Lightroom Tuesday
Welcome to Lightroom
Tuesday.
This weekly post is aptly named, as each Tuesday I
gather together the best presets, tips, tricks,
tutorials from the Lightroom-o-sphere and post them
for you, my cherished readers.
- I don’t quite get photowalking. A few years ago, some fellas and I would meetup (part of a street shooters gang) in Seattle and have lunch. Then the goal was to walk around together and shoot. It never worked. We’d all get in some zone and completely ignore each other as we worked the streets. I’m sure there is some great stuff you can get from it, but it wasn’t my cup of tea. Speaking of such, if you’re in SEA/SJ/SF or in Minneapolis, you can go photowalking with members of the LR team. More here...
- Here is an interesting take on sharing a catalog between a home machine and a laptop. Personally, I just export the files I want to take somewhere and then reimport them when I get back. Works fine using import/export.
- Here is a Adjustment Brush tutorial from Layers Magazine.
- Here is a set of Antique presets for Lightroom.
- Here is how to use the Gradient Filter adjustment to recover a sky you blew out (bad you!)
- Hate how LIghtroom shows the contents of all subfolders? You should start a club for the 8 of you. You can even be president. But seriously, if it bugs you, you can stop it from doing that via this tip here...
- David DuChemin has a nice write up on the subject of backups.
- Turn day into night. Great for all you vampires who get hives looking at daylight photos. And we know you’re out there - they keep writing books about you that I find strewn about my home.
- Want to resize your picture? Here is a nice DPS tutorial on how to do that.
- The latest Adobe specials, courtesey of Camera Deals.
- Scott Kelby covers how to get faster jpg exports from Lightroom.
- XEquals reminds us that keyboard shortcuts are cool.
- A new plugin that lets you open a Raw file directly somewhere else (i.e. NIkon or Canon’s Raw software). Sound interesting? Fly your freak flag, my friend.
- There was a discussion a few weeks ago about the new DNG spec, and it looks like Tom Hogarty has chimed in to correct a few issues with the aforementioned article.
- As many of you know, I’m a big advocate of keeping your file *in* the Raw pipeline. i.e. not exporting it to a tiff and getting all destructive on those wonderful pixels. Lightroom 2 really beefed up the toolset (i.e. adjustment brushes) to minimize the need for external editors. That said, sometimes its necessary. Or you’re just itching to do it. Here is a nice tutorial on how to use Nik’s Silver Effect Pro in your workflow.
- HDR. Love it or hate it. Here are some tutorials for the former. For the rest, just move on. And stay off Flickr, you’re eyes will bleed.
- Want to get all Raph Gibson on your photos? Here is a rundown on some presets for you street photogs. Don’t know who Ralph Gibson is? You’re dead to me.
- Brandon has a nice summary rundown of all the goodness from June on Xequals.
- Preset Heaven has some great presets online. Check this one. And this one.
- LRB Portfolio (a gallery creator web plugin for Lightroom) was updated recently.
Not Lightroom related, but interesting
- For Blurb users, I noted that you can now upload PDF’s to Blurb directly. Why you ask? This lets you design where you want (InDesign!) and then get a book for your efforts. Nice. Yes, I’m still down on Blurb.
Well that is it for this week. Have a great Tuesday.
Olys Dance Slideshow
Yesterday I posted a few black and whites from the show, so here is a larger slideshow (with the appropriate music) of just under 200 images from the weekend.
To participants and dancers at Olys, these will be available for purchase shortly - so watch Oly’s website next week for the gallery links.
Have a great weekend everyone...
Oh Ballroom!
I was on hand to record it for posterity, which came out to over 100 GB of images. I’m still hard at work on editing the results, but here are a few that I really liked...
To be completely honest,
you should listen to this while
looking at the pictures. And yes, I’ll be doing a
slideshow with music as soon as these pictures are
all ready.
Its been a busy week.
Lots going on and I’ve got to prep for a road trip
next week.
Have a great Thursday.
Lightroom Tuesday Addendum!
Go get it!
http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/detail.jsp?ftpID=4507
Lightroom Tuesday
Welcome to Lightroom
Tuesday.
