Its another Lightroom Tuesday! Huzzah!

Each week I gather the best of the Lightroom-o-sphere into one place for your edification, perusal and gain. Lets get started, shall we...

• Lightroomsecrets.com points us to some Lightroom 3 resources...
• Not to be out foxed, Adobe wanted to chime in with some resources as well.
• Want to export some of those great photos for use on your iPad here is a nice tutorial on creating photo albums from Lightroom 3
• I might have mentioned this before, but PresetPond.com is a new preset repository.
• My sister had a near death experience with her Lightroom Catalogs (drive died) and she realized that her backup strategy was far from perfect. I recommend a Drobo or other such RAID device, a NAS for network backup and Backblaze for offsite cloud storage. Here is an article from X-Equals that details a bit on cloud storage.
• Still on the fence regarding Lightroom3. Here are a few reviews: BrightHub, DPReview
• The Luminous Landscape has posted their Guide to Lightroom 3 Video tutorials. I’ve enjoyed their past videos, so this one should be no less useful.
• Eight steps to crafting images in Lightroom from DPS.
• Timothy Armes has updated his LR/Enfuse plugin to version 4.
• LightroomKillerTips.com has some interesting “Worth a Clicks” here...
• PresetHeaven offers a new preset for your edification.
• A newbies look at what Lightrom can do for you.
• Staying on Newbie Aisle, here is a look at Importing Presets

That is it. I’m heading down to Goblin Valley State Park today to spend a day with Scott Jarvie and a few of his students doing some flashy things. Stay tuned for some awesomeness.

PS. When not backpacking, here is how I roll (taken up a canyon somewhere near Paris, Idaho).

Tags:Lightroom

Its another Lightroom Tuesday! Huzzah!

Each week I gather the best of the Lightroom-o-sphere into one place for your edification, perusal and gain. Lets get started, shall we...

• A detailed analysis of JPG export quality from Jeffrey Friedl
• George Jardine has a new LR 3 workflow tutorial online.
• LIghtroomKillerTips.com has a few “Worth A Click” items, uh, worth the click.
• Victoria Bampton notified me that her “Adobe Lightroom 3 - The Missing FAQ” book is now available.
• David Marx is leading a weeklong Lightroom 3 workshop at the Rocky Mountain School of Photography in Missoula, MT.
• Matt Klowskowski takes a look at Exposure vs. Brightness.
• NAPP has a great Lightroom 3 Learning Center online...
• X-Equals looks at Lens Correction & Alteration workflow in LR3.
• Lightroomsecrets.com has a look at some LR3 resources...
• TheLightroomLab.com looks at importing files into Lightroom...
• X-Equals looks at offsite storage options for photographers...
• Foto-Biz looks at the promised speed improvements in LR3

Thats it for this week. Have a great Tuesday!

Tags:Lightroom

Its another Lightroom Tuesday! Huzzah!

Each week I gather the best of the Lightroom-o-sphere into one place for your edification, perusal and gain. Lets get started, shall we...

• Slideshow pro now using HTML5 instead of Flash. Nice for all those iPads out there.
• Timothy Armes has announced FTP Publisher announced
• X-Equals details the new Lens Correction features in Lightroom 3. They also have a nice “Link Party” post which has a bunch of photo/biz/lighroom/photoshop related stuff all together.
• Lightroomsecrets.com details some Lightroom 3 resources for us. How nice!
• TheLightroomLab.com looks at the catalog and importing options.
• I’m not a big fan of Blurb for customer books, but they are nice for family and friends. Here is a video on going from Lightroom to Blurb.
• Gene McCullah looks at Virtual Copies. Not to be outdone by X-Equals with multiple useful posts, he also looks at organizing your images.
• LightroomKillerTips.com looks at HDR photography They also have a great set of export presets for presenting your images on your iPad.
• Lynda.com, a recommended online training source, has a few new tours/tutorials on Lightroom 3
• Wired got around to reviewing Lightroom 3 recently.
• Foto-Biz looks at what computer/CPU is best for photo work.
• The making of a Lightroom Preset. Photographer Michael Sweeney breaks it down for you.
• DPS looks at Embracing Brightness.
• TheLightroomLab.com looks at LR3 setup and catalog creation. And upgrading to LR3. Its a two for one deal!
• Learn to convert to Black & White with Julianne Kost.
• Terry White looks at running Lightroom on your iPad

Thats it for today. The sun is shining, the world cup is beckoning and I got work to do.

So have a great Tuesday. Keep pressing that shutter, it’ll come unstuck.

Tags:Lightroom

Its another Lightroom Tuesday! Huzzah. Turn off the World Cup and lets get our Lightroom on.

Each week I gather the best of the Lightroom-o-sphere into one place for your edification, perusal and gain. Lets get started, shall we...

• Nat Coalson advises me his new Lightroom 3 book is out now. I liked his LR2 book, so this one shouldn’t disappoint.
• TheLightroomLab.com looks at building better filenames in Lightroom 3.

• Hands on the Thermostat! – Color Temperature in Monochrome from X-Equals
• LightroomKillerTips.com looks at how to get your beta catalog into the full version of LR3
• Seth at D-65 has launched a new website and book for LR3 - Seth’s seminars are fantastic and he’s a great guy.
• Lightroomers looks at getting to the Help Documentation...
• Scott Kelby has his Lightroom LIVE Tour coming up...
• Laura Shoe is giving free Lightroom 3 “What’s New” demonstrations in Seattle for the local folks...
• LightroomKillerTips also has a nice Q&A about LR3 online for your perusal.
• Victoria Bampton looks at what happens when you use an outdated version of Photoshop and ACR with LR3.
• Getting started right with Lightroom 3 - Critical Preference items.
• Not to be outdone, Martin Evening also has his new LR3 book online...
• TheLightroomLab.com looks at moving from LR2 to LR3...
• LightroomNews.com reports on Timothy Armes new Keyword Master Plugin for LR3
• Photographer Nasim Mansurov looks at Lightroom Process Versions.
• Why you should consider Lightroom...
• CameraDojo.com looks at Lightroom 3’s lesser known new features. Kee-ya!
• Canonblogger.com looks at Lightroom 3.
• PhotoshopUser.com has a nice Lightroom 3 Learning Center. Lots of great intro videos that look at the new features.
• Thomas Hawk reviews Lightroom 3
• Jefferey Friedl has an update on his useful upload plugins.

Thats it for this week. Cheers!

Tags:Lightroom

Its another Lightroom Tuesday! In fact, it is one of the most important LR2sdays since I started all this.

Each week I gather the best of the Lightroom-o-sphere into one place for your edification, perusal and gain. Lets get started, shall we...

• First, for the big one. Adobe has released Lightroom 3. Finally. $299 and upgrades are $99. Go get it here...
• Adobe’s look at what is new in Lightroom 3.
• Adobe’s support pages...
• The team’s official blog has the word.
• The Lightroom-Blog covers the release. Speaking of which, looks like Sean is trying to steal my thunder with a nice resource list here
• Viktoria Bampton has a great rundown on the new stuff as well...
• Photoshop Cafe does likewise...
• Laura Shoe has her say. And a look at thew new custom print layouts.
• Nat Coalson has a new book out already, and if it is as good as the last one, its recommended.
• Peachpit has a plethora of tutorials coming for the new release. Wow, look at al those books...
• John Beardsworth has released a new plugin for Lightroom called Locktastic. Learn more here.
• Julianne Kost has some great new tutorials on AdobeTV.
• Jefferey Friedl has some announcements for your consideration...
• Blurb has an upcoming webinar (man I hate saying that) on taking images from Lightroom to book.
• Lightroom Pro Q&A with Chris Orwig
• CameraDojo has a learning center online...
• Ian Lyons looks at the new release...
• Lightroom Secrets takes a look at the new import dialog. And the new grain feature.
• X-Equals has a few jewels this week: a gander at Lightroom print templates and hints on editing sequences.
• David DuChemin talks LR3 and how to refine your vision with Vision & Voice...
• Scott Kelby has his LR3 learning center up and running as well...
• The Luminous Landscape will have a massive video tutorial available in short order.
• TheLightroomLab has a look at five new features for pros...
• John Nack points us to some new video sessions coming up for Lightroom and Photoshop CS5.

If you’re upgrading and are a member of a professional organization, don’t forget you might get a discount (ASMP etc). Adobe also has some promos out there...

Tags:Lightroom

So this weekend I shot a performance of Coppelia in Portland for a young dancer. You can see some of the shots from that performance over the past few days on the blog.

After pretty much ignoring LR3 beta X since its launch last fall, I decided it was time to put it thru its paces. Mainly I was looking to see how the updated noise reduction features were going to work - I tend to work in such situations at 640 to 3200 ISO and at the higher end I like to take the edge off a bit.

Let me preface this quickly: Lightroom 3 is in beta still. Beta as in not-final. As in, it still has bugs. This is why I’ve ignored it for production work since it came out. But I’ve talked to a lot of other photogs who are using it daily for production, so I decided to forgo my usual reticence and give it a workout.

So lets see...

So I imported the files and converted to DNG. The shoot was about 2400 images, and I pulled them off the cards using Photo Mechanic because it will work with multiple CF card readers. Come to think of it, I didn’t even give LR3 a try as I’ve become so accustomed to doing it this way with LR2.

I really hate the extra steps that this takes, but it beats doing each card serially. This way I can then import, convert to DNG and build 1:1 previews in one fell swoop - i.e. like when I’m asleep as I did here. I’m still getting used to the new import dialog, but I like how it helps you visualize where things are going (but I’m biased as I worked on the early versions of this).

I came back in the morning and found all the pictures where they should be, ready to roll.

I then applied a preset in Library to turn them all to Black & White (using my fave b/w preset) and started to work.

My B/W preset usually gets me close, so after a bit of tweaking contrast/brightness/exposure, I generally dive into cropping and then the spot tool. Both tools seemed a bitt laggy and slower than their LR2 brethren. I certainly stared at that beach ball a lot more - both to get the tool ready to roll and in between placing spots. When you have 20 or 40 pieces of dirt on the dancer’s marley, you want speed to get them all taken care of. This was (and always is) the most time consuming part of shooting dance photos. Note to self, this is a beta. And to be honest, I’ve never found it to fast for my liking. Beta. Beta. Beta.

