I'm trying to make the transition from SOoC JPEG to RAW

Do yourself a favour and skip LR, go for Capture One 10. It's just all around better.

>What helped you guys when you first started post-processing?
Starting with photoshop and not software meant for editing a bunch of pictures all together.
Start with learning how curves work, by the way.

>>3033324
Just look for a short overview of the general features. Anything beyond 10 minutes is too long.

you will learn what you can do with each tool and how to export a high quallity image.

Lightroom is pretty simple and straight forward once you want to do something that you cant with your current knowledge, google that specific question.

If you want to learn a proper postprocesing workflow (capture one/lightroom-Photoshop-Print/High quallity file) you can always refer to... well, workflow videos. If you really want to learn about it, Pay for proper education.

>>3033337
Also this guy is a complete idiot. If you are going to process a RAW with Photoshop, it will open "camera raw" which is essentially FUCKING LIGHTROOM minus the database capabilities.

For everyday retouching lightroom is the tool to go to (you clearly wont exceed this in a while). Its pretty uncommon that for basic retouching you will need PS over LR

Capture one is in fact a good option, but i find it to be far more confusing and a little more intimidating than lightroom. You can change the position of everything and gives too many things to get confused with.

Stick to the basics and dont waste your time.

>>3033343
Been using and I still use LR for work stuff. LR is a pain in the butt to use: slow, prone to crashes (not just me, I've talked with other people working with it obviously and my machine is clean.) and tends to fuck the colours up royally. Also, it's slow as fuck. Did I mention it's slow? Because it's slow. (i7 4790, 16gb of RAM and a GTX 970.)

Everyone says
> it will open "camera raw" which is essentially FUCKING LIGHTROOM minus the database capabilities.

But it's just not true. Whenever I edit my work - yes, with proper camera profiles, LR clips my colours a lot earlier and just generally sucks, while ACR+PS is a much faster and foolproof way of doing things, especially for a beginner. I'm still on LR 5.7.1 so maybe it got better with time.

Whatever you do OP, go to LR's develop settings and make sure that your profiles are set to CAMERA NEUTRAL and nothing else, ever. You'll find it under "camera calibration", LR defaults to Adobe Standard which will take a giant dump all over your pictures.

Also
>but i find it to be far more confusing and a little more intimidating than lightroom.
True, but it's also much faster and lets you work with colours and exposure much more easily once you understand how it works. Which takes very little time, usually capture one feels harder just because people are used to LR.

>>3033348
>Did I mention it's slow? Because it's slow. (i7 4790, 16gb of RAM and a GTX 970.)

I'm using LR CC 2015 on i5 6500, 16GB RAM and a GTX 1060 6GB. Runs fine for me.

Appreciate the tips from everyone on everything else. Capture One is a bit out of my budget unless it's easy to find for free.

>>3033348
Dude, this guy needs to bump the contrast in photos of his cat. Remove spots in his cousin's face and probably crop a hand out a family portrait.

He's not going to be doing frecuency separations, there's no point in suggesting him to even look at the PS icon

He doesent care about camera profiles right now. I know professional photographers that earn a living with their work and dont give a fuck about all that. Sure if you're going to be retouching professionally, go for the tool that you think will give you the best results.

But we're talking about someone who has been doing SOOC jpegs for gods sake.

>>3033355

Did you come in here just to make assumptions?

I didn't make the thread to argue about what I'm shooting, and it sure as shit isn't a cat or family members. I'm looking for advice with the software, that's all.

>>3033356
And im not arguing about what you're shooting. But it is fair to assume that you're not shooting professionaly or you would not even be >"trying to make the transition from SOoC JPEG to RAW" just now.

My point was that for an amateur with basic needs (color balancing, cropping, contrast) lightroom will get the job done.

You're welcome to shoot whatever the hell you want which is irrelevant

>>3033324
Dump Lightroom and all that bullshit paid software and install Rawtherapee.

>>3033358

>But it is fair to assume that you're not shooting professionaly or you would not even be >"trying to make the transition from SOoC JPEG to RAW" just now.

I'm not shooting professionally, that's correct. I've just done JPEG for a while since I never bothered to get into editing, but I want to expand my knowledge and shooting habits. My photos pretty much variate between street photography (I live in a major city, so not much room for nature) during night and day, occasional landscape and architecture. I still wanted to learn the processing method for times when I take trips and I have the chance to get better landscape content and I can post-process it to look as good as possible.

>My point was that for an amateur with basic needs (color balancing, cropping, contrast) lightroom will get the job done.

I agree. I don't really see the need at this point to shell out $300 for professional editing software when I barely have time to shoot considering my work schedule.

all i ever did in lightroom was to click on autocorrect lol

i pirated it anyway

>>3033324
I watched a few tutorials at first then I quickly worked out a basic method.
Step 0 is setting the lens correction and CA and fringing correction, manually setting purple and green around 3 to 7 depending on how heavy it is on the lens. Then onto the real stuff:
First, is setting exposure with eyeing the subject and watching the histogram so it won't clip highlights.
Second is setting whites and blacks by holding down Alt key, watch for the spots showing clipping on the image (it will turn white/black respectively)
Then I set contrast, shadows, highlights, adjust saturation and maybe clarity. I might add an S-curve in tone curves with the inflection point around the EV of my main subject.
Noise correction and color grading are mostly just dicking around with sliders.

>>3033324
At first it was just struggling. i watched tutorials, googled for specific problems and just fucked around. I'm still learning, I started shooting for money in 2012. I believe I tried LR maybe around 2009-2010 to use as an editing software.
>>3033343
Agreeing. I don't like to press Ctrl+E as it means my work process gets slower when I need to fuck around in PS.
>>3033348
>slow
It truly is.
If I need to wait 1 second for the image to open a 600 photo shoot is already 10 minutes. It starts out fine but starts to crawl eventually...

>>3033324
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL657554B111D83968

Start here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fb-TqUA2lDI&index=25&list=PL657554B111D83968

>>3033324
Watching some videos about work processes in Lightroom was a real eye opener for me.

Apart from editing single pictures, Lightroom is also great for organizing all your pictures and doing bulk operations.

>>3033324
>>3033343
>>3033348
>>3033352
>>3033348
>considering lightroom as a useful software at all
photoshop and your cameras tethering software is all you ever need. everything else is redundant convenience.