What to Learn After Lightroom

Lightroom is a compact photo editing and storage application made available through the Adobe Creative Cloud. If you already know how to use Lightroom, you might consider learning other Adobe Creative Cloud applications, such as Photoshop and XD, to help improve your photographs and publish them more easily. Aspiring professional Graphic Designers may also wish to learn more advanced digital photography skills, while Digital Marketers or Social Media Managers may want to learn more about using photography as a component of a digital ad campaign. We’ll cover Photoshop, digital photography, and online marketing below so you have a clear understanding of what skill you want to tackle next.

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.

Adobe Photoshop

The most straightforward skill to learn after Adobe Lightroom is Adobe Photoshop, the more advanced photo-manipulation tool offered as part of the Adobe Creative Cloud. These two skills are so closely linked that many training programs, such as Noble’s Photo Retouching Certificate program, teach the two skills alongside one another.

Photoshop lets users make more precise and more complex edits to their photographs. While Lightroom has some functionalities for altering colors and eliminating undesirable elements such as red-eye, detailed photograph retouching will require knowledge of Photoshop. This makes it an ideal skill to pair alongside Lightroom because it will allow users to make minor adjustments immediately after taking the photo through Lightroom’s Creative Cloud.

Digital Photography

Many new Lightroom users will be hobbyist photographers hoping to improve the quality of their images. These students may find that learning more advanced techniques for taking digital photos will be useful, as it will help them have better raw materials to edit in Lightroom.

While most cellphones have perfectly serviceable digital cameras, dedicated devices can be used to greatly improve the quality of even an amateur’s photographs. Learning more about the different types of cameras and lenses can help Lightroom users leap from hobbyist shutterbugs to skilled photographers.

Digital Marketing

Photography isn’t purely the purview of photographers and creatives. Lightroom is also used by professional Digital Marketers and Social Media Managers to help build advertising campaigns for their firms and clients. Marketing professionals can use Lightroom to ensure that the photographs used in advertisements or a client’s social media accounts communicate what the client wants them to communicate.

Noble offers a wide range of digital marketing courses ranging from specific training courses in using social media platforms to advertise to professional training certificate programs meant to teach students every aspect of designing and running a digital marketing campaign. Whether a student wants to learn how to make better photographs for professional Instagram accounts or build entire digital marketing campaigns professionally, learning digital marketing skills can greatly complement Lightroom training.

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.

Key Insights

• After learning Lightroom, there are several skills that users may wish to receive training in order to expand their professional opportunities or expand the uses of their Lightroom training.
• Lightroom users may benefit from learning other Adobe Creative Cloud applications, especially Photoshop. The integrated programs each serve a specific function, and learning more than one can open new doors for using others.
• Upgrading from cell phone cameras to dedicated digital cameras may require training, but it is valuable training for both hobbyist photographers and aspiring professionals.
• Professional marketers and advertising agencies frequently use Lightroom to help improve the quality of the photographs used in their campaigns. Lightroom users may wish to consider this as a viable career path.
• You can learn Lightroom comprehensively with live, instructor-led training at Noble Desktop.