Also, when working on a plethora of spots, you often keep running into other spots or their clone source. This requires workarounds - create a spot elsewhere and drag it to where you want it. Then reposition the source. That takes alot of time. I wish there was an “ignore” the other spots keyboard shortcut or something to speed this frustrating part of my workflow up. But hey, I’m dealing with detritus on a black floor...

I then used the adjustment brushes to dodge and burn areas as appropriate. It seemed to work about as I was used to, with the exception that they took away the (-) and (+) button sets for shortcutting your selection. I missed them, and may continue to do so. I’ve never really wanted to adjust all those sliders at once, so a quick plus or minus for exposure or clarity was a bit faster. I may get accustomed to it, but I miss it.

Spot tool gripe b: Q. For years you used N to get to the spot tool. Now you have to use Q (as in Quit beachballing I guess - sorry Jon) and it took quite a bit of time to retrain myself. I suppose it will be easy to get used to, and I do like the consistency this now brings to Library/Dev modules. Shrug long term, pain short term.

Exporting to SmugMug went pretty good - it even seemed that the SmugMug plugin from Friedl was less buggy than the one in LR2 but that might be just me thinking to much. (PS. It is. Jefferey emailed me to ask about it and told me its the same plugin). I also might be blaming him when network issues are to blame...

The noise reduction is much nicer.

The new Post-Crop Vignetting tool gives me better results than LR2. Nice.

I was very happy to see my presets and export stuff where it should be. Pretty painless transition.

It felt like Library/Develop transitions and preview generation was a bit faster. Hooray for that. Overall, its a nice upgrade from LR2 (better than PS CS5 which has been a bit ho-hum for me).

And better yet, guess how many photos went to Photoshop for further work? None. Zilch. Not a one. This is good, because a trip to the big blue box translates to at least 5-10 minutes, 200 MB on disk and extra file management duties. Not one. Awesome.

Can’t wait for the final release. I expect that the final code will show some significant trimming on those laggy episodes I was having.

Tags:Lightroom

Its another Lightroom Tuesday!

Each week I gather the best of the Lightroom-o-sphere into one place for your edification, perusal and gain. Lets get started, shall we...

• X-Equals looks at color spaces and IC profiles. Part 1 is up.
• X-Equals also looks at how to “Bend Presets to Your Will” No luck getting that preset to get me a soda from the fridge though...
• LightroomKillerTips.com has a new installment of their Q&A day up...
• LightroomNews.com has announced the release of LRB Portfolio 2.6...
• David Monnerat is using Lightroom 3, read why.
• Correcting White Balance and Exposure in Lightroom.

Looks to be a slow week, so that is what we got. Have a great Tuesday!

Tags:Lightroom

Its another Lightroom Tuesday!

Each week I gather the best of the Lightroom-o-sphere into one place for your edification, perusal and gain. Lets get started, shall we...

• A set of very interesting collage templates for LR 3 Beta
• X-Equals has a great article on correcting color cast.
• LightroomKillerTips.com has a great Q&A with Sean McCormack of LightroomBlog.com fame.
• Victoria Bampton gives us sneak peak at Lens Corrections in ACR 6.1 (and presumably what is coming in LR 3)
• Matt Kloskowski posts 4 Lightroom Productivity tips he can’t live without on LightroomKillerTips.com
• PresetHeaven.com has a new preset for your edification.

Thats it for this week. Have a great Tuesday!

Tags:Lightroom

Its another Lightroom Tuesday!

Each week I gather the best of the Lightroom-o-sphere into one place for your edification, perusal and gain. Lets get started, shall we...

• Laura Shoe in Seattle has announced the dates for the rest of her 2010 Lightroom and Photoshop courses.
• What software for a Photographer’s new Mac? Lightroom? Check. Office? Bzzt. I hate MS office for the Mac. Slow, bloated and crappy. iWork or OpenOffice (free!) are both better/less expensive choices. InDesign/Illustrator are a must have for layout and design work (if you do it). Doing business cards or brochures in Word is a recipe for insanity.
• LightroomKillerTips.com looks at Lightroom Beta 3, CS5 and sharpening.
• Ever wonder what makes up a Preset? Before you click on that very inviting bit of text, watch this...
• X-Equals had a great series on mastering the HSL pane in Lightroom. Read up. Part 1, Part 2, Part 3
• DPS looks at Survey Mode
• The folks at DPE have a look at tethered capture in Lightroom 3 Beta 2.
• A quick overview of using the brushes in Lightroom.
• A free Quick Touch Up preset for your Tuesday.

That is it for today. Have a great Tuesday...

Tags:Lightroom

A few things I’d missed in today’s previous post.

• Lens distortions and abberations got you down? Spend a measily $15 and get PTLens, a good tool that can be run as a Lightroom Editor (and it streamlines the workflow some from a standalone app). I’ve tried it, and it works well. Not as well as a correction module, but that isn’t yet on the radar. Until then, working on a rendered tiff is what you get - and its worht noting that this is Aperture’s solution to everything and it kinda sucks compared to being able to do this fancy stuff on Raw images. See LR 2.0’s Local Corrections for example. Zing! (Via the Lightroom Blog)
• A reader, Mike Solomon, pointed me to a tutorial and a couple of Lightroom presets on his blog. He says they give photos the “it” that sometimes is needed for advertising photographs. Worth a read.
• Like to put your stuff on the web from Lightroom? Check out all the galleries on Lightroomgalleries.com

Tags:Lightroom

Its another Lightroom Tuesday!

Each week I gather the best of the Lightroom-o-sphere into one place for your edification, perusal and gain. Lets get started, shall we...

• Mastering HSL in Lightroom from X-Equals PT 1
• Is there such thing as Preset theft? A look at the Post Production economy.
• LightroomKillerTips.com offers up The Vintage Look this week. Also a new Before/After video looking at post processing technique.
• Adobe releases Lightroom 2.7 this week - this is mostly a camera support update.
• Laura Shoe at the Digital Daily Dose takes a look at Clone vs. Heal when using the Spot Removal tool.
• Preset Heaven offers up some new presets for your edification.
• Michael Clark is holding several 2 day Workflow Seminars focused on Lightroom - cost is $400ish. More info here.\
• Optimizing Lightroom for your Canon 5D.

Thats it for this week. Have a great Tuesday!

Tags:Lightroom

Its another Lightroom Tuesday!

Each week I gather the best of the Lightroom-o-sphere into one place for your edification, perusal and gain. Lets get started, shall we...

• Need to get stuff from iPhoto to Lightroom? Ok, what to do when you got suckered in by free software and realized its now time to Lightroom up.
• Sunset needs a boost? Split tone it, baby.
• Some tips on using the Blacks slider...
• DPE looks at fixing problematic skies...
• Lightroom 3 tethering walkthru.
• Two video tutorials on getting started with Lightroom from alittlephotoshop.com Video 1- where to store your images, Video 2 - Creating a Catalog
• X-Equals has a new set of film-styled presets for sale - Cold Storage Volume 2. I have a set of these in house and will be looking at them soon.
• Flashback - Plugins Galore - X-Equals looks at extending Lightroom.
• A look at the new Publish Services in Lightroom 3 Beta 2
• LRB Exhibition web gallery platform has been updated.

Looks like a light week with everyone looking into Photoshop CS5. Have a great Tuesday.

Tags:Lightroom

Its another Lightroom Tuesday!

Each week I gather the best of the Lightroom-o-sphere into one place for your edification, perusal and gain. Lets get started, shall we...

• Don’t forget that old backups can be deleted...
• Speaking of that, Laura Shoe looks at reclaiming hard drive space...
• A photographer’s ode to Lightroom.
• Stacking images in Lightroom.
• Aperture vs. Lightroom. A nice comparison.
• Don’t make these mistakes...
• A new version of Portraiture for Lightroom. Great plugin for skin retouching.
• Lightroom 2.7 now available for download...
• Stacking images for better organization...
• X-Equals rundown: Review of TTG Highside Gallery Pro 2.0
• Adobe released Photoshop CS5 this week. Shrug. A few good things for us Lightroom Jockeys.
• Smart Collection tips from Matt K at Lightroom Killer Tips.

Not Lightroom-related, but worth looking into:

• Chase Jarvis debuts a new learning resource for photographers.

Tags:Lightroom

Its another Lightroom Tuesday!

Each week I gather the best of the Lightroom-o-sphere into one place for your edification, perusal and gain. Lets get started, shall we...

• Lightroom-Blog looks at the Camera Raw cache...
• Stephen is considering Lightroom 3 vs. Aperture 3...
• Getting photos onto your ipad...
• Adobe has announced updates to Camera Raw and Lightroom 2...
• DPE looks at sharpening in Lightroom. And a tone curve.
• Lightroomsecrets.com looks at noise reduction in the Beta 2
• Lightroom panel tricks...
• An Aperture user looks at noise reduction...
• X-Equals rundown: Jpeg vs. Raw, Composition
• Lightroom Kill Tips looks at what the vibrance slider can do
• Get a free 24 hour pass to Lynda.com for learning all kinds of stuff about Lightroom (or other creative apps)
• Cropping tip for Lightroom 3 beta 2 from LightroomKillerTips.com
• John Beardsworth is cashing in with his new Pre$et for Lightroom.
• Laura Shoe has some tips for your Tone Curve...

That is it for this week. Cheers!

Tags:Lightroom

Its another Lightroom Tuesday!

Each week I gather the best of the Lightroom-o-sphere into one place for your edification, perusal and gain. And this week is quite an interesting one, so lets get rolling...

