Check out the Lightroom Academy
A fairly recent addition to the content on lightroom.adobe.com is the Lightroom Academy (no, not an Umbrella Academy spinoff, but that would be cool too). Lightroom Academy bills itself as “a learning environment dedicated to sharing photographic knowledge that informs, inspires, and supports photographers with a wide level of experience, equipment, time, and resources. Additional content is in development.”
What you’ll find as you enter and explore are a growing number of articles, neatly organized in bite-sized chunks, on various photographic subjects, currently focusing on composition and food photography.
At first it may appear like a typical blog, but there is actually a good deal more going on than just reading well written content by accomplished photographers and educators (I’m not involved with this effort, but I know the impressive roster of people behind it). Articles contain interactive illustrations and challenges as well as assignments you can opt to do on your own along with links to additional resources.
I have been consistently impressed with the educational quality of the content and the use of interactive learning tools that I wish we could include in a blog. This is a level of educational material I would assign to my Intro to Photography students if I was still teaching that class.
You don’t need any special camera or even a subscription to any Adobe products to dive into this content and start learning. If you are an Adobe subscriber and use the Lightroom cloud environment you can easily jump between the Lightroom Academy and your content via the buttons at the top (but that is not required).
Pulling in and showcasing inspiring work from the larger Lightroom community is another cool feature for seeing what’s possible, discovering new artists, and keeping the content fresh and interesting.
Scrolling down even further below the lessons you’ll encounter a collection of Lightroom edited photos shared to the Discover section by others in the larger Lightroom community. This is very immersive experience that can show you exactly how other photographers approached the edits to their photos.
It looks like there’s a large amount of additional content in the works, so be sure to check back regularly to see what gets added. Kudos to the Lightroom Academy team for making this content available to all of us for free.
