Anyone who shoots photos for more than just fun must check out Adobe’s photo management system Lightroom. The program is the ultimate workflow tool and has been a godsend since I downloaded the beta version over a year ago. Prior to using Lightroom, I pretty much just dumped everything into iphoto and exported the few photos that I thought were worth playing with in photoshop. Now, I have seamless integration between CS3, Bridge, and Lightroom.

But here’s the best part, pretty much all the tools I need to fix photos are available in Lightroom. With the exception of the dodge and burn tool, I can pretty much manipulate and salvage photos without having to open photoshop. I’ve been having tons of fun lately with the  channel saturation tool under in the HSL/Color/Grayscale component.

Take this shot from the Horrorpops show last Friday. The shot was fine on its own, but my wife suggested I drop all the color except for the red. In the saturation tool, I dropped every color element except for red down to -100. I left red at 0. The effect is really badass, giving the day of the dead bride/dance a bit zombie-rific look. Look closely and you can see that the red in her tattoo is even visible. Look closer and you can see the red noise by her armpit. On second thought, ignore that. I had to balance the brightness and the shadows to get the right mix of noise and contrast.

For those on the fence between Apple’s Aperture and Lightroom. Go download both demos and give them a spin. I liked Aperture, but Lightroom is just awesome.

Click the links below from more shots from the show:
Flickr Set or GLK PHOTO slideshow