Masking for Portrait Photos
Great portrait editing often comes down to control. Not heavy-handed retouching. Not changing the person into someone else. Just thoughtful, selective adjustments that help the viewer connect with the subject.
In this class, we’ll use Lightroom’s Masking tools to improve portrait photos in a clean, natural way. You’ll see how to guide attention to the face, soften distractions, improve skin tones, enhance eyes, shape light, and bring more polish to your portraits without making them look over-edited.
Lightroom’s masking tools are powerful, but they’re also easy to overuse. The goal of this class is to show you how to use them with restraint and purpose.
In this class, you will learn…

By the end of the class, you’ll have a practical portrait workflow you can use on your own images right away.

Masking for Wildlife Photos
Wildlife photography often happens fast. The light may not be perfect. The background may be busy. The subject may need help standing out. That’s where Lightroom’s Masking tools can make a real difference.
In this class, we’ll use masks to improve wildlife photos while keeping the edit natural. You’ll learn how to bring more attention to the animal, improve detail where it matters, reduce distractions, and shape the light around the subject.
Wildlife editing can go wrong quickly when the subject becomes too sharp, too bright, or too separated from the environment. This class focuses on practical edits that make the animal look better while still feeling like it belongs in the scene.
In this class, you will learn…

By the end of the class, you’ll have a clear workflow for using masks to improve your wildlife images while keeping them realistic.

Landscape Editing
A strong landscape edit does more than make a photo look colorful. It helps bring the viewer back to what you saw, felt, and noticed when you pressed the shutter.
In this class, we’ll walk through a complete Lightroom landscape editing workflow. We’ll begin with the basic global adjustments, then move into selective edits that help shape the image. You’ll see how small changes to light, contrast, color, and detail can make a major difference without pushing the photo too far.
The goal is not to create an over-processed image. The goal is to bring out the best parts of the scene while keeping the edit believable.
In this class, you will learn…

By the end of the class, you’ll have a simple, repeatable workflow for editing landscape photos with more confidence and control.

Masking for Landscape and Travel Photos
Discover the transformative power of masking in Lightroom to elevate your landscape and travel photographs from good to breathtaking. You will master precise, creative masking techniques that allow you to selectively enhance skies, bring out intricate foreground details, balance challenging lighting conditions, and create natural-looking adjustments that preserve the authentic mood and atmosphere of your scenes. By learning to harness these tools with confidence, you will gain control over every element in your images, turning ordinary captures into compelling images that captivate viewers and reflect your unique artistic vision.

• You will learn to unlock the ability to dramatically improve sky drama and cloud definition without affecting the rest of your landscape
• Master subject isolation and selective enhancements that make your travel photos truly pop
• Balance exposure between bright highlights and deep shadows to achieve natural-looking results
• Create depth and mood by precisely adjusting colors, contrast, and clarity in targeted areas of your photos
• Develop efficient workflows that save time while delivering consistent, high-impact edits across your entire portfolio

 

How much is too much (how to avoid over editing)
Discover the essential skill of knowing when to stop in photo editing. This will empower you to create natural, authentic, and visually powerful images across any genre or subject. You will develop a trained eye to confidently spot signs of over-editing in your own photos and in the work of others. At the same time, you will master restrained techniques that preserve the genuine mood, light, emotion, and character of your photographs. This approach helps you avoid the common mistakes that make images look processed or artificial, so you can deliver stunning yet believable results that resonate with viewers and stand the test of time.

• You will learn to spot the visual warning signs of over-editing and build clear personal standards for when an image has gone too far
• Train your eye to inspect photos critically, recognizing issues like excessive noise, unnatural tonal shifts, or edge artifacts so you can correct them for more natural-looking results
• Master subtle, tasteful adjustments to exposure, contrast, color, and detail that enhance impact without compromising authenticity
• Gain confidence in making strong yet believable improvements while keeping the soul and integrity of every photograph intact
• Discover efficient decision-making workflows that prevent over-tweaking, helping you finalize images faster with consistent, viewer-pleasing quality

 

Organizing: Keywording Deep Dive
Discover the power of strategic keywording to transform how you organize, search, and manage your entire photo library with precision. You will learn the real limitations of Lightroom Desktop’s AI-based natural language search and when manual keywords deliver far better results. In Lightroom Classic, you learn how to add natural language search where you can find images without entering a single keyword. Then supplement that by building a smart, layered keywording system that goes well beyond what any AI can achieve. This approach gives you complete control over your archive, making it easy to find any memorable image in under 5 seconds while unlocking powerful automation for client work, stylistic grouping, and portfolio building.

