First, let's address a common query: Should beginners choose Lightroom or Photoshop? For those just starting their photography journey, Lightroom is the recommended choice. It's important to understand that Lightroom and Photoshop serve distinct purposes and are not interchangeable tools.

So why Lightroom? Lightroom allows you to do most of your editing. But the functions in Lightroom that are not involved with “editing” your photos are just as valuable as the editing.

The primary Reason to Use Lightroom is “The Catalog”. The catalog is simply a database that does NOT store your photos. Instead, it stores the location of your photos and more:

• Organizes photos into user-defined folders.

• Allows for photo information to be imported directly into the catalog.

• Enables tagging of photos with keywords during import for easy searching later.

• Imports and makes photo metadata searchable.

• Stores previews of photos for viewing even when the original hard drive is not connected.

While there is a lot to talk about for editing in Lightroom, the purpose of this post is not editing. The purpose is to get you started right in Lightroom.

I will make another post on my folder structure and why, but here is my basic folder structure:

<Year>
<Month>
<Photoshoot description>

I have seen others that use location or events as the folder structure. I tried that, but going back to my method above.

This blog could get too long to walk through all the menus and dropdowns and I would likely not hit them all. So, instead, here is a link to a video on my YouTube channel to show you what you need to get started.