Adobe® Photoshop® Lightroom® & Photoshop® Workflow Bible

Chapter 4. Understanding the Lightroom Workspace

IN THIS CHAPTER

• Getting an overview of the Lightroom workspace

• Exploring Lightroom's five modules

• Viewing your photos in many different ways

• Getting ready to use Lightroom by setting up preferences

Before you begin using Lightroom, take a few moments to orient yourself to its intuitive workspace. This user interface, with its consistent look and feel throughout all modules, is one of the best things about Lightroom. Understanding the consistency is the key to learning to use Lightroom in your workflow because it allows you to move quickly from one module to the next.

As powerful as Lightroom's consistent workspace is, there's one drawback—the workspace isn't as flexible as some other editing programs such as Photoshop. The user can't rearrange key elements by dragging them to different locations. With that said, there are a number of things you can do to quickly change the Lightroom environment and the way images are viewed to make the workspace fit your particular needs.

The least intuitive part of Lightroom is the way preferences are handled. The problem is that they aren't located together in the same place. In this chapter, I guide you through Lightroom's most important preferences. By the end of this chapter, you'll be ready to start off on the right foot when you begin using Lightroom in the next chapter.

Getting a Bird's-Eye View

One of the first things to notice about Lightroom is the simplicity of the overall layout. Figure 4.1 shows ...