• Warm up your portraits on for a more pleasing look.
• TheLightroomLab.com looks at LRSaver.
• The Targeted Adjustment Tool - powerful adjustments with a few clicks.
• A look at the new watermarking features in the Beta 2
• A look at color workflow
• Eric Chan of Adobe has released new Beta color profiles for the Nikon D3/D700 cameras. (via Lightroom-blog.com)
• Lightroomsecrets.com has a look at the powerful new curve features in the Beta 2. And the Watermarking. And the new Curve tools.
• Victoria Bampton updates her Missing FAQ to include the Beta 2 release
• TTG Highside Gallery was updated...
• Leica M9 High ISO images in Lightroom.
• Lightroom 2 vs. Lightroom 3 Beta 2 Noise Reduction
• A look at the improved camera profiles and highlight rendering in the beta 2.
• Lightroom Sunday, a new feature from DPE.
• Some discussion of the new tether feature in LR 3 beta 2
• Feel like some Lightroom-fu? David Griffin looks at tone mapping.
• RedRex presents some new Creative Presets.
• Lightroom in Monochrome
• Jeffery Friedl has a look at some freaky Tone-Curve presets. Even more wackiness here... A statement on his LR plugins and the beta 2 release.
• For those in New York, Katrin Eismann to give free Lightroom 3 talk at B&H. April 8th at 3-5 pm.
• John Beardsworth looks at the new grain effect feature in Lightroom 3
• X-Equals has a Raw Challenge going on...
• John Nack of Adobe has some space saving tips...
• New versions of Simpleviewer and Monoslideshow engines. Awesome.
• Adobe has announced the launch event for Photoshop CS5. I vaguely remember using photoshop for photography Ok,I kid. Its still 10% of my workflow.
• Matt Kloskowski takes a Part II look at the new Beta release...
• X-Equals points us to a photographer’s look at some of the most useful presets he’s used...
• Tom Hogarty is holding some Lightroom brownbags online...
• Timmothy Armes has released a new Web Engine for Lightroom...

Less Lightroom related, but interesting...

• Epic Edits has a nice roundup of more general photo-related stuff here.
• Win an iPad from SmugMug...
• Speedliting - a new website for learning to use small flashes.
• Keep track of the new stuff at SmugMug - Release Notes blog

That is everything so far this morning. Have a great Tuesday!

Tags:Lightroom

Its another Lightroom Tuesday!

Each week I gather the best of the Lightroom-o-sphere into one place for your edification, perusal and gain. And this week is quite an interesting one, so lets get rolling...

First off, lets do the Lightroom 3 beta 2 round up:

• Adobe announces the Lightroom 3 beta 2 release yesterday. New features, snappier performance and some results of feedback since the first beta release. PS. Yes, this means the release is still not ready for prime time. New: Tethered Shooting, improved noise reduction. Tweaks: performance, import, watermarking
• Tom has also posted some resources for learning more...
• Sean McCormack posts his first look (and a new blog layout to boot!)
• Gene McCullagh takes a first look at the release on Lightromsecrets.com
• John Beardsworth looks at the noise reduction and process version gotchas

• Victoria Bampton does likewise...
• New Lightroom dips toe in video workflow... If you mean by workflow it does not ignore them so you can delete them by accident after it ejects the CF card.
• Rob Sylvan takes a look at the new stuff...
• Scott Kelby’s takes a look at the new release
• The Turning Gate released a new Lightroom/Flash slideshow utility for the new beta 2

For those not moving to the beta 2 yet (and I’m one of them - its beta for a reason)

• How to remove dust with Lightroom (via DPS)
• Timothy Armes has released a new Web engine for Lightroom. The focus is on provoking a maximum emotional response to your work.
• TheLightroomLab.com looks at a backup strategy for Mac users. And for Windows users. Psst. a good second solution. A Raid solution should always be first.
• Matt at LightroomKillerTips looks at reordering photos in a slideshow.
• Photoshop World in Orlando is coming up. Lots of Lightroom learning goodness is bound to go on.
• A new preset for Lightroom users from Jennifer Duffy.
• RawFightClub. A comparison of the output of Lightroom and Aperture. Take this with a grain of salt as the new LR has a very different/improved engine. That and I completely disagree with the author’s summary. The Aperture image looks like its been run thru a noise reduction plugin a few times and half the detail shed to get rid of that noise. To each his own...
• Matt Anderson has released a few Raw presets for the new Canon 1D MK IV camera.
• A few Lightroom tips compiled by Artsstock.com
• X-Equals offers the Lightroom PhD program
• Exposing to the right explained...
• For you Nerdy McNerdison’s looking for more metadata power, here is an interesting look at using Photo Mechanic vs Lightroom for serious metadata. PS. I have a copy of Photo Mechanic that gets used when I have 10 cards to download. LR only does them one at a time, but PM will grab as many as you have readers to do. Nice. (thanks to Adobe’s David Franzen).

Tags:Lightroom

Its Lightroom Tuesday! Huzzah!

Each week I gather the best of the Lightroom-o-sphere into one place for your edification, perusal and gain.

But hey, look at me yapping my mouth. Lets have at it...

• DPS looks at how you can arrange files your way in Lightroom.
• 21 Reasons to use Lightroom from the Photography blog.
• Red Eye. Mostly for people who don’t understand off camera lighting ;->
• A look at Lightroom 3’s noise reduction.
• Using Stacks to unclutter your Lightroom library...
• Getting that Dave Hill look... (ps. are you Dave hill?)
• Some Lightroom presets for night owls.
• 5 Lightroom Quick Tips
• How Aperture 3 can solidify your Lightroom usage...
• X-Equals rundown: Harnessing Histograms, Preset Platform, The Digest
• Sherri Meyer’s Top 10 Lightroom tweets of the week.
• A few new presets for Lightroom from Jennifer Duffy Photography.
• PhotoFocus has a look at the Adjustment Brush Essentials.
• Printing with Lightroom from my friend Chris.
• Matt K’s Lightroom Killer Tips rundown: Hard Edgy Look Preset, Cool Crop Tips, When to use Presets,
• Digital Daily Dose has some printing profile tips...
• Lightroom Secrets looks at what they’d like to see in Lightroom 4.
• Free “Zeroed” preset from Lightroomers...
• Using the Graduated Filter for better skies...
• New Presets from Preset Heaven. And more for weddings...

Well folks, that is it for this week...

Tags:Lightroom

Its Lightroom Tuesday! Huzzah!

Each week I gather the best of the Lightroom-o-sphere into one place for your edification, perusal and gain, so lets have at it...

• What is Lightroom all about?
• Comparing the HD footprint of Aperture v. Lightroom. Not that it matters, but interesting to see...
• ImageArchiver 1.0 for Lightroom is released.
• Matt K has a nice before/after video to show how he works...
• More comparison with Aperture...
• New presets from X-Equals - Cold Storage Film Presets
• Nerdy McMetadata warning: Plus plugin from Timothy Armes updated
• Arrange your files your way in Lightroom from DPS
• Red Eye - bane of the flash-challenged everywhere. Maybe you’re challenged?
• Laura Shoe talks about some new Lightroom workshops in Austin & Minneapolis, and also, how to rename images, and a look at Aperture
• LightroomKillerTips.com has some good “worth a click” stuff
• X-Equals reviews the onOne Plugin-Suite 5

That is all for this week. Im prepping for WPPI next week. If you’re going to Vegas, please stop by the SmugMug booth and say hi.

Tags:Lightroom

Its Lightroom Tuesday! Huzzah! Sorry for the lateness, but I’ve been flat on my back sick all day, and am just getting over what was a nasty 24 hour bug.

Anyhow, each week I gather the best of the Lightroom-o-sphere into one place for your edification, perusal and gain, so lets have at it...

• A neat new HDR plugin for Lightroom.
• Off-center Vignetting? There is an app for that. Er, I mean, technique.
• A review of the Totally Rad Lightroom Effects preset set.
• Aperture 3 - Time to Switch? Uh, no.
• Matt K has some more reasons why Lightroom remains a better product.
• Organizing your photos in Lightroom. Adobe TV’s Julianne Kost.
• Lightroom or Photoshop? Or both? Personally, Lightroom for 90% and Photoshop for the rest. Lightroom is much more efficient.
• X-Equals takes a stab at fixing Chromatic Abberation.
• Rob Sylvan has some Grid View Tips.
• A new preset from Lightroom Killer Tips...
• LIghtroom vs. Bridge. You need to ask? Having worked on both, I never use Bridge anymore. Lightroom is just much better.
• An interesting look at new camera support between Lightroom and Aperture.
• More from Lightroom Killer tips: Quick panel tip, A look at the Recovery slider (Matt is on a roll this week)
• Preset Heaven offers some new presets (its been awhile)...

Well, that is about it. I’m ready to get back in bed...

Tags:Lightroom

Its Lightroom Tuesday! Huzzah! Direct from Mexico to you wherever you are.

Each week I gather the best of the Lightroom-o-sphere into one place for your edification, perusal and gain.

• Sean McCormack walks you thru how to fix a weak catchlight
• One photographers walk-thru of how he uses the Adjustment Brushes in Lightroom 2. Sometimes its informative to see how someone else does something, even if you already think you get something.
• One photographer looks at the color differences in Lightroom vs. Aperture 3
• A reminder to back up. Everything.
• Laura Shoe looks at LRB Exhibition - a new “all-in-one” website creator for your photography.
• Matt K tells us when its time to start from scratch...
• Lightroom Secrets has a spotlight on Adobe’s Anita Dennis
• Timothy Armes has updated his Elegance web engine...
• The gloves are off - a look at Aperture and Lightroom...
• LightroomKillerTips tells you why you might wanna stick with Lightroom.
• Zack Arias looks at his worlkflow...
• How to export several versions of a file at once...
• X-Equals + LIDF - Creative Production Presets, and they also have a nice look at keeping all those presets organized

That is it. Greetings from the sunny beach from where I sit typing this out.

Tags:Lightroom

Well, Apple finally released Aperture 3!

Surprise!

I love how secretive Apple is with their stuff. Mums the word. When things look good and dead, and most people have moved on, they suddenly pull this “Ta-da” routine and expect us to get excited.

