Adobe CS4 and Photoshop Lightroom 2

A few weeks ago I purchased myself a bit of a pre-Christmas pressie which consisted of Adobe Creative Suite (CS) 4 and Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2. Luckily as I am still a student at university I was able to get academic pricing on both of these and save an absolute bundle.

After buying both the packages, and another trip to the store to get a bigger hard drive for my laptop (*hehe*) I was able to install both and start getting my hands dirty.

The main topic I wanted to cover in this post is actually Adobe Lightroom 2, however thought that I would mention Adobe CS 4 as the integration between Lightroom and Photoshop is nothing short of spectacular.

After installing Lightroom and importing all my photos (which is a little over 31, 000 photos at this stage but I started with around 34, 000) I started to get to work actually looking through some of my historical shots.

I have spent the last day going through and starting to organise everything into folders as well as adding meta data such as keywords to each of the photos. I have to say that the ability to search my images by meta data will be a godsend. There have been so many times in the past that I have wanted to find a photo but could not find it at all due to it being hidden in the deep dark recesses of my hard drive that I am now coming across (and appropriately tagging) before moving into meaningful folders.

I am also finding that I am no longer going to the Windows “My Pictures” folder to find things, I am now just going straight to Adobe Lightroom as it is just so much easier to find in Lightroom (and the interface appears to be faster than explorer for most things too).

Back to the integration, when I wish to edit an image, I can make adjustments to the post-production exposure settings and such and then export straight to Adobe Photoshop for further edititing. It is just so easy to move back and forth between the two it really does feel like heaven.

Anyhoo, I just wanted to say that if you are starting out in Photography, the CS 4 suite (I got CS 4 Web Premium but whichever suits your needs will be fine) and Adobe Photoshop Lightroom are an absoulute must.

I look forward to hearing other people’s thoughts, do you use the Adobe Suites or something else?

Stuart