Lightroom is one of my most used tools in my arsenal photo-editing softwares. I’m not the most technical kind of photographer when it comes to taking photos (in-camera), so most of the time, I have to edit the photos I take before uploading them in the internet. At certain times, I have hundreds of photos that I want to upload in a short span of time. Lightroom to saves me a hell of a lot of time and effort unlike editing the photos one by one in photoshop.

Lightroom works like Picasa but is much more powerful. I like that it’s able to edit RAW photos since I now exclusively shoot in RAW format. Another  thing I like about Lightroom is that you can apply “preset effects” to a photo, which means you can edit/enhance batches of photos with just one click.

Example

This is an unedited photo I took during a recent trip to Taklong Island in Guimaras. Due to the undesirable settings I had and the bad lighting conditions, the colors turned out too dull, which doesn’t give justice to the beautiful sight in real life. I wanted to emphasize the vibrant colors of the boat and the scenery so I had to brighten the photo, and increase the saturation and contrast. Though … before achieving the the image I had in my head, I wanted to tryout some other effects. Using the preset option, I came up with these:

Sepia Old Photo / Retro Feel

Cool tones

The mood of the picture had changed dramatically and it didn’t require much knowledge in editing or photography. After tweaking the photo some more in Lighroom, I came up with this final image:

“First Arrival” (Taklong Island, Guimaras)