But hey, I’m no marketing genius. Maybe it will work. I much prefer the openness from Adobe, to be honest. Open betas, open discussions and true community involvement.

But that is neither here nor there. The release is now out and it has some interesting things. And competition is a good thing, to be sure, so this will certainly serve as a nice exclamation point to the Lightroom team meetings. I’ve sat thru these meetings twice before (on this very subject) and it is a good thing for photographers.

Here are some quick impressions, with more to come later..

• Brushes - Welcome to the party (PS. Adobe skip the full page Welcome ad in the WSJ). I remember some of us sitting around making fun of their half-arsed effort in Aperture 2. This one is finally non-destructive, and I quickly noted that they appropriated quite a bit from our designs in Lightroom 2. Like a lot. They do have Quick brushes, which was something I really pushed for in 2 (I wanted brushes for specific tasks like "Dodge, Burn, Skin Soften, etc.) but it didn’t happen.
• Presets - Its been how many years?
• Faces/Places - I’m not sure how the market will receive these, but they are obviously building on what they have in iPhoto. That is great for a segment of the population that shoots a few pictures at family functions or on trips, but I'm just not sure how useful these will be to working pros.  Personally I spend too much time working on the photos to even properly keyword them all the time, let alone tag them for faces or worry about GPS coordinates.  But when you shoot as much as I do, I might be a bell curve edger. I reserve the right to be wrong, and do applaud them for looking for areas to help make photo management easier.
• Import - Lightroom did a good job providing them a template here as well.
• Color Labels -   Whahoo! Amazing. Kidding. They do sync with the Finder though, which is nice if you want to forgo the *management* part of Aperture and dig in the OS.
• LIbrary Merge - Just a simplified drag/drop merging of libraries.  Slightly better than we did with catalog import export but not much.
• LCD Panel - A minor thing, but it caught my eye. A camera-like display of metadata in a nice small area. Why did it catch my eye? Because I designed and patented this display for Bridge 2 several years ago and they’ve largely copied it. FWIW, I tried to get it in Lightroom/ACR but didn’t succeed.
• Focus - A small thing, but cool. One can see the focus points right on your image like you do on the back of your camera - kinda useful to see where you screwed up and focused on the wrong thing. Frankly, I wish Lightroom did this.
• Video Support - Very interesting.  Broadens aperture's asset management approach to include what photogs in the past year or two have dealt with. This will be controversial move, but might just work for them.  When looking at this years ago, I initially wanted LR to stay focused on photogs, trying to avoid another product (guess which one) that expanded rapidly to encompass a bunch of user groups and left photographers wondering what happened to “Photo” in the shop. Honestly, I’m not sure where I'd come down on this argument today, but I at least appreciate LR3 not ignoring the .move files.  Apple allows for management, playback, and basic trimming with external editors for anything else
• Advanced Slideshows - Lots of control here. Very nice. I prefer solutions like SmugMug because these can get big. And I can sell from SmugMug.
• Books - This is huge. Pros can get high quality albums, including the big brands - Queensbury, Couture, Leather Craftsman.  Wedding photogs will eat this up.
• Printing - Looks largely like what we did in 2.0 and is being finished in the forthcoming Lightroom 3
• Speed - 64 bit.  Like Lightroom 2 from a few years ago. Wonder if it will make a difference.

I have yet to really look at the release or put it thru its paces. Time will tell if some of the new views/modes for browsing images will be useful.

Tags:Lightroom

Its Lightroom Tuesday! Huzzah!

Each week I gather the best of the Lightroom-o-sphere into one place for your edification, perusal and gain.

• InsideLightroom looks at the state of Lightroom plugins.
• Digital Photo Experience looks at searching with the Library Filters.
• A speed tip from Foto-Biz. This one is new to me.
• Terry White has a tip for using Smart Collections to remove crap from your Lightroom Library.
• A spot removal tip from Outdoor Photo Gear.
• Sherri Meyer has posted her top 10 LR tweets of the week. Saves me some typing...
• An interesting look at the difference between Photoshop Actions and Lightroom Presets.
• Eric Cheng looks at the difference between Raw and sRaw conversions.
• Foto-Biz takes a look at LR previews.
• LightroomKillerTips has new preset for your perusal.
• Sean McCormack at Lightroomblog.com has some info about a new LR web gallery that he’s about to release into the wild. I’ve got a prerelease copy to have a look at after I was asked about this on my Lightroom Questions forum.
• Speaking of which, I answered several new questions at my Lightroom Q&A forum this week.
• Lightroomsecrets.com has a new contributor.
• I love collections. Use them daily. Laura Shoe looks at how to save time with them.
• Applying Presets - how to apply them to multiple photos at once.
• Color Calibration. Its hard. Here is a look at the difference between monitors and printers.
• Lightroom 2.6.1 available - has fixes mostly for Leica M9 shooters.
• X-Equals looks at the processing of editing one’s photos.
• A Holga preset from X-Equals. Don’t forget to sign up for the X-Equals digest, a weekly digest of cool Lightroom stuff.

That is it for today. Have a great Tuesday.

Tags:Lightroom

Its Lightroom Tuesday! Huzzah!

Each week I gather the best of the Lightroom-o-sphere into one place for your edification, perusal and gain.

• A nice discussion on sharpening in Lightroom vs. Unsharp Mask in Photoshop.
• Creating Pseudo HDR images in Lightroom 2
• For the geeky ones among us, here is an article on creating your own engine for Lightroom galleries using the SDK.
• Lightroomsecrets.com looks at organizing your images.
• Not that I recommend it due to spotty quality control, but here is a discussion on Lightroom and ICC profiles for book printing. Man, I really want to like Blurb, but experience teaches me otherwise.
• A video tutorial from Sean Duggan on moving your files in Lightroom. Sometimes we’re messy house guests and need to reorganize stuff.
• Ok, more for the nerdy mcnerdisons: Common IPTC entries for that metadata goodness.
• Thomas Hawk looks at how to improve Lightroom...
• Lightroom vs. Aperture - a photog looks at the two. Aperture? I remember hearing about that...
• While we’re at it, here is a comparison between Lightroom and Capture NX 2. Is that what those CD’s had on them?
• Adjustment Brush tip...
• Blemish removal tips...
• A look at some black and white presets from Silver Efex Pro and DxO Film Pack.
• Foto-Biz.com looks at cropping to fixed sizes. And Monitor Calibration.
• The power of Lightroom. A photographer mulls it over.
• Geotagging made easy...
• Build & ship - X-equals looks at export presets.
• X-Equals also takes a look at the right panel track...
• Matt K has some good advice for naming your presets.
• Laura Shoe of the Digital Daily Dose has a nice article on curves. Speaking of which, Laura is holding a Lightroom workshop in Seattle and there are a few spaces left.
• Process Version - its something new in LR3 and you should probably learn about it.
• LRSaver has a new Mac version of its LR to Screensaver utility out. (Psst. it uses a collection and your LR cache - very slick).

That is it for this week. Have a great Tuesday.


PS. Did you miss my tweet yesterday about the Amazon deal on Lightroom 2? If you were following me on twitter this woulda never happened.

Tags:Lightroom

Its Lightroom Tuesday! Huzzah!

Each week I gather the best of the Lightroom-o-sphere into one place for your edification, perusal and gain.

• Four presets from photographer Kenji Angelo
• A tutorial on fixing importing errors.
• A keywording tutorial from This Digital Life.
• Foto Care in New York will be presenting two sessions on Lightroom 2 & 3 on the 21st of January. More info here...
• Foto-Biz looks at the reasons for DNG.
• Terry White has 30,000 images in his catalog and is pruning back for the new year. That is being frugal with the shutter button in my world
• X-Equals wants you to be faster fixing those exposure errors.
• Matt K covers DNG and Auto Saving Changes in this tutorial.
• X-Equals has some resolution tips for the new year.’
• Timothy Armes, author of some great Lightroom plugins, has redone his website...
• Sean McCormack of the Lightroom-blog.com has an interesting post on Practical Presets.

Not Lightroom related, but interesting...

• Mark Wallace from Snapfactory will be doing a new series of Adorama-sponsored flash tutorials this year...

Tags:Lightroom

For the New Year, I’m happy to debut a new feature at heninger.org that lets you, my cherished readers, easily ask me a question about Lightroom.

In a fit of creative genius I’m calling it “Lightroom Q&A” and I’ve added it to the Navigation bar above.

So, feel free to ask me a question and I’ll answer it as soon as I have time.

Note: Please consider not posting anonymously so I know who I’m talking with - right now I’ve allowed anonymous posters and am hoping that the spammers stay away.

Tags:Lightroom

Welcome to the first Lightroom Tuesday of the New Year. Yes, its 2010 already and hopefully you’ve all recovered from your holiday excesses.

So lets see what is going on in the Lightroom world this past week...

• Nat Coalson reminds us that Adobe will be releasing Lightroom 3 sometime in the next few months. Lots of interesting discussion features etc. FWIW, I have *not* been using the Beta much. While I like the new features, I’m leery of issues when working in production.
• Lloyd has a tip for you, one that mirrors something I mentioned a few months back. Worth repeating.
• Lightening backgrounds in Lightroom from DPS. Great info.
• Before and After. Its kinda like those shows you see on E! about washed up entertainers and what they’re doing now. Only with your photos and not involving crystal meth.
• Refining your photographic vision using Lightroom. With a hat tip to David duChemin’s book on seeing...
• Peachpit TV - Using Keywords. An oldy, but useful.
• Speaking of Keywords, Lightroom-blog.com has a look at some keyword lists you can use to effect...
• Lightroom Secrets offers you 10 suggestions for 2010.
• The Lightroom Blog looks at Luminous Landscape’s Guide to Assset Management.
• Sean Phillips pointed me to an article on using Lightroom to improve dull skies. Presets included!
• X-Equals has some good stuff for you’re Tuesday (they seem to be offline right now, so stay tuned) Brandon promises a preset too...
• Laura Shoe talks about why images seem to change slightly when imported into Lightroom.
• Happy Lightroom New Year from Matt K
• Lightroom Blog does some navel gazing and reflects on the top 5 posts of 2009.
• Not to be outdone, DPS ups the anty with 21 most popular posts on DPS.

