How Difficult is it to Learn Lightroom?

Are you curious about learning Lightroom but worried it might be too hard? Of course, the difficulty that comes with learning a new skill is somewhat subjective. The challenges of learning Lightroom depend on factors like how much experience a user has with other creative design programs, how much a student intends to use Lightroom in a professional capacity, and how comfortable a student is with creative projects.

No matter your current schedule or comfort level with Lightroom, plenty of tools are available to help make learning easier than you might think.

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.

What Are the Most Challenging Parts of Learning Lightroom?

Since Lightroom is a very beginner-friendly program, most of the challenges in learning will arise when they need to complement Lightroom with other skills. Like the rest of the Adobe Creative Cloud, Lightroom is built with a particular functionality in mind, and it is meant to be complemented with other applications which also serve specific functions. Students who are new to Lightroom may find themselves running into problems arising from trying to use Lightroom for a task best suited for Photoshop or Illustrator, for instance. The best way to overcome these challenges is to first research the specific functions of Lightroom so that new users understand when they are running into problems arising because another program is better suited for their task. The second step is to gauge how frequently these problems are occurring so that users can make an informed decision about whether or not other skills training is ideal.

Users may also run into problems learning Lightroom because they are less experienced with creative projects and therefore aren’t as sure what it is they are attempting to use Lightroom to do. Lightroom can help add contrast to photos, assist in color correction, and let users perform on-the-fly edits. Still, new users who aren’t sure why a photographer might want to alter the contrast of an image may find Lightroom confusing. These students may wish to brush up on theories of visual design, watch tutorial videos, or be willing to experiment with their photographs to get a feel for the program.

How Does Learning Lightroom Compare to Other Applications?

As a fairly lightweight photo editing application, Lightroom’s biggest selling point is its ease of use and connection to other creative programs. The main factor that separates Lightroom from its competitors is Lightroom’s connection to the Adobe Creative Cloud. One of the features that Adobe boasts is the ease of storing and transferring photos using Lightroom. In addition, because it is so closely integrated with other Adobe creative products, learning to use Lightroom can open the door to more easily working with other industry standard tools such as Photoshop. This also means that many subscribers to the Adobe Creative Cloud will either have access to all of the programs through a package subscription ($54.99/month) or to Lightroom alongside Photoshop through a bundled subscription (either $9.99/month and $19.99/month depending on how much data a user plans to store).

Speaking of Photoshop, one of the most obvious points of comparison is between Photoshop and Lightroom. Noble offers a free video tutorial outlining the differences between the two programs for new users to decide which program will be better and easier to learn. Photoshop is primarily designed as a desktop application, meant for making much finer and more specific edits to a photograph. Lightroom, on the other hand, is built to be used away from a desktop computer to start editing a photograph the moment it is taken. This means that Lightroom has fewer features and is more straightforward to use.

Lightroom and Photoshop are then most commonly compared to another of Adobe’s graphic design tools, Illustrator. Illustrator is used to build digital illustrations out of vector graphics, which use lines and shapes rather than pixels, used in digital photography and therefore used by Photoshop and Lightroom. Vector illustrations are easier to resize than pixel images, meaning they are better suited for branding and logos. Lightroom is best suited for altering images that won’t undergo resizing.

Why Learn Lightroom

Learning any new skill can seem intimidating, but Lightroom is an incredibly versatile application useful for novice and experienced photographers alike. For students struggling with learning the basics of digital photography, Lightroom can be a helpful tool because it lets photographers easily and quickly edit and adjust photographs. This means that new photographers can see how things like shade and contrast affect an image in real-time and because Lightroom is a non-destructive editing tool, there is minimal risk to experimentation.

For experienced photographers, Lightroom is a tool that will help optimize workflow and increase productivity. Since Lightroom lets users adjust photos directly after taking them, Lightroom will let photographers know immediately whether they need to take another set of photos or if they can perfect the image they have on hand. Additionally, learning Lightroom, even if it may take time, complements many skills that creatives regularly use, like Photoshop.

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.