Up to Speed Academy

Welcome to Lightroom Up To Speed!

This course helps you to get up and running quickly with Adobe’s powerful photo editing and management system. This handy step-by-step class starts from scratch, starting with basic Lightroom topics and moving on to more advanced features of the Library module, designed to help you to become more productive more quickly.

In no time at all you’ll be navigating Lightroom’s interface, importing, rating, and filtering your photos, managing your photo library, creating and managing collections, and post-processing your images.  You’ll delve into adjusting image exposure, clarity, vibrance, and saturation; removing haze from images; adjusting shadows and highlights; changing color and adjusting white balance; using handy tools such as the Brush, Linear Gradient and Radial Gradient tools; cropping and straightening images; fixing perspective problems; creating panoramas and merging photos using HDR; and much more.

Who is this course for?

This course was created for people new to photography as well as well-seasoned photographers looking to learn a new photo organizing and editing application. This course will also be helpful for those coming from a previous version of Lightroom or those looking to delve more deeply into the Lightroom application.

What does this course include?

• Step-by-step instructional videos that are easy to follow
• Downloadable lesson files allowing you to follow along with the instructor
•  Support for any questions you may have

What You’ll Learn:

• Getting your files into Lightroom.  You’ll learn how to import images from your computer, an external drive, an SD card or directly from your camera into Lightroom.
  
  
• Learning the Lightroom Environment. Next, we’ll take a look at the various panels and panes in Lightroom. We’ll learn about Grid View and Detail View, and how to view your photos in a variety of ways.
  
  
• Image Handling. We’ll go in-depth with managing your images, and you’ll learn how to create albums, create folders, how to move albums and folders and how to group photos using stacks.
  
  
• Adding Image Information. To help you organize your images and find the ones you want quickly, you’ll learn how to add star ratings to your images, how to flag them, and how to reject the ones you don’t want.  You also add keywords to your images and learn how to add and view an image’s Metadata.
  
  
• Searching for Images. You’ll learn how to sort your photos and search your photos using the powerful search feature to quickly find the images that you’re looking for.  You’ll then work with the Filter tool,  which allows you to filter images by text, attribute or metadata.
  
  
• Sharing Your Images. You’ll learn how to export your images into a variety of formats so that you can easily share them with others or to Social Media. You’ll also share your albums online with others as well as learn how to create a Public Web Gallery.
  
  
• Editing  Basics. We’ll begin by looking at the difference between RAW vs JPEG processing. We’ll start out by choosing a camera profile as a starting point and make virtual copies of our images. You’ll also learn a bunch of editing shortcuts to help speed up your workflow.
  
  
• Image Adjustment Basics. Next, we’ll drive into photo editing. You’ll learn how to adjust image exposure, contrast, and clarity as well as tweak the vibrance and saturation. We’ll discuss how to remove fog and haze from images, how to add texture, adjust the shadows and highlights and blacks and whites, and how to effectively use Lightroom’s Clipping Indicators.
  
  
• Working with Color. We’ll go in-depth working with Color in Lightroom. You’ll learn how to set the white balance in an image as well as how to change color in an image. We’ll convert an image to black and white, add some interesting effects using split toning, apply selective adjustments using the Brush tool, and how to add a gradient using the Linear Gradient tool.
  
  
• Fixing Common Image Problems. To help you fix those pesky image problems, you’ll learn how to crop and straighten photos, remove spots and other image imperfections using the Healing brush.  You’ll also make lens corrections, fix perspective problems and even rotate images.
  
  
• Beyond the Basics. In this section, we’ll move into some of the more advanced Lightroom editing features. You’ll learn how to adjust contrast using Lightroom’s Tone Curve, work with the Histogram and synchronize adjustments across multiple images. Then, you’ll learn how to merge multiple images into a panorama or an HDR image.  You’ll work with Presets and learn how to enhance the details of your RAW images using the new Enhance Details feature.
  
  
• Adding Effects and Finishing Touches. You’ll end by learning how to add those special finishing touches to an image. You’ll learn how to add a post-crop vignette, add grain, reduce color and luminance noise and sharpen your images. We’ll also add a spotlight to areas of our image using Lightroom’s handy Radial Filter tool.  Lastly, we’ll take a brief tour of Lightroom  Mobile on the iPhone and the iPad.
  
  

By the end of this course, you’ll learn how to build and organize your Lightroom library, allowing you to effectively manage hundreds of thousands of images with ease, how to edit your images in Lightroom like a pro, allowing you to effectively and quickly move through your photography workflow.

I’m also here every step along the way for you so don’t hesitate to ask me any questions related to Lightroom or to the course content that come up as you journey through the course. You can post your question in the course or fire me off a direct message. Also, let me know if there’s any way I can improve this course.

Are you ready to begin your Lightroom journey? Then, click the Enroll icon and let’s get started!

- Roger