i am trying to get the hang of this thing (and i'm struggling)

any idea why...

1 - i have to click on an image to be able to see a preview? all i see are squares with an '!' icon until i do. i'm in the library and when i import, all i see are squares until li click on the image.

2- why are my skin tones looking so orange? when i white balance, the skin tones are going orange.

any help greatly appreciated.

yikes!!! Wish I could help. Actually...I can pray for you.

Laurie

The"!" means the file has been moved. If you imported raws and exported jpgs then deleted the raws or moved the Raw folder you need to find it to load the full images in. LR keeps the previews in the system but you can't work on the image until you find the folder.

As far as the White balance check and see you are auto importing on a setting or something. Genereally high contrast with a warm WB will give orangey skin tones. Check your sliders. Clicking Auto is a generally a good start to look at the image.

If you haven't already you should download and try the new camera specific color profiles for Lightroom 2 from here. Skin tones have always been an issue in Lightroom and these new camera specific profiles address a lot of the issues with reds/oranges.

If the skin tones are still not 'correct' I'd get stuck into the HSL tab and play with the orange & red saturation slider..

Good luck!

Alan

these are jpgs and i've never imported them before.
i have to click the file to see it.

hmmmm...

any other ideas?

thanks for the skin tone suggestions.

Anything in LR has to be imported. I might be more confused than you unless you had card in the computer and it came up as an autoimport.

ugh!!!!
this is so frustrating!

is there something in the preferences i'm missing?

Hi Robin,
I am not sure your problem, but the ! means that LR can't find your file. Start over with a group of images, doing this...

1. Download your card to a folder in your computer.
2. Import the images into LR, keeping them in the same folder. (Make sure you do this option in the import dialog box.)
3. LR just looks at that folder now.... you can not change the name of the images or the folder outside of LR, or move the files outside of LR, or LR will not know where the files are. The files are not actually stored in LR, but rather LR is just told where to find them. If changes are made, LR will still try to look in the same place, and it doesn't exist any more.

Hopefully you did not import them off the card and leave the files on the card, or they really aren't in your computer. If you did that, you were just telling LR to look at your card. You need them in your computer first, then you tell LR where to find them.

4. Now, in the Library mode, you can view the images as thumbnails in a grid, or as one large, or compare or survey different images. These are the little icons along the top of the bottom strip.
5. When you click on the develop tab, you get one image in the middle. The image on the upper left corner shows a preivew of the image if you want to see it with a certain preset.

Does this help at all???

I am no help here other than to say -- stay with it. LIGHTROOM ROCKS!!!!!

I had this happen once when my wife renamed a folder after I had imported the images into Lightroom. Anytime you rename a folder or any of the folders in the path to that folder Lightroom looses the path to the images.

Have you tried right mouse clicking on the folder and tried the find missing folder option? Maybe something happened and it lost the folder path to the images.

Just thought of that and wanted to try and help,

How are you using the white balance sounds like your not clicking on a neutral tone Robin. Are clicking on white when this happens? Do you shoot Nikon by any chance?