Lightroom Training Cost

Looking to learn Lightroom? After a user has settled on a subscription plan and accessed the Adobe Creative Cloud, they will be able to start paying a monthly fee to use Lightroom. Beyond this, you’ll want to consider the cost of Lightroom training. Lightroom is a relatively compact program, meaning that light and occasional users won’t be looking to spend too much learning the program and may even get by on free resources alone.

For professional users, however, Lightroom is almost always taught alongside other creative programs, meaning that the cost of professional training will increase to potentially hundreds or thousands of dollars. This means that the cost of learning Lightroom depends more on how many complementary skills a student is trained in than most other creative programs. Read on to learn more about how much you can expect to spend learning Lightroom.

What is Lightroom?

Adobe Lightroom is compact photo organizing and editing software that allows users to catalog and edit photographs from any device using the Adobe Creative Cloud. Using Lightroom, users can examine and edit photographs on the fly immediately after taking them without having to leave the site. This makes Lightroom ideal for photographers who want to create perfect photographs for advertising, social media, or personal printing, as Lightroom lets them take a photo and immediately start the process of editing. Lightroom provides tools for color correction, altering contrasts, modifying brightness, and basic editing functions such as correcting red-eye or blurring/sharpening an image. Since Lightroom is part of the Adobe Creative Cloud, it is also optimized for photo sharing, letting users work with the same photo across multiple devices and including tools to help users prepare their photos for publication.

Adobe Lightroom is closely related to Adobe Photoshop. The major difference between the two programs is that Lightroom is optimized for mobile devices and on-the-fly photo editing, whereas Photoshop is optimized for desktop use and has more precise and granular editing tools. Lightroom is best suited for users who want to take a photograph and immediately begin editing it to suit their needs, particularly photographers working on-site, away from their desktop computers. Lightroom also lets users create and import preset filters and settings to help them quickly edit their photos.

Read more about what Lightroom is and why you should learn it.

What Can You Do with Lightroom?

Adobe Lightroom is a powerful photo editing tool with a number of features that make it useful for both professional and hobbyist photographers. Whether a photographer is taking photos of models for a series of print advertisements or just taking vacation photos for their own personal social media account, the ability to edit photos quickly and efficiently will greatly improve the quality of their output. This versatility makes Lightroom an ideal choice to learn for anyone who is regularly taking photos as a part of their day-to-day life.

Lightroom lets users make on-the-fly edits to photographs, altering colors, shade, contrast, and other digital details with only a few clicks. Owing to its easy-to-use sliders and built-in/customizable presets, users can begin editing their photos within seconds, easily letting them identify the issues that need to be changed to get a perfect shot. Recent updates to Adobe Lightroom allow users to build and edit rudimentary video animations, opening a whole new world of possibilities for creative photographers.

Lightroom is also a powerful tool for archiving and publishing photos. Linked to the Adobe Creative Cloud, Lightroom lets users easily share their photos across multiple devices and programs. Users can take a picture, edit the basics of the color and contrast in Lightroom, then import that photo into Photoshop to perform more detailed photo editing. Then, they can import the newly edited photos into a program like Adobe XD in preparation for publication on a website or digital advertisement.

In-Depth Review of the Training Cost

Since very few professionals deal solely with Lightroom, it is essential to consider what other skills are being taught and how they impact the cost. For example, aspiring Graphic Designers will likely need to learn other skills such as theories of graphic design, Photoshop, Illustrator, etc. to build a professional resume, meaning that while they can receive professional Lightroom training for only a few hundred dollars, that training will likely need to be supplemented with other costly programs.

The most expensive option for students is a traditional four-year university education in graphic design or digital art. These programs are useful for aspiring creatives but can cost tens of thousands of dollars a year and often take many years to complete. While they are a good option, these factors can make them untenable for many students.

Self-paced and on-demand classes are also options available, and these tend to be cheaper than live instruction courses because they save money on not employing instructors. This comes with the drawback of lacking a number of the benefits offered through in-person instruction, most notably the ability to interface directly with an instructor.

Live training seminars tend to be costly (sometimes costing nearly ten thousand dollars, though this is still far less than a university education). The advantages in terms of cost are that they have the benefits of in-person training, and often, they provide students with hardware and software. This can be offset, however, by the cost of attending an in-person course. This might make online courses more desirable, especially for a program like Lightroom, which has a relatively low upfront cost to users.

Free training options are available in the form of free tutorials, online videos, and how-to websites, though these are rarely deep enough to provide the kind of professional skills training offered by live seminars.

Free Introductory Lightroom Course Online

Some students may not feel comfortable enrolling in an immersive skills training course without a background in Lightroom. Those students may wish to take advantage of some of the free introductory courses and online tutorials. Noble offers a free introductory seminar helping students understand the basic functionalities of Lightroom and how it differs from Adobe Photoshop. This seminar is an ideal way to introduce oneself to Lightroom and decide whether to learn Lightroom, Photoshop, or both.

Adobe also provides new Lightroom users with a seven-day free trial of the program. During this time, students can take advantage of the free offers available through Noble alongside the free tutorials and training videos offered by Adobe. Once students have exhausted the free tutorials available through Noble, they may consider looking at the options for free courses available through other service providers such as Udemy or Coursera, both of which offer free tutorials in the basics of Lightroom.

Read about more free Lightroom videos and online tutorials.

Learn Lightroom with Hands-on Training at Noble Desktop

Noble Desktop offers a wide range of Lightroom courses designed to fit the practical and professional needs of all students. Participants can take these courses both at Noble’s Manhattan location in-person, or they are available through live, online instruction. Even if taken online, these courses boast small classes taught by experienced instructors who can respond to student needs in real-time. Taking a class online through Noble provides students with the same high-quality instruction and professional skills training as the in-person courses, with the advantage of being available to students from all over the country. Noble’s courses offer a free retake option within one year, allowing students to hone their skills at no cost.

Noble’s Adobe Lightroom Classic course gives students hands-on experience using Lightroom to edit, share, and publish photographs. Students will practice manipulating photos and learn strategies to optimize these photos for different purposes, such as social media advertising, web design, and physical printing. Students will also learn how to utilize the Adobe Creative Cloud integration to share, publish, and archive their photos safely and effectively. This course will provide students with the experience they need to use Lightroom Classic for professional and personal purposes.

Noble also offers Lightroom instruction as part of its Photo Retouching Certificate program. This training program teaches students the skills that they need to take and edit their own high-quality digital photos for professional use. Students will learn the best ways to take a digital photo and then be taught how to edit those photos using both Lightroom and Photoshop. Students will learn how to optimize their photographs by taking advantage of Lightroom’s editing and sharing capabilities alongside learning how to make more advanced and complex manipulations in Photoshop. Completing the course provides students with an industry recognized certificate of completion, and participants are also eligible for a free retake within one year to continue honing their retouching skills.