7 Lightroom Tips Every New Photographer Should Know

For most photographers, Lightroom is the place where they will start their photos and often where they will finish them. If you are new to photography, you might be surprised by just how much you can do with Lightroom without ever touching Photoshop. This helpful video tutorial will give you seven tips to ensure you are getting the most out of the program and creating high-quality edits.

Coming to you from Nigel Danson, this great video tutorial discusses seven useful tips for getting the most out of Lightroom when you are new to the program. One piece of advice I would definitely give new photographers is to establish a good organizational strategy from the outset. There are a lot of ways to keep things organized in Lightroom, whether you use keywords, collections, or something else, and it really comes down to personal preference. Whatever you choose, though, being sure to organize your photos each time you import a new batch will save you a ton of time and effort in the long run. I didn't do this at first, and it took me about 20 hours on a weekend to get things fixed when I finally got around to it! Check out the video above for the full rundown from Danson.

Alex Cooke's picture

Alex Cooke is a Cleveland-based portrait, events, and landscape photographer. He holds an M.S. in Applied Mathematics and a doctorate in Music Composition. He is also an avid equestrian.

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Ive used Lightroom for some time since switching from Apple’s discontinued Aperture! The main issue with Lightroom and the problem of establishing a good workflow from the outset is it’s simplicity and ease of use. Jump into Lightroom and you can start sliding those sliders right from the get go focusing on image tweaking rather than thinking about efficient working. It’s just too easy and tempting. Looking back it’s what I did and as a result I picked up and established a lot of bad organisational habits ending up with not the best way of image organisation. When I open up old catalogues I cringe at the way I organised those early files, plus when I want to find an old image it’s much harder than it should be due to my sloppy file management.
My advice to any new user would be to stop and think about how you would like to organise and categorise your images, looking at the pros and cons of multiple V single catalogues etc. Actually using Lightroom is relatively simple but deciding on HOW you would like to use it does requires some thought.