Inside Lightroom 2: The serious photographer's guide to Lightroom efficiency [Paperback]

Richard Earney (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 21, 2008

If you're comfortable using the basic features of Lightroom, but really want to push the envelope with this powerful software, Inside Lightroom by acclaimed photographer and Lightroom Beta-tester Richard Earney is a must-have.
Bypassing the obvious features covered in a variety of existing Lightroom books, Richard focuses on customizing Lightroom to suit your workflow. For example, he covers using presets to automate the way Lightroom deals with photos, optimizing your Lightroom workflow for your own hardware and preferences. He covers sophisticated calibration techniques, helping you render your pictures accurately both onscreen and in print. Basically -- the hidden information for this powerful software. Unlike the other 'guides' on the market, this book doesn't tell you what you already know. Instead, it focuses on what you don't.
'Inside Lightroom' also showcases new features of the software, available only in Lightroom 2.0, so if you have recently upgraded from Lightroom 1, this book will help you reap the benefits of your investment.
Practical, jargon-free and full of stunning images, Richard Earney's book should be on the shelf of every Lightroom user.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Richard Earney is the owner of Method Photo and Inside-Lightroom.com, an experienced professional photographer, a Licentiate of the Royal Photographic Society, Adobe tester for Photoshop and Lightroom, and pro-contributor to Adobe's new Lightroom "help community” wiki. Richard is also the series editor for Focal's Digital Workflow Series.

Product Details

• Paperback: 208 pages
• Publisher: Focal Press; 1 edition (October 21, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0240811429
• ISBN-13: 978-0240811420
• Product Dimensions: 7.4 x 0.5 x 9.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (28 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,782,767 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars A Lightroom book that tries to be different December 3, 2008

By Charles I. Maas

Format:Paperback

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom is an image editing and cataloging program that has become exceedingly popular, especially with version 2. The promise of this tool is to make it easier for photographers to quickly download, sort, process, output, and manage a large number of images in a visually intuitive fashion. In addition, the editing process in nondestructive and can be adjusted or reversed at any time prior to export. For many, this is a less laborious workflow and demands less storage space for large, individually purposed files .

As with any sophisticated program, a whole industry has developed to help owners learn to use it. There are a host of books on the subject, most of which attempt to address as many features as possible to an audience from beginner to expert. The result is often less than satisfying; too much basic stuff for the expert, too much high-powered stuff for the beginner, and not enough pages to cover all the permutations within the program without needing a wheelbarrow to get it out of the store.

Richard Earney attempts a different approach. Instead of trying to be comprehensive and cover every possible within the program, he states his goal as showing how Lightroom "works and behaves and how best to make it work for you." The question is , how well does he succeed? The short answer is fairly well in some respects and not so well in others.

One interesting aspect is that he adds commentary along the way on additional digital imaging topics that are related to but not specifically part of Lightroom, such as color management, computer systems, file management strategies, and backup.... While important issues themselves, this coverage in an otherwise "advanced" book used up a lot of space that might have been better used in addressing particular Lightroom features in greater depth.

Some Lightroom features deserve amplification, such as Presets -- "a file of settings that can be saved for applying similar effects on a repeated basis." Richard uses an entire chapter to delve into what presets are, how to apply them, and even how to edit preset templates in a text editor. This gets well beyond the general perception of Lightroom as a visually driven, intuitive adjustment program, but certainly could be worthwhile for technically oriented photographers who batch process large numbers of images made with similar lighting conditions.

The last chapter of the book contains a very useful and extensive list of Lightroom resources, of which there are many.

A couple of practical considerations. While screen shots and diagrams are certainly descriptive, there needs to be a balance between text and pictures. Too many pictures and there's little room for text, which is usually the meat of the book. There are an awful lot of pictures in this book. In addition, there are quite a few misspellings and minor editing errors which are unfortunate in an otherwise nicely published work.

