My 8 top reasons to  use Lightroom

Maybe you aren’t exactly sure what Lightroom is or more important if you should be using it?
Or even some of you may want to leave Lightroom not knowing all facts?

Then don’t miss this out!!

I have been using Lightroom since the very beginning and know Lightroom very well, so follow along.
By the end of this post, you’ll see how powerful Lightroom is as I share with you my top reasons you should use Lightroom!

Let’s start with a summary of functions/options first and later go into details.

• Subscription model – automatically updated with latest releases and fixes
• DAM – one of the original Digital asset management tools on the market
• Mobility – Lightroom mobile app and work from multiple computers
• Learning – tons of information on the internet
• Non-destructive editing – no save button needed
• Photoshop included – for more advanced edits
• Presets and profiles – quick edits with saved settings
• Collections – store your images in groups

Subscription model

DAM

What Does DAM Mean?

DAM stands for Digital Asset Management, and in photography, it describes everything we do with our image files from downloading them from the memory card.
DAM is an incredibly important concept in digital photography that is too often overlooked.

When people are talking about DAM and photography, these are the most likely topics:

• What file format to store images in
• Where we store our images
• How to back up our images
• Best way to ingest images from the memory card
• How to add metadata to our images, like keywords and scene descriptions
• What software we use to manage our images and metadata
• How we decide to distribute our images
• File naming conventions

Management of digital images is crucial, especially backing up your files and applying some basic metadata to help you find them in the future.  In digital photography, we can capture thousands of images in a single day.  Being able to locate a specific image ten years after you have taken it is important.

Organizing your photos with Lightroom will help to make DAM easier for photographers.  Lightroom is one of the best and original Digital asset management tools on the market.

Learn more about DAM from Peter Krogh – leading expert in the area:
thedambook.com/about/

For accessing my images online I use the very useful option to sync collections to https://lightroom.adobe.com, accessible to all subscribers of the Photography plan.
I use it to share images with family members, clients, and friends. They can even “Like” and comment on your photos. You can later see these likes and/or comments in Lightroom on desktop. In my view, a very useful feature.

This online image library can also be accessed and edited from your smartphone or tablet using the Lightroom app.

lightroom.adobe.com

Learning

Lightroom is relatively easy to learn and you can master the full range of options that it has to offer. But make no mistake, it is a very powerful tool and can stand up for almost all that a photographer needs.
The popularity of Lightroom ensures you’ll never be short of resources to help you learn how to use it. There are lots of websites, forums, books, ebooks, video tutorials online, dedicated to helping you.
Ranging from beginner to advanced, Lightroom tutorials can help you import, enhance, organize, and share your photos, as well as create prints and photo books, and more.

When you are a beginner or even more advanced user, a forum is very helpful to ask questions. The best and most helpful forum online is https://www.lightroomqueen.com/community/

Another result of Lightroom’s popularity is that you can buy Develop Presets and custom Profiles to creatively develop your photos.

Non-destructive editing

Lightroom is a non-destructive editor and makes edits and adjustments to your photos without actually changing anything in the original file. Lightroom does this by using a catalog file of your photos, and in this catalog file, your develop work is saved automatically behind the scenes as a set of instructions.
In Lightroom, you’ll see the adjustments you make in a “preview” which is a rendering of what your photos will look like when you save them. At any point in time, you can press “reset” in Lightroom, which wipes away all the editing and adjustments you make and you’ll be left with how your original image looked.
After you’ve exported your photos in Lightroom you’ll be left with both your edited photos and your original files. You’re never writing over your original files, all of the changes you make in your photos are saved in the catalog file.

Remember – the catalog doesn’t contain the photos themselves, just information about them!!

The beauty of non-destructive editing is that I have no fear at any point in time because no matter how many buttons I have pushed, I can always hit the reset button in the Develop Module and instantly return to my original capture.

Photoshop included

I love the fact that Photoshop is included in the Adobe Photography Plan.
Now I’m able to create special effects and do creative editing on a higher level, without having to pay extra for additional software.

You can automate your workflow by creating Photoshop droplets and actions.
For instance, create a preset in Lightroom that will send copies of your images to Photoshop, e.g adding a border or a watermark, run and save it and import the new image back to Lightroom.
In short, droplets are a way to automate your image work for batch processing.

Photoshop is extremely good at what it does. It’s exceptionally good at detailed, technical adjustments on single images, but it doesn’t have any integrated image organizational tools, and that’s where Lightroom does its job.
Make these two tools work where they are at their best and Lightroom together with Photoshop will be an unbeatable combination.

Presets and profiles

Using presets and profiles is another way of automating your workflow.

A preset is basically a set of adjustments that are saved to use for later and you can easily create your own presets.
Maybe you edited a beautiful sunset shot with the perfect saturation and other edits and really liked the effect. Instead of having to re-do the same edit for another image, you can use a preset.

Lightroom profiles typically apply an overall look to the photo. Unlike Presets they leave all the develop/edit controls unchanged, so you can adjust them to taste. And you can make your profile effect lighter or stronger with the “Amount” slider.
Profiles can create looks that are not possible with the Lightroom controls on their own and are very powerful.

Collections

A Lightroom Collection is a grouping of photos. The photos can be from the same folder or from different folders all over your hard drive. When you put photos in a collection you are not making duplicates of the files you are putting there. You are just telling Lightroom that you want those photos linked and viewable together in your collection.

There are two types of collections in Lightroom:

• Collections – used to group photos together and access them across all Lightroom panels and they can also be synced to the cloud
• Smart Collections – used to gather images together automatically using criteria you set

Collections are used for grouping any photos by dragging and dropping.

Smart Collections, on the other hand, are used by finding and including photos based on criteria or filters that you set within that particular Smart Collection.

Some examples of criteria you can use to filter photos into a Lightroom Smart Collection include:

A specific file type.
Star rating or star rating range.
Specific color label.
Aspect ratio.
Lightroom “picked” or “rejected” photos.

I use collections for many different purposes, here are some:
Grouping my best images by year.
Highest rated B&W photos.
Photobook collections.
Images for competitions.
Traveling grouped by destination and year.
Website images.

Lightroom collections are incredibly powerful! They have the ability to save you time and keep your photos organized and available in all the Lightroom Modules which will make finding your images fast no matter where you are in Lightroom.

Conclusion

These were some of my top reasons why I use Lightroom and still like it.
Sure! I can find lots more advantages, but I think I listed the major ones.

I have tried other post-processing software but I keep coming back to Lightroom.
For me, the Adobe Photography plan with Lightroom, Photoshop, and the additional Adobe services that you have access to, in its completeness is all I need.

Do you agree? Do you disagree?
What other reasons can you add to this list that I may have not mentioned?

Let me know in the comments…