(As well as access to the 8 live Workshops, you will receive links to the recordings, which will be valid until 1st October 2026, for you to review, rewind and revisit)

Eight sessions. One complete workflow. You’ll understand exactly what to do with your photos from the moment they come off the camera to the moment they go out into the world.

Lightroom Classic is the professional standard for photographers who want proper control over their image library and their editing — but most people use about 20% of what it can do.

This series changes that. Joe Houghton, Irish based photographer and author of the Amazon #1 bestselling Lightroom Classic Step by Step books, guides you through the full application in a way that actually sticks: practical, structured, and directly relevant to how you shoot. Joe is an Adobe Certified Expert and has the ability to teach in a warm and engaging way that makes Lightroom clear, understandable and immediately useable.

Whether you’ve been clicking around Lightroom for years without a clear system, or you’re starting fresh and want to build good habits from day one, this series meets your demands.

Every session builds on the last, so you’ll have a complete, repeatable workflow – not just a collection of tips.

Each session runs for approximately two hours and combines demonstration with hands-on practice. Participants are encouraged to work along in real time using their own photographs.

What You’ll Cover

The eight sessions split across three areas:

• Library Module (Sessions 1 & 2) — catalogue setup, importing, organising, keywording, and finding images fast
• Develop Module (Sessions 3–6) — the full editing toolkit from basic adjustments to masking, presets, and batch processing
• Other Modules (Sessions 7 & 8) — Map, Book, Slideshow, Print, Web, and round-trip editing with external apps

Joe Houghton has been teaching photography and Lightroom for over a decade, working with camera clubs, corporate clients, and individual photographers.

His approach is direct, practical, and grounded in real shooting situations rather than abstract theory.

Tuition Sessions Outline

The following outlines what each session covers. Topics build progressively — earlier sessions inform later ones — so attending the full series gives the best result.

Lightroom Library Module Tuition – Sessions 1 & 2 

Session 1 — Your Lightroom Foundation: The Catalogue & Importing (21st April)

• Understanding what the Lightroom catalogue actually is, why it doesn’t store your images, and how to set it up correctly from the start — including single vs. multiple catalogues and local vs. external drive decisions
• Importing from cameras and memory cards using the Import dialogue — Copy vs. Move vs. Add, folder destination strategies, and how to rename files on the way in
• Setting up metadata templates and applying keywords at the point of import so your images arrive already tagged
• Build Previews explained — Minimal, Embedded & Sidecar, Standard, and 1:1 — and why your choice here affects performance throughout your workflow

Session 2 — Finding Order in Chaos: Organising & Searching Your Library (5th May)

• Folders, Collections and Smart Collections — understanding the difference between where files physically live on your drive and how Lightroom’s virtual organisation layer works on top of that
• Rating, flagging and colour labels as a triage system, plus using the Filter Bar to cut a large catalogue down to exactly the images you need
• Metadata and keywording in depth — EXIF vs. IPTC, adding and editing metadata in the Metadata panel, and building a keywording strategy you can actually sustain
• The four Library views (Grid, Loupe, Compare, Survey) and how switching between them at the right moment speeds up your selection and cull process

Lightroom Develop Module Tuition – Sessions 3 to 6 

Session 3 — Your First Develop Edits: Interface, Histogram & the Basic Panel (19th May)

• A tour of the Develop module interface — understanding the difference between the Library and Develop modules, the panel layout, and the Before & After views
• Reading the histogram — what the graph actually tells you, how to use clipping warnings for highlights and shadows, and why you should look at it before touching any slider
• The Basic Panel in full — White Balance (Temp & Tint), the six Tone controls (Exposure, Contrast, Highlights, Shadows, Whites, Blacks), and the Presence sliders (Texture, Clarity, Dehaze, Vibrance, Saturation)
• Cropping and straightening — the Crop tool, aspect ratios, using the angle tool for horizons, and Crop Overlays including the rule of thirds

Session 4 — Going Deeper: Tone Curve, Colour, Detail & Lens Corrections (26th May)