This weekly post is aptly named, as each Tuesday I
gather together the best presets, tips, tricks,
tutorials from the Lightroom-o-sphere and post them
for you, my cherished readers.
- Jeff Friedl has released an interesting new plugin that purports to help manage video in Lightroom. Definitely have a read on his description page as there are some caveats. And yes, he does ask for an icon badge in a not-so veiled way from yours truly (although my design compatriot Phil is the true icon genius of our erstwhile team). Video in Lightroom is an interesting enigma for both the team and its users, and I can’t help but wonder how the recent video landscape changes (5D MKII, D90) are making things even more interesting for future development (of which I have little insight now). This plug-in might spur the debate some.
- Adorama is running a promotion that gives you $50 back if you buy Lightroom 2 and a DSLR (obviously from them).
- Lightroom’s backup feature is a bit wanting. This has come up here before, and the team knows about it. One gotcha is that the Backup that does exist in the application today only backs up the Catalog - you’ll need to backup all the photos yourself. The best way to do this is a RAID or Drobo device - just plug it in and save yourself the hassles of a Chron type app. I saw one crazy article on the web this week recommending that you backup with the export dialog, which is kinda silly if you ask me. If you don’t have an array, just buy ChronoSync and be done with it. And save for a Drobo.
- Auto Advance - a cool feature I had to be told about after complaining on Twitter about the CapsLock-itis I was suffering from. Speeds up your editing prowess. Rawwwr.
- Wonderland Presets are now priced less - at $40 or so. I’ve downloaded their samples, but have yet to actually pay for presets. Shrug. Never saw the need, but maybe this is yoru cup-o-tea.
- 6 great Adjustment Brush tutorials for Lightroom 2. The shining feature of LR 2! w00t. Saves me more time by spending less in Photoshop - and its still true almost a year after we released it.
- Nik Software last week announced that all their plugins are now Lightroom capable. You’ll still need a trip to tiff land, nixing (NIking?) them from my workflow. I just don’t like to go outside the Raw world and get all destructive on my images. A 24 MB 5D2 file chews on enough space itself, without resorting to a 150 MB tiff file. YMMV.
- An interview with Jerry
Couvoisier over at the UK’s Photoshop Daily.
It even says he’s a guru, so get thee hence to
his Ashram of enlightenment
- Ansel Adams was a great photographer. Personally, I’m not so interested in landscape photography - and I have nothing more than a passing fancy for Adam’s work. However, he defined what most of us today consider the “perfect silver print” and heavens knows that many spent hours surrounded by chemicals looking to dupe his look. Apparently people are looking for a shortcut today to Adams bliss. Read the comments. Funny.
- Flickr preset extractor. ha ha. Then the world asplode. Personally, I saw this as lazy, shrugged and went to Flickr and made sure I stripped metadata from my files on export. Hey, this kinda relates to the previous item. Lots of controversy. What would we do without it? Take pictures?
- I became important last week. Sweet.
- A few numbers quantifying Lightroom’s speed. A friend of mine was doing something similar with a shared Google spreadsheet - I should look into that.
- Lightroom Collections are “teh bomb”. Learn them. Use them courtesey of lightroomsecrets.com
- Victoria Brampton points to the flurry of plugin development recently. Add in Jeff’s work above and yeah, its an interesting world.
Not Lightroom related, but interesting
- Video DSLRs vs. Camcorders. Let the battle begin!
- Leica’s newest offering is almost here.
- Kinda cool camera strap for those of us shooting multiple cameras. teh awesome Candice! Gotta get me some of that dual camera strappy action. Sure woulda helped this past weekend shooting 15 hours of ballroom dance. Goodbye banging cameras.
- Yesterday’s sMUGS were all humming. Seattle, SF and Mountain View. Lots of great people getting together to chat about photography and build a community of peers. Go team!
Dress Rehearsal
Lighting a Dance Studio
I’m shooting a ballroom dance competition and show at Olly’s Dance in Everett this weekend. It’s a nice space, but they really love low, dramatic light. Pity the poor photographer trying to make pictures.
In the past, I’ve just gone with on-camera flash (bounced) and high ISOs. And I wasn’t overly happy with the results, frankly.
