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CHAPTER 1: WORKFLOW FOUNDATIONS ■
Designed for a Sensible Workflow
Lightroom is best thought of as a workflow tool for digital photography. I think of it
as “command central” for managing and processing digital photographs. To under-
stand what Lightroom provides, it is helpful to understand the basic stages of a digital
photography workflow. The key stages of such a workflow are as follows:
Importing There are various names and approaches to this phase of the workflow. In
general, this is when the images are copied onto your computer or imported into a
database so you can actually view the images.
Sorting You need to be able to review and evaluate your images so you can decide
which aren’t worth keeping, which are your favorites, and which you want to process
in some way.
Managing Especially because photographers tend to capture many more images with
digital cameras then they ever did with film, it is critical that you have some method
for managing your images so you can find the one you need when you need it.
Optimizing No matter how well you’ve configured your camera to capture a particular
image, you’ll likely need to apply some adjustments to the images in order to make
them look their best or realize your photographic vision.
Sharing Whether you are sharing your images through prints, digital slideshows, web-
sites, or other means, you want to have a way to share those images quickly and easily
with others.
Lightroom provides solutions for all of these stages of a digital photography
workflow—in one application with a common interface that makes it easy to learn in
a relatively short period of time.
Lightroom Modules
Lightroom divides your workflow into five individual modules that each address specific
stages of the workflow. The modules are as follows:
Library This module provides tools that enable you to import, sort, manage, locate,
and apply basic adjustments to your images (Figure 1.2). It is the module you’ll likely
use most often in Lightroom as you work with your images. Lightroom is not an image
browser, but rather a form of image management tool. You can’t view images in Light-
room until you have imported them into the Lightroom database.
Develop This module provides tools for applying adjustments to your images,
including RAW captures (Figure 1.3). It is important to realize that Lightroom pro-
vides a nondestructive optimization solution. That means that all adjustments you
apply in Lightroom don’t alter your original pixel values, but are rather stored as
instructions within Lightroom about what adjustments should be applied to the
image, and those adjustments are applied on the fly to the preview images you see
within Lightroom.
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