Not Lightroom related, but worth a look:

• Lighting Essentials loks at 8 essential sites for photographers.

Well, that is it for this week meus queridos. Have a great Tuesday.

Tags:Lightroom

Welcome to Lightroom Tuesday. And the last one before Christmas. W00t!

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, mes amis.

• Lightroom 2.6 and the accompanying ACR plugin have been posted.
• Laura Shoe has a short pointer to importing photos into Lightroom from iPhoto.
• Lightrom Q&A from Matt K
• DPS has a great rundown of the “5 coolest commands” in Lightroom.
• Another Lightroom 3 Beta tweak that Scott Kelby finds cool.
• A spotlight on Jefferey Friedl from Lightroom secrets
• Black &White from JPG vs. RAW
• In case you missed my review of Victoria Bampton’s Lightroom ebooks...
• X-equals talks Photoshop Droplet workflows.

Not Lightroom related, but cool...

• iPhone Lighting diagram app.

Well, that is it for this week - kind of a slow week in the Lightroom world as everyone rushes around looking for that missing gift. Speaking of which, now that I’ve dug out of all those Nutcracker pictures, its time to do some shopping (I kid, I kid).

Have a Merry Christmas, Happy Holiday or whatever else you wanna have this week!

Tags:Lightroom

I was recently contacted by Victoria Bampton to review her ∑

I’ve read and reviewed several of the Lightroom books out there, and for the most part, find something to like in all of them. This one is no exception. Victoria has taken a slightly different approach to her ebook, and I find this helps her offering stand out in a crowded field.

First, it is primarily an ebook in PDF format (although I hear it comes or will come in paperback form as well).

Ebooks are a good thing in my, ahem, book. All I need are more books crowding an already straining series of bookshelves. I’m not kidding. I recently bought a Kindle and love the ability to carry 55 books and magazines/newspapers with me always. And it helps keep the bookshelf thing in check. So the fact that her book comes in an easy to manage PDF is a godsend for me. Searching is faster too.

Second off, its written in a very different format, giving the reader a simple, straightforward FAQ style approach to answering questions. FAQ have existed for years, and were always focused on brevity in answering the very specific salient questions people have about a piece of software. Therefore, one should consider it a reference book that you go to when you have a problem - its less for perusing than some other books.

Yes, there are the obligatory intro comments for each section (a catalog is...) but they seem complete and concise for the task at hand. Now I’m no Lightroom slouch, so not much in the book was news to me, but it represents a nice compendium of questions that Victoria has run into over the last several years in various online forums dedicated to such things. Real world data in, useful information out. And in my scanning, I saw all the big questions I get asked covered.

The book (I reviewed the LR 3 Beta, but there is one for LR2 as well) is around 400-450 pages depending on which version you get and is logically organized by module. This is pretty common for all Lightroom books, and it helps you to narrow down your search quickly. Its designed to be a handy reference that you quickly grab and read for a problem that is dogging you.

Sections include the obligatory getting started section, which covers database and catalog issues, the import and library organization aspects and then the develop module, where much of the heavy lifting is done. The question/answer format works well for Victoria, and I find that she’s very good at getting right to the point and not overwhelming you with words. She uses just enough words to get her point across, and generally has a screen shot to visually point you in the right direction. Very nice. See the TOC here...

Here is an example of the question/answer format and the use of appropriate graphics:

Lots of white space, graphical additions and “just the facts, ma’am” approach works well.

For some, her focus on just the basics might not give all that they need, but I found it to be more than adequate for someone with a basic knowledge of working with Raw images.

I noticed that she also includes some extra chapters to cover ACR compatibility (Yes we sometimes need to go to Photoshop or even, heaven forbid, Bridge) and caps it off with some General Troubleshooting and other useful information.

Overall it looks like a solid and useful addition to the Lightroom library (or my Kindle as in my case). I’d recommend it for anyone who likes the conciseness and salience of a FAQ.

As to cost, it comes in around $25 US. Don’t let that squiggly L thing fool you - that just represents a depreciation in your home currency if you’re on this side of the pond.

Cheers!

Tags:Lightroom

Welcome to Lightroom Tuesday. W00t!

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, mes amis.

• Photoshop TV looks at some Lightroom tips and offers a few free presets.
• Foto-Biz presents a short description of its preferred Develop workflow.
• Lightroomers guide to Lightroom - a new online course thru PPSOP (Picture Perfect School of Photography)...
• Scott Kelby looks at a few nice new things in Lightroom 3 Beta.
• Quick and easy web slideshows from Lightroom. I mean, if you can’t spring for a SmugMug account and want to host all your own photos...
• Ask Mac Create offers a free Lightroom 3 Beta Webinar.
• Adobe’s Anita Dennis recently announced a new addition to helpf or the Lightroom 3 beta. Read more from Lightroom News.com
• A nice tutorial from Digital Photo Experience on exporting images from Lightroom. Raw in, Tiff out. Or Jpeg.
• Corrupted Database? Foto-Biz has some hints for you. FWIW, I’ve repaired my catalogs without issue several times.
• Inside Lightroom looks at the new X-Rite Color Checker Passport (part of my Holiday Gift Guide 2009).
• Lightroom Killer Tips offers another preset....
• DNG. Just do it. Here is why from X-equals.
• A nice discussion on filters and digital photography...
• Victoria Bampton has a nice ebook on Lightroom Beta 3, entitled “Lightroom Beta 3” the missing FAQ” which is a good read. Its really good at focusing on the real problems people have when starting with Lightroom. I hope to have a review of it tomorrow.

Well, thats it for this week. Have a great Tuesday.

Tags:Lightroom

Welcome to Lightroom Tuesday. W00t!

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.

• Biggest news of the week? Amazon was selling Lightroom for $170! Was, as in its over and you missed it. But seriously, who is still sitting on the fence? Get it already.
• LightroomKillerTips.com has a great free preset available, entitled “Wedding Fantasy”, which sounds pretty darn fantastical. More here...
• Into making slideshows? A new plugin called Bragit does just that.
• Some tips on how to move from iPhoto to Lightroom.
• Raplh Norstrom has put together a few tips for those wanting to do some HDR work.
• Quick Batch resizing for print output. Crop happens, and we have standardized on funny sizes, so get used to it.
• Batch Cropping must be in this week.
• I’m not much for the look, but if you want some frames on your images, OnOne has a package for you.
• PhotographyBB has a new issue of their e-magazine for you to check out. They cover the LR beta and some other tutorials. New to me... (via PhotographyBlog)
• Foto-Biz has a tip on how to select a catalog when opening Lightroom. Its the little things...
• Here is a free preset from photographer Kirsten Cox
• Another article on improving LR performance from Rob Sylvan. Must be in the air.
• Get your Nerd on! Metadata presets from LightroomSecrets.
• X-Equals brings us a great look at Creating Panoramas in Lightroom (includes at least one preset in there)
• Stephen Zeller has a nice video tutorial of his Lightroom workflow. Be a fly on the wall, I dare you.
• LRSaver is a screensaver app that uses Lightroom (and its cache) for image organization (Windows now, Mac support in a few weeks).
• Super cool bonus of the week - The Monochrome Toolkit
• Michael Gray has a nice Tmax 3200 preset for you to enjoy. Note: I think this requires LR3 Beta. Tmax, kids, was a type of high speed film used to shoot in crappy light.

Not Lightroom related, but worth a look...

• TOP has another look at the online photo critique. Very funny.
• If you didn’t notice, I posted my 2009 Holiday Gift Guide yesterday. Scroll down for more giving goodness.

Tags:Lightroom

Welcome to Lightroom Tuesday. W00t!

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.

• Speed tip - increase raw cache for faster processing.
• A look at color from Lightroom and other raw processors.
• Great eyes in Lightroom.
• A before and after video from Matt K.
• Adding a virtual photo frame in Lightroom (PS. need a mike baffle there Yanik)
• Cuba Gallery is offering a Lightroom tutorial package (ebook, practice images, preset) for a few bucks.
• Lightroom processing video tutorial.
• So you spend all that time keywording your photos (wish I could say I reliably do this, but no matter). Here is how to use those keywords to greater effect when searching.
• Lightroom 3 Beta printing improvements are detailed here.
• Instructables has a nice tutorial on popping color in Lightroom.
• Solo Mode is cool - keeping the clutter down.
• Top 10 Lightroom Tweets of the week - lots of good stuff here I won’t have to cover.
• Lightroom Killer Tips covers some, ahem, killer modifier keys for the graduated filter.
• A look at skin softening techniques in Portraiture, Lightroom and Nik Color Efex Pro.
• Refine photos. I’ve never really wrapped my head around the Refine Photos command. Here is a look at it.
• Edit in Photoshop bug fixed for Snow Leopard users.
• How to display EXIF data in Lightroom.
• A photographer sees the light and switches from Photoshop to Lightroom for post processing. Hey, I know you like your actions and all that. I know its comfortable. But Lightroom will save you so much time...
• A discussion with Tom Hogarty of Adobe on Lightroom Beta 3.
• For the Noobs - DPS asks “What is Lightroom and why should I consider it.”
• Collections are very cool. Here is Scott K talking about them. In my workflow, after the initial edit, all photos go into a collection for further editing and processing.
• Lightroom Killer Tips has a link to someone elses’ tip on how to fade a preset. PS. that is how its done - you link to people with the ideas. I always run across at least one cut/paste rip off of someone else’s Lightroom content a week. Seriously?
• Lightroom Secrets has a Q&A day.
• LightroomLab.com has a look at how metadata adds value.
• Sean McCormack has a column in Photoshop User about Lightroom sharpening. He even links to a pdf if you don’t subscribe. What a nice guy.

Not Lightroom related, but interesting/cool/necessary:

• X-Equals has a look at The Business of Doing Business. They also have a nice gear review up...
• SmugMug has some awesome features coming in the next few weeks. Last week we shipped the ability for our Pro users to price and sell cards.