So last night, I went up to try a few things during a rehearsal. My Canon 5DMKII has admirable low light capabilities, but I wanted to try lighting it like sports shooters often do with cave-like gyms. So off I went, ready to add a bit of light up high and see what happens.
I ended up putting a couple of Alien Bee mono-lights in the front two corners of the studio on light stands. I could have gone with two Canon speedlights for off camera TTL flash (courtesy of the Pocketwizards). It would worked just fine, but the recycle time isn’t as good as the Alien Bees, and they run on AA batteries. And I’d probably melt them from rapid-fire shooting. I’m completely serious.
They were set to shoot up and bounce off the ceiling and were triggered by PocketWizard Mini/Flex units.
At first I tried adding a kiss of frontal light with an on-camera flash unit (also bounced off the roof) but I ended up removing it - I was getting some inconsistency with the mono-lights with the speedlight in the hot shoe. I think the Pocket Wizards were trying to get all ETTL on me. I’m still new to these Flex/Mini units, so I’m still learning all the nutty things they can do.
So I just shot with the two mono-lights up about 10 feet pointed up with the standard reflectors.
I metered the scene and ended up at ISO 800 f4 and 1/200th a second. Good enough.
The light was surprisingly even across the floor and certainly gave me much better lighting than I had previously just using on-camera flash or just available light. Now I have to figure out how to mount them up high without stands - they’ll get knocked over by spectators at the show.
Going to mount them on a 1 foot wide ledge up 11 ft. Clamp ‘em, sand bag ‘em, done. W00t.
Talk about drama. And not
the lights.
Those ballroom dancers master drama for lunch and
then bring an extra helping for dinner. Bam! Pow!
There you go!
Various Photos
Dance Wednesday
Dance is a hard thing to shoot. Poor light. Fast moving subjects. Lots of background distraction. I’ve been doing it for years, and have found it to be among the hardest things to get right.
So throwing in a fixed aperture lens (f8 I believe) in this environment was going to be interesting.
Here are a few favorites...
Have a great Wednesday.
Lightroom Tuesday
Welcome to Lightroom
Tuesday.
This weekly post is aptly named, as each Tuesday I
gather together the best presets, tips, tricks,
tutorials from the Lightroom-o-sphere and post them
for you, meus queridos...
- Tim Armes, the guy behind LR/Mogrify just released a plugin that lets you export your photos *and* preserve the existing folder hierarchy at the same time. Very cool.
- Sean McCormack released two plugins that speed the whole “Look I’m on twitter” front. Export your photos directly to your twitter account - LR2TweetPhoto and LR2Twitpic.
- Speaking of Sean, here are two other posts of interest: a) the difference between web galleries and web templates and b) Lightroom timelapse.
- DPS has a great article about adding in a lightsource in Lightroom with the graduated filter tool. Very cool. Brandon @ the X= blog uses this technique in a few of his presets.
- Need a good Lightroom book. TheLightroomLab.com has a quick overview (plus links to reviews) of several good LR books. I concur with his suggestions: Seth’s book rocks. As does Martins.
- Speaking of books, Nat Coalson sent me a review copy of his latest Lightroom book (Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2: Streamlining your digital photography process) this week. I hope to have a look at it and a short review next week.
- Lightroom catalog backup - very important as I lost a catalog once and it suuuuuucked. First tip: save everything to XMP and all you’ll lose is your collections and flags (which sucks, but the dev settings are all there). Here is an article discussing catalog backups. He reiterates my complaints with the current backup methodology in LR.
- Gavin Seim released a goodies pack for Lightroom/Photoshop. If you were needing a kick in the saturation pants, this might do it.
- How many photos in a catalog? I think that the answer varies by person, their digital hygiene and their computer. Here is a good discussion at foto-biz.com
- Speaking of saturation. Need some Velvia love? Don’t
know what Velvia is? You’re dead to me
- Top 10 most popular Lightroom
Tweets of the week? I don’t think so. She’s
missing *the* tweet of the week for Ligtroom
geeks Help this young lady out...
