Teaching an old dog new tricks

Recently I have made some major changes in my photography. If you follow my journal, you know that my wonderful husband gave me a new iMac for Christmas. After years of working on a PC, it has been an adjustment, but I love my new iMac. On my old computer, the PC, I used Photoshop Elements to crop, correct exposure, and otherwise "develop" my pictures. I was comfortable with it, but I only did basic processing, i.e. nothing fancy.

When my daughter asked me what I wanted for Christmas, I said, "Lightroom," but I was only half serious because it is more costly than upgrading PE would have been. Well, she and her husband, and our two oldest grandchildren went together on the gift, and all I had to do was download Lightroom and learn how to use it. A big challenge and a lot of fun.

So for the past five weeks, my eyes have been glued to the computer screen and my fingers to the keyboard as I learn how to navigate this new set up. It has really gobbled up the hours, cut back on my Blip commenting time, and, as my Lightroom files get much better organized, my house has become increasingly disorganized (and dare I say dirty).

Last Friday I was browsing the shelves at Barnes and Noble bookstore, and my eyes lit on The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom3 book for digital photographers by Scott Kelby, and I soon had it bought, bagged, and headed for home in my hands. If you are using Lightroom, I recommend this book. It has been a huge help to me this week, and Kelby convinced me, without even trying, to start shooting in RAW! (Just in case you aren't sure, RAW refers to the image setting on my camera, not to the photographer.) I've always shot jpegs and this week I have been shooting RAW. It's an added challenge,but who says you can't teach an old dog new tricks?