Check out the Lightroom Academy
A fairly recent addition to the content on lightroom.adobe.com is the Lightroom Academy (no, not an Umbrella Academy spinoff, but that would be cool too). Lightroom Academy bills itself as “a learning environment dedicated to sharing photographic knowledge that informs, inspires, and supports photographers with a wide level of experience, equipment, time, and resources. Additional content is in development.”
What you’ll find as you enter and explore are a growing number of articles, neatly organized in bite-sized chunks, on various photographic subjects, currently focusing on composition and food photography.
At first it may appear like a typical blog, but there is actually a good deal more going on than just reading well written content by accomplished photographers and educators (I’m not involved with this effort, but I know the impressive roster of people behind it). Articles contain interactive illustrations and challenges as well as assignments you can opt to do on your own along with links to additional resources.
I have been consistently impressed with the educational quality of the content and the use of interactive learning tools that I wish we could include in a blog. This is a level of educational material I would assign to my Intro to Photography students if I was still teaching that class.
You don’t need any special camera or even a subscription to any Adobe products to dive into this content and start learning. If you are an Adobe subscriber and use the Lightroom cloud environment you can easily jump between the Lightroom Academy and your content via the buttons at the top (but that is not required).
Pulling in and showcasing inspiring work from the larger Lightroom community is another cool feature for seeing what’s possible, discovering new artists, and keeping the content fresh and interesting.
Scrolling down even further below the lessons you’ll encounter a collection of Lightroom edited photos shared to the Discover section by others in the larger Lightroom community. This is very immersive experience that can show you exactly how other photographers approached the edits to their photos.
It looks like there’s a large amount of additional content in the works, so be sure to check back regularly to see what gets added. Kudos to the Lightroom Academy team for making this content available to all of us for free.
What? I should have found this, but i hadn’t. I’m anxious to dig in. thanks for the heads up!
Rob, maybe the LR workflow could be a future article….
Here’s what I’ve discovered so far.
LR has no renaming upon import feature so it’s best to rename files in Windows for example before uploading. It appears to me that LR will search based on terms located in the filename (even though Adobe told me LR would not search filenames). So a descriptive filename will help avoid having to add keywords.
If you want to find a particular photo you cannot really rely on the AI search or the AI People. You cannot add photos to “People” so your only option there is either keyword or persons name in the filename. The AI search is sketchy so again you’ll need to keyword or have keyword in the filename in order to find a cake for example. I have about 1000 photos uploaded including shots from 3 birthdays. One photo of a cake (and only a cake) did not appear in the AI search.
You can select many photos and add keywords to the batch within LR.
I’m unsure as to how best to use Folders and Albums. With the proper filename I wonder if albums are really needed at all. But I’m an old school Windows file folder guy so I like the Folders and Albums even if it doesn’t seem like I need them. So I’m going to try just putting one of my kids photos in one album and use descriptive filenames and see what happens.
The exif “date taken” becomes the “capture date” on import. This is important because you may want to sort by capture date. You cannot sort by filename. You can edit the capture date within LR but it seems best to get a third party Windows app if you need to enter the date taken info in many photos. If your imported photo doesn’t have a date taken then LR uses the date modified date I believe and if you have neither then LR uses the date imported. So it seems you need to have your dates right before import to save some grief. Videos for example don’t have date taken data embedded in the original file.
Phone photos can be automatically uploaded to LR. You don’t have the chance to batch change the filenames so it seems keywords are the best option for these types of photos to help you find them later.
That’s about all I can think of for now.
Thanks!
Eben Battaglia
Rob thanks! I’ll check it out. I’ve decided to go all in with LR cloud. Can you point me to an article with a best practices workflow for the process of uploading current photos from disc and continuing to add new photos. Seems like some prep work (renaming photos to avoid duplicates) before upload is a must. Thanks!
Eben BattaglIa
Hi Eben, I’ll have to give that some thought as I am not aware of such an article off the top of my head.
Rob – thanks for the Lightroom Academy feature. I have it and didn’t even know it!
You’re welcome!
Rob, I’m a classic user. Would there be any downside in activating cloud just to have the opportunity to utilize the academy?
Thanks,
HB
Hi Howard, You can utilize the Lr Academy without activating the cloud. It is free for all to use and access.