In recent years Adobe has done a really good job of confusing everyone about its versions of Lightroom. Back in the old days we only had one current version at a time and they were named Lightroom 1, Lightroom 2, etc. This numbering strategy changed when Adobe moved most products to its subscription model, named Adobe Creative Cloud.

Setting up an automatic backup of your system is critical to maintaining a healthy organizational system. There are lots of great options for both Mac and Windows, many of which are easy to setup. For example I use Apple’s Time Machine to backup my workstation. Once I setup a Time Machine drive I can leave it plugged in and it updates every hour. I never need to think about it again unless I need something from the backup. At least that’s the conventional thinking. But set and forget on a backup can lead to serious issues.

The Ishahara Color Blindness Test consists of 38 printed plates of patterns like the one shown above.

In the past when discussing Adobe’s DNG format in Basic Lightroom classes and books, I would say converting to DNG during import poses little risk. No data is lost and the DNG format has all the Lightroom editing capabilities of the original raw format. I recommended this because an advantage of DNG is that Lightroom can write metadata directly to the file, eliminating the need for XMP sidecar files with proprietary raw formats.

A feature that I’ve always wanted in Lightroom is the ability to use a photo’s metadata to see where the camera focused when I shot the photo. The metadata is in the file, but for some reason Lightroom doesn’t use it. Now I can stop waiting for Adobe to add this feature because of a really cool, free Lightroom plugin named Show Focus Points, created by Chris Reimold. I’m not a huge Lightroom plugin user, but this one is a must have.

A common Lightroom annoyance is when a panel suddenly disappears. You would be surprised at how often someone contacts me in a panic because he or she can’t find a needed panel. They have looked everywhere and they don’t understand what happened to it.

Students often ask me if I have a list of Lightroom keyboard shortcuts. They are surprised when I tell them that all the important shortcuts are just one keyboard shortcut away. To see a list of shortcuts press Cmd/Ctrl + /. That’s Cmd / (Mac) and Control / (Windows).

Before PPA-style image competitions went digital, we used to enter mounted prints in competition. Those prints were viewed under special bright lights during competition so it was standard procedure to print them 15-20% darker than normal to compensate for the lights. When I worked at a prolab we would set up competition lights in the custom printing area during competition season. We used this setup to evaluate customer prints in an environment designed to emulate competition.

This image looks too dark here, but the brightness was perfect on the competition display.

Most Lightroom users import photos created by their digital cameras using Lightroom’s Import dialog to copy and organize the files. However, when using a scanner the saving process typically bypasses Lightroom’s import dialog making it necessary manually import them to add them to Lightroom’s catalog. This system is okay if you only have a few scans. But when you’re working on a large scanning job, manual imports are a PITA. Fortunately the designers of Lightroom created a system for automatically importing scans that makes the process painless.

When I travel with my camera, it’s common for me to import photos to my laptop’s Lightroom catalog. Then I can keyword, label, and edit photos while I’m on the road. When I return home it’s necessary to merge the new photos from the trip with my main Lightroom catalog without losing any of my editing. The best way to do this is to export the new shoot from the laptop’s catalog as a separate catalog and then import that catalog into the main catalog on my workstation. You’ll need an external hard drive to handle the transfer.