• You will learn why AI image search falls short in many real-world situations and how to use targeted keywords to fill those gaps
• How to add natural language search to Lightroom Classic while building a manual keyword structure that works alongside it
• Discover how to track important client details, project information, and location data through smart keyword strategies
• Add stylistic and technical keywords that let you automate the creation of portfolios collections
• Build efficient keywording workflows that save hours of searching and keep your growing library organized for years to come

• Portrait Class Class
• The Edit Room (Watch me Edit Your Photos)

TBA

Profiles VS Presets – why you need both
Presets and profiles both alter your images in a single click, both can make a dull image pop instantly and convey emotion.
Fundamentally though, both of these work differently. Even better, they can work together to produce a near perfect result.
In this session with PhotoshopCAFE’s Colin Smith you’ll learn:
- What is a preset and how do you make one
- What is a profile and how do you use them
- Smart profiles 
- ai presets
- use Presets and Profiles together

Add Magic Pop by Painting with Light and Shadow (dodge and burn)
Do you want to make details in your photo pop? Do you want a clever way to reduce visual clutter?
Do you want to add touchable dimension? Are there details that are too dark or light within an otherwise perfectly exposed photo?
If you answered yes to any of these questions, dodge and burn is for you! Colin Smith has worked on these techniques for years in Photoshop and Lightroom and has a great way of teaching this to you. 
Learn how to 
- understand how light works within an image 
- paint with light that looks as real as the sun
- add depth with shadows
- use the masks in Lightroom to assist you

The Edit Room

Colin will be editing attendee-submitted Raw files.

The Edit Room

Daniel will be editing attendee-submitted Raw files, focusing on black and white editing.

Backing Up Your Photos: Practical Strategies for Lightroom Classic & Lightroom
You open your photo editor, and you get a message saying images can't be found. You dig a little more, and the hard drive has crashed. Everything is lost. For most of us, losing our images can be one of the most upsetting things that can happen. All that work and time are gone. 

This session is not about how to prevent that from happening, because it will eventually happen, but rather about how we can have a good backup system in place so we never actually lose all our files. Rather than talk about theories and percentage chances that things might go back, we are going to focus on clear, practical strategies for backing up and protecting your photos and catalogs. Whether you use Lightroom Classic, Lightroom, or both, we'll discuss how your files, catalogs, and cloud storage work, and outline simple backup steps and options to reduce the risk of losing photos without adding complexity or stress.

The goal is to emphasize real-world ideas you can implement immediately, along with options to consider as your data needs grow over time. We'll discuss how to structure backups both on local drives and with some of the more popular cloud services. We will also dig into things to watch out for to avoid common pitfalls and ensure your images remain accessible and secure over time. Whether you're managing a growing archive or just starting to organize your work, this session will help you build confidence in your backup process.

You will learn:

By the end of this session, you’ll have a clear, manageable plan to safeguard your images and maintain peace of mind as your archive grows.

From Images to Story: Building a Photo Book in Lightroom
Ever look at a photo book and think you could never make something like that? Sure, a good photo book is more than just strong photographs. It's about pulling together great images and thinking about pacing, structure, and thoughtful design. Luckily, we already have some great options to help us make awesome photo books. Both Lightroom and Classic are amazing tools for turning a sequence of images into a cohesive photo book.

This session is all about the Book module in Lightroom Classic and the Blurb Connection Tool found in Lightroom. While each program has a slightly different approach, you can make amazing books using your images, no matter which version you use. We will do a quick look at the Blurb BookWrite Tool (Lightroom), but will spend most of the time in the Lightroom Classics Book Module. The features are very similar between the two book layout programs, and all the design and layout considerations will apply to both. So no matter what version of Lightroom you are in, we have you covered. 

We will start by talking about how to use the various tools and options to create your book. After spending some time on the tools, we'll explore how to move from a loose edit to a structured sequence, and how design choices such as layout, sequences, white space, and image pairing shape the reading and viewing experience.

The main goal of the session is to build confidence with the tools and also addressing the larger question of how images work together in book format. You'll see how to use various templates and customization options to quickly generate variuos book layouts, and how to refine them to suit your own style and voice. We'll also cover basic export and printing options, whether you're using Blurb's built-in services or preparing files for external printers.

