More Lightroom Help
There are many resources that can help you with Adobe Photoshop Lightroom and other programs. From workshops to one-on-one instruction; from private blogs to Twitter; there’s always something out there.
Obviously we hope that you’ll find TheLightroomLab.com a great source for any Lightroom help you may need, but we understand that you may need to refer to some other sources from time to time.
The Official Help Site
A good starting place is Adobe’s official online Lightroom Help site. If you’re a regular user of the help, you’ll definitely want to keep up with all the new official help resources from Adobe at the Phosphors Blog. Anita Dennis, Documentation Writer for Adobe, keeps readers up to date on all the changes to the official help documentation. While you’re there, be sure read the post from last month mentioning that TheLightroomLab.com (along with Digital Daily Dose and Digital Photography School) has been to the Lightroom Community Help Custom Search Engine.
Forums
Most Lightroom users are fans and are happy to share their knowledge with others. Forums are a great place to get yourself a little bit of that free knowledge.
Our Forums at TheLightroomLab are just getting started, but I encourage you to go there and ask your question. I promise to give you an answer, and I’ll direct some others your way, as well.
If you’re looking for a very active forum, I rarely see questions sit unanswered for more than an hour or so at the official Adobe Lightroom Forums.
LightroomForums.net is also quite an active site.
One of my favorite places to get help and meet others working on similar projects is Twitter. If you’re a Twitter user, make sure you follow TheLightroomLab on Twitter. I’m on there a good portion of most days, and if you @ me a question or just include “Lightroom” in your post, I’m almost sure to see it.
If I don’t get to your question, I’m sure someone else will. My two pieces of advice for getting help on Twitter:
- It’s Twitter…not Google. Take a few moments to research your question yourself before you ask. I have found answers to many, many questions with just a few seconds on online searching.
- Don’t be afraid to ask. Once you’ve done a bit of research and not found the answer you’re looking for, don’t be afraid to ask. Believe it or not, someone will probably hear you. I’ve answered many of the same questions over and over again, but if I didn’t want to answer, I wouldn’t.
Want to know who else to follow on Twitter? Check out the WeFollow.com Lightroom Twitter Users Directory for some other great Lightroom geeks on Twitter.
Just getting started with Twitter? Check out this post from Brandon Oelling (@xequals) called +TWITTER 101 – FOR PHOTOGRAPHERS.
Other Sites
I’d LOVE to list off all my favorite Lightroom resource websites here, but I just don’t have the time. You can check out the “website” tag at TheLightroomLab.com for a couple of examples, but, for now I’ll just send you to the Lightroom page at Alltop. There are quite a few great resources there.
Here’s where you come in. Let us know your favorite Lightroom resources (online, offline, or other) in the comments section below. I’ll try to compile a list one of these days. Thanks!
Filed Under: News
About the Author: Scott Rouse is an Adobe Certified Expert (ACE), photographer, teacher, and graphic- and web-designer in Missoula, MT. His photography focuses on wildlife and adventure sports and can be viewed at 
Hi,
I have two questions regarding LightRoom.
How do you resample or resize images for printing from lightroom? and wich one will be better in terms of print quality.
Thans,
John.
John,
If you are printing directly from Lightroom (using the Print Module), you can specify the print size in the options on the right in combination with the paper size you set in the Page Setup dialog box.
If you are printing outside of Lightroom, you specify the physical dimensions of the image in the Export dialog.
To make things easier, I prefer printing directly out of Lightroom. I’m not typically needing to upsize an image (printing it larger than it would normally be able to be printed due to pixel dimensions). Many photographers have a favorite upsize routine that they use in Photoshop (upsizing in increments versus all at once, using plugins such as Genuine Fractals, etc), but I’m happy to do most of my work in Lightroom.
The advantage to upsizing an image in Photoshop is that you can control what’s known as the “interpolation” method. Interpolation refers to the way that the software “makes up” the new pixel information that must be inserted into the file to make it larger than it originally was. Upsizing and interpolating an image always results in lower image quality, although you can get away with a surprising increase in image dimensions without sacrificing too much.
I know that probably sounds like a lot, but the bottom line is that I just do my sizing when exporting or printing from Lightroom unless I REALLY need to make a print that’s much larger than the original. In that case, I result to Photoshop.
Let me know if you need more information on this.
-Scott
Lightroom website, mainly in Dutch but Piet is hoping to have more English content.
Excellent tutorial on creating a 20cmx20cm print template.
Helps you understand Lightroom more into the bargain.
http://morethanwords.be/blog/
Alan.
Thanks for the link, Alan. Looks like some interesting tips and tutorials over there.
-Scott
Thanks for the link, Alan. Looks like some interesting tips and tutorials over there.
-Scott
When working in RAW and a when complete, what is the best way to export the final image for saving, printing, etc. I do not print from Lightroom, but have saved some print selections from there. For some reason I feel I could be compromising on quality as the file size is different from the photo that has been exported, due to my lack of knowledge. I see selections for file settings and sizing in the export section, could you please help me with that process.
Anna
Dear Anna,
For printing you probably want to export a copy of your file using the jpeg format at its maximum quality. Most photolabs are setup to print files in the sRGB colorspace but if your lab provides custom profiles for their paper surfaces then I would pick the appropriate profile.
For top-quality results, export files at the size that they will be printed and with low to normal export sharpening. I also suggest that you set your own crop using the crop tool in the develop module before you export. By taking control over the cropping, sizing, and sharpening you leave little for the lab to do which is generally a good thing.
Assuming that you have spit out the perfect file the final step is to instruct your lab to print exactly what you give them. In particular, you want to make it clear that they are not to color correct your files.
Just to ease your fears, the top-quality print-ready jpeg file that comes out of Lightroom should have a much smaller file size than the original capture.
hope this helps,
David