an edited picture) that you can share with others. When you are finished, your original image filesВ still remain, but you have a new creation (i.e. Lightroom doesnвЂ™t do anything to your ingredients (your original files), but instead saves the instructions for transforming your supplies into actual finished products (in this case output edited images), just like recipes for your photos. The best analogy I can think of is that of a kitchen: your original pictures are kind of like the raw ingredients in your cupboards, and the Lightroom Catalog is like a recipe book. Lightroom stores a record of all the changes you want to make to your images in a separate file called the Catalog, which is stored independent from your pictures. The Lightroom catalog is like a recipe book When you are finished with your editing you exportВ (or save as) a final image from Lightroom (again leaving the original file completely un-touched) and voilГЎ, you now have a second, much brighter photo, to print or share with others. Instead Lightroom, is a non-destructive editing program, that allowsВ you make changes to a preview or thumbnail version of the picture, which means you canВ see what the final image will look like after you make it brighter. Lightroom doesnвЂ™t touch the original image! It doesnвЂ™t move it, copy it, rename it, or change it in any way. Instead, the program works by looking at pictures you have stored on your computer, and allows you to create instructions for how you want to change them.ДЇor example, letвЂ™s say you have a photo of a squirrelВ thatвЂ™s a bit dark so you want to make it brighter. The catch, though, is that it doesnвЂ™t really edit your images, orВ actually manage anything either. In a nutshell, Lightroom is a program that can manage and edit your images. ItвЂ™s designed to help you through a few basic steps from opening up Lightroom for the first time, making two basic edits, and exporting (saving) a final version of your picture. I wrote this BeginnerвЂ™s Guide to Lightroom to help you, and I wish I would have had something like this when I first got started. If you are new to Lightroom and donвЂ™t know where to start, or have thought about using it but feel overwhelmed, then please know I feel your pain, and know where youвЂ™re coming from. At first I found it difficult to use and not really intuitive, but I soon found my way around and I was a Lightroom convert. But in the spring of 2014, when it was announced that Apple was no longer supporting Aperture, I decided to make the leap to Lightroom. I had tried Lightroom in the past, but always preferred using AppleвЂ™s Aperture photo editing program.