Today I passed the exam in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom for the Adobe Certified Expert program. I share my personal experience and thoughts for other people interested in the certification. Besides the study of help and use of the software, I recommend ExamAids.
About Adobe Photoshop Lightroom ACE Exam
For who has never heard about the Adobe Certified Expert (ACE) certifications, plenty of information can be found in the dedicated section on the Adobe site. For sample questions and a quick overview on the specific exam for Lightroom, there is an handy introductory guide in PDF.
For a discussion about the reasons for getting certified, there’s a quite commented post on Photoshop Lightroom Killer Tips. I only add that I worked with various training centers and schools that gave good attention to the “piece of paper”.
How did I prepare for the Adobe Certified Expert exam?
I went back to Lightroom 1.0, I read the whole help once and I challenged myself a few times with an ExamAid. A couple of days were enough for everything, but I guess that the previous intense and passionate use of Lightroom has helped me a lot. Questions had their difficulties, but I found the Adobe Photoshop Lightroom ACE Exam more reachable then the one in Photoshop CS3.
I wasn’t sure about the exact 1.x minor release to concentrate on. I had a fresher memory of Lightroom 1.4, so I just prepared myself with Lightroom 1.0. Probably it wasn’t necessary: I’m sure that a couple of questions were about features introduced in LR 1.1 or 1.2. This is the case of “the painter”, that replaced the “keyword stamper” in LR 1.1.
I confirm that reading the software help is an absolute must for any ACE exam: questions are pretty coherent and aligned with it. It’s advisable to pay attention on features that you don’t usually use in your daily workflow. In my case it was the whole slideshow module.
I took advantage of the Adobe Photoshop Lightroom ACE Exam Aid, which was effectively propaedeutic. Basically it gives a you a good idea of the exam structure/topics and previews possible tricks in questions, like “which of the following options is NOT…” I would have probably passed the exam even without the aid, but I felt more secure with an earlier test. My notebook was not in love with its Java requirement: some restarts solved the issue. Recommended even if a bit pricey.
Few curious things learned while preparing the ACE exam
In my daily work in Photoshop I’ve been preferring TIFF files over PSD since several years ago and I kept this habit even with Lightroom integration. I realized only through Lightroom help that it’s recommended also by Adobe itself: “The TIFF format provides greater compression and industry compatibility than Photoshop format (PSD), and is the recommended format for exchanging files between Lightroom and Photoshop.”
I thought that differences between PC and Mac versions were inexistent, actually there are a couple of “sweeties” more on Mac. One is the spell checker (Edit > Spelling > Check Spelling). Another is a shortcut for special characters (In the Library module, Edit > Special Characters). Well, for Windows users not in love with the “Character map”, there is a web alternative. Last one for slideshow: you can choose music from iTunes playlists only on Mac.
I remember the first time that I played with Lightroom: I felt like a pioneer while experimenting with split toning for recreating a cross processed look. Besides the fact that probably many others has done it before me, I just faced with the help of Lightroom 1.0 talking about split toning sliders: “You can also apply special effects, such as a cross-processed look, to a color photo.“
English blog
October 1st, 2008 at 11:35 pm
Giovanni, congratulations on passing the Lightroom ACE exam! Thanks for the kind words about our exam aid. We’re pleased to hear it played some small part in your preparation.
You are absolutely right to say you must read the help file to prepare yourself. We spent a considerable amount of time pouring over it and added hyperlinks at the end of each supplement answer to the relevant pages to make it easier for you.
If you study the help file and spend time using the application, you *should* pass the exam easily. However, that’s not the experience for most people. Passing the exam is a skill in itself and not everyone has it.
What the exam aids do, any exam aid, not just ours, is not only plug any holes in your knowledge as you noted but to also put you in the right frame of mind (think of it like an athlete limbering up before a race).
We have lots of unsolicited testimonials from people who have been using, for example, Photoshop for ten/eleven years on almost a daily basis but found they failed the exam on their first try. However, they passed after preparing with our exam aid.
October 2nd, 2008 at 3:29 am
@Examaids
thank you for your comment and for having created the aid. Yes studying the help and using the software should be enough: I passed my first certification just in this way, but I didn’t score highly (a couple of nights didn’t give me a solid preparation).
I discovered examaids with the Photoshop CS2 Exam Aid, that helped me to pass the Photoshop certification at first try and with a pretty score. I cannot say what would have happened without the aid, but I believe it was appreciably advantageous.
Even if you are really motivated it’s not easy to keep yourself concentrated in the tough path of studying the whole help of a major application like Photoshop. A photographer could have hard times with web and video features, a video guy with print options and so on.
Photoshop CS3 Extended broadened even more the range with 3D, video and scientific tools. I think that examaid is becoming more and more a complementary training tool. It pinpoints and quantifies your lacunae, showing a daily feedback on your preparation status.
I didn’t buy the Adobe Photoshop CS3 ACE Exam Aid because I updated my certification with the on-line exam. The price for the recertification is the same for the exam aid: it makes more sense to keep the money in case a second attempt is required.
This is to say that I love you guys at Examaids, but I will love you even more if you introduce an upgrade price for returning customers. Pretty welcome would be also Adobe Air instead of Java.
October 6th, 2008 at 5:46 pm
Congratulations on earning your ACE!!!!!!!!!!
October 6th, 2008 at 7:10 pm
thank you very much Brian!
October 14th, 2008 at 7:48 am
Congrats on the ACE, Giovanni – I’m studying for mine (using the same Examaid you did) and am already feeling confident. Just passed the CS3 ACE, and it did seem a lot harder than the mock exams so far for LR. Of course, I didn’t use the Examaid… learned my lesson after failing the first time!
November 27th, 2008 at 8:25 pm
I hope the Examaid helps me. I am trying for the first time and am taking your advice.
December 13th, 2008 at 12:47 am
The PSD format is only needed when storing layers, otherwise TIFFs really are the way to go.
Congrats on the certification.
December 13th, 2008 at 3:12 am
@Alan & PhotoRIP
thanks and good luck!
@Michael
TIFF files preserve almost all the very same things of PSD ones, from layers to adjustment layers, from metadata to smart objects, but they adds the loss-less compression. Try and be surprised! I use PSD files only when I need to import things in After Effects or Flash.