- A basic “getting to know you” video tutorial of Lightroom 2. Presented by Eric Hamilton at the SparksArts Fesitival in SLC, UT. Don’t miss parts 2 and 3.
- The print *is* the photograph. Well that used to be the refrain. So here are some great tips for printing in Lightroom from Layers Magazine.
Some non-Lightroom stuff you should know:
- Hands on with the new Olympus E-P1. Very sweet camera.
- Exploring my new Holga lens for my 5DMKII - here are some still shots, here is a video
- FYI for the histo-newbies. Proper exposure with a digital camera.
Thats it for today folks. Pass it along, would ya?
5DMKII Holga Video
Today I oblige.
Of course, let me reiterate that I’ve never shot video before. In fact, one could historically call me antagonistic towards the genre. But time moves on and hey, I got this new toy that does this neat trick.
It would be criminal not to try it. N’est-ce pas?
So without further muddying the waters, here is a video shot early this AM on my morning bike ride thru the Snoqualmie Valley.
Its an interesting effect. And certainly a different way of looking at the world.
5D MK II Holga
Yes. A cheap plastic lens from China, complete with outrageous aberrations to stick on my 3K camera body. What was I thinking?
Well, I’ve owned several holgas, and they’ve always given me the wildest results. That is the point, but still, it can be alot of fun to see what comes out of the soup when developing that roll of 120 film. Well, all I’ve done is removed the middleman (i.e. the soup) and went straight to digital. No photoshop necessary.
Of course, its slightly pretentious (just as any toy camera pictures are) but its kinda fun in the same way that a Holga can be.
So feast your eyes on the best a random piece of plastic can give you...
Kinda fun. Certainly a
change from the “oh look how sharp my 1K lens is
dance...
PS. the lens I bought comes from Holgamods.com is just a holga
lens mounted to an EOS body cap (as far as I can
tell). The construction is a bit crude - dremel
marks and glue residue - something you wouldn’t
expect in the L lens, but right on par with the
goods being delivered. The only issue I have is my
example won’t lock on the body - so focusing it
sometimes removes the lens (I’ve emailed them).
I expect in general that this lens really sucks for
my poor sensor. Good thing the MKII has dust removal
built in to temper this somewhat...
Mermaid Favorites
Have a great Friday!
Farzin Plays Guitar
Dance Wednesday
Lightroom Tuesday
Welcome to Lightroom
Tuesday.
This weekly post is aptly named, as each Tuesday I
gather together the best presets, tips, tricks,
tutorials from the Lightroom-o-sphere and post them
for you, meus queridos...
- Lets say you have this, uh friend from Canada, who imported his images and then later put more photos into that same folder on the desktop without importing them directly. How dan you can make sure everything is in Lightroom? Why by synchronizing your folders in Lightroom of course! Here is a little tutorial.
- Matt Kloskowski’s tip of the week lets you choose the name for your files going to Photoshop. Here is the hint...
- Speaking of Matt, here is last week’s Lightroom Q&A... And here is his rundown of tethering options for Lightroom.
- Here is a great rundown by photographer Kelly Anne Martin on how to interpret all those Library overlays in LR2. Kelly is new to me, but she also maintains the @lightroomtips twitter account you might wanna follow. Go Kelly.
- Got a corrupted LR database? You did use the backup feature regularly, no? Here is a short look at how you deal with this...
- Lightroom & Photoshop workflows are pretty powerful stuff. On occasion you need the heavy lifting that Photoshop provides. Here is a great tip on how to get the most out of Smart Objects and your photos.
- Michael Gray posted his Part 2 of a three part series on color. Part Deux covers how to build a custom camera profile for your camera. For those who missed it, Part 1 was about using the camera profiles in Lightroom.
- Replace your Raws with JPG? Are you crazy? Well, when your raw files from a 5D MK II are 24 MB each, maybe those inconsequential family snaps are good enough in jpg. Here is a quick tutorial from the Lightroomblog on how to do such a nutty thing.
- For the poor Noob that read the above and had no idea what I’m talking about . Read this...
- Virtual Copies rule. If you use them, you rule. Its simple. Here is a good look at how to use them efficiently from DPS.
