Adobe Photoshop Lightroom is a very powerful and fairly user friendly application designed for the amateur to professional photographer. While it is in its current form missing some basics it is none the less one of the best cataloging and processing applications I have used. Until Lightroom I hated shooting RAW with my camera because it was always a lot more work to get them in to a format that I could use for multimedia, web and print. Lightroom changed all of that.

However, like most of Adobe's products there is more to Lightroom than you will see at first glance. In other words there is a lot under the hood and if you hope to get the most from it you need some help. The Digital Photographer's Guide to Adobe Photoshop Lightroom is that help.

This full color, nicely designed and laid out book covers everything you need to know to maximize your use and enjoyment of Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. It covers such topics as:

Introduction
Why Lightroom
The Five Faces of Lightroom

Library

Importing
Importing Options
Renaming
Good Renaming Practice
Copy Photos as Digital Negative
Automated Importing and Tethered Shooting
Databases and Folders
Folders
Stacks
Copyright and Contact Details
Keywords
Finding and Filtering
Ratings
Adding Structure > Collections
Quick Collection
Quick Develop > Why It's There and What It's For
Quick Develop > Save Yourself Time
Quick Develop > Batch Conversion
Synchronizing
Export > Creating Output
Quick Contact Sheets
Slideshow
Web Galleries
Building the Brand > The Identity Plate

Develop

Develop Workflow
Straightening and Cropping
White Balance Correction
The Exposure Slider
Recovery and the White Point
Shadows and the Black Point
Fill Light
Color Saturation and Vibrance
Tone Curve > Fine Contrast and Brightness Control
Black and White
Black and White > The Grayscale Mixer Method
Black and White > The Saturation and Luminance Method
Black and White > Timesavers
Single and Split Tones
Color Adjustments
Split Screen
Dust Spots
Dealing with Noise
Chromatic Aberration
Sharpening
From One to Many
Alternative Versions
Alternative Versions > Large Batches
History and Snapshots
Printing > Adding a Copyright Symbol to your Pictures

Advanced Topics

The Polarized Image
Creative Vignetting
Cross Processing
Non-Raw Originals
Photoshop Workflow > Blend Exposures
Other Image Editors
Drag and Drop
Moving Work Between Computers
Sharing and Backing Up Your Presets

As you can see everything is covered. Everything has lots of sample shots and screen shots so that what is being covered is clear and easy to understand. This is a wonderful book, one of my top choices for learning Adobe Photoshop Lightroom.