Comments on: My Recapped Thoughts on “Lightroom Only” Month

By: EDUARDO LLERANDI

EDUARDO LLERANDI — Thu, 08 May 2014 20:20:35 +0000

I do learned a lot from this tutorials. I came back from a trip to the Smoky Mountains and I been using your techniques and is incredible the results that I an getting. Thanks for sharing and keep your excellent work. I love to participate in one of your Landscapes workshop, so please keep me posted. Regards,

By: Arnel Garcia

Arnel Garcia — Tue, 11 Feb 2014 23:34:51 +0000

Completely agree, Matt. I have met a good number of photographers who have all the software and plug ins, and with all those choices, they can get confused on which to use that it becomes a hindrance to their creative process. My suggestion is to simplify, focus on their images and just use Lightroom. Thanks for sharing.

By: Justin

Justin — Tue, 11 Feb 2014 20:12:59 +0000

Great Series Matt, I really learned a lot watching how you did your edits in Lightroom. I do have both LR and PS because of the awesome deal Adobe is doing for $9.99/m. But I find myself always trying to stay in LR as much as possible for two reasons. The first and biggest is I am not that fluent in PS and just use it for Content-aware/cloning. But even then I still try to do as much as I can in LR. The other reason I don’t like to go edit in PS is I don’t like making another copy of my photo and separating it from the edits I’ve done in LR. I have it built to make a .tif when editing in a plug-in but when it comes back to LR all the edit in the development module are zeroed out. I know the edit is there because of the way it works, but I think if I ever have to go back and change something I have to do it again in LR and then take that new edit back into PS and do my outside edits again. Plus then you have two photos you have to deal with, the RAW file with LR edits and the PS .tif, which then adds extra size to your hard drive. So I only take it into a plug-in unless I absolutely have to. I’m sure this is probably the wrong way to think about it but it just seems an easier work flow. But I’d love to hear arguments on why you’d want to take most of your photos out of LR and into a plugin/PS. Am I missing the boat somewhere with that philosophy 🙂

By: Bill Bentley

Bill Bentley — Tue, 11 Feb 2014 18:48:19 +0000

Well done series Matt. For me it’s the content-aware fill tool. If LR had this ability then I would rarely go to PS.

I’m also in love with the Dynamic Contrast presets in Perfect Effects. Like you said it’s hard to get that “crisp” finish within LR. I have tried a few of the other PE filter sets and they are great too. So happy to have downloaded it for free. Thanks OnOne and Matt!

By: Keith R. Starkey

Keith R. Starkey — Tue, 11 Feb 2014 18:30:14 +0000

What a great series, Matt. I really enjoyed it, and I learned a lot. Further, I am so never going to use Photoshop, if I can help it, because the program is so engineered for graphic artist thinkers——no, you don’t have to be a graphic artist to use it, but if you don’t even have a smidgen of how to make sense of a program like PS, which I do not, not even close, PS is then nothing but frustration after frustration.

So seeing you work with LR only was not only a learning process but an encoragement, because for what I want to do, you proved it can all be done in LR; all that you did in LR was as far as I will probably ever want to go in post-production. (Yeah, now watch I end up falling into some trillion dollar photo shoot deal and find myself clammering for…for…PS! I’ll pass, thank you very much!)

By: Michael W

Michael W — Tue, 11 Feb 2014 18:24:16 +0000

I’m curious about your mention of the patch tool ‘after’ you make a fix. I find myself making “just ok” fixes in some images, only to find that I can see the fix. I’d like to hear/see more on what you do to smooth out your fixes!

I liked the whole “LR ONLY” month, it definitely adds to ones skills and capabilities!

Thanks for all the info!

By: Paul C

Paul C — Tue, 11 Feb 2014 17:37:10 +0000

It was a great series for me because I DON’T usually use Photoshop, and it is good to know that I’m not missing much. I do use OnOne, though. What would be great would be a 3-Way competition… PS only vs LR only vs OnOne only… all on the same photo… not to get the same outcome but rather to exploit to the limit what each one does best, ie give us insight into where we may need to invest. I suspect that, for photographers, LR + OnOne have everything we’d normally need, but you’d know the truth better than any of us.

Thanks for a great series, come to the UK soon.

By: Dennis Zito

Dennis Zito — Tue, 11 Feb 2014 17:24:20 +0000

Hey Matt,

I agree with you 100% … after all you’ve taught me everything I know in LR and PS. 🙂 I couldn’t see what you were so hooked on about with onOne’s dynamic contract. I used it a couple of times, but it just made things look weird to me. Then I did my long exposures a week or so ago and thought … Matt really likes this Dynamic Contrast, I’ll try it one more time. Well, I finally got the feel of the plug-in and now I love it!!! I can see why you like it so much. I just didn’t mess around enough with the sliders and opacity settings. So, I’m hooked!

This was a Great series to follow up on. Even though I watch your classes and read your books, the refresher was awesome for me! Thanks for taking the time to do this.

Dennis