I PROMISE that Europe pictures are coming soon, but I couldn’t help myself with this one – it just needed more attention.  The featured image for this post is titled “Bloom,” and it’s also featured in the previous blog entry.  Bloom is one of those pictures I took, reviewed on my camera screen, and knew right away that I was going to love the final product.  I also knew that what I saw on my camera screen wouldn’t be nearly the same as the final product.  Normally, I don’t let everyone in on the behind-the-scenes stuff, but this time, I decided to do just that.

I use Adobe Lightroom pretty extensively to enhance every picture before I publicize it.  Lightroom is an essential tool for importing picture files, selecting the photos I want to edit, publishing them, and creating archives of old “albums” of imported images.  Most people think about Photoshop when they hear “editing photos,” but I haven’t touched Photoshop in months.  IN FACT, I only have Photoshop Elements installed on my computer right now – not even a full version of Photoshop.  Anyways, I used almost all the “weapons” in the Lightroom “arsenal” to get the final product just the way I wanted.