Adobe Photoshop Lightroom lets photographers view, edit and export multiple pictures at a time. It lets you view a list of pictures to pick the ones you want to work with and comes with a plethora of tools for everything from minor fixes, such as cropping or straightening an image, to major overhauls, such as color changes and lightening dark pictures. Once you've mastered the basics, you'll have the skills to create professional photos.

Difficulty: Moderately EasyInstructions1

Click "Start" and choose "Adobe Lightroom" to open the program. Click the "File" menu and choose "Import." Locate the pictures you want to open, either on your computer or from a camera plugged into the computer. Click the photo or folder of photos you wish to edit and click "Open."

2

Click the photograph you wish to work on from the photos that open in Adobe Lightroom.

3

Click "View" and choose "Show Toolbar." This displays the tools you'll work with on your photos. Click the "Crop and Straighten" tools to cut out unwanted parts of photos or to straighten your images. Click the "Red Eye" tool and the person's eyes to remove red eye. Choose the "Spot Removal" tools and click minor blemishes, such as pimples, to remove them from a photo.

4

Click the "White Balance Selector Tool," which appears as a small eyedropper symbol, and choose a section of your photograph that represents a light gray value. Click this area of the image with the eyedropper tool. For example, if your background is a light gray, clicking the background will adjust the other colors in relation to this color. If your photo is too dark or too light, this will fix it. It sets the color you pick as the gray value for the picture and adjusts other colors in relation to this value.

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Click the word "Develop" in the top of the screen if it is not already selected.

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Click the slider under "Hue" to alter the colors in the picture. Click the slider under "Saturation" to lighten or darken a color, such as making a dark blue sky a lighter blue. Sliding to the right lightens a color and sliding to the left darkens it.

7

Click the photographs, or folder of photographs, you want to export to another location. Click "File" and choose "Export." Select the destination for the export, such as another folder on your computer or a memory card, for example. Select the file type to save the images as. JPG images will take up little space but have lower overall quality while a TIFF photo keeps high quality but takes up a lot of space. Click "Export" and your files will save to the desired location.

Tips & WarningsOpen your photographs in Adobe Photoshop for making major corrections or adding graphics, such as text and images, to the photographs. References Adobe Photoshop Lightroom User Guide

• Adobe Lightroom Tutorial [10/14/2010 03:00:01]