- Convert to DNG. No really. Do it. You’ll save space, you’ll have files that can be opened in 15 years. Here is a great overview of how to do it from the thelightroomlab.com.
- Fellow Seattlite Laura Shoe runs a little blog full of Lightroom Tips. I did not know this. Now I do. And so do you. Check her out. (a nice overview: Why are there Question Marks on my photo? How do I work on my catalog on multiple computers? How do I see my Folders? What is this Library thing: A Library analogy).
- TTG Highside, a web gallery plugin has been updated.
- Not happy with the black/white options in
Lightroom? If your not (and I’m highly suspect of
you now) then check out this review of Nik
Software’s Silver Efex Pro. Seems like more
trouble and more pixels to deal with, my friend,
but have at it. We all need 200 MB files in
place of our 24 MB raw files
On the broader front, here are some interesting things from this week:
- Apple’s Developer Conference is happening. Great stuff for photogs
- Zack Arias has a great article in PPM this month on lighting...
- Martin Evening does a finish the sentence with Dave Cross...
- A nice tutorial on cleaning your DSLR.
- Nasty Clamps are cool.
- A Holga Lens for your Canon camera? Yep, Mr. Crazy, its a possibility. Certainly cheaper than those massively expensive LensBaby things.
- I have a Canon 5d and battery grip for sale on Craigslist. If you want a recent 5d (less than 10 months old) at a decent price. Check it out.
- A good friend of mine, Ira Block a photographer for National Geographic, recently did a stills/video fusion on men doing Yoga in New York.
- SmugMug is in the process of launching “sMUGS” in a bunch of cities nationwide. The focus is to get photographers (pro or otherwise) together to talk about the passion and business of photography. We’ve got great guest speakers/leaders like Dane Sanders, Jasmine Star, Robert Evans and much more. Learn more here...
I Bought This (or On Getting Paid)
Ok. As the reluctant capitalist, I’m not sure how I feel about it. Seems a bit crass. But it does encourage the artsy kids to break out the sketch pads, toothpicks and glue and get paid for it.
Or in this case pom-poms...
Interestingly, they deal in school credits, not the
coin of the realm per se. No crossing of palms with
actual silver.
Makes me wonder if they have vendors with tables that
buy and sell debt and create these things called
derivatives...
Oh, I kid. I kid.
Speaking of the exchange of goods, I got
another unsolicited email from
magazine editor in the Netherlands who was gunning
for free photos of mountain biking in Moab for a
commercial magazine.
I mean, really? Really? Work for free? Really? My
next question when he gets back to me astounded that
I asked for payment predictably will be: so, do you
get a salary to edit and write for this magazine?
Which then leads to this rant I saw some time ago
(Warning: there are some
expletives in this short blurb).
Told you I was a reluctant capitalist.
New Blog Design!
Blurb Redux
Pity, because I won’t use it much.
I twittered about this today and got an avalanche of questions, so I figured it was worth a blog post...
You see, I’ve had huge problems with Blurb books in the recent past. I detail those problems here. And here.
Many of my issues were subsequently discussed here by photographer Jonahtan Saunders on the web (and highlighted by APE here). A total nightmare, let me tell you.
So, I’d not recommend Blurb for any books of import until they clean up their act. Sure, you can use them for your mom’s photo book. Or that inconsequential book of your macro flower pictures. But not for clients. Or for those concerned with quality over price.
It seems that at least one of the printers they farm their work out to is just not up to snuff, and you roll the dice when you submit a book.
I docurrently have a few books for sale on Blurb’s marketplace (which is super nice, btw) but I shudder to think of what people will be getting. Will it suck? Who knows. Roll the dice baby. If the market I’m selling these into wasn’t super price conscious, I’d change them. But then I’d have to do self-fullfilment and re-layout the book elsewhere. Not going to happen as these are fundraisers for EBT and I make zilch on them. Roll the dice and hope.
The sad thing is, I totally want Blurb to get its act together. BookSmart kinda works. And the idea of cheap books for the masses is a wonderful thing. Let me say that I have received good books from them in the past, but the situations detailed above are just too much to ignore. And the snotty, asinine customer service I’ve dealt with and you have a no-go.
