AZNikon Loc: Mesa, AZ

I agree. Start by making Julieanne Kost your new best friend. It took me a while to get my mind around Lightroom but once I "got it", I wouldn't be without it. Great program! And later you can add Photoshop Elements to your repertoire as it works well with Lightroom and is totally compatible. RAW rules!

dcampbell52 Loc: Clearwater Fl

Anthony Morganti has a good free tutorial on his website... its about 43 sections long now but very good and free. He is trying to sell his presets though.

http://www.anthonymorganti.com/

abc1234 Loc: Elk Grove Village, Illinois

The only difference is processing a raw file relative to jpg is that your software must have information specific for the camera used. Unless you bought a newly introduced camera, having the camera profile should not be a problem.

Aside from this, processing a raw or jpg is identical although raw's will ultimately give a better result. Do not be put off by raw's. Many people think raw's have some secret juice making them hard to work with. Not true.

LR is an excellent choice. I am not a fan of Adobe but LR is certainly the software to use. Bear in mind that you may likely need more than thirty days to get comfortable with it. However, in the long run, you will probably be glad you learned it. A great starting place is Julieanne Kost on Adobe TV.

Good luck and do not be shy about asking for help here.

pithydoug Loc: Catskill Mountains, NY

I found one particular set by Anthony Morganti on Lightroom. They are numbered and he keeps them short, with each one a specific function.

pecohen Loc: Central Maine

I recently downloaded a trial of Lightroom and spent a couple days working with it. In the end, I found I still preferred the results I was getting with Raw Therapee. LR has some nice features though and perhaps a couple days was not enough.

The trial of CC only lasts a month though and I'll probably devote that to Premier Pro; it clearly gives me capabilities that I don't get from Video Studio though I do find it harder to use.

mborn Loc: Massachusetts

I found that Nat Colson's books on lightroom are excellent and taught me easily how to use it. It is available from Amazon http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1118645219/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1118645219&linkCode=as2&tag=phbe1bl-20&linkId=CRSSJY7LAWO6CPSZ Lightroom 5: Streamlining Your Digital Photography Process

James R. Kyle Loc: Saint Louis, Missouri (A Suburb of Ferguson)

++++++++++++++++++++++++++

YEP!

Great advice from an outstanding photographer.

:-)

lamiaceae Loc: San Luis Obispo County, CA

What program are you suggesting be used? Certainly not Photoshop CS6 or CC. Try "every change possible", the Universe is not that old yet!

pecohen Loc: Central Maine

There are some other differences to watch out for and the first is that your editing software must be able to read the RAW image; but if not then you will surely notice in short order. Less obvious is that your editing SW may assume that there are only eight bits of data for each color. Many older editors made this assumption and using one of them will sacrifice most if not all advantage there would be in using RAW.

Corel claims that all of their processing is now done with 32- or 64-bit floating point and that is probably true; however, I have reason to suspect that the 8-bit color plane is still lurking in some of their algorithms. The most serious concern I have is with the use of adjustment curves, but I've noticed that CMYK tiff files seem to truncate to eight bits as well. I don't doubt that these problems will be corrected in time since I have reported them to Corel.

I can't comment on Photoshop or Lightroom, but if these were derived from earlier versions that made the 8-bit assumption then it is possible that assumption is still lurking in some corner or another.

ceallachain Loc: Cape May, NJ

Neither you or any of the others suggested using PS ELEMENTS. Is there a reason why this SW was not suggested??

dcampbell52 Loc: Clearwater Fl

Mainly because the OP asked about Lightroom..

pecohen Loc: Central Maine

Also, I think most of us try to limit what we say to things that are familiar to us. I'm not sure whether I've ever used PS Elements and if I did it was briefly and many years ago.

I try not to talk about things I know nothing about.

AzPicLady Loc: Behind the camera!

This is how I learned LR. The hardest part was learning to maneuver from one segment to another. And sometimes the screen would get "wrong" somehow and I wouldn't know how to get it back to what I wanted. Other than that, it was a matter of playing.

MtnMan Loc: ID

No reason to not mention it. Elements comes with Adobe Camera RAW (ACR): the same tool you use for RAW images in Photoshop CS6 or CC. ACR has most of the same editing features you find in Lightroom.

Elements has a separate Organizer program to perform the cataloging functions that Lightroom does with its Library.

Elements includes a separate Editor program that provides much of the editing functionality of Photoshop including layers. But the Editor does not work directly on RAW images so you have to save what you do there as an alternative file type.

abc1234 Loc: Elk Grove Village, Illinois

Good insights. I am only referring to the operational aspect. That is, for adjusting brightness, contrast, cropping, saturation, local adjustments, etc. CorelDraw is my go-to program for vector graphics while LR and PS are my choices for photography.