Import, manage and edit your photos expertly with Lightroom CC!

Take Control of
Lightroom CC

Jeff Carlson

This book gives you all the information you need to use Lightroom CC, Adobe’s all-new desktop photo editor and organizer, from understanding where it fits in the Lightroom ecosystem (alongside Lightroom Classic, the rebranded and updated version of the traditional Lightroom application), to importing, managing, and professionally editing your photos.

This book has been discontinued.

Because this book has gone significantly out of date and we will be unable to update it in the foreseeable future, we have discontinued it. To learn about some of the things that have changed in Lightroom since the book’s release, read this blog post.

As more and more of us access and edit photos on many different devices—laptops, desktops, tablets, and phones—we increasingly expect a seamless experience, with our images and edits showing up on all our devices, immediately. To accommodate this shift, Adobe has released a new version of its Lightroom application, Lightroom CC, that is specifically designed for cloud interaction. Lightroom CC is streamlined and simplified, meant to appeal to those who want to do more than the basics with their photos, but who are intimidated by Lightroom Classic CC and Photoshop.

In Take Control of Lightroom CC, photography expert Jeff Carlson gives a thorough, but accessible, guide to the new Lightroom CC. He explains where it fits in the Lightroom ecosystem, then moves on to detail how to import, manage, and professionally edit your photos using Lightroom CC. For those who want to keep using Lightroom Classic CC, he also looks at how the two programs can work together.

With this book, you’ll:

  • Get the big picture: See how Lightroom CC and Lightroom Classic (as well as Lightroom Mobile and Lightroom for Web) work together
  • Build your photo library: Learn how to import photos from cameras, memory cards, and locations on your hard disk; automatically add mobile photos; and sync photos, taking advantage of Lightroom CC’s cloud-focused features.
  • Organize your photos: Organize your photo library with rating and tagging, find photos using Adobe Sensei, manage your storage options, and back up your library.
  • Edit your photos: Get a handle on essential editing basics (like working in the Edit panel); use crop, straighten, rotate and flip to re-orient photos; adjust lighting, color, and appearance; and apply presets.
  • Share your photos: Post images directly to your friends online in Facebook, export them to disk in order to share them elsewhere, or make an entire album public for people to view and, optionally, to download.
  • Work with Lightroom Classic CC: Learn how to migrate a Classic catalog, or discover how to run both programs together.
Jeff Carlson

About Jeff Carlson

Jeff Carlson is a contributing editor of TidBITS, a frequent contributor to DPReview, Macworld, and CreativePro, and the author of best-selling books on the Mac, digital photography, and, in earlier incarnations, web design and Palm organizers. He consumes almost too much coffee. Almost.

Lightroom CC started off as a lean, cloud-centric cousin to Lightroom Classic CC, which means Adobe is being aggressive about adding features that didn’t show up in the initial 1.0 version. It’s a trend I hope continues as the software matures.

This version of the book has been updated to reflect changes introduced in Lightroom CC 1.1, released in December 2017, and Lightroom CC 1.2, released in February 2018:

  • For those who prefer curves to sliders when adjusting their photos’ tones, Adobe added the new Tone Curve tool. It’s a surprisingly powerful control within a compact interface.
  • When you want to add color to highlights and shadows, turn to the new Split Toning feature.
  • Lightroom CC now has the capability to view a photo fullscreen, without the application interface, something I do a lot when I’m looking over my edits. Press F in the Detail view.
  • The Manage Storage on Disk section has been reworked to reflect the refined approach Lightroom CC now takes, including the option to store a copy of all smart previews on your startup disk.
  • The Auto feature for automatically editing a photo now uses Sensei technology for improved results. I also added a sidebar about how Adobe uses your images to train its Sensei machine-learning service, and How to Opt Out of Sensei Analysis if you choose.
  • I accidentally omitted a section about applying titles, captions, and location data to your photos, which is now in Add Essential Information. Adobe added the capability to adjust a photo’s time and date after the first revision of this book was released, so I’m going to pretend I was just waiting for that to appear.

What platforms does this book cover?

Lightroom CC runs on both Windows and macOS, so the book covers both platforms.

What’s New Since the Lightroom CC Book Release

Posted by Jeff Carlson on November 23, 2019

Update, May 2, 2020: Since the blog post below was written back in November, we’ve realized that we currently have no plausible path to update this book in the foreseeable future. Since the book’s contents go further out of sync with each new update of Lightroom, we decided that the best course of action was to discontinue the book altogether. If there is sufficient demand, we might consider bringing it back in 2021 or later, but the odds are against it.

Adobe recently updated Lightroom for Windows and Mac to version 3.0 (dropping the “CC” in the name), though you may have noticed that Take Control of Lightroom CC still covers version 1.0. Unfortunately, sales of the book have not yet merited the time it would take to update it for the latest Lightroom version.

So we’re offering you a great deal. The improvements Adobe has made to Lightroom have nearly all been additions to the core organizing and editing functionality, which means the book is still approximately 90% accurate and useful. It just doesn’t include the new bells and whistles. As such, we don’t want to kill the book, so we’re offering it for just $5.00—that’s 67% off its original price!

Take Control of Lightroom CC includes what you need to know about editing your photos, organizing them, and syncing them with Creative Cloud. Here are the main features that the program has added since the book was released:

  • The People feature does a great job identifying the folks in your images—much better than Lightroom Classic, even.

  • You can merge panorama and HDR (high dynamic range) shots, and even merge a series of photos that were shot as both HDR and panoramas, using the Photomerge features.

  • Lightroom supports profiles that interpret how raw images appear, including camera-specific ones. They don’t affect the controls in the Light, Color, or other panels.

  • Adobe added a new Texture control that acts as a fine-grained Clarity slider.

  • There are more sharing options, such as presets for large and small image sizes. (Although the option to post directly to Facebook has been removed.) You can also share groups of photos or albums to web galleries that can remain private or available to anyone with the address.

  • A new Home screen includes lots of guided tutorials for learning new techniques.

We’re always listening to feedback from readers and evaluating future titles, so if there’s enough interest in the book, we may look into updating it for upcoming releases. Until then, grab it now for just $5.00 if you don’t own it already.

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