So who do I use for this market (AKA the $50-200 per book crowd) I’m using MyCanvas.com.
They have SmugMug integration, and once you get
around the flash-based web app for building it (not
as nice as a dedicated desktop app, although I’ve had
no issues with it) its pretty nice. Their pretty nice
guys to deal with.
As a bonus, the backgrounds, accoutrements and
textures that are available in MyCanvas’ tools are
top notch. Much better. My clients have been very
happy with them.
If Blurb had dealt with me like Drobo did this week,
things might be different. Customer Service is
everything.
Lightroom Tuesday!
Welcome to Lightroom
Tuesday.
This weekly post is aptly named, as each Tuesday I
gather together the best presets, tips, tricks,
tutorials from the Lightroom-o-sphere and post them
for you, cher readers.
- Virtual Copies are very cool. You can have two interpretations of the same image right in your grid/filmstrip. Learn how to master them here...
- Matt K has his Q&A for this week.
- Brandon @ X= pointed me to a few great things on Mike Gray’s LIDF blog - Holga/Film Presets, 3 part tutorial on updating/modifying and combining presets (very cool). Keep looking. There is more there.
- Another from DPS this week - how to move your catalogs. And no, you won’t even have to ask all your friends/neighbors to show up with your house half packed!
- Ack! My photos are missing! At least that is mostly how the refrain goes. I get this question every once in a while. Here is how you fix it. And please, don’t move stuff in the Finder anymore, do it in LIghtroom.
- Via the Lightroom-blog.com, Sean points us to Brian Reyman’s interactive Keyboard shortcut PDF. Being in control of your keyboard shortcuts in LR is a huge timesaver.
- Saving changes in Lightroom? OH, so 1984 with the Save command. Lightroom auto-saves stuff for you (either to your catalog or, even better, to the file’s metadata). Read more here. PS. turn on Auto-Save XMP in the prefs to avoid this. This is covered in my Adobe Lightroom 2: Workflow for Busy Photographers PDF, so go read it.
- Victoria Brampton has a great article on Watermarking in LR with LR2/Mogrify. Great plugin. Great tip.
- A repeat, but a goody: Lightroom’s Top 10 Gotchas.
- This is interesting, but I have not had time to look into it: a new backup plugin that saves space and backs you up. Worth looking into.
- Thomas Hawk spent some time in San Jose with part of the Lightroom team. Ah, my old stomping grounds.
- Still plugging your camera into your computer? Seriously? Its so passé. Here is a good intro tutorial on getting images off the camera...
- I don’t use Impromptu Slideshow much, but here is how you use it. Personally I just use Lights out and Shift-Tab hide the panels.
- Single or Multiple Catalogs? Lightroomsecrets.com talks about the choices you have. Personally, I’m using multiple catalogs because I shoot too much.
- Lightroom vs. Nikon View/Capture? Have a read up if you’re a Nikon shooter.
- Tethering from Lightroom. I’m surprised how little I do this, even with all the stuff to do it.
- X= presents “Lightning Quick Galleries” - a how to for wedding photogs and those of us who shoot lots of pictures.
A few other interesting things to peruse:
- Balancing Ambient and Strobes. Great little tutorial for you lighting wonks.
- Great audio from a 5D MK II.
- Canon has released the new firmware for the 5D MK II. Manual control over video!
- Jeffery Friedl, author of some great Lightroom plugins, is on Twitter
That is about it for this week. Have a great Tuesday!
Go Chloe!
EBT's Mermaid - Backstage
Emerald Ballet Theatre’s
production of The Mermaid is in the bag.
Based on Hans Christian Anderson’s familiar story, it
chronicles our young mermaid’s adventures with men,
fish, marriage and sea foam. No wisecracking crabs,
though.
It was a busy week. I shot three rehearsals and the
Saturday evening performance. Total was around 8300
photos in all. Yowsa!
That is plenty to edit, let me assure you. The total
damage was 140 GB of images over the course of 2 days
- a new record for me.
I’ve just posted the first gallery online, a sort of
backstage pass, of the preparations going on
behind the scenes...
Cheers. Have a great Monday, and stay tuned for more Mermaid photos over the next week...