Lightroom is a great tool. It’s quick and easy to use – once you get the hang of it. But sometimes mastering the workflow, the steps you go through to take a raw file to a ‘final’ image, can be a bit daunting.

Let me say up front that Lightroom is an important part of my workflow but it’s not the only part.  Every photograph I work on starts in Lightroom but is completed in Photoshop.  Nevertheless, Lightroom gets a photograph to about 80% of the final product.  I know many people who use Lightroom exclusively and Photoshop only in rare circumstances if at all.

So back to the workflow.  Can it really be made easy?  Yes it can.  There are four major steps (not counting import – see Lightroom Tutorial – Importing Photographs):

1. Mechanical adjustments like dust spot removal and cropping
2. Tonality adjustments
3. Hue adjustments
4. Saturation adjustments

Let’s skip the first step and start with the second.  The example will be in Lightroom 4.

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We are choosing the best Ralph Nordstrom Photography photograph of 2012, or, more precisely, you are.  We’re running a series of surveys, selecting the best photograph from each of five areas where we did workshops – Death Valley and Joshua Tree (collectively the California Deserts), Eastern Sierra, Big Sur, Zion and Bryce Canyon.

The first survey covered the California Deserts.  And the results are in.  But before presenting them I’d like to give you an opportunity to weigh in on the second survey – the incomparable Eastern Sierra.  We were there in early June which is summer in the Owens Valley but still spring up in the mountains.  There are six photographs to choose from and the survey will only take a couple of minutes.  So click the link below and share your opinion.

Select the Best Eastern Sierra Photograph of 2012

OK, now let’s turn to the results of the California Deserts survey.  There were four photographs, two from Death Valley and two from Joshua Tree.

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I have a good friend who is a very fine photographer who hates Photoshop.  Not me.  I love it and will spend days and weeks on a single image.  But my friend hates Photoshop and wants to get done with it as quickly as possible.

So I showed him a simple two-step approach to Photoshop that gets you a long ways toward a great looking photograph.  And I’d like to share it with you now.

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Join us for the 2010 Death Valley Workshop.

Space is still available for the 2008 Death Valley workshop.

When: February 20-23, 2010

Where: Death Valley National Park, Furnace Creek

For more information click on Death Valley Photography Workshop (138)