Sunday, October 31, 2010

Need a Lightroom 3 Kickstart?


xequals
Originally uploaded by Thorpeland
I was recently asked by Brandon Oelling from Xequals to have a look at their new Lightroom 3 mini-guide and talk a bit about my thoughts. Sine I've been a long time user of X-Equals Lr presets and a reader of their website, x-equals.com, I was happy to ablige.

What the guys over at X-Equals have done is taken a deeper look at Lightroom 3 and give us some insight into their workflow in this new version. Then, they've compressed it into this 52 page mini-guide with easy to follow screen captures and step by step instructions. Now, I've been an Adobe Lightroom users since pre-version 1.0, back when it was in beta. It's easy to say I use this program on a daily basis. So as I began reading through Brandons latest guide, I wasn't sure how much I'd learn from it. But surprisingly I found I'd fallen into a bit of a rut in my editing workflow, always doing things the same way from Lr version to Lr version. So this guide has turned out to be quite an eye opener to the many new options and ways of doing things.

As I said, the guide isn't too long at 52 pages in pdf form. Which is perfect for me since I normally have the attention span of a knatt...on crack... sipping Red Bull. But it not only kept me reading but taught me a few things. This really isn't a guide just for experienced Lightroom users. If you have the program or are thinking of trying it out, I can definitely recommend this program as a tool to give you a bit of hand-holding as you learn what is what. You'll go from beginner to novice Lr3 user very quickly with the help of this mini-guide. And being that it's in PDF format, you can quickly search it for what you're looking for. Now, this of course isn't a full length, in depth Scott Kelby Lightroom book. But it's not meant to be. This is the quick and dirty, get you importing, editing and exporting in the most efficient and least amount of time. And it accomplishes that goal very nicely.

The mini-guide sells for $7 over on their site. Considering most books on Lightroom run $30 to $50, this guide is well worth it for the amount of information inside it. Big thanks to Brandon for allowing me to review this guide! It's been an enjoyable and educational experience.

You can find and purchase the X-Equals Lightroom 3 Mini-Guide right HERE.

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