A lot has been written in recent months about Adobe’s Lightroom 2, from the beginning of its beta testing, to its full release just a month ago. With the buzz surrounding it in the digital imaging blogosphere, you can find some helpful tips, tricks and tutorials that will guide you through its new tools.

Although some of the functions of Photoshop aren’t available in Lightroom 2, it is a program that is capable of much more than your basic photo editor software, giving you the power to control colors locally, the power to organize your photos more precisely, keywording, adding metadata, better Photoshop integration and the ability to prepare images for printing.

Lightroom has evolved into an essential tool for the landscape photographer, which takes some of the extra work in Photoshop out of the equation. Some of the tools that we’ve found to be most beneficial when editing landscapes are in the new develop module. With it you can obtain non-destructive localized corrections with the adjustment tool brush that can correct exposure, contrast, saturation, sharpness, color and more, and it has an auto-mask function that masks as you paint with the brush. The other great function of Lightroom 2 is that you can dodge and burn with either the adjustment tool or the graduated filter to darken or lighten up specific portions or sections of an image without creating new layers like you would in Photoshop. Since it is non-destructive, if you make a change you don’t like, you can go back to square one without ruining your photo.

New blogs are popping up everyday, focusing on all sorts of photographic news and reviews, but if you’re interested in putting your focus on Lightroom 2, some of the more helpful places to learn tips and tricks are directly through Adobe, which also links you to other sites dedicated to Lightroom 2, to learn more of what Adobe offers, visit www.adobe.com/designcenter/photoshoplightroom, or watch some Photoshop videos on Adobe TV at http://tv.adobe.com/. Another great Web site is from Scott Kelby and the National Association of Photoshop Professionals, which has a Lightroom 2 section on Photoshopuser.com, to see more visit www.photoshopuser.com/lightroom2, or check out our article on Lightroom 2 to find out what’s new for nature photographers, www.outdoorphotographer.com/how-to/photoshop-and-other-software/photoshop-lightroom-2-for-nature-photographers.html.

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