After completing my homework for the first week of Lightroom 101, I tried my hand at improving some older photos (not that old, just predating the class) that needed a little love.
Remember this photo from my visit to Hollywood?
f/5.3, 1/50 sec, ISO 100
I liked that it was a kind of retro illustration of the famous intersection, but the image is definitely overexposed and the colors look more faded than they did in real life. I took the original photo in JPEG and not RAW so I had less flexibility in Lightroom, but I still think the result is an improvement on the original!
f/5.3, 1/50 sec, ISO 100
It’s not perfect, and I honestly just realized that it’s cropped differently than the original — oops! Guess I have more learning to do on how to use the export function 
Have you ever gone back and edited old photos? Do you have any tips on working with JPEGs (or other non-RAW files) in an editing program?
Pretty in Prose 
I have revisited old photos! I still like photoshop and you can slightly edit in RAW JPEG. I would say to use sharpening when you are editing because JPEG can tend to lose quality and also save your JPEGs at the high QUALITY possible that way you don’t lose artifacts.
Thanks for the tips! I’ve only just scratched the tip of the Lightroom iceberg — I’ll keep an eye out for the sharpening feature.
I’m really giddy that you are using Lightroom because I LOVE IT. Have been using it for about 2 years now and it is great for organizing photos and also editing. I shoot in RAW now because of the flexibility you mentioned, especially for indoor photos, RAW is crucial for me. Nevertheless, I re-edited photos from a Japan trip, when I was shooting with a measly 4 MP point-and-shoot and I’m still pretty shocked and satisfied how a little editing really made them pop.
It’s nice to hear you had some luck with editing old photos 🙂 I’m trying to shoot exclusively in RAW now, but I have tons of old pics that could use some help too!
I’ve only just scratched the surface of what Lightroom can do, but I’m already excited by the kind of results it achieves!
Wow, that’s really amazing! Maybe I should get on the Lightroom train and start using it, haha. I had a free trial of it and sort of started getting the hang of it. But then I would get frustrated, close it, and not open it again for a few days. It kind of went on like that for my entire free trial. I’m still debating if I want to get it or not; though, I’m thinking I should with the new DSLR camera I’m going to be getting soon. It’s just going to take some adjusting to and lots of learning!
I’m using the free trial also, but I’ll probably break down and buy a copy when it expires (it’s cheaper on Amazon than on the Adobe website). I’m taking a Lightroom 101 class through Nicole’s classes, otherwise I think I would be overwhelmed with the amount of options in the program! It’s a little pricey, but I was able to get the class on a sale so I think it will be worth it.
Yeah, I would get it through Amazon for sure. They usually have pretty good pricing there. I’ll have to look into Nicole’s classes. I’ve watched some videos to try to dive in a bit and think the program’s awesome. There’ just so much to learn!