As a photographer, I often have upwards of 500 shots per shoot. I'm sure you can imagine, organizing, checking and editing all these images would be a tedious, monotonous task, but it's not when you use Lightroom.

Lightroom is a software package designed to help the photographer quickly organize their photographs, make edits, print and do countless other tasks in minimal time.

It is packed with features giving you complete control of what to do with your pictures post shooting.

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Key features

Two features that really stand out to me, that I use on a daily basis are the library and design modes.

The library mode is where you can organize your photos, add meta data such as keywords, titles, copywrite info etc, plus add custom flags to help find your pictures later. As you import images into your library you can even add presents to the images, this will save you loads of time, and maybe that'll even be your whole post work done.

The design mode is where you can make tons of different edits, making your mediocre picture look amazing. The edits are non-destructive meaning Lightroom renders any changes you make in your display, but you can also remove any edits without affecting the original file. This great feature makes it easy to go back or restart if your editing idea isn't working and you want to start again. Of course if you're happy with the edits you can export the file. By being able to make non-destructive edits you can go creative crazy and easily try new things.


Features and specifications

Library

The Library is used to organise your images. I often drag and drop my images straight into the software. As you import the images you can automatically apply presets to the meta data or image adjustments. This can save you lots of time with post production processes.

In this section you can also do the following (and more)...

- Organise your images into folders on your storage device

- Organise your images into collections

- Apply custom presets

- Update meta data such as copywrite information, captions and keywords


Develop

If you make adjustments to your photographs or shoot raw, you will likely use this section a lot. Here you can adjust many elements of the pictures. The beauty of this editor is that you can use sliders to make the adjustments or put in values, so you have complete control.


Some of the options available in this section are below.

- Change the crop and rotation of the image

- Update the white balance

- Adjust the exposure, shadows, darks, whites or highlights as well as the contrast

- Change the saturation and vibrancy of the image

- Adjust the tonality of the image

- Make changes to the saturation/hue and vibrancy for individual color channels

- Add color tones to the shadows or highlights

- Make adjustments to the sharpness as well as noise control

- Add effects such as grain, vignetting etc

- Fix lens issues such as chronic aberration, lens distortion and vignetting

- Use a brush tool to make specific edits

- Remove dust spots and other things using a spot removal tool

- Add gradients with different settings such as color, brightness sharpness etc


Other sections

There are other sections of the software such as the below. I haven't used these much...

- Map (Add GPS co-ordinates to your images on a map, or if the GPS co-ordinates are there already you could search for your images on the map)

- Book (Create a book using your images)

- Slideshow (Run a slideshow on your computer with your images)

- Print (Various options for printing your images directly from Lightroom)

- Web (Various ways to show your images on the web)


Customer Reviews and Scores

At my time of writing I found 399 reviews of Lightroom 5. The average rating for Lightroom 5 is 4.5 out of a possible 5 stars.

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Summary

Lightroom is one of the best things I have ever brought. My work flow is now quick and controlled and it allows me to make the adjustments to the images I need to and keyword them in minimal time. It is also very intuitive and I expect many people could learn how to use the software in a short period of time.

If you have any questions on the capabilities of the software, let me know and I will try and answer the best I can.

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Price: $143.82
(Price accurate at time of writing but subject to change.
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Disclaimer:

The above review is based on mikecleggphotography's personal opinion, often from using the product. Any specifications and prices are believed to be true, but should be double checked when purchasing. Mikecleggphotography is not responsible for any damage to your equipment or yourself if you use the product mentioned. My review is designed to help you with your purchasing decisions, but any decisions are ultimately your own.


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