• The Tone Curve panel — Parametric vs. Point Curve, making targeted tonal adjustments, and how the curve interacts with the Basic Panel sliders you’ve already set
• Colour Mixer (HSL) and Colour Grading — adjusting individual hues, saturation and luminance with the Targeted Adjustment Tool, and introducing creative colour grading across shadows, midtones and highlights
• The Detail panel — manual sharpening (Amount, Radius, Detail, Masking slider), Noise Reduction for luminance and colour noise, and the AI Denoise option
• Lens Corrections and Transform — enabling profile corrections, removing chromatic aberration, correcting distortion, and fixing converging verticals with Guided Upright

Session 5 — Precision Editing: Masking & Local Adjustments (16th June)

• Global vs. local adjustments — understanding why you’d reach for a mask instead of a global slider, and an overview of the full masking toolkit in the Masking panel
• AI-powered masks — Select Subject, Select Sky, Select Background and Select People; how they work, where they fall short, and how to refine them
• Manual masking tools — the Brush, Linear Gradient and Radial Gradient; how to build up a mask using Add and Subtract; and how to invert a mask when that’s the quicker route
• Combining masks with Intersect — using Colour Range and Luminance Range masks to constrain an AI selection to specific tones, and how to manage multiple masks cleanly without losing track of your edits

Session 6 — Working Smarter: Presets, Sync, Virtual Copies & Workflow (30th June)

• The History panel and Snapshots — tracking every edit you’ve made, jumping back to any point in your edit history, and saving named Snapshots as milestones
• Virtual Copies — what they are, why creating one costs nothing in disk space, and practical uses such as preparing a colour and a monochrome version of the same file simultaneously
• Copying, Pasting and Syncing settings — applying one image’s Develop settings to a batch in a single step, choosing which settings to include in a Sync, and the difference between Paste Settings and Auto Sync
• Creating, applying and managing Develop Presets — saving your own presets, organising them into folders, and using them at import to apply a starting look automatically

Lightroom Other Modules Tuition – Sessions 7 & 8

Session 7 — Beyond the Edit: Map, Book & Slideshow Modules (14th July)

• The Map module — geotagging images automatically from GPS-enabled cameras, dragging and dropping images manually onto the map, and using a GPS tracklog to batch-geotag an entire shoot; the importance of accurate camera time for tracklog matching
• Saved Locations in the Map module — creating named locations for places you return to regularly, filtering your catalogue by location, and a note on privacy when sharing geotagged images
• The Book module — preparing and selecting images in a Collection before entering Book, the interface and page layout design, and exporting your finished book to Blurb or as a PDF
• The Slideshow module — choosing and customising a template, adding text overlays, music and timing, using the Ken Burns effect, and exporting as either an MP4 video or a PDF

Session 8 — Sharing Your Work: Print, Web & External Editors (28th July)

• The Print module — layout styles (Single Image, Contact Sheet, Picture Package, Custom Package), image settings, soft proofing, and the critical role of ICC colour profiles and colour management when sending to a printer
• The Web module — HTML vs. Flash gallery engines, customising appearance and image info panels, and the options for exporting a gallery locally or uploading via FTP, with an honest assessment of where the Web module stands today
• Round-trip editing with external applications — setting up Photoshop, Affinity Photo, or Topaz as an external editor in Preferences, using Edit In, understanding the TIFF/PSD options, and managing round-tripped files back inside your catalogue
• Export workflows — building Export presets for different output destinations (web, print, client delivery), file format and quality decisions, and adding watermarks and output sharpening before files leave Lightroom

(a reminder – if you can’t make any, or wish to review, rewind and revisit – the recordings are valid until 1st October 2026)

If you have any questions or would like more information, please email roy@myphotoclub.co.uk.

We’ve had fantastic feedback from previous Lightroom Workshops:

Jayne (UK) – ‘I can thoroughly recommend Joe, he covers everything from the basics to the more advanced concepts, and no question is too small. Joe is a great teacher and makes the whole experience very enjoyable.’

Andrea (Canada) – ‘I can do things now that I didn’t even know were possible!’

Ed (USA) – ‘Watched many, many, videos on Lightroom – nothing has been as comprehensive, practical and useful as this.