Tags:Lightroom

Welcome to Lightroom Tuesday. W00t!

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.

• Lightroom 3 beta still seems to be tearing up the interwebz: New Features, Sharpening Tip, Q&A with Matt, Another Review, The Import Experience
• X-Equals talks about the Beta and the future.
• Tom Hogarty, product manager for LR, is interviewed on EXIF and Beyond. Not surprisingly, they talk mostly about Beta 3.
• A grain preset for Lightroom 3 from Matt K.
• Timothy Armes released a new plugin for Lightroom to embed PLUS usage rights into images exported from Lightroom 2. PLUS is a standardized way to define rights for digital works. Read more on PLUS here.
• Another “I’m switching from Aperture to Lightroom” blog post. PS. Its sad to see Aperture wither on the vine.
• Adobe provides a SDK (software development kit) for those interested in creating nifty additions to Lightroom’s abilities.
• Sean McCormack has a great tutorial on doing timelapse from Lightroom.
• Dig this Lightroom Shortcut Cheat Sheet.
• Sherri Meyer has posted her Lightroom Tweets of the week.
• A tutorial on printing from Lightroom.
• YATVTLR - Yet another Tethering Video Tutorial for Lightroom.
• David Ziser talks about the Canon 7D and Lightroom Beta 3.
• Scott Kelby on a fix in Lightroom: Backup. Yes its slightly better than before...
• DPS covers how to control Before and After in Lightroom.
• Publish your photos to the cloud. Ok, its not as nebulous as that. A great look at publishing services in action.
• Advice on Tiff or PSD for archiving...
• Meet Julie. She works on Lightroom. She’s good people.

A few things worth looking at:

• A great tutorial on exposure from David DuChemin.
• 10 fascinating recently discovered photos

Thats it (so far today) - have a good one.

Tags:Lightroom

Welcome to Lightroom Tuesday. W00t!

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.

• Well the surprise of the week was the release of the Lightroom 3 Beta. Get it here. Big deal: Speed! New Noise Reduction, New Import dialog, New Post-Crop.
• Learn more about the beta from a post last Thursday here.
• A look at the new Noise Reduction defaults.
• A nice poster template for those awesome landscape shots you should have taken.
• Another video look at the beta. And another here...
• Victoria Brampton looks at the new features. She’s also got a new book on the app that I’m looking at this week.
• Another “Moving from Aperture” article...
• Lightroom makes this author happy.
• Lightroom-blog.com has a nice “Alphabetic LIghtroom” look at keyboard shortcuts.
• Free cinematic presets (whatever that means to you) for Lightroom.
• Utah Valley photogs note: Scott Jarvie has a few Lightroom workshops going down
• A few more presets to make your Tuesday...
• Lexar & Adobe offer discounts on Lightroom.
• How to install presets.
• David Ziser has an interesting take on how to make Lightroom studio friendly

As you can see, its mostly LR3 Beta stuff. I’ve seen a few issues with the new app - mostly around importing files from a card with other files included in the mix (read movie files). So be careful. This is beta software.

Have a great Tuesday.

PS. Most of the PPE pictures shot in NY this week were run thru the beta, problems not withstanding.

Tags:Lightroom

The new Lighroom Beta 3 import dialog has a few improvements over the last.

The concept is something that I worked up a year or two ago for Lightroom 2 - the jist was that users were confused about the import process and to lay it out visually would improve the "big bump" in the learning curve for the product.

The big bump is the issue of people not groking where thier photos are being saved to. I've seen people save their imports to all manner of weird locations, and then get mad because they don't know where things are. I've seen people claim Lightroom is obfuscating stuff. I've even seen people claim LR imported stuff right to the trash and they've been the victim of a poorly designed product. I kid you not.

So the idea was to provide a nice overlay that would show point A (the CF card for exapmle), the process (copy, move, convert to DNG) and point B (the save location - i.e. my Drobo). This new dialog does this quite well - its much more explicit about where things are going if you are cognizant about things.

I'm iffy on the the tree explorer on the left - it just seems a bit overwhelming compared to the "choose" dialog we just had, but it does help visualize the where from a local drive. Jury out.

I do like that they do a better job of visualizing what won't be imported (a nice vignette gray out effect) on stuff that won't come over. And the coolest thing I've found so far is that LR will now move your .mov files from your video-enhanced camera, which rocks. One had to be very on top of moving video files because LR 2 just ignores them and you'd have to manually grab them yourself. That meant reinserting the card if it had been ejected and canceling the import dialog again in LR before digging them out of the CF card. Many a movie has probably been deleted when the photog forgot.

One minor nit: the "No preview available" tag for videos is hopefully a beta-isim - it needs a keyframe image of the video and some graphics to make sure people realize its a video.

I have not had time to see if the backup feature is the same, or if the've improved on it to mirror your choices for the primary import.

Finally, I'm also kinda confused why it has my local hard drive and my user directory listed out as peers in the destination tab when they're not. I'm assuming its for convieniece but it could be confusing.

The import presets feature? Not sure yet. Might be really useful, might never get used. Time will tell on this one.

PhotoPlus East Day 2 was just like day one. Our booth was mobbed. We gave out all our SmugMugPro bags and had to turn away quite a few dissapointed people. What I like about working in the SmugBooth is that one in 15 people are already customers who come to us and just say how happy they are to be our customers. Very few have complaints or requests - most just want to say Hi and that they love us. Its weird after fielding odd Acrobat complaints for years in the Adobe booth. And funnier yet, if someone asks what SmugMug is while our happy customer is there, they'll usually just jump in with praise and encouragment. I just have to stand their and smile.

Didn't get a chance to look around much yesterday. And our biggest diversion of the day was to get a 10 minute massage before heading back to the booth.

That was sure nice.

Tags:Lightroom

Welcome to Lightroom Tuesday. W00t!

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.

• An older, but very useful look at Lightroom Catalogs.
• Rob Sylvan has a great article over at PhotoFocus.com entitled “10 Things I wish I could tell Every New Lightroom User”. Worth a read.
• This is one for the noobs: how to pull detail out of them thar shadows.
• Noob2:
• Just a reminder: Adobe’s Lightroom Help/Support pages have some good stuff
• Transferring projects from Aperture to Lightroom. (heh heh)
• A nice treatise on workflow from Eivind Birkedal over at Posterous.
• Vibrance is the new black. Yehaw!
• Itching to learn more about color? X-Rite has a free webinar for you...
• Matt K’s Lightroom Tip of the Day: The Missing Filter Options.
• Camera profiles can save beaucoup time. Here is a short screed on one photographer’s quest for Nikon camera profiles.
• Add drama with the Graduated Filter.
• Configuring external editors. There’s an increasing number of third party editors out there. Learn more.
• Exporting multiple photos directly to an email attachment is easy.
• Lightroom changed my photos on import and they now look blah! I get his question all the time. Here is how to address this.
• I found a nice sharpening tip for Canon 5D series cameras here in this discussion of post-processing workflow.
• X-Equals has posed some Lightroom speed tips. Open up that throttle!
• Scott Bourne, poster child for Aperture, has inflated the escape raft and is pointing it toward HMS Lightroom.
• Limping by with the trial version. Cheapest place to get the full version is Adorama at $250. Cheap for how much time it saves you.
• Untwisted Camera profiles. Not sure what that means? Then by the heavens, go educate yourself.
• More Lightroom Q&A from Matt K.
• Lightroom and pie charts? Yeah really. You know that metadata nerd in you is just dying for it.

Not Lightroom related, but worth a look...

• Vincent Laforet goes into some detail about his hands on with the new Canon 1D MK IV camera. With some video. And he hosts his good stuff on SmugMug.
• Run & Gun kit for your video DSLR.
• The Panasonic GF1 camera reviewed on TOP. Sweet pocket camera.
• New Canon 5D MKII firmware in the works...
• Chase Jarvis, seattle photog and guy behind the Best Camera iPhone app has a new book and contest.

Tags:Lightroom

Welcome to Lightroom Tuesday. W00t!

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.

• Presets, Defaults and how to manage the two.
• SimpleScrapper talks presets. And provides some linky to some free/for pay presets.
• LR/Mogrify has been updated. Lots of cool new features methinks...
• Why is the histogram not the same in LR and PS?
• Stop mailing me full res images from your camera Uncle Bob. Seriously. Please. Or better yet, SmugMug them.
• High Key is Super Key in my book. Learn more...
• Got multiple catalogs that need some quality time together. Merge em...
• X-Equals has some great stuff on Best Practices for LR. Get all read-y with them...
• Image sequencing isn’t just for Nerdy McNerdison anymore.
• Watch an image unfold in LR with Tony Eckersley.
• Laura Shoe teaches you how to xxport to shiny, round discs.
• A review of LRKeys from LightroomSecrets.com. Some schwanky thing or other for speeding your KBSC-mojo.
• Vignettes (pronounced like Vigh-nettes, thankyouvermucy) are very cool.
• Lightroom Painter has some tricks up its, uh, not-real cannister of pressurized gas?

Not LR related, but cool...

• Nat Geo photog and friend Ira Block does some looking at the 7D. I chatted with him this past week and he was pretty excited about this new camera after hating on his 50D.

Thats it folks. Have a great Tuesday!

Tags:Lightroom

Welcome to Lightroom Tuesday. W00t!

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.

• Phototuts has an “Ultimate Guide to Lightroom 2” online. Its only been a year, so they’ve really been thorough .
• Neutralday has links to a variety of free presets for you to peruse...
• Is your world a bit blurry? Can’t afford that great Leica lens you really want? DPS teaches you how LR can help by sharpening things up a bit...
• Photoshelter has a nice tutorial on workflow...
• Timothy Armes released a new web gallery in the past few weeks...
• Danette Chappell has a tutorial on editing in Lightroom. And by Edit she means developing. Its always interesting to see how others use those sliders...
• LR Engineer extrordinaireTroy Gual gave a talk on Lightroom development at C4[2] awhile back (whatever that is).
• Free preset from LightroomLibrary.com. Meow!
• More from the Texas Chicks Blogs & Pics! What has to be my favorite blog title has posted a short tip on editing multiple photos in LR.
• More for-pay presets from Rebecca Lily.
• Snapshots - versioning made easy from X-Equals.
• Luminance. It ain’t just for geeks anymore.
• John Shaw (yes, you saw his books at Barnes & Noble) has a new eBook on Lightroom development.
• A convert. Well, kinda.

