Focus on Photoshop Lightroom – A Review
Photoshop Lightroom is, as any of the Nuts will tell you is an amazing piece of software both as a stand alone application or a compliment to Photoshop or Photoshop Elements.
Like all powerful software it can be a bit daunting when you first open it, so maybe a good book would help?
Focus On Photoshop Lightroom by Dave Stevenson and Nik Rawlinson is a great introduction to Lightroom.
The information in this book is deceptively deep, when flicking through the eye is caught by coloured boxes, hand written notes and post it note type tips, but opening it and looking at it properly you find that these compliment the text incredibly well.
The 9 chapters are split into sub headings which helps any newcomer to work steadily through the book learning in easily digestible chunks. There’s plenty of screenshots to make sure you know where you should be at, complimented with some stunning photography, I’m guessing to instil a ‘look what you can achieve’ feel.
There’s no photographs of weddings or portraits in the 
book, and that surprises me as these are areas that I know Lightroom is used extensively. The techniques shown can, of course, be used in these situations but it would have been nice to have some actual examples.
Its great to see that Lightroom’s movie capabilities haven’t been left out, with a chapter devoted to editing movies. With so many DSLRs able to take HD footage Lightroom is only set to expand in this area.
All in all, a very well laid out and written book, easy to read and well illustrated. As mentioned at the top of this article, Lightroom is a brilliant companion to Photoshop Elements so you may also want to check out Focus On Photoshop Elements by our very own David Asch.
“Photoshop Lightroom is, as any of the Nuts will tell you is an amazing piece of software both as a stand alone application or a compliment to Photoshop or Photoshop Elements.”
I personally never felt the need to compliment Photoshop. 🙂
I used Photoshop for many years and recently added Lightroom (LR3 to LR 5). After learning it’s ins and outs – not hard. I have found it makes processing photos go way faster and often better, and the cataloging tools are terrific. When I need to do something special to a particular shot it is simple to bring it into Photoshop. I find that most images do not need Photoshop. LR uses ACR but the tools are arranged in a better way.