You will learn:

By the end of this session, you’ll have the tools and understanding to create a cohesive, well-designed photo book directly from your Lightroom catalog.
 

Get Organized with Metadata
Stop searching. Start finding. Your photos are one search away — if you set this up right.

You remember taking that shot. You know it exists. But now you're digging through folders, scrolling through tens of thousands of thumbnails, or hunting across multiple drives trying to locate it. That's not a storage problem — it's a metadata problem, and it's completely fixable.  Metadata is the invisible layer of information attached to every photo you take, and when it's working for you, finding any image in a catalog of hundreds of thousands takes seconds. When it's not, every search is a gamble.

In this class, Jared Platt will show you exactly how to build a metadata system that makes your entire photo library searchable and retrievable on demand. You'll learn how keywords, star ratings, color labels, IPTC fields, Smart Collections, and GPS data work together inside Lightroom Classic and Lightroom Desktop — and more importantly, how to add that metadata quickly enough that you'll actually use it. Jared will also show you how to automate much of the process so your organizational system builds itself in the background while you focus on shooting and editing.

This class is designed for photographers who are already using any version of Lightroom but feel like their catalog is getting out of control. No prior experience with metadata is required — but by the end, you'll be using it like a pro.

Tools covered: Lightroom Classic, Lightroom Desktop, and select organizational plugins.


Next Level Importing
The most overlooked step in your workflow is the first one.

Most photographers treat importing as a necessary chore — click import, wait, move on. But the import process is where your entire workflow is either set up for success or quietly sabotaged. Every session you've spent hunting for files, re-doing adjustments, or scrambling to find a backup traces back to decisions — or missed decisions — made at import.  Done right, importing is where your photos get automatically organized, your first round of adjustments gets applied, your backups get triggered, your files get synced to your devices, and your culling process begins — before you've touched a single slider.

In this class, Jared Platt walks you through a complete, professional-grade import workflow from the ground up. You'll learn how to use import presets, automatic develop settings, file renaming conventions, folder structures, and backup triggers so that every session starts clean, organized, and already partially done. You'll also learn the most common import mistakes photographers make and exactly how to avoid them.

This class is appropriate for intermediate Lightroom users who feel like they're always playing catch-up in their workflow. If you've never given much thought to your import settings, expect to walk away and immediately change them.

Tools covered: Primarily Lightroom Classic, with import workflow coverage for Lightroom Desktop.


Traveling with Lightroom
Lighter kit, faster edits, better photos — your complete on-the-road workflow.

Traveling with a camera means traveling with a problem: the photos pile up fast, the editing time doesn't exist, the backup situation is sketchy, and by the time you get home you're staring at a week's worth of unprocessed images and wondering where to start. Meanwhile, the photos you meant to share while you were traveling are already old news.  It doesn't have to work that way.

In this class, Jared Platt lays out a complete travel photography workflow built around the entire Lightroom ecosystem — one that lets you ingest, cull, edit, back up, and share images every night on the road without it eating your whole evening. You'll learn how to structure your travel kit for a lightweight but fully functional mobile editing setup, how to use Lightroom's cloud sync to keep your files safe and accessible across devices in real time, and how to get edited, share-ready images out to clients or social media while you're still on location. You'll also learn how daily photo reviews on the road actually make you a better photographer — because processing what you shot today sharpens how you shoot tomorrow.

This class is suited for both enthusiast and professional photographers who travel with their camera regularly and want a workflow that keeps pace with the trip instead of waiting until they get home.

Tools covered: Lightroom Classic, Lightroom Desktop, Lightroom Mobile, and Lightroom Web.

Pro Color Grading in Lightroom: Cinematic Techniques

Discover the pro color grading techniques Jesús Ramirez uses in his own movie poster work, applied step by step in Lightroom. This beginner session covers the Color Grading panel, skin tone balancing, and building stylized cinematic looks from scratch.

In this class, you will learn to:

• Use the Color Grading panel to control shadows, midtones, and highlights independently.
• Build cinematic color looks inspired by movie poster work.
• Balance skin tones while applying a stylized color grade.
• Develop a consistent, repeatable color grading workflow in Lightroom.

Get Started with The Powerful Lightroom Web

Discover how to edit and share photos using Lightroom on the web, no software installation required. This beginner class covers essential editing tools, AI-powered shortcuts, and sharing features that work from any device.

