The Adobe Lightroom National Tour

Recently I had the opportunity to attend the Adobe Lightroom National Tour featuring Scott Kelby. Now, for those of you who don't know who Scott Kelby is, he is "the man with all of the answers" in the Photoshop and digital photography world. Scott is a writer, teacher, Photoshop expert and television personality extraordinaire. And he was here to teach us how to use and maximize Adobe's newest photography-based application called "Lightroom."

Adobe Lightroom is a wonderful photographic tool and after learning how to use it correctly, I can honestly say that Lightroom will be with us for a long time to come. It doesn't replace Photoshop but it will eventually find its way into 80% of your digital workflow.

Although the interface is very intuitive, having "played" with it without instructions and now having been taught how to use it I highly recommend using instructions. There was so much I wasn't taking advantage of simply because I didn't know many of the features and the shortcuts that existed. And, we also learned what not to use as this is only version 1.1.

I won't bore you with all of the technical details of the seminar, but if this tour comes to a city near you do yourself a favor and attend. I have found that I can use Lightroom as an editing tool to help distinguish my work from the myriad of photographers in my local market. The competition is getting "thick" and you will need a way (aside from great images) to stand out from the crowd and Lightroom can help you do that.


The location - as a wedding photographer you could have a lot of fun inside of this place.



Registration


The Vendors





Drobo was on-hand and they had a great presentation to showcase their new "Drobo storage robot". Checkout their website as it looks like they've got a winner in their new storage system.


Ah, light - a photographers best friend. F.J. Westcott was also on-hand to feature something they called the "Scott Kelby System" that was very impressive. In fact, I'm seriously considering purchasing one. And just for the record - I am open to being sponsored by this fine company to use their excellent lighting system free of charge to help spread the good news. ;-)


There was a really cool Corel Painter demonstration during lunch. For those of you who use your computer to paint, you've got to checkout Painter X from Corel. It is really the "bomb" computer painting application!


Graphic Authority was also on-hand to showcase many of their Photoshop ornaments and custom frames. I use a bunch of ornaments and various frames as artistic elements and have found that my clients love them. If you don't know much about Graphic Authority then checkout their website for some really cool creative tools.


This picture is for all of my Canon friends who keep trying to get me to switch systems. I don't know but I believe Scott uses both systems, BUT he chose to bring his Nikon gear to the seminar. Hmm, could it be the ease of use? OK, OK, I'm just teasing - well kinda...


There were plenty of friendly people on-hand to help answer all of our questions (and as photographers we had a bunch of questions). This looks like one of those "super-technical-only-an-Adobe-engineering-expert-could-answer" type question. Hmm, maybe it's a good thing that I stayed away.


The Master at work...


Unfortunately, I didn't recall this gentleman's name at the time of publishing but he was very friendly and extremely helpful. So, if you decide to attend this seminar please walk up to him and give him a hug. Despite the intense look in this image he's really a nice guy. :-)






Thanks Scott for taking so much time to meet, greet and answer all of our questions. You are a special person with a big and giving heart and I'm thankful that I had the opportunity to meet you. And, I'm so happy to see so many good things happening to a good person like you. You deserve it my man, be blessed and keep shooting!