Lightroom is a nondestructive photo editing software program. Meaning, once you get your images into Lightroom, your original files will not be altered, you do not have to keep “saving” your changes and edits because your changes stay in an extra file next to the original, your history never goes away, and you can bring changes with you when you export.

GET ORGANIZED! Decide where you will store your picture files. Set up your “Filing Cabinet” before you start filing!

 LIGHTROOM assumes you are going to store the files on your internal hard disk and sets up the default catalogue there. It is in your Mac or PC’s “Picture” folder.  You should also have an external hard drive for storage and back-up. 500GB to 1 terabyte is the recommendation.  Bigger is always better when it comes to hard drive storage space. NOTE: if you fill a 4GB card in 1 shoot, on average, you could have over 200GB of images in a year!

ALWAYS GIVE YOUR THUMBDRIVES AND EXTERNAL HARD DRIVES A NAME! i.e. “A.Smith Photo 70,” “B.Jones Spring 2010,” On a Mac, just click on the title under the icon until it is type-able. On a PC, find your thumb drive in My Computer, and click on it until it is type-able.

On your THUMBDRIVE AND/OR EXTERNAL HARD DRIVE: Create a new empty folder called “My Lightroom Photos.” Do the same on your computer, in the “Picture” folder, create an empty folder called “My Lightroom Photos.”

PC Mac

 There is more than one way to import photo files into Lightroom. Using the method described here will get you to this Lightroom import interface panel …

In the Export as Catalog dialogue 1) Choose your drive on the left 2) Create a logically named New Folder i.e. Assignment #1 3) In the Save As, type in a logically named title, i.e. Landscapes LR Edits 4) Confirm the checked boxes on the bottom. (negative files are the originals) 5) Click “Export Catalog” Too save edits for transfer to another computer:

1) Go to File> Export with Preset> Burn Full-Sized JPEGs. 2) In the “Choose Folder” menu, choose where you want the JPGs to go. You could put them inside the same folder as the catalogued edits as they are the edited images in JPEG form.