Without much fanfare Adobe has posted the Lightroom CC & Lightroom 6 Manual. This is the latest version of the manual. And with a publish date of 4/20, is there a little inside joke here? The PDF manual is now two weeks old and the world should know it’s available, especially since it’s not included with the CC download. (However it is available through the Lightroom Help menu, which brings you to the official Adobe Lightroom Help web page. Most bloggers just post the Keyboard shortcuts as a download. This PDF download includes the keyboard shortcuts at the end in chapter 17, so you might as well get the whole shebang while you’re at it.
What’s New details the facial recognition, panorama merge and HDR features along with a few other items like touch support for devices like the Microsoft Surface Pro. There is one thing that doesn’t get a mention that I’d like to know about, and that’s the animated circular icon that appears momentarily to the left of the Toolbar Content pulldown menu in the Develop module.
What is this progress circle telling us?
It happens so quickly on my machine that I had to illustrate what it looks like in Photoshop. I think it’s loading the develop settings, but I haven’t found the official Adobe description.
Chapter 2 leads in with Lightroom Mobile. Sorry, it still doesn’t work for my workflow, but I know travel shooters that like it. Anyway, it’s 18 pages of details on editing, cropping, presets and white balance. Looks like it’s getting better. However, there are third party apps like Mylio (free for up to 1000 photos, $50-250 for additional storage) that work standalone or with Lightroom that are supposed to be faster and more robust across multiple devices. If you want to know more about Mylio, there’s a Kindle book co-written by Mylio founder David Vaskevitch – The Official Guide to Mylio: Mastering The Next Generation Photo Management System and a “Look Inside!” Amazon preview of the book that details the features.
As I had mentioned in one of my earlier posts, this manual also has the same warning at the beginning of Chapter 3, Workflows: “Important: When importing for the first time, think through how you want to organize your photos and where you plan to store them before you start to import. Planning ahead can help minimize the need to move photos later and possibly lose track of them in your catalog.” True. So true. This is actually how I became Lightroom Guy, rescuing new users from the nightmare of lost photos in multiple catalogs. ‘Nuf said.
From Chapter 3 on, the manual is a bible of detailed, but sometimes cryptic information (especially for new users) on how to use Lightroom. And because managing the Lightroom catalog is the most important part of keeping organized, I recommend reading Chapter 7 before reading anything else in the manual. Without a doubt, Chapter 7 should have absolutely been the first chapter! Becoming proficient in managing catalogs and files is critical to a happy life with Lightroom. Screw up the library and life can become a misery of lost photos and missing folders. If that’s where you are now, call me.
I’ve downloaded a copy of this Lightroom CC manual and keep it on my iPad and workstation for reference when I need to know something. It’s easier to search and I don’t have to be online, which happens all too frequently with Time Warner Cable.
Soooo I didn’t read ch. 7 or anything else before I started importing. “Nut said”. I did some editing then changed where i”m storing my pics on my hard drive. Now I’m getting lots of ” file can’t be found messages. Should I clean it all out and start anew. I am new to picture editing other than with iPhoto. Can you offer a way to out of this mess? I’ll do anything to get organized.
Thanks Light Guy
Chris
Fixing the catalog is a lot of work and finding and relinking photos can just make things worse for beginners. If you have just started using Lightroom, I’d recommend you start over, it’ll be easier. Going forward be sure to read chapter 7 for the importing process and never move your photos around inside the finder (explorer if you’re on a PC), as Lightroom will loose them again on you! We have an expression, RTFM, which means “Read The F#&King Manual.” But that being said, at some point or another, most Lightroom users have been where you are now.
Wow, quick response. Thanks so very much. I’ll put away the Xanax, jk.
To be clear to start over, I will delete the catalog in Lightroom. But I don’t need to delete the photos from the hard drive, right? I do still have them on my memory card. I would like to schedule a private session. What are your rates and availability?
Don’t delete the catalog you started just yet. Start a new catalog and give it a different name – I like to use “LR Master Catalog.” Please note: NEVER DELETE THE PHOTOS THAT ARE IN THE LIGHTROOM CATALOG FROM THE HARD DRIVE! In fact, never do anything in the hard drive that has to do with Lightroom. You must ALWAYS move, delete, rename, etc. from within Lightroom. Otherwise you will end up back where you started! ~D.A.
Hi,
I have just downloaded a free lightroom 6 as part of a Leica package.
Is there a beginners guide to setting this up please?
I have been using Aperture for all my editing & just going into Photoshop CS6 to enable printing on my Canon iPF 5100. Bit of a procedure!
Many thanks
David.
Thanks for the question, David. For starters, go to the Lightroom Queen and download her quickstart guide. Victoria is a go-to person for helpful LR information. Printing is more of a challenge. I’ve just returned to printing with the Canon Pixma Pro-10 after a long hiatus from doing my own. What I’m currently looking at is Jeff Schewe’s book, The Digital Print:Preparing Images in Lightroom and Photoshop for Printing. Jeff has written extensively on Camera Raw Image Processing and although the book is from 2013, I think it may be useful for this transition. I’ll be writing about my experience setting up for printing in future blog posts.
Hi
Thank you so much for that. I have downloaded the quick start guide & am sure this will point me in the right direction!!
I bought a new Canon iPF5100 as Canon did not seem to be able to correct the colour printing faults through their printer plug in for my 2 year old iPF5100. However, the new one is the same, – I bought this size as I use the 17″ art paper rolls & their 12 pigment colour mix is brilliant – when you can get it to work!
I am continuing to work on it, & hopefully will resolve it.
You’re welcome! Here’s the link to Jeff Schewe’s The Digital Print:Preparing Images in Lightroom and Photoshop for Printing. And don’t forget to sign up for my quarterly newsletter. D.A.
I was working with photos in lightroom and then, all of a sudden, when I clicked on the next picture, it said “the file could not be opened” and I couldn’t do anything in the “develop” section after. Any ideas on what went wrong?
I’d have to see the error badge from the image thumbnail to know exactly what happened. However, it sounds like you may have a corrupt file. If you have a small black circle on the upper right corner of your thumbnail with an exclamation point in it, that would be a corrupt file. The other possibility is a missing photo. This would have an exclamation point in a rectangle in the upper right corner.