One of my New Year’s Resolutions is to spend less time on social media. Well, so far, not so good. As photographers, we thrive off of getting inspired by what we see posted by other creatives. With Instagram changing its business model and becoming more and more promotion-heavy, now’s a great chance to look into some other options.
One of those options is the Discover tab in Adobe Lightroom. Here, you can see what photographers have posted based on what you have personally explored or liked. You can also browse by featured photographers, those you follow or new work.
The Discover tab is available not only in the Lightroom desktop app, but also on the web and Lightroom mobile app.
Find inspiration and learn Lightroom through others
Lightroom Discover features several ways to find photos, but it also lets you filter down by genre. If I need inspiration for an upcoming event, I can find that. Portrait shoot? Yep, it’s got that too.
But more than that, you can go into a photo and see all the edits the photographer made to get to their final look. If you’re new to photo editing, or are playing around with different styles, Lightroom Discover lets you easily see what each tool does and how it impacts a photo. And if you like a photographer’s edit, you can save that as a preset, that you can then apply to your own photos.
Put your skills to the test
Last year, Adobe introduced Remix, a tool that lets you take other people’s work and edit them as your own. Photographers enable people to “remix” their images, so this isn’t across the board. In this case, I was able to take this photo highlighting some different whisky, and turn it into a dynamic, contrasty black and white.
Lightroom Discover puts the emphasis on photo inspiration and education
In a lot of ways, Lightroom Discover does all that I want it to do, in that it showcases some of the best photographs by Lightroom users. But with the ability to see photo edits, and “remix” photos, I can learn how different tools I might not normally use work, and then apply those skills to my own images. If you’re looking for a way to kick off your year, Lightroom Discover really offers a lot for any type of photographer.