That is it. Sorry about the late post, its been a busy day...

Tags:Lightroom

Welcome to Lightroom Tuesday. W00t!

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.

• So hows Lightroom doing against its competition? And by competition I actually mean two things: 1) Apterture and 2) Bridge/ACR. Turns out pretty good. PS. Yes, I lump Bridge/ACR as a competitor. This was the de-facto standard before the enlightening. Back when Adobe didn’t get the whole Raw thing yet. Back when we cobbled together workflows with all kinds of tools based on expediency, company politics and shrugs from the poor users who had to suffer because of the former two. I do not miss those days.
• The Library module has lots of cool views besides grid. You should know them. As the ghost of christmas present said: get to know me better man!
• Matt K does a demo of shooting tethered (ahem) with a WiFI card from Eye-Fi. At least with SD based cameras. PS. I’ve seen CF card adapters that I’m told work in Pro bodies. P.S.S If you’re a smugger, look here. Eye-Fi is a few doors down from SmugMug.
• Frederick Van has posted an interview with Katrin Eismann, author, educator and author. She’s been a godsend to Adobe and helped me meet several good friends.
• Its update season for Lightroom, so here is a tutorial for those of you who’ve never updated before... Hey, there might be a few of you.
• Matt K’s tip for this week is about updating presets with new settings. Read up!
• Tablets. Love em or hate em (I’m in the latter camp - and I’ve sure tried to like em), there are many who swear by them. Here is a fun little discussion from some Wacom guy on imaging and tablets.
• Smart Objects in Photoshop. I’ve never bothered to figure them out. Oh, I know there are lots of cool stuff you can do with them. All those fuzzy promises are rattling around somewhere in the back of my head. X-Equals sure tries to convince me to give them a try again...
• Laura Shoe still has some spots in her Seattle Lightroom workshops.
• How to use a gray card with Lightroom. I actually get asked this a lot.
• Well that is it for today. So time to stand up, go outside and press that shutter button some. Do that enough, it will come unstuck.
• Cheers!

Tags:Lightroom

My wife kept frowning at me.

I knew exactly what it was for. But I manage to stall for a few weeks.

It was the closet. The master one. Specifically my side.

I’m a bit of a pack rat. Nothing neurotic or anything, there are no piles of newspapers stacked to the ceiling or empty rolls of paper towels. No, I just have stuff that needs putting somewhere.

I’m an outdoor fanatic, so I have a variety of sleeping bags. 20 degree, 30 degree, 40 degree. And a few of each. I camp in different seasons, and one needs a bit of variety. Plus I have kids, so they get used. But they also need a place to rest when not on some adventure at the bottom of my pack.

I also have lots of shirts. Short sleeve t-shirts when I’m displaying my awesome coolness. Short sleeve t-shirts when I’m biking or hiking. Short sleeve t-shirts when I’m digging in the back yard. And the worst? Company t-shirts. I’ve got Apple t’s, Adobe t’s and now SmugMug t’s littering the closet. There is even a few band t-shirts from when I was much more punk rock than most of you. Misfits, Exploited and The Dead Kennedys. Yup. I suppose I can lump those in with the awesome coolness part above, but I’m trying to make a point...

So the closet gets full. And it was. You know when you gotta jump over sleeping bags and the like that time is limited...

So I cleaned it out tonight. And that meant more than just putting stuff back where it goes. It meant getting rid of stuff. Those dress shirts I don’t wear much anymore. A few pairs of pants and shorts that are just too worn out to matter. Those shoes that just sit there. You get the point.

So why am I telling you this? Well, because I have a few Lightroom shirts that I never wear, so I figured I’d give them away to my voracious readers who love all things Lightroom.

I have the shipping shirt for Lightroom 1 and Lightroom 2.

Stay tuned for tomorrow when I give away the first...

Tags:Lightroom

Welcome to Lightroom Tuesday. Huzzah!

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.

• A few weeks ago I reviewed Nathaniel Coalson’s Lightroom book, entitled , entitled Adobe Photoshop LIghtroom 2: Streamlining your Digital Photography Process. I recommend it. This week, Chris Shepherd reviews Inside Lightroom 2, another LIghtroom2 book seeking for your attention. Read up!
• Lightroom guru and friend Eric Scouten has just posted an updated article on how he manages his Lightroom world.
• Lightroom 2.5 is now out. Huzzah! I just installed it, and its mostly a bug fix/camera support release
• Lightroom Secrets has a new feature introducing members of the Lightroom community for your edification. Read on...
• AdobeTV, an Adobe website focused on free training and tutorials, has been updated...
• Cropping with a fixed aspect ratio. Sometimes you gotta fit that paper and frames made for 18th century photographers...
• Calibrate your monitors - sometimes what you see on screen isn’t what prints. That person you shot a portrait of shouldn’t look like a smurf (yes, I’ve seen that one more than a few times at SmugMug.)
• Speaking of cropping, here are some Standard Print Size presets for the Print module from Matt K.
• Matt also has a tip on how to zoom to a specific point using a little known preference...
• Did you have troubles getting Jeffrey Friedl’s plugins? His website seems like its back up now...
• PhotoshopWorld is a good place to learn about Lightroom. And that other photo editing app from Adobe.
• Snow Leopard issues with Lightroom detailed here. PS. I had a fantastic failure with Snow Leopard on my main machine. Lucky I’m a backup madman.
• Moving folders in Lightroom. Yes, you’ll mess up your perfect organization at some point and need to clean up. And some of you are not that organized to begin with (yes, I know), so this is a good thing to know.
• Adjustment Brush finesse. Yes you can increase your technique...
• TTG’s Pages 3.0 web gallery was released. Cost is $25, but is worth it if you need said functionality.
• Comparing before/after views in Lightroom. You did make it better, didn’t you?
• BTW, the new Leica cameras come with LIghtroom. And they shot native DNG.
• Selective color. Please no! Ok, maybe a bit, but don’t overdo it. PS. Texaschicksblogandpicts.com? I know!
• Free online Lightroom Webinar. Read more.
• Smart Collections are like playlists for your photos. And smart people use them. Be smart.

Not Lightroom related, but worth a look

• SEO and SmugMug. Its about getting da word out.

• For you point/shooters who like expensive things, here is a hands on with the new Leica X1. I’d love to, but the Oly is less than 1/2 as much.
• A hands on with the M9.

Ok, that is it for this week. I gotta go dig myself from under a Snow Leopard mess...

Have a great Tuesday.

Tags:Lightroom

Welcome to Lightroom Tuesday. Huzzah!

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.

• Top Ten Lightroom Tweets. Lots here I don’t need to duplicate...
• Scrapbooking and Lightroom? Frick on a Stick. I love that.
• Timothy Armes has a new Web Gallery out. Elegance. Hat tip to LRN.
• Plugins Galore - X-equals looks at all the greeeet Lightroom plugins you should consider...
• Jarvie kicks it with the Utah Photo Editing Showdown @Pictureline - see pros in action using Lightroom. Keep track of their future dates if you’re in the Wasatch Front area...
• David Saffir’s ongoing look at File management in Lightroom.
• Creating HDR images in Lightroom. Don’t do it. I kid. Kind of.
• Cleaning out your Catalog. Its like Spring or Fall cleaning, only with photos and involves less dust.
• I always yak on about how important keyboard shortcuts are in Lightroom. G, V, D, N, L, etc. Here is a nice video tutorial on using KBSCs to speed yourself. Think of it like a supercharger on the ends of your arms.
• Snow Leopard and Lightroom? I’ve personally not taken the plunge to SL until today and have not launched Lightroom on the lappy yet to see myself. Matt K covers it on his blog today. Note Tom Hogarty’s comments last week...
• Rebecca Lily offers some inexpensive preset variations for Lightroom. Some deep stuff there

• The Navigator and Rating video tutorial. I always hide the Navigator to get more left panel track space, but hey, thats just me.

Not Lightroom related, but worth a look

• Leica M9. Mmmmmm.

Tags:Lightroom

Welcome to Lightroom Tuesday. Huzzah!

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.

• How to setup external editors for Lightroom. Useful for the few external editors I’d consider worthy of tacking on the end of a Lightroom workflow - PT lens and Photoshop.
• Speaking of external editing apps, it looks like Imageonomic (ugh, I hate typing that) has released Portraiture 2 for Lightroom. Saves a bit of time over going to Photoshop to do the same time I guess.
• Kinda late in coming (we released Lightroom 2 over a year ago) but here is a rundown of the “new” Develop tools in Lightroom 2.
• I talk often of LR2/Mogrify. Its very cool. Here is a great overview from TheLightroomLab.com on what it can do for you.
• Speaking of LR2/Mogrify, here is how to add EXIF metadata with this indispensable tool.
• David Franzen talks about how to make an Lightroom Export Action for an AIR App. Don’t now what an AIR app is? Move on, its just for the big nerds. Oops, I mean, except David (Disclaimer - David works at Adobe in Seattle, and used to sit next door to me).
• LIghtroom 3 is in development. Here is one user’s take on what he’d love to see in the next version. Adobe actually listens to this kinda stuff (especially when Scott Kelby and his hoarde do it), so contribute. PS. We mostly know what you’re going to say, but sometimes we get a curve ball.
• One of the most oft-asked questions asked of Adobe educators is the venerable “if I have Photoshop, do I need Lightroom” meme. Short answer: Yes, go get it and save beaucoup time. Sheesh, where’ve you been. And here is the Long answer.
• Sean McCormack has a great tutorial on how to create a background grid of photos with Lightroom. Very cool.\
• Having trouble installing LIghtroom 2 after updating to Snow Leopard? Here is why...
• Live in Seattle or its environs? Laura Shoe is doing a free 2 hour Lightroom demo for your edification.
• Its Q&A day over at Lightroom Killer tips. Good stuff.
• X-Equals is pimping a very, uh, pimp digest of photo-nerd stuff. Check it out.
• LRB Portfolio is up to 2.3
• Keywording in Loupe View. Very nerdy.
• Slideshows in Lightroom are barely adequate. Here is a tip on how to improve them.
• One man’s transition to Lightroom. This episode- editing.

