dallaspic.jpg

First, I want to thank everybody who came out yesterday to help launch my new Lightroom 2 Tour in Dallas (photo above from yesterday’s event; by Jeff Leimbach). Anytime you launch something of this scale, it makes you hold your breath a little, but we had a really great day, and the people in Dallas were incredibly gracious, polite, and just plain fun to spend the day with.

They were especially patient when, for some reason, my seasonal allergies kicked in big time right before lunch and I nearly blew out the overhead speakers a few times with coughs and sneezes that came on before I could hit the mute button.

Despite all that, the real challenge of the day was fitting all the new Lightroom 2 stuff in to a full-day that was already packed to the gills (we actually ended the day nearly 20 minutes late, which means I’ll be tweaking a few things for Orlando tomorrow to bring us in for a landing closer to “on time”).

I did a quick show of hands to see how many people were already using Lightroom 2; how many were still on Lightroom 1, and how many didn’t have Lightroom at all, but were there to see if this was their workflow of the future. Only around 40% of the nearly 500 photographers on hand yesterday actually had Lightroom 2, but by the end of the day, people were lining up to tell me they were going straight home to upgrade (some ordered it online right during the day). The lightbulb really went on for a lot of people yesterday (which I totally dig), and for a lot of folks it was the first time they had seen Photoshop CS4 (I dedicated nearly an entire class to using Lightroom 2 and CS4 together).

We’ll be back in Dallas in early December with Ben Willmore’s “Photoshop CS4 for Photographers” Tour, and I can tell you this; Ben is going to love the friendly hospitality of the folks in Texas. Thank you all so much for your support; for coming out and spending the day with me, and I hope what you learned yesterday helps you in your work, and fun, in Lightroom 2. Now onto Orlando!