After months of polling my readers and social media pages… after weeks and weeks of recording videos… and after not enough hours of sleep, my brand new Ultimate Lightroom Course is finally here.

I wrote about the course a few times here on the blog, and thousands of you signed up to stay tuned for updates. A bunch of you have already bought the course, but I wanted to make it official and post it here. As of Thursday, September 22nd, the course is live. You can find more about it right here. The important part to know is that I have special “launch week” pricing that ends tomorrow (Tuesday Sept. 27th) at midnight. So if you’re going to pull the trigger, do it soon. (There’s an FAQ below that has some info on the specials).

Note: I do know that some people had download issues during the server problems described below. If that was you: 1) You should have already received new download links and, 2) If you have any issues or problems, please use the Contact Support page here. It’s your fastest way to get help since we have people checking the support email inbox constantly. 

Wasn’t Sept 22nd Last Thursday?

Ah! That’s very perceptive of you. Yes, it was last Thursday. And you’d think, with a brand new course, that I’d post all about it right here on my blog. Well… I wanted to. But I actually couldn’t get to my blog for two days after I launched it.

Have you ever heard the Mike Tyson quote: “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face”

When I launched the Ultimate Lightroom course on Thursday, my wife Diana and I had a solid plan. Months ago, to get ready, we picked the best web hosting company money can buy. We picked the best, and most reliable, content delivery service out there. And guess what…

We got punched in the face.

About 2 hours after we sent out the launch email, my friends started texting me that the site was down. After spending hours and hours on the phone and trying to figure out what happened, the web hosting company actually owned up to it as a “hardware failure” on their end (I pasted the email below).

As you can imagine, this is a learning experience. We never planned for someone else’s server to crash. The internet figuratively punched us in the face, and all of our plans went down the drain 🙂

That’s the Bad News Right?

Well, kinda. If that wasn’t bad enough, our internet service provider blocked the IP address of my website, to my office (I guess with so much going on, they thought something suspicious was happening). So even after the site was up, I couldn’t even get to it to respond to people who were having problems. Imagine being on the phone telling the tech support the site is down, and them telling me it’s up. We eventually had to go to Starbucks Wifi to figure this out. Fun times!

Is That All the Bad News?

Yes, that’s the worse of it. It’s all good news from here on out. Once everything settled, the website was running smooth, I was receiving huge amounts of “love” emails from everyone that was totally digging the new course.

How to Find Out More

I can tell you all about the course here, but honestly, the best place to go is the course home page at mattk.com/lightroom. There’s a video on the home page that tells you all about it. It’s got a list of what you’ll learn, the special pricing (which runs out tomorrow), and a lot of other info.

Frequently Asked Questions

I will leave you with the top 5 big questions I’ve been getting though.

Big Question #1: What Skill Level is This Course For?
If I had to put a label on the ideal person, I’d say Beginner to Intermediate. Maybe you’ve installed it, launched it, but not much more – and it’s sat on your computer since. Maybe you’ve tried multiple versions of the free trial, but never really understood how to get your photos imported. But the course is also great for someone who understands how to make their way around, but needs some training on how to really take advantage of everything Lightroom has to offer.

Big Question #2: Do You Cover Sharpening and Noise Reduction?
Absolutely! I cover this area more than I’ve ever covered it before. Rather than just do 1 video when I’m talking about the Develop module. I broke this out in to its own mini-course. It’s got 7 videos on sharpening and noise reduction, so you can learn the entire sharpening workflow.

Big Question #3: How Is This Course Different From Your Other Lightroom Training?
I thought this was a great question because a lot of people I talk to today have followed my training for years. First, I asked my audience for what they wanted to know most and everyone said “catalogs, importing, organizing and backup“. So I included huge sections in the course on just this part (more than I’ve ever included before). Next, I’ve never done such a complete course on Printing. I turned the video camera on and recorded a start-to-finish video of me actually printing the photo and the entire workflow – even what to do if the print doesn’t match (with live photo examples). Finally, I’ve refined my presentation a lot in the past few years. I’ve learned new ways to explain things better. Sure, there’s really no different way to explain the Exposure slider. But, there are a lot of other places where I’ve learned new techniques to help get the point across.

Big Question #4: What’s the Big Deal About The “Office Hours” Special You Keep Mentioning?
The “office hours” are a launch week only special. I wanted to make learning more personal. I thought the office hours concept, of having a place to ask questions, put some of the responsibility back on me. Part of making this work, will be for me to push information to you. You’ll get emails with sign-up links, emails with places to ask questions ahead of time, and emails with the actual video download in case you missed it, or want something to refer back to. That way, I’m hoping it’ll be easy for you to stay engaged in learning Lightroom, and keep yourself moving along.

Big Question #5: So Why Did You Really Create this Course?
I did this course because I feel that the way most people teach Lightroom is wrong. I know it’s a big statement, and I wrote more about it here.

Big Question #5.5: Why Buy Before Tuesday? Won’t You Be Offering the Course After That?
(yes, I snuck another one in here)
Most definitely! This course isn’t just a one-time offer. It’ll go in my store after Tuesday, and be available for purchase. But a few things will change:

• For starters, the price will go up significantly. Right now, each price is up to 50% off.
• The bonus office hours and top 10 videos I’ll be doing each week (for 6 weeks) go away.
• I won’t be offering free course updates for 6 months anymore

So if the price jump isn’t enough to grab you, hopefully the other stuff will 🙂

Thank You!

Thanks so much for all of your support, ideas and kind words. I’ve also heard from a bunch of you that told me that you wouldn’t be buying the course because you’ve already learned Lightroom from other courses. That would normally disappoint me, but everyone who wrote that said those other courses were mine. So in my book, that’s a win and I’ll take it.

Have a good one!

Note: I do know that some people had download issues during the server problems described below. If that was you: 1) You should have already received new download links and, 2) If you have any issues or problems, please use the Contact Support page here. It’s your fastest way to get help since we have people checking the support email inbox constantly.