Delderby Loc: Derby UK

SusanFromVermont Loc: Southwest corner of Vermont

LR CAN be used as a stand-alone program, although using it in conjunction with PS and/or other programs greatly increases functionality. It all depends on what someone wants to be able to do.

I used LR alone for several years before the subscription that included PS became available. It is great for the basic edits that are enough for so many photographers. In fact, in some functions it can work better than PS, but that is dependent on the photo itself and how it reacts to the adjustment.

You can make all the global adjustments, but if you want a selective adjustment it is available. It may not be as in depth as in PS, but it works very well just the same. Any feature used in LR including WB and Tone can be changed later. Nothing becomes "set" so you cannot go back and change it. Plus you can make as many versions of an image as you like as long as you are not keeping the original RAW file with the adjustments instead of using a "virtual copy" each time you do a new version!

Delderby Loc: Derby UK

mwsilvers Loc: Central New Jersey

There are no layers in Lightroom of course, but you can switch instantly switch between the original and your edited version of an image.

SusanFromVermont Loc: Southwest corner of Vermont

I am glad you have gotten some good information on organizing your images. The instructor, however, is speaking from the point of view of a professional photographer, with client "shoots" to keep each in a separate catalog. When you are shooting for yourself, whether it is family photos or your artistic endeavors, it becomes important to organize in such a way that you can find certain images without relying on keywords.

The need to export to folders is a personal preference, and regardless of the added space requirements, this is what I also prefer. Storage is not expensive these days! I do use keywords when I want to find images that are in a variety of different folders. For instance, keywords like "winter", "snow", will bring together images from multiple topics whether they are landscapes, people, individual locations, etc.

Another reason I export [or further edits in PS and then saving] is to be able to see the actual image in the folders on my hard drive. Looking at an icon is not the same. This is important for me when posting on social media or sending in an email. Using a site's tools to display images takes you to your hard drive folders, and if you can only see that .xmp side-car, how can you know exactly what you are posting? Of course, you can jump back and forth with LR to check, but to me that is an extra and undesirable step.

The beauty of LR is that it can be adapted to whatever sort of organization set-up you prefer! Many like the dates system. I prefer to start with major categories, subdivided into topics. Within the topics I may have added sub-topics, but when appropriate I also use years to group together the images from the year they were taken. I call this a "filing cabinet" system!

The main objective of an organization system is to make it easy to find images. Because of the way my photos are organized, I also do not have checked the "show photos in subfolders" under the Library menu, unless I want to do a search that encompasses multiple folders.

To illustrate, to find images of your granddaughter, at a specific event, those photos could be grouped in a topic folder "People" or "Family", with a sub-folder for Cathy. That folder can be divided by year, or by event. And if the specific event occurred more than one year, it could have a sub-folder for each year's photos. If you have photos of her you want to access that are in group photos or other types of events, then a Catalog-wide search may be appropriate.

No one way is right for everyone, and it takes time to set up a system that works for you. I have re-organized several times, now have a system that I like which I believe will be the keeper!

Hope this helps.
Susan

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

Oh, I understand the merits, advantages, and usage, but right now I don't need/care to populate the field.
Eventually maybe... (I only have 18K+ files so far.)
I don't have a "million" photos (yet), so I know that "Christy" would be under Family\Feny. But who was at my kid's weddings, a bunch of people... Refresh memory by viewing album.

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

Of course it's much easier to populate the field when there are only a few photos. If you're going to do it, don't wait until you have a lot of photos. For one thing, if you're like me you will start to forget the locations or names of people in the photos.

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

cjc2 Loc: Hellertown PA

Like any software or computer process, you only get out what you put in. While confusing at first, Lightroom's cataloguing and non-destructive editing features are nothing short of genius, IMHO. My current catalog is approaching 250,000 images and I am thinking of moving 2019 images to a brand new catalog to increase speed, although my hardware can handle what I have. Best of luck to all.

cjc2 Loc: Hellertown PA

Lightroom does not in fact do layers, but it does come with a handy little program called Photoshop which is a master at layers and moving an image between the two is a click away. If you use RAW files, as I do, you can adjust WB, Tone, and many other things to your hearts content during the initial, or any later, editing process. Not sure about jpegs because I don't use them. Best of luck.

tdekany Loc: Oregon

Why not use your free photo editing program that came with your Apple computer?

cjc2 Loc: Hellertown PA

Perhaps because it doesn't do that much and Lr, once learned, is both superior and much faster?

tdekany Loc: Oregon

Did you read the OP? While I don’t use it to edit, for someone like the OP, it should be plenty enough.

10MPlayer Loc: California

I agree with this if all you do with it is post process images. For most well exposed images I hit the Auto adjust button and I'm done. It's more database manager than post processing platform. If you want to use it to catalogue and organize thousands of images it's a powerful tool but it will take some effort to learn it. I took a six session course a few years ago and got what I needed to learn. Like many graphics programs, AutoCAD for instance, there are several paths to take to get the same end result in Lightroom. That can make it confusing. The best part of it is that it's non-destructive so your original images are never changed. A small file is created to store your changes so that they are more of an overlay than actual changes to the original.

There are different ways to organize. I organize mine by the date they were taken and everything goes into one catalogue. On import into Lightroom I tag them with keywords, family, Canada, animals, birds, water etc. Whatever helps to find them later. When you do it that way you can then use the Collections tool to make quick collections. For example, if you make a collection called FAMILY, Lightroom will search your database and locate every photo you have tagged with Family. Then when you open the collection every photo tagged with the keyword Family will be there. Then you can go in and edit the contents of the collection for whatever purpose you had in mind. You could make a collection called Pets then use the images in the collection to make a book using the Book tool.

Download a free trial copy and see if you like it. For $10/month it's affordable. It may be more than you want or need.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

Adobe designed Lr to do 80% of what most pros need to do with their images. For the other 20%, Ps and other apps fill the gaps. This saves a tremendous amount of time!