In this class, you will learn to:

• Edit photos using Lightroom's core light and color tools directly in your browser.
• Use Adaptive Profiles to get a strong starting point with one click.
• Create targeted adjustments with AI masking for skies, landscapes, and portraits.
• Remove distractions like unwanted people.
• Share finished photos or albums.

• Removing Distractions (can also include when to use PS)
• Portrait Class Class
• Ways to Batch Edit Photos

From Phone to Film: Classic Black & White Film Magic in Lightroom Mobile

Skip the one‑click “desaturate” and dive back into real black and white film aesthetics on your mobile device. Learn how to expose for expressive monochrome, use Lightroom Mobile’s profiles, tone curves, and color channels like classic filters, and add grain and contrast to craft timeless film‑style images. Learn to see, shoot, and edit like a black and white film photographer—on your phone. We’ll cover pre‑visualizing in monochrome, leveraging Lightroom Mobile profiles and color filters for sky and skin control, local adjustments, and layering grain and texture for authentic film‑inspired results

Lightroom Mobile Essentials on iPhone & iPad edit anywhere
Learn how to build a complete editing workflow using Lightroom on your iPhone and iPad. From capture to finished file, we’ll cover organizing your images, essential Light and Color adjustments, presets, masking tools, and syncing with the desktop, so your best edits can happen right in your hand. Turn your iPhone and iPad into a modern darkroom - experiment with multiple looks, keep everything non‑destructive, and confidently share finished images straight from your device.

Edit As You Go: Mobile Lightroom Workflow for Travel Shooters

From markets and museums to mountains and skylines, learn how to handle the full variety of travel subjects with Lightroom Mobile. If your camera roll overflows every trip, this session is for you. We’ll build a practical, repeatable Lightroom Mobile workflow for travelers—culling on the plane, batch‑editing sets, using profiles, presets, and versions to explore different looks, and syncing favorites so your best trip images are always ready to share or print.

Do You Still Need Photoshop?

Lightroom has come a long way, and a lot of what used to require Photoshop can now be done without ever leaving it. In this class, we’ll look at where Lightroom is enough, where it’s not, and how to know the difference. Some of the key areas we’ll look at are:

• When Lightroom can handle all of your editing (and when it can’t)

• The few situations where Photoshop still makes a real difference

• How to keep your round-trip workflow simple without overcomplicating it

The Edit Room

Matt will be editing attendee-submitted Raw files.

Masking Magic: the Power of Intersect
Of all the masking operations in Lightroom Classic, Intersect is probably the least known, and yet it's the most powerful. It lets you make a precise selection within a selection, unlocking a level of creative control that most photographers walk right past every time they open the Masks panel.
Through practical, real-world examples across portraits, animals, landscapes and architecture, you will learn to apply light, colour and texture adjustments with a precision no single mask can match.

This class will permanently change the way you think about selective editing in Lightroom Classic.

Lightroom Classic vs. Lightroom: Which program is right for me?

These two programs have been developed side by side for years now, and they are equally powerful tools for editing your photos, but what sets them apart? There are several Adobe subscription plans that include both programs in them, but the interfaces and core workflows are different enough to warrant serious consideration before you make a decision. In this session we'll discuss the key features and functionalities of Lightroom and Lightroom Classic to help you decide which program is the right one for your needs. We'll also explore how they can be used together to get the best of both worlds. In this class you will learn:

- The core strengths each program has to offer

- The types of photography workflows each was designed to support

- The most important things you need to know before you get started with either one

- How to configure them to work together for added flexibility

Lightroom to Photoshop Roundtrip Workflow Basics

Come find out why Photoshop is still just as relevant today as it ever was! Even after all the amazing new features continually added to Lightroom and Lightroom Classic, there’s still a few places Photoshop (and maybe even the Camera Raw plug-in) is the right tool for the job. We’ll also explore round trip workflows from Lightroom and from Lightroom Classic, and even Photoshop and Lightroom on the iPad. If you’re paying for a subscription that includes Photoshop or considering it in the future, this class is for you. In this class you will learn:

- The key settings you'll want to configure

- The features and functionalities that Photoshop adds to your workflow

- The core workflow steps to send photos for editing to Photoshop and bring all your work back to Lightroom

- How the Camera Raw plug-in for Photoshop is still an essential tool to keep in mind

Help! My Catalog is a Mess!

Lightroom Classic provides you with the tools to organize, edit, and output your photo library, but some of those tools are not very intuitive. In this session we'll explore the core skills everyone needs to know stay in control of your photo library as it grows, including how to locate your catalog, set it as the default, and keep it backed up. You’ll see how easy it is to move and rename your catalog should the need arise. We’ll also explore the features and functions of the Folders panel, which is the key to managing your photo storage, and ensure you are in control every step of the way. We’ll wrap up the session with a look at the role of the import process has in getting you started on the right foot. In this class you'll learn:

- How to locate, rename, backup, and manage your catalog over time

- How to reconnect missing photos and folders to the catalog

- The proper (and safe) way to move photos between folders and drives

- How to rename folders and photos and keep the catalog up to date

Shoot. Import. Organise. Repeat.
Taking photos and editing them is not enough if you can’t find them. Creating structure and method will allow you to find your photos quickly, even without using AI. This class will show you how to set up Import so the process is the same every time, and you don’t have to think too hard about it once set up. Unique filenames, with descriptive text allows fast search, as does using good folder names. Understand when to use Folders and when Collections are more appropriate. Automate search using Smart Collections. Get yourself organised so you can shoot more, and worry less.

Bring on the Night: Editing the Night Sky
After the sun goes down; we live in a different world with different rules. High ISO is the order of the day and landscapes are often at f1.4 instead of f14. Learn to edit the wonders of the night like The Milky Way, Aurora, Comets and The Moon. Bring out colour and detail, but lose the noise, all in Lightroom Classic. 

Elevate your skills: Lightroom Tips and Tricks
Quick tricks and tips to increase your mastery of the Lightroom Ecosystem. Shortcuts, workflow hints, sharing, collaborating are the order of the day, with a good dose of masking tips and of course, AI to do your bidding.

• How to make the most of Assisted Culling
• Using Plug-ins with Lightroom
• Saving Photos for Web, print and social

Although there will be some discussion of the cloud-based and mobile versions of Lightroom, the majority of the classes will focus on Lightroom Classic. And for the most part, techniques shown in the cloud versions can be applied to Lightroom Classic and vice-versa.

With a free pass you get 48 hours of access to the classes. After the free viewing period ends, the classes are archived into our VIP Member Area, where VIP Members get lifetime access to watch the classes, along with exclusive bonuses such as additional videos, presets, templates and more.
Think of a free pass as an opprtunity to "try before you buy".

The event is completely virtual, so you can watch on any device from wherever you like! There is no password required to attend or log in to the free access.
Free pass holders will get a daily email with a link to that day's classes, while VIP Pass holders can log in to the VIP Member Area at any time to watch and re-watch the classes, and download the extras and bonuses.
To sign up for a free pass, click on the Get a Free Pass button and fill in the form (please make sure your email address is correct as that’s how you will receive the link to watch the classes). VIP Passes can be purchased by visiting the VIP Info page

No! Each day during the event, Free Pass holders receive an email with a link to that day's classes, with 48 hours to watch each session. You simply refresh the page each hour to see the latest class.
VIP Members can log in to their VIP area at any time to watch the classes.

Classes are pre-recorded and will be released each hour on the hour based on the Eastern Daylight Time zone. With a free pass, you have 48 hours to watch the classes, so for example, a class that's released on Monday at 9am EDT will be available to watch until Wednesday at 9am EDT. After that, the class is archived into the VIP Member Area.

The schedule page shows the release time of each class.

With a free pass, you have 48 hours to watch each class, so for example, a class that's released on Monday at 9am EDT will be available to watch until Wednesday at 9am EDT. After that, the class is archived into the VIP Member Area. There will be no replays or further opportunities for free pass holders after the 48-hour period. VIP Pass holders get lifetime access to watch (and re-watch) classes as often as they want.

With a Free Pass you have 48 hours of access to watch each class, but to get ongoing access to watch and re-watch the classes, we offer the optional VIP Pass. With the VIP Pass, you get lifetime access to watch all the class recordings, and exclusive bonuses such as class notes, additional videos, goodies from instructors and our VIP-only Help Desk during the event.
Just like in-person events, each with its own entrance fee, each Summit is a separate event with its own VIP Pass, with lifetime access to the classes from that event.

Although Adobe has given us their support and encouragement, the event itself is being organized and run by Dave Cross, in partnership with Matt Kloskowski.

Yes, our class videos offer auto-generated captions.

You can try our AI chat robot (icon at the bottom right of the page) to get answers to commonly asked questions. If that doesn't help, you can use the email address that the chat robot will give you for further assistance.