[samyshah]

Hello All

I have been involved in doing photography for the past 4+ years now. All these years, somehow I have feared Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Lightroom - mainly due to the complexity it provides for amateurs like me.

I do lot of editing of my photographs using Google's Picasa software which is really lame and basic.

I have always thought about trying my hands on Lightroom or Photoshop, but then the overwhelming availability of various settings, editing options, tools etc that comes with these software kind of scares me!

So my question is - does anyone know of basic tutorial guides (preferably free for obvious reasons) that one can get hold of to learn about the tool.

Also this might inspire me to shoot in RAW since I have heard all around that RAW helps you restore and edit your photos with better flexibility.

If someone can shed some light onto the tutorial / step-by-step guide for Lightroom/Photoshop combined with what one can do with RAW images - that would be like the best answer for me

Cheers
Samy

[PongoAlpha]

Hello All

I have been involved in doing photography for the past 4+ years now. All these years, somehow I have feared Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Lightroom - mainly due to the complexity it provides for amateurs like me.

I do lot of editing of my photographs using Google's Picasa software which is really lame and basic.

I have always thought about trying my hands on Lightroom or Photoshop, but then the overwhelming availability of various settings, editing options, tools etc that comes with these software kind of scares me!

So my question is - does anyone know of basic tutorial guides (preferably free for obvious reasons) that one can get hold of to learn about the tool.

Also this might inspire me to shoot in RAW since I have heard all around that RAW helps you restore and edit your photos with better flexibility.

If someone can shed some light onto the tutorial / step-by-step guide for Lightroom/Photoshop combined with what one can do with RAW images - that would be like the best answer for me

Cheers
Samy

My first port of call would be the Adobe website and log on to Adobe TV http://tv.adobe.com/watch
look for episodes by Julieanne Kost she takes you from the very basics of creating your catalogue then creating collections and rating your images. really easy going at a gentle pace. Or if you prefer the written word, try Scott Kelby's book Lightroom 4 for digital photographers, when I upgraded to LR4 the book was a huge help, best £20.00 I've spent in a long time, as far as full blown Photoshop goes the same applies J.K's. video lessons on Adobe TV are very good also, although if I knew Lightroom was as good as it is I doubt that I would have purchased Photoshop CS5.

Hope this helps PongoAlpha.

[Suhail Khan]

Dear Samy
There are two reputed photographers who have written extensively about the subject you refer to. One is Mr. Trey Ratcliff, visit his sight Stuck in customs and the second gentleman is Mr. Nasim Mansurov - Photography Life. You can get lot of information from these two sites.
Cheers
Suhail.

Hello All

I have been involved in doing photography for the past 4+ years now. All these years, somehow I have feared Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Lightroom - mainly due to the complexity it provides for amateurs like me.

I do lot of editing of my photographs using Google's Picasa software which is really lame and basic.

I have always thought about trying my hands on Lightroom or Photoshop, but then the overwhelming availability of various settings, editing options, tools etc that comes with these software kind of scares me!

So my question is - does anyone know of basic tutorial guides (preferably free for obvious reasons) that one can get hold of to learn about the tool.

Also this might inspire me to shoot in RAW since I have heard all around that RAW helps you restore and edit your photos with better flexibility.

If someone can shed some light onto the tutorial / step-by-step guide for Lightroom/Photoshop combined with what one can do with RAW images - that would be like the best answer for me

Cheers
Samy

[hoobaloo]

Hi Samy, there are hundreds of tutorials on photoshop procedures if you just go on You Tube and search for which action you require, i.e "raw process in photoshop"
regards, hoobaloo

[PhotoPlay]

Hello All

I have been involved in doing photography for the past 4+ years now. All these years, somehow I have feared Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Lightroom - mainly due to the complexity it provides for amateurs like me.

I do lot of editing of my photographs using Google's Picasa software which is really lame and basic.

I have always thought about trying my hands on Lightroom or Photoshop, but then the overwhelming availability of various settings, editing options, tools etc that comes with these software kind of scares me!

So my question is - does anyone know of basic tutorial guides (preferably free for obvious reasons) that one can get hold of to learn about the tool.

Also this might inspire me to shoot in RAW since I have heard all around that RAW helps you restore and edit your photos with better flexibility.

If someone can shed some light onto the tutorial / step-by-step guide for Lightroom/Photoshop combined with what one can do with RAW images - that would be like the best answer for me

Cheers
Samy

Hello Samyshah You can try this LINK She's good in lightroom and photoshop basic. I believe learning the basic can lead you to understand the concept and use of each tool then look on the advance tutorials to give you other ideas on how they used most tools on advance/other ways.

[jmars]

new to this group - your post about Photoshop caught my eye. I use Photoshop Elements. Much cheaper for non professional users and works great. Seem to remember it has tutorials within the program. J

[Barbara G.]

new to this group - your post about Photoshop caught my eye. I use Photoshop Elements. Much cheaper for non professional users and works great. Seem to remember it has tutorials within the program. J

Hello,

Welcome to the forums! Nice to have you here as a member! Feel free to join in on the conversations!

[Stikin2pentax]

Hello All

I have been involved in doing photography for the past 4+ years now. All these years, somehow I have feared Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Lightroom - mainly due to the complexity it provides for amateurs like me.

I do lot of editing of my photographs using Google's Picasa software which is really lame and basic.

I have always thought about trying my hands on Lightroom or Photoshop, but then the overwhelming availability of various settings, editing options, tools etc that comes with these software kind of scares me!

