits.

Portra 160 is a great free Lightroom preset that gives your photos the unmistakable and timeless look of the classic Kodak Portra 160. It is one of our favorites presets because of its soft cool hues and tempered intensity. This is the one if you want subtler tones and matte textures on your pictures.

Urban Cool perfectly intensifies cool temperatures in your photos. Urban Cool adds greens, blues, and violet tones in shadows to achieve this effect. In addition, it increases saturation in warm tones to make your photo appear calm and cool.

Summer Love adds bright warm summer effects to your photos. This preset is perfect for you if your picture is captured in sunlight.

Lightroom Presets For Landscape

To make your landscapes look grand and breathtaking, check out these free Lightroom presets for landscape photography:

Trey Ratcliff is a set of Lightroom presets that includes some of the best presets for travel photography. These presets are great for portraits and landscape photos.

Cinematic HDR is a free Lightroom preset that makes your photos look like an awesome cinema-inspired HDR effect. It works well with landscapes as well as other types of photos.

Black & White HDR is a free Lightroom preset that will make your color photos awesome with this black & white HDR conversion. It opens up the dynamic range while still keeping deep, beautiful blacks.

Winter Wonderland is a preset pack that includes some of Lightroom’s newest and best winter-time presets. From black & white, desaturated, and dehire presets to sky enhancers, vintage retro, and other various looks to help you achieve the perfect winter look for your photos.

Indoor Bright is a free Lightroom preset ideal for indoor photography, especially if you are shooting products or interiors. The preset neutralize harsh light in any photo, so you won’t get those stark yellow or blues that often pop from artificial light.

Adobe Lightroom Review Conclusions

Adobe Lightroom Classic (officially Adobe Photoshop Lightroom) is a creative image organization and image manipulation software developed by Adobe Inc. as part of the Creative Cloud subscription family. It is supported on Windows and iOS. Its primary uses include importing, saving, viewing, organizing, tagging, editing, and sharing large numbers of digital images. Lightroom’s editing functions include white balance, presence, tone, tone curve, HSL, color grading, detail, lens corrections, calibration manipulation, transformation, spot removal, red-eye correction, graduated filters, radial filters, and adjustment brushing. The name of the software is based on darkrooms used for processing light-sensitive photographic materials.