Not Lightroom related, but worth a look

• Man, I want one of these...
• Snow Leopard. Here. Except for me because someone is dragging their heels about getting we smuggers the update...
• Leica has stuff up its sleeves. Just past those expensive cuff links.

Tags:Lightroom

Nathaniel Coalson recently contacted me and asked if I’d review his Lightroom 2 book, entitled Adobe Photoshop LIghtroom 2: Streamlining your Digital Photography Process. I agreed, and it arrived a few days later in the mail.

Then I took my sweet time to review it. Between this crazy summer’s escapades and a nasty spider bite, I’ve been a busy, distracted man this summer.

As an aside, being an erstwhile a member of the Lightroom team, I’m used to getting copies of the latest Lightroom books from the well-known Industrial Adobe Learning Complex (IALC) authors. For the past few years, I’ve recommended Seth Resnick’s book as it is a great extension of his wonderful multi-day seminar that I’ve been privileged to sit in on over the past few years. I also have books from Scott Kelby and Martin Evening kicking around. Or had them - I generally end up giving them out as gifts to family members who like to have a reference guide close by.

Nathaniel’s book fills an interesting niche - his book is for the kind of photographer (like me) that likes to understand the basic technical side, but does not want to get overly obsessive about the technology. The latter being typified by those annoying camera cluby people who never take actual pictures but know everything about a Bayer filters and micro-lenses. And will tell you about it repeatedly. They can rot your insides if you let them. But I digress...

What is a digital workflow you ask? A workflow is the methodological process one uses to approach working with digital imagery. And I say methodological because its like mowing the grass when you’re 12 - a plan makes it easier and look better when you’re done. Workflow certainly isn’t new. Ansel was teaching that decades ago. It just got a bit more complex when someone let the computer nerds in the door.

Anyhow, all the basic workflow topics are covered, including Capture, Import, Organize, Process, Export and Present. Just as you’d expect.

But hold on. Before we get all hot and heavy into keywording and granular slider adjustments, Nat gives you a short look at the fundamental theories of digital imaging (sensor capture, color management, raw file composition) before getting into what my friend Nacho would call “the nitty gritty”. Very nice.

With that, he then spends time on the various aspects of capturing imagery - this chapter is a great refresher on how to avoid frustration later on. In fact, I remember my “Intro to Darkroom” teacher once opine that “bad negatives make for work” and that axiom is just as true today. Read it a few times. You’ll learn something.

Then we get a thorough job walking thru the Lightroom environment and introducing you to the neighbors. Not surprising, as most all books do this well.

Following along, the Import and Organize chapters cover what is necessary to manage that stream of big CR2 or NEFs plopping on your hard drive, including folder/collection management and metadata/keyword tips that will make life easier down the road. Trust me, you won’t always remember that Client A’s shoot was on August 12th, 2009. Competent and thorough.

What actually surprised me was a substantial chapter focused on reinforcing the need for a plan when processing images. It’s not that the idea of “having a plan” is surprising per se (we all get this talk early on in our photographic lives) but it was more that he tackled it so thoroughly. In fact, I tend to gloss over most of this in my Intro to Lightroom tutorials because its such a subjective thing (and I usually don’t have time in a 3-4 hour session to touch much on it). Apart from the capture variables you control at shutter press, the processing aspect is very personal and often becomes the “look” part that so many people talk about. Just as I’ve often stressed editing as an important skill (one that takes years to develop), processing is the next big challenge on the list. This chapter is a great intro to how to methodologically tackle this. Just insert yourself into the process to avoid being a preset weenie, and you’re on your way.

The rest of the book is the mechanics of getting your work to fire people’s synapses in a good way. Exporting, slideshow, printing etc. He covers the important export plugins, basic color management and web presentation. It reminded me how little I print and make web galleries since joining SmugMug. I sure don’t miss that much. Its easier to dump them into an online gallery where commerce and printing are all setup ahead of time.

He does make at least one recommendation I disagree with (i.e. don’t use Auto Save to make sure the files contain the latest metadata), but overall I found his methodical approach to a workflow useful and can easily see it helping others. Workflow is the process of settling on a methodological process for dealing with your output, and this book helps you think about what parts are most important to you and why.

So where does this book fall in the canon of Lightroom literature? I see this as a great recommendation for photographers who want a bit more than the typical “Ten Down/Dirty tips to Lightroom Greatness” type books. It is a great way to get a walk-thru of the fundamentals as well as a great overview of a workflow for those looking to actually develop their photographic skill - be they amateurs, prosumers or professionals. It might be a bit detailed for the former, but the latter two groups can get much from this workflow-centric look at Lightroom.

I see this as a cover-to-cover read. It will serve as an off the shelf reference as well (its well organized), but its best read in order to fully grasp the concepts behind a total workflow solution.

So yes, I heartily recommend this book - especially to people who are looking to define their workflow in a responsible, holistic manner. It is slightly denser than some of the other Lightroom books I’ve looked at, but for the most part, I think he nails the balance between informative and overwhelming.

Thanks Nat, for a great addition for the book learnin’ crowd.

PS. I didn’t find my invaluable blog in the list of Lightroom references though. Such an oversight

Tags:Lightroom

Welcome to Lightroom Tuesday. Huzzah!

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.

• MattK has posted an update to some retouching presets for the Adjustment Brushes. And a great video tutorial on sharpening.
• A great tip on panning thru an image at 1:1.
• Looks like another big long list of free presets for Lightroom has been posted. Have a look...
• Timothy Armes is at it again. This time its a plugin for Gmail (LR2/Gmail) that lets you send images to others...
• Wonderland Presets just lowered the price on their preset offering.
• Sean McCormack has the shortcut of the day over on the Lightroom-Blog.com
• Here is a short video tutorial on keyboard shortcuts for LIghtroom. KBSC = More Faster.
• A short tutorial from Eric Tastad on recovering a partly shaded area of a photo.
• Want more granularity from your sliders. Get some!
• Photographywired presents a short blurb on how to soften skin in Lightroom.
• Grayscale gradients in the identity plate? Why not. Here is a short tutorial on how to do this. PS. Helps on a laptop and its recommended by Matt K.
• Importing Images into Lightroom. This gets covered all the time, but worth a read if you’re confused about DNG or importing into LIghtroom.
• Backup your catalog on a regular basis. No really. Backup. Here is a story to scare you a bit.
• Another “Meet the Lightroom Team” video. This time of Craig Marble, the guy making sure Lightroom won’t crash. He’s good people.
• Adobe has released Camera Raw 5.5 (support for new cameras like the new Oly and D300s). Comes with a new DNG converter as well.

Not Lightroom related, but worth a look:

• X-Equals has a great two part article on scanning. Part II is now posted.
• David DuChemin has a great article on his blog about exposure and metering. Back to basics!
• Leica S2. Sweet.

Tomorrow I have a short article on LIghtroom books, a book review, and some recommendations for you book learnin’ types, so stay tuned.

Have a great Tuesday!

Tags:Lightroom

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, mes amis.

• Kubota Imaging Tools has released RPG SpeedKeys for LIghtroom. Here is a YouTube video. Spendy, but interesting.
• Sean McCormack has a nice How To tutorial for people wanting to watermark their photos using Timothy Armes’ LR2/Mogrify plugin. If you don’t have LR2/Mogrify, you’re missing out.
• Shhhh. Someone is getting it.
• If you’re still on an PowerPC, get over it and buy an intel Mac. Seriously. My first gen IntelMac has already gone to meet its maker after years and years of service. And now the LR team has announced that it won’t support non-intel Macs going forward. That they humored you powerpc goofballs as long as they did is amazing And if you’re using a monitor that supports less than 1280xwhatever, seriously, you’re dead to me.
• PresetHeaven pointed to a nice AdobeTV spot highlighting the time saving features in Lightroom.
• Michael Clark has released a new Adobe Lightroom ebook. Its for pay, and I have not looked at it, but bears looking into if you’re wanting some Lightroom book-love.
• Jim Goldstein presents his take on JPG vs. RAW (and DNG) for his workflow.
• CreativeTech presents an online, 10 week LIghtroom ecourse. Worth looking into.
• Ultimate free preset list for LIghtroom. You’re sure to find something interesting there...
• Lightroom vs. Aperture. I’m biased, so read this take on which is better. PS. Aperture has a few nice tools that Lightroom is missing...
• Lighroom-News.com interviews photographer David DuChemin

Not specifically LIghtroom-related, but worth a lookie...

• Scanning? Yeah, it still happens. X-Equals has a nice discussion on best practices.

Tags:Lightroom

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, mes amis.

• Panoramas from Lightroom. Very easy. Very cool.
• Photos from LIghtroom right to Facebook? You bet.
• Here is a take on Importing images into LIghtroom.
• Matt K on LIghtroom Killer Tips has a bunch of good stuff: Print Layout, Resetting Presets, Q&A day, Organizing by Date
• Rebecca Lilly shares her presets with you in a slightly odd way. PS: its called hyperlinking
• Christine Meintjes shares a few presets from her toolbox.
• Timothy Armes has a new Lightroom plugin - LR2/Gmail, which does exactly what you’d expect.
• How to simulate Infared photography with Lightroom.
• Here is a neat Virtual Copy trick from the Lightroom Blog and Victoria Bampton.
• How to create Diptychs in Lightroom.
• An interesting tip on Parent and subfolders...
• X= Blog has a great article on resolution you should look at if you print much...

Tags:Lightroom

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, mes amis.

• LR2/Blog is cool for Wordpress/Blogger users, so it bