Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Classic Classroom in a Book (2020 release)

So confusingly written. Coming from Adobe, they should have selected the best authors to write their books. A graphical company & yet the authors decided not to annotate their photos removing all ambiguity about what they were talking about. Suggest you buy alternatives or go though online courses.

Great product for helping to understand the software programme

Well written and well organized, with access to downloadable images to allow you follow along on your computer so you can use the same steps he is using to edit various images to demonstrate the capabilities of the program.If you are over 35, this book, or a step-by-step video program by an expert, may be essential to understanding the way this program works and how to use its many features. This also applies to PhotoShop. Lightroom will become the central library of all of your images, and the key to organizing them, and doing basic edits. If you need to send an image to Photoshop or to a plug-in for more editing, it is a keystroke away. I have been working with computers on a daily basis for about 40 years, starting with Dos-based computers, then going to Windows-based programs, and later to Macs and iPads, and do not find Lightroom to be intuitive in any way. If you screw up getting your image files into the Lightroom catalog, or if you corrupt that catalog file in some way, you probably will not lose your image files (the catalog only knows the location of your image files - they are not in the catalog database as image files subject to being corrupted) but you may lose your edits, your metadata, and the Lightroom cataloging information, and the time you've invested to that point. You can't really work on files successfully if they are not integrated into the catalog structure. I started with processing my own darkroom-based B/W photographs, with my color prints and slides processed commercially, then started with digital cameras and computer editing about 20 years ago. I have a lot of image files, and Lightroom seems to be the key to handling a large number of image files.Getting the catalog right has been the biggest stumbling block for me, and I hope I will fully comprehend it by the time I have worked through the lessons in this very comprehensive book, which is up to date through 2020, and that ultimately my Lightroom Catalog will organize and manage every image file I have, regardless of original format.The only negative comment is this: Adobe offers myriad 2-keystroke shortcuts to performing routine, but essential, functions in the various modules you work through from adding an image to the catalog to final steps of either publishing in a book, printing a single image for formal display, or for displaying on a monitor separately or through the internet. I hope I have just overlooked something, I can find no page, or group of pages, in the book which lists these keystroke combinations for the program or for any component module, and the Index makes no reference to these keystroke shortcuts. Unless you can find a list of these commands somewhere on the Internet, you will just have to keep a pad and pencil at hand while you read the book, and make your own list of these commands, which are represented by the author as being very helpful, but to me, they are only helpful if you know how to find them when you need them.

I used photoshop frequently years ago, so Adobe products are familiar. I got Lightroom to help me organize my large collection of photographs. I understand why the book is organized the way it is. But I do not think it is well written. Maybe it's me but I find it confusing and frustrating. At the same time I'm reading the book I'm also watching several different YouTube videos. I find the videos much more useful. The author may be an expert in Lightroom, but he's not a great instructional writer. I suggest that before you make the costly investment in this book, try the video tutorials on line. Different people learn differently. The book is thorough and comprehensive, it just isn't for me.

Excellent photographers are artists. Right-brained, intuitive, creative, and often disorganized in a (mostly) lovable way. Digital media technologists are generally left-brained, logical, and often dry in a (mostly) tolerable way. A book about Lightroom workflow ought to be written by someone who approaches their work in a logical, orderly fashion. A book about using Lightroom to change the ordinary into the extraordinary ought to be written by an artist.Many of steps that are common to different Lightroom capabilities, such as downloading files, are repeated in their entirety, which makes the book longer and more tedious than it needs to be. Many of the options, such as assigning flags, are discussed in multiple places, with the same result. Many processes, such as tethering, are of no interest to some of us, and ought to be in an appendix, perhaps, rather than buried in content that I need to know.I was very frustrated by the discussion of the develop module in the first chapter. Its inclusion at that point was disruptive to the logical progression of the workflow. I'll be looking for 300 pages on the develop module where someone tells me more than, here, put this number here and that number there.Prior to using this book, I learned Lightroom through a few YouTube tutorials, and by my tried but not always true method of pulling down menus till I find something that sounds right. I learned enough of the back story by working with this book, and I now feel more competent and confident. Frankly, it was a high price to pay, in time and money.