If you use Lightroom should you buy this book? Maybe. The style is very readable and many of the discussions about specific tasks are beneficial, but somehow it doesn't seem to fully meet the stated objective of getting "inside" Lightroom, or to be a truly comprehensive resource for serious photographers. Read more ›

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars This is it. August 27, 2009

By William A. Nolan VINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

As a professional photographer, this was the book I was looking for. It doesn't restate all of what I already knew, but does provide some really good ideas on how to handle the workflow. If you come back from a shoot with thousands of images, this book will give you some tips on how to speed up the process. I like it.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Focused on Efficiency August 20, 2009

By Damian P. Gadal VINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

Yes I'm giving this five stars (though the editors did miss a few minor things).

Why? Because Mr. Earney accomplishes what he sets out to do, which is focus on Lightroom efficiency.

Lightroom has matured and become more robust. There have been a lot of improvements, as well as new features added to this program. I know a lot of photographers who used to do the bulk of their post processing with Photoshop, and now do more than 90% of their post using only Lightroom.

This is due to the product improvements. This book focuses in on these changes, outlining what's new, and what's changed. All with the goal of helping to improve the photographer's efficiency in working with Lightroom.

Mr. Earney touches upon several things that I think are important, such as the use of DNG, color management, exporting from Lightroom, Post Crop Vignettes, Camera Profiles, Gradient Filter Masks, Adjustment Brushes, the Lightroom SDK, File Structures, Catalog Settings, working with Previews, Importing, Geocoding, Collections, using the Historgram, 16 bit printing, Presets and editing them, and Metadata.

The author also takes the time to outline what was left out of this release. In other words the most requested items during the public beta that didn't make the final cut.

The last chapter gives the reader a great list of resources for additional information.

This is not a book for the beginner, but rather for those who have been using Lightroom and are familiar with how it works and want to really dig in to get the most out of this great program.

This book is a resource and reference for me, not a how to. Well done!

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Perfect for freelancers June 13, 2010

By Matthew Keefe VINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

This book is perfect freelance photographers because we all need that extra tip or technique to complete are jobs faster and better. Inside Lightroom 2 doesn't focus on rehashing the LR2 manual that you probably already read. Instead this book teaches you tips and techniques specific to Lightroom 2. One chapter I was surprised to see was Chapter 2, this showed the ideal system to properly use Lightroom. This little tip can save you hours and a stack of vulgarities when processing and editing your photos.

I highly recommend this book to any amateur or freelance professional photographer so you can harness the true power of Lightroom.

Update: Many tips/concepts can be applied to Lightroom 3 which was just released in June 2010.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Libraries will find this a winner, packed with explicit details February 16, 2010

By Midwest Book Review

Format:Paperback

Any photographer or library catering to them will find essential this new book on Lightroom, telling how to reach new levels in Lightroom applications. Images pack in details on how to modify and calibrate images and how to use the most advanced features of Lightroom, from presets and customization techniques to file management and development workflows. Libraries will find this a winner, packed with explicit details.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Good companion to LR2, but... December 23, 2009

By R. Kaufmann VINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

This book wasn't really written for me. I'm a pretty advanced Lightroom user already, and I mostly read this book to help friends and family learn how to use LR2 (without bugging me as much). I respect the way the book is organized, and find its writing still easy to live with.

Bottom line: if you like reading "the complete guide to XXX" books, and want to learn how to use LR2, this is a great book. If you want "just the facts" in a very condense manner, you'll be frustrated. In fact, I found the easiest way to learn LR2 was to just play with it -- and then use Google to find blogs, etc. to fill in gaps. In fact, the author's "[...]" is one of the frequent destinations for such searches!

Finally, the book really leans on presets. I don't find them to be useful tools, but then I'm a bit of a geek (and like to tinker). And, finally, make sure you follow this book's (or someone else's!) to make sure you build a profile for your specific camera. LR2 can automatically apply this on import. Also, make sure you calibrate your monitor!