Welcome to the PhotoTraces Academy. I am happy to see you here. To ensure you take advantage of all the features and tools on the Academy platform, I would like to show you around.
If you break down the structure of the Academy, you will find four distinct areas: Basics, Editing Tools, Weekly Challenges, and Community.
Basics
The goal of the Basics area is to give all Academy members the fundamentals of Lightroom photo editing and ensure that every student can follow both the existing and future tutorials as well as feel comfortable enough to compete in the Weekly Challenges.
Free Lightroom Presets
The purpose of the Free Lightroom Presets module is to introduce students to Lightroom preset-based editing. This module comes with unprocessed demo images, which you can download and follow the tutorial step by step. The module demonstrates how to approach Lightroom preset-based editing with landscapes, cityscapes, and people photography.
Each demo image comes with the editing steps embedded into the image’s metadata. When you import the demo images into Lightroom, you can replicate my editing steps by clicking through the Snapshots Panel. I call this method “Enhanced Tutorials.”
JumpStart – Lightroom Mini Course
I designed the JumpStart mini course to introduce beginners to the principal concepts of both Lightroom and photo editing in general.
First, the mini course addresses the role of digital photo editing in modern photography. Next, it gives clear instructions on how to organize your photos on your hard drive. Further, it moves to the fundamentals of Lightroom by starting with the most crucial step: the process of importing photos into Lightroom.
Lightroom Rapid Editing
Lightroom Rapid Editing is the workflow I developed as part of my travel photography routine to edit a high volume of photos quickly and efficiently. I use it on a daily basis in my photography whether I am working in the comfort of my own home, on a plane, or in the backseat of a car during my travels.
Since I introduced Lightroom Rapid Editing to the general public, over 10,000 photographers from around the world have adopted it in their editing workflows.
Lightroom Rapid Editing enables us to edit different types of photos without touching Lightroom’s main editing tools and sliders. I highly recommend familiarizing yourself with Lightroom Rapid Editing because I use it as the foundation of many concepts in the Academy’s tutorials and in the Weekly Challenges.
How to Use Basics Area
The PhotoTraces Academy is an educational platform I created for photographers with different levels of experience from beginners to advanced amateurs and professionals.
Depending on your level of expertise, I recommend using the Basics area differently.
Beginners
If you are a beginner, I highly recommend starting with the JumpStart Lightroom Mini-Course. When you are comfortable with importing photos to Lightroom and preset-based editing, you can jump to the Lightroom Rapid Editing tutorial.
Intermediate Photographers
If you are familiar with the basic concepts of photo editing and are comfortable with the Lightroom import process, you can skip the JumpStart Mini-Course and start with the Free Presets module to familiarize yourself with the concept of Lightroom preset editing. From there, go directly to the Lightroom Rapid Editing tutorial.
Advanced Photographers
If you are an experienced photographer who knows Lightroom inside and out, I recommend jumping directly into Lightroom Rapid Editing. I guarantee it will give you a new perspective on the entire process of Lightroom editing.
Editing Tools
If the Basics area of the PhotoTraces Academy gives you the necessary knowledge and skills to follow the tutorials and challenges, the Editing Tools section provides you all the essential means.
At this point, I have a variety of editing tools that cover different genres of photography: landscapes, cityscapes, portraits, black and white photography, and HDR photography.
You do not have to download and install all the presets at once. This will take too long. Download them as you need them.
Please note, every product comes with an enhanced tutorial to help you better understand the best practices of using the product. You can download the demo images and retrace all my editing steps through the Snapshots Panel.
Weekly Challenges
At this point, you have the knowledge and tools; now, it is time to put them into practice.
The Weekly Challenges are the foundation of ongoing learning.
Every week, you will be challenged to learn and implement one specific technique or task into your photography. The goal is to keep going and continue to learn something new each week.
Community
The goal of the Community is to get help and receive feedback from Academy members and me personally.
You can achieve this in two ways.
First, if you have questions about a specific tutorial or tool, I recommend using the comment system at the bottom of every page. I will be happy to address your issues.
Second, the PhotoTraces Academy Facebook Group is a place where you can share your weekly challenge results, receive feedback, and find motivation.
Please note, since the Academy cannot be directly integrated with Facebook, all new members will be asked to provide the email address they used to join the Academy when they request access to the Facebook group. I will manually approve new members.