I am right now in the middle of Ben Wilmore’s Photoshop Complete Guide, and find his teaching style to be very good. He provides many practice images to use and assigns homework with each lesson. I’d previously completed his Lightroom training and am now very comfortable with that product. His courses are on Creative Live.

I like to journal when my hubby and I travel. I've got Adobe's Photography Subscription for LR and PS, and have discovered that Spark Page is a great way to create daily journals and Portfolio as a good location for keeping them all together.

Oh, yes, before I retired, I was an application support manager; my team was responsible for responding as first line of support for multiple business applications. I tell you this to let you know that I am not afraid of nor unfamiliar with technology, and generally understand when there's a problem.

I was not able to complete a particular action, that should have been a simple one, with Portfolio for several days. I used different browsers and my iPad...completely unresponsive for that one action. I was confident the issue was related to recent Adobe software upgrades; so, I opened a chat with their Help Desk and explained my problem. Well, because it was an issue with Portfolio, I needed to submit my issue by email. Okay. Did that, giving all of my hardware and software version numbers, and describing the steps and error messages I was receiving.

They responded that they were unable to replicate the issue, so I should make sure any plugins/firewall/ad-blockers were disabled. They also asked for screenshots and video of the errors.

Screenshots showing all things disabled and videos showing what I was doing and errors received were compiled and sent off.

I went to make some breakfast, then...DUH! It struck me I had not yet taken the first, most basic, step in resolving an issue: Reboot the computer.

Turned it off, waited half a minute, turned it back on - transaction worked flawlessly.

Red-faced, I went back to the email thread, told them issue had been resolved but was not overly sorry, because I hoped both of us would learn from this!

My hubby and I take several trips each year with one of those usually being about a month long. I journal every night and use the photos I took that day to insert into the journals. My iPad Pro has 256gb capacity, more than enough for several thousand raw photos. I use a USB-C to SD Card reader to transfer each day’s photos (available from Apple for $39). All the images are brought into the Photos app as raw, then imported into LRCC, also as raw. I’ll generally delete the ones in the Photos app (and clear out the “recently deleted” folder at the same time since I won’t need two copies on my iPad). Most of these steps I have automated using a Siri shortcut (https://youtu.be/FMlGgjTyx7A). Because all of my photos are now in LRCC, they sync to my LR Classic and when I get home, I don’t have to transfer again, just start following my normal LR process.

With regard to your question about converting from raw to jpeg, LR handles that when you export an image, either on the iPad or from your desktop.

Happy traveling!!!

I got the message that I needed to quit and reopen and login to Lightroom Classic yesterday. I assumed it was because I was working with Spark on Chrome, Portfolio on Safari, and also using LR. I quit and reopened LR, logged in, and haven’t had a problem since. I thought it was weird.

Not a book, but an excellent reference: John Greengo at Creative Live does an excellent in-depth descriptions of the Nikon D7100/D7200. $21 for 16 lessons: https://www.creativelive.com/class/nikon-d7100-dslr-fast-start-john-greengo?via=site-header_0

Thank you for the reminder!

I have had my iPad Pro for several years and use the Apple Pencil for editing in LR, especially when we travel as I transfer all of my photos each night, to give me a backup and to use for my travel blogging. I like the precision the pencil provides. My first pencil lost battery after a few years; I tried a lesser expensive, off brand, but was not happy with it, so went to Best Buy and got an Apple. I have a case for the iPad that has the pencil loop and have never had a problem with losing either the tip or the cap, admittedly I am a little OCD about all my equipment. You do have to build in some time for charging the pencil occasionally.

Guess it all depends on what you want. For me, I got a few "great" shots - in terms of: the people I was traveling with who were professional photographers, asked me for my shot of the Mama Brown Bear on the side of the road in Denali - because I got the shot from the bus and they didn't, despite all their great gear and multiple lenses. I was lucky, I know, but my camera and my lens were good enough. Would I put it up against Steve Perry? Absolutely not! Am I proud of it, because of where I'm at with my photography? Absolutely!!!

When you're on the bus, you won't have time to change lenses and take time to shoot; you're shooting through windows and around the other people; if you get really lucky, the action happens on your side and you can get it outside your window. If you want to get professional shots, you're not gonna be on the tour bus with a whole bunch of others. But, with a decent camera and lens, both of which you know how to use, you can get some really good shots to share with your family and friends (and even new people you meet along the way!). BTW - I used my Tamron 18-400 to take some awesome pano shots of the glaciers (Lightroom stitched them together for me!).

(Download)

I took my Tamron 18-400 lens with my Nikon D7100 with me for 3 weeks in Alaska and got some great shots of breaching humpbacks, brown bears and Sled dogs!

Thank you for all your responses. This all makes much more sense to me now!

UHH Community - I'm a grandma who has been shooting photos forever, mostly of the kids sporting events and family functions; but, I'll admit I didn't really know what I was doing and got really lucky sometimes. Since retiring a couple of years ago, I've taken some classes at our local community college and now am shooting with my Nikon D7100 and primarily my Tamron 18-400 f3.5-6.3 lens; I'm much more confident shooting in Manual or Aperture priority now.

I've been reading all the comments about crop factor and am wondering if I should be considering crop factor when composing my shots. I tend to get up close and personal and fill my lens viewer with my subject, be it a face or a flower or a building or a bear; but am starting to think that I should not get AS up close and leave some room top/bottom/sides. (I'm pretty good with using Lightroom for PP.)

Am I missing something, misinterpreting what I'm reading, or way off base? Thanks for your help!

I use your same approach but only when traveling. I import my raw photos using Apple’s dongle, then I use Photos to review my pics from the day and bring only the best of those into Lightroom for some editing and export the selected raw files to jpgs from Lightroom to share. Always have had sporadic issues with Photos handling of raw files.

Like others have stated, if the drive can be seen by your computer, you can try EaseUS to recover your files yourself. Their software is free to download that will do a deep search and let you know which files it can recover. If you like the results, you can pay $69.95 to get a key to unlock and restore. My 1T Silicon Power A60 quit working on my iMac which could see it, but not mount it. My hubby’s Windows PC saw it and I was able to recover my files there. The only thing I didn’t get back were my video files. I did have a secondary backup process in place using Amazon Photos, but the upload/download speeds are extremely slow. The EaseUS solution was such a relief for me. Good luck!

Hi, Grammadb! I am in the same boat as you, I retired last year and picked up my D7100 camera. I have learned a lot about how to shoot in raw and using manual settings through forums like this, people are so helpful. But the best thing I did was to take a semester course in Beginning Photography at my local community college. Best wishes on your journey!