For tonight’s meeting, Dave volunteered to share some of the secrets of his success with a talk on this processing tool of choice, Adobe Lightroom.
This was despite his suffering from a particularly bad bout of Influenza Gentlemanus.
He began by outlining what Lightroom was, an editing software program that gives the ability to download, organize and catalogue a lot of images ,especially files in one of the various RAW formats specific to various manufacturers, Canon, Nikon, Pentax etc.
Taking the path of natural of progression, Dave started at the very beginning, which was a very good place to start, and demonstrated his favoured method of using Lightroom’s library mode to import and organise his files.
He then moved onto the development module in which he demonstrated the use of the tools that enable its use as his RAW manipulation tools of choice. In addition he explained the use of specialized tools for cropping, spot removal, lens correction, noise reduction, an adjustment brush for masking exposure, contrast, saturation and a variety of other controls.
This included an explanation of the ability of the program to manipulate the use of the histogram to ensure perfect exposure, highlights, whites, blacks and shadows and how the understanding of the histogram can help ensure the successful development of an image.
He also included an overview of the use of the history and snapshot options allowing the user to return to any point in the development process should he or she so wish.
Finally he moved on to the export and printing which lead in to a group discussion about achieving the correct representation of colours during the printing process via screen calibration.
Throughout, he encouraged other members to contribute to the evening by sharing their own hints, tips and methods of choice with the group.
The talk was pitched at the perfect level, enabling everyone, whether a novice or experienced user to gain some benefit from his knowledge and expertise in the subject.