Lightroom and other questions

[t80tank]

Hello. My name is Chris, and I'm new to the forum, and had a coupole questions. I have a Canon EOS-10D. I primarily do nature and weather related photography. I go storm chasing so I try and do lightning, cloud, and storm photography. I used to shoot in medium JPEG format, but am wanting to make the switch to RAW so I can work on image processing and ehancements. I also recently acquired Adobe Phtoshop Lightroom. Here's my questions.

1) What are some techniques you use while doing image processing in Photoshop Lightroom?
2) When I took some pictures earlier in RAW mode, the pictures came out grainy when I opened them up in Lightroom. What are some things I can do to fix that?
3) What are some good inexpensive programs that I can use for image processing?

I'll probably think of some more in time. Thank you.  

[sojournerphoto]

Hello. My name is Chris, and I'm new to the forum, and had a coupole questions. I have a Canon EOS-10D. I primarily do nature and weather related photography. I go storm chasing so I try and do lightning, cloud, and storm photography. I used to shoot in medium JPEG format, but am wanting to make the switch to RAW so I can work on image processing and ehancements. I also recently acquired Adobe Phtoshop Lightroom. Here's my questions.

1) What are some techniques you use while doing image processing in Photoshop Lightroom?
2) When I took some pictures earlier in RAW mode, the pictures came out grainy when I opened them up in Lightroom. What are some things I can do to fix that?
3) What are some good inexpensive programs that I can use for image processing?

I'll probably think of some more in time. Thank you. 
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=177134\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

LR's good, CS3 is a great addition and elements 6 seems pretty accomplished, butno softproofing...

[NikoJorj]

1) What are some techniques you use while doing image processing in Photoshop Lightroom? [{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Play and tinker with the sliders until you are pleased with the results ;o))). You have real-time feedback and can go back in history (develop module, left panel) if you screwed things up.
To elaborate, you can RTFM - I found it very sound, and well adapted to my learning preferences.
For a more visual media, check the [a href=\"http://www.luminous-landscape.com/videos/LR-V1.shtml]LR video tutorial[/url] eg.

2) When I took some pictures earlier in RAW mode, the pictures came out grainy when I opened them up in Lightroom. What are some things I can do to fix that?
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=177134\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

For noise, I got a rebel/300d which has essentially the same sensor, and I find that a moderate amount of chroma noise reduction (between 10 and 30 - no luminance noise) and sharpening (I use amount 60, radius 0.8, detail 25 and mask 0 as my 100ISO default capture sharpening) is well appropriate for low ISO pictures, when contrast or exposure is pushed (eg heavy shadow recovery with FillLight).
For higher ISO, push the chroma NR a bit further, add a bit of luminance NR (10-20 range?), don't sharpen too much (beware of the detail slider, it will also make the noise more visible) and live with the remaining amount of noise rather than smoothing out all the textures and details (but it's essentially a matter of taste).