If you’re just starting out with Lightroom, there are a few CRUCIAL bits of information which will save you hours of headaches and untangling. They’re the kind of thing that just make you say “I’d wish I’d known that before….” These are my top ten gotchas, direct from the forums.

1. Lightroom is all about non-destructive editing – so don’t try to save over your originals.
2. Lightroom doesn’t ‘contain’ files, it just holds data about them – so don’t go deleting your originals thinking that they’re safely stored in Lightroom.
3. Lightroom’s backups don’t back up your originals – you still need to do that.
4. Lightroom’s catalog is just a database, and databases can become corrupted – backup regularly, and keep older backups for a while.
5. Lightroom needs to know where the files are – don’t move or rename files outside of Lightroom, i.e. in Explorer or Finder, otherwise you’ll have a long job fixing all of the links.
6. Lightroom will not match your cameras rendering when working with raw files as it’s just raw data, but you can use the new profiles to emulate the manufacturer’s look for some cameras, or you can build your own profile to match.
7. Lightroom offers a choice of different colour spaces when you output, and AdobeRGB/ProPhotoRGB will look odd in programs that aren’t colour managed (like web browsers). Use sRGB for screen output like emailing or uploading to the web.
8. Lightroom’s Grid view behaves differently to other views – anything you do in Grid view applies to all selected images, whereas other views only apply to the most selected image.
9. Lightroom has 3 different levels of selection, not 2. Notice the difference, otherwise you could accidently apply a setting to multiple different images.
10. Lightroom’s Flags are local to the folder or collection, whereas star ratings and labels are global. This means that a photo can be flagged in one collection but not flagged in the folder.

Any more gotchas or blinding flashes of the obvious that you wish to add? You know, the things that make you go ‘Duh!’

Photoshop User Magazine has just published its second set of Lightroom book reviews, and it gave Adobe Lightroom 2 – The Missing FAQ a 5 star review!

Rob Sylvan wrote:

“Being part of the NAPP Help Desk team, I’m very familiar with the types of questions frequently asked by Lightroom users, and I have to tell you that Victoria has solid answers for all of them.  If you’ve ever had a question about some Lightroom quirk, error message, or just how to do something that isn’t as intuitive as it could be, I’d wager it’s explained in a straightforward manner inside this book.  The real strength of this book though is the fact that it was originally developed as an eBook (PDF format) to facilitate quick-and-easy searches of its contents right from your workstation.  You can purchase the eBook alone (which is cheaper) or purchase the printed version and get the eBook for free.  Head over to lightroomqueen.com for the best price and all the answers to your questions.” – 5 stars – Photoshop User Magazine, April 2009

To read the rest of the reviews, head on over to the NAPP website and sign up now.

I’ve just had an email from Gene McCullagh, an Adobe Community Expert, host of Lightroom Secrets website, and all round nice guy – and this Lightroom Queen website is his current Featured Site!

Wander over and have a look round – he’s got some great tips and tutorials over there, and he’s completely redesigned the website.

Lightroom automatically chooses its own primary External Editor, based on registry entries on Windows and preference files on Mac.  It’ll generally default to the newest version of Photoshop, and if it can’t find Photoshop, it’ll use Photoshop Elements instead. There’s an old TechNote which explains further: http://www.adobe.com/go/kb401629

However, what if you want to use an older version of Photoshop, for example, to use plugins which are unavailable in the latest version?  It’s really simple – open that version of Photoshop yourself.  If Lightroom sees a Photoshop open, it’ll ignore its own preference, and use the open version instead.

Adobe Lightroom 2.3 is now available as an official release!

The release candidate has had really positive feedback, so it’s a pretty safe bet.  There have been a few more bug fixes since the release candidate, so it’s worth heading over to Adobe’s website for the updated downloads: Windows – Mac

New cameras: Nikon D3X, Olympus E-30, and now also preliminary support for the Epson R-D1x raw format.

The biggest and best bug fixes – well, the 2.2 memory leak has to be the best fix in this release.  That solves many of the performance problems seen in earlier releases.

And here’s a bug you’ll be pleased to see if the back of, if you’ve ever been affected…. the Ctrl-Z bug!  In some circumstances, pressing Ctrl-Z to undo the last action could undo a whole series of actions, in some cases undoing a lot of work.  Nasty!  But the good news is, the team have found it and fixed it!

It also solves the ‘disc burning failed’ bug for some Windows customers, an sFTP bug for Windows customers, and a odd slideshow bug, where it randomly reverted to the first image while playing.

As in the release candidate, it also fixes the Canon 5D MkII magenta shift on sRAW files which was introduced with the Canon 1.0.7 firmware and these new languages are now officially supported: Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Dutch, Italian, Korean, Portuguese (Brazilian), Spanish & Swedish.

It’s a great update – Enjoy!