So my question is - does anyone know of basic tutorial guides (preferably free for obvious reasons) that one can get hold of to learn about the tool.

Also this might inspire me to shoot in RAW since I have heard all around that RAW helps you restore and edit your photos with better flexibility.

If someone can shed some light onto the tutorial / step-by-step guide for Lightroom/Photoshop combined with what one can do with RAW images - that would be like the best answer for me

Cheers
Samy

Hi Samy
I know exactly what you mean about editing programs, as they also scared the hell out of me to begin with. When I took the plunge and turned from a -below average- 35mm user to a below average digital 'compact' user it (the camera) shot in JPEG only. I eventually upgraded to a DSLR ( Pentax K10D) and still shot JPEG until reading about RAW in a photo-journal supplement. On balance, and despite the author suggesting that it was a 'no brainer' converting to RAW photography, I figured that it did actually seem to have distinct advantages over JPEG and so decided to change my camera settings whilst up in Scotland and shoot everything in RAW. Back at base thereafter, I soon realised that you needed a specific type of program to open and view RAW images and so installed the supplied editing program that came with the camera and began poking and playing with the various options and buttons to see what happened to my photographs. Once I realised that I could mess with an image as much as I liked without harming the original, I gained more confidence and lost some of my initial fears....hell, I even managed to turn a few otherwise dud images into halfway decent efforts whilst experimenting in such a way. I can't say that my 'poke it and see' method of learning is the best way to go, but it did teach me a whole lot about post processing RAW photographs and killed my fears into the bargain.
I've still a massive amount to learn both in terms of photography and post editing Samy, but with all previous fears now somewhat blunted I have recently purchased Lightroom 4. Rather than operate it in the same kind of dark as I did the Pentax program, I've also purchased the book Photoshop Lightroom 4 by Martin Evening to accompany my 'learning curve'. This guy has been in on its development from the start, so I figured who better to teach me than him?

I'm reading the book at my own pace, playing with the program accordingly, and benefiting from both...
...I'd call that a positive result quite frankly Samy, wouldn't you?

[jeanneb39]

Start with light room it comes with tutorials. Also YouTube.com is a wonderful place to learn anything. On One software is also an exceptional place to start. Have fun learning something new just dive in you can do it

[vlad]

Lightroom is also pretty intuitive. Unlike Photoshop. You can just move the sliders until the picture looks right. That's how I learnt it anyway.

[jaclegau]

Hi !

Here is a site that can hewlp you with free tutorials for lightroom and other things:

www.ephotozine.com

P.S. You will love lightrrom and you can get a free beta version of lightroom 5 on the adobe website until they come out with the definitive version.

Hello All

I have been involved in doing photography for the past 4+ years now. All these years, somehow I have feared Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Lightroom - mainly due to the complexity it provides for amateurs like me.

I do lot of editing of my photographs using Google's Picasa software which is really lame and basic.

I have always thought about trying my hands on Lightroom or Photoshop, but then the overwhelming availability of various settings, editing options, tools etc that comes with these software kind of scares me!

So my question is - does anyone know of basic tutorial guides (preferably free for obvious reasons) that one can get hold of to learn about the tool.

Also this might inspire me to shoot in RAW since I have heard all around that RAW helps you restore and edit your photos with better flexibility.

If someone can shed some light onto the tutorial / step-by-step guide for Lightroom/Photoshop combined with what one can do with RAW images - that would be like the best answer for me

Cheers
Samy

[samyshah]

Wow! Awesome great information all around! Thanks a lot guys! I will have to try my hands on some of the suggestions that you provide and see how it goes. It really sucks to just use Picassa to go about your editing. I wanted more control over post-editing and I guess two things to keep in mind are - shoot in RAW + switch to Adobe Lightroom or Elements.

Cheers
Samy

[Stikin2pentax]

Wow! Awesome great information all around! Thanks a lot guys! I will have to try my hands on some of the suggestions that you provide and see how it goes. It really sucks to just use Picassa to go about your editing. I wanted more control over post-editing and I guess two things to keep in mind are - shoot in RAW + switch to Adobe Lightroom or Elements.

Cheers
Samy

RAW is undoubtedly the way to go Samy. The pictures you shoot won't vanish or degrade when stored on your computer..they'll always be sitting there waiting for you to progress along your post editing learning curve!

Be bold, shoot bold and go for gold

[PhotoPlay]

Shooting in RAW really takes you in advance. Later on you'll feel the load of all those photos occupying every space of your hard drive. Better invest in good hard drives and back them up regularly so you won't loose any files when one of your drive crashes. <--- for long term safe keeping

[kulucriss]

My daughter was self taught in Photoshop just using Youtube, she is as good as any expert now. I will be visiting the Youtube sites as I too wish to make use of all the fancy thing you can do. Boaz!

[Pooky]

Very informative.as I need some editing software. Thanks all

[Gaptoothedgypsy]

Check out these guys they have some excellent Lightroom eBook Tutorials http://craftandvision.com

[samyshah]

Thanks a lot for the information. This should certainly help learn a bit more about Lightroom.

Does anyone know of a particular YouTube channel though which has like a series of episodes for Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator?

[Gaptoothedgypsy]

Try These!
http://tv.adobe.com
They have loads of tutorials

--GTG
www.kopstone.co.uk

[spareno]

Hi there type in you tube the specific tutorial you are looking for and hey presto there it is I have learned a lot from this site