I can't quite tell from the names of the Perks, but are there specific paths you would take if you're only interested in forging/improving one type of armor? I'm thinking of making a sword/shield Redguard who wears Light Armor, so is there a "path" for Light Armor in the Smithing tree, sort of like the different paths for swords, axes, dual-wielding, etc. in the weapon trees?

Thanks.

Yes. All of the light armor is on the left-hand path. Almost all of the heavy armor is on the right-hand path. They meet up at the top, so both can access the best weapons (dragonbone).

yes light armors start with elven and go up to advance forging,glass and heavy will start with dwarven,orc,ebony and deadric.They both meet up to dragon forging which includes both light AND heavy with the strongest weapons in the game.

There are two trees: Left is light, right is heavy. Dragon has both. Weapons are proportional to each other in damage and weight, but heavy deals more damage; until you get to Dragon which has the best weapons, then they meet up and it doesn't matter. Going light saves you perks and out-perform heavy in every way except maybe shields.

You can technically cap light armor (567 armor rating = 80% damage reduction) when you get to glass if you pay attention to Enchanting, you can get up to 100% (116% for Vampires with Necromage) maximum Smithing bonus. But Glass armor looks hideous; you can cap using Dawnguard Armor, but it's very close.

in all ways if you like a specific armor you can get it to max armor no matter if its scale or iron with right ammounts of enchanting,personly i pefer deadric since my main im goin for a battlle mage who specs in fire

Thanks! I was thinking it was divided that way, but didn't know for sure even after reading the Smithing page on the wiki.

One downside of light armor is that it's a bit harder to level up, dwarven is nice because all the scrap metal you can melt down and make bows of. With light you better off making leather armor and improve it together with jevelery until you can make steel plate,

actuly i lvled up smithing is with making jewerly since its mostly based on the worth of the item,like say making a flawless diamond in a gold neckless is goign to fill your ball up alot since its worth alot

Actually, "Scrap Metal" is one Dwemer item that can't be made into ingots. Ironically.

Dat badass dwemer crossbow and dem dwemer bolts...

which is overpowerd as hell

Are Dragon weapons introduced in DG? Because, to my knowledge, they ain't in vanilla (armor only).

Yeah DG only. So are crossbows