Nicolesy’s new Two Minute Lightroom Tips, a comprehensive Lightroom training video series, is a fantastic option for teaching yourself Lightroom. If you’re looking to develop your skills or speed up your workflow, this course is a great resource.

Why learn Lightroom?

While it’s name hasn’t been turned into a verb like Photoshop, Adobe’s Lightroom is arguably the more important tool for digital photographers these days. Lightroom has become an industry standard, and is built to accommodate everyone from the working professional to the casual hobbyist.

Lightroom does many things very well and can give your editing workflow a huge boost — if you know what you’re doing. But there’s a bit of a learning curve. Get started on the wrong foot, and your journey into Lightroom could be a mess.

Do I need a whole course?

I’m a firm believer in complete courses. Sure, you can learn piecemeal, finding quick tips on YouTube to address particular problems as they arise, but over time your skills will develop huge gaps. If you don’t develop a comprehensive sense of all the features available to you, you’ll find yourself spending hours on tasks that should only take a few minutes.

Nicolesy keeps her instructional videos short and to the point. No rambling; she’s all business. Her polish as a published author, photographer, and experienced software instructor comes across. The result is a comprehensive course that feels as pointed and efficient as those quick tip videos — hence the name. You can pick up a useful new skill — and work toward real mastery of Lightroom — by investing those little pockets of time you’d otherwise waste scrolling through Facebook.

Who is the course for?

The course, which runs nearly five hours in its entirety, is very approachable. If you’re just getting into digital photography, this is a great place to start. But even if you’re a working photographer, you’ll find this course plenty helpful. I’ve been using Lightroom daily for a few years now in my professional practice, but I’m still learning a lot from Nicolesy.

For example, I recently added an iMac as my primary editing computer. Working with Lightroom across two computers is doable, but there are some things to be aware of that aren’t immediately obvious. She has a few videos on this very topic that got me off to a great start.

What will I learn?

Nicolesy covers everything. For a complete list, check out the course page for the table of contents.

In addition to the videos, the course comes with a well designed PDF guidebook. This is a great way to track your progress, or quickly find a particular topic.

My favorite section

One underutilized feature in Lightroom is the Print Module. Yes, it’s obviously for printing, but it’s also very handy for putting together collages to share online. Lightroom allows you to ‘print’ to a file, not just to paper. As a headshot photographer, I use these features to quickly generate contact sheets for my clients. Sure, you can do the same thing in Photoshop, but it’s much quicker in Lightroom. This trick has saved me hours, and it’s the kind of thing this course is full of.

Final thoughts: Is it worth it?

Short answer: yes.

As you look to invest in your photography education, Nicolesy’s new course is a great option. And it’s on sale for just $35 until August 23, 2016! Learning the ins and outs of a core piece of software is key to getting the most out of your photography. No matter how powerful, any piece of software is just a tool. And like any tool, it takes skill to make that tool work for you. The faster you learn it, the faster you’ll be able to execute your vision. Let Nicolesy help you get there.