I've been using Lightroom for a couple of years now. I was even using it before I got into photography, but at the time I didn't know the power that this software had. It's pretty amazing to be able to take an extremely overexposed, or underexposed, photo and bring it back to life. I'm not going to go too much into the technical side of this software because, to be honest, I want this blog to be more about how you should approach your editing software.
When I first dove into editing my RAW files, which I'll go more in detail in a later blog, I had absolutely zero idea how I should approach it. In a way, I knew what all of the sliders did, but since I hadn't developed a style yet most of my edits were all over the place. Some of my pictures were too sharp or too soft. Some pictures were extremely over saturated or I had taken so much color out that it almost looked grey. To say the least, the edits were not great at all. As I kept experimenting with the software I started developing a style and began to edit a certain way. I noticed that I watched so many videos and looked at so many pictures that I began to take small pieces of advice from each of these artists and started developing my own editing style. This is my advice to anyone reading who's stuck when they get to editing. Go online and study how different photographers edit their work. Watch different tutorials and take notes on different techniques people use. I promise that not a single one will be the same. Join online photography groups, and notice how much opinions will differ on a single picture. There really is no secret to editing, and after practicing you will start to notice what you like and how you want your pictures to look. It's very easy to be overwhelmed by the software, but if you practice enough you will feel very accomplished when you get your image to look exactly the way you want it to look.
Just one more piece of advice before I finish this. SAVE YOUR IMAGES and keep going back to them so you can track your progress!