cwilliams31 Loc: Salisbury, North Carolina

Thank you ...

G Brown Loc: Sunny Bognor Regis West Sussex UK

Try GIMP its free and just as hard to learn!
Use the tutorials that you can print off - Youtube can be fast and forgettable.
Print of the guides and make a physical folder - so you can quickly find what you want when you need to. We are more used to the printed word than the modern media.
Take it slow and enjoy the hobby.

jliane Loc: Washington state

Precisely why I'm learning LR and PS. Use it or lose it. Both my parents had alzheimer's.

DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA

If your files are already in your computer, Lightroom will take them where they are. It won't move them.

If you are downloading the files from your card into Lightroom, it will want to store them in your computer somewhere. It has to do that because you aren't going to leave your card connected to your computer all the time and if Lightroom doesn't have access to the original file it can't do anything with it. Lightroom will ask you where you want to place it, but it will have a default location. If you don't tell it where you want your files it will store them at the default location.

Personally, I prefer to download my files from my card into my computer so I know where they are. Then I import them into Lightroom.

joer Loc: Colorado/Illinois

Tried LR and found it to be too intrusive. Been using PS for years and it's not that complicated. Of course I use a small fraction of its capabilities.

Try it there is nothing to loose.

DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA

I'm not sure what you mean by LR being intrusive. It doesn't strike me that way.

But you're right. You can use Photoshop without using Lightroom. Some people use Photoshop and Bridge, which is a folder-based organization tool rather than a database tool.

Bobspez Loc: Southern NJ, USA

Don't try to learn it all. First just learn a few simple clicks and sliders like auto tone, auto color auto contrast, exposure, brightness/contrast, and the shadows and higlights. These are all under the image and image/adjustments tabs. Save your jpgs at the highest quality. You can see massive improvements in your finished shots with just those and 5 or 10 minutes of tweaking. You can start experimenting and learn those clicks and tabs in an hour. I had light room and couldn't get used to it either. Photoshop is the best.

OnDSnap Loc: NE New Jersey

Good advise, I taught myself AutoCad one command a day back when the first version came out I think early 80's, I still to this day use it everyday and over time it became second nature. No different with Photoshop, a little each day till you have it down pat then add to what you know, I do recommend a path in learning though with PS...I.E. what you want to do with it and learn the tools you need for that task, then expand... like AutoCad , it's been said that only 2% is actually used within any one discipline. No different than PS, kind of one stop shopping but ya don't need everything in the store.

Bobspez Loc: Southern NJ, USA

So true. I also was involved with cad software before retirement. There's lots of beginning and advanced videos on youtube for PS. If a person has used pp software before they probably have a good idea of what they want PS to do. But if they have never uses a pp software they may not know where to start or what can be done. I've been using PS for a couple of years and never did get the hang of layers, so I just don't use them. But I did use the youtube videos as needed to show me some more advanced skills in PS, like cropping, resizing, removing spots invisibly, creating panoramas, correcting for wide angle lens distortion, and photo stacking.
Bob

:thumbup:

OnDSnap Loc: NE New Jersey

WOW! Im surprised you don't use layers coming from a cad background, The fact that Cad software also relies very heavily on Layers especially as in PS for isolating and easier manipulation. In my field of Architecture and using AIA layering which depending of coarse the size of the job, can sore into the hundreds. Thankfully when PS came out with layers it was an easy transition, and still today IMO iI think is sooooo important and such a powerful tool to be ignored. I strongly recommend learning how they work and to use them, and I stress to USE um.


[quote=Bobspez]So true. I also was involved with cad software before retirement. There's lots of beginning and advanced videos on youtube for PS. If a person has used pp software before they probably have a good idea of what they want PS to do. But if they have never uses a pp software they may not know where to start or what can be done. I've been using PS for a couple of years and never did get the hang of layers, so I just don't use them. But I did use the youtube videos as needed to show me some more advanced skills in PS, like cropping, resizing, removing spots invisibly, creating panoramas, correcting for wide angle lens distortion, and photo stacking.
Bob

Bobspez Loc: Southern NJ, USA

In my job I auotomated the mapping function for an electric power utility. All of the drawings were two dimensional as they were of the electric distribution system. The elements of the maps all had live data which we used to model the distribution system to see how re-routing feeders would impact networks. So the drawings were more schematic than realistic. They included everything from the substations to the customer's homes, both underground and overhead lines, equipment, transformers, fuses, breakers, feeders, etc.

I have used tutorials on PS layers and done stuff like changing the color of a sweater in a pic or removing a mailbox in front of a building and reconstituting the missng parts of the sidewalk, but it's not something I would need to do. I'm more interested in tweaking and cropping pics to make them look good. I didn't see how layers would help.
Bob

OnDSnap Loc: NE New Jersey

2D...what's that? Kidding 95% of my world/work is 3D then if I need a 2D from it, well I'm not going to get into it...other than I only have to make one model to make any 2D view/drawing from the model. As far as PS layers. I can understand your reluctance to use layers if your keeping it simple, for simple to moderate PP I just use LR or ACR and never edit in PS unless there is something I can't do in LR, ACR. But I'll still use layers if they're available in any software package even if it's as simple as trying different effects, turning on/off layers is a lot easier than having to remember and re-duing something you tried and then deleted.
Speaking of what you did, had you ever tried or seen the capabilities of Autodesk's REVIT (Electrical Module)...amazing.

http://www.google.com/search?q=revit+electrical+design&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjLu4SakIbLAhVDcj4KHeqNBEEQsAQIKg&biw=835&bih=609

Bobspez Loc: Southern NJ, USA

That is amazing software, but the only commercial cad software I have used is Autocad, and just for fun. When I started the project in 1989 we had about 50 years of hand drawn maps and schematics to digitize, covering all of Brooklyn, New York. We picked a proprietary system by Xerox which inclued a Sun Server and Sun workstations. The original process was for Xerox to scan all the maps and schematics over about a year period, and for the drafters to use the Xerox cad software to make the updates using live objects with database attributes. At that rate it would have taken another 50 years to have all live objects with database attributes. About 5 years into the project we cracked the Xerox proprietary raster format and realized we could program a new cad system in house and convert all the scanned images to live data. I created the database and the programmer created the cad system and the data conversion software. We changed over to HP hardware and Oracle as the database. It was just me as the Sys Admin and Database Admin and the programmer and three sudents from Brooklyn Polytechnic. Once all the data was live we fed it into all the distribution engineering computer models that the programmer had created over the previous years, and I exported all the images and data to be available on the company intranet where it was available to any employee with a desktop or mobile PC. It was a great job, and I retired from the company in 2005.

gsmith051 Loc: Fairfield Glade, TN

I didn't try to learn photoshop all at once. Took it one section at a time, sometimes one function at a time. I find I'm only going back and using the same functions but it sure is worth it. Good luck. :)

cwilliams31 Loc: Salisbury, North Carolina

Thanks - I needed that ......
I'm pretty good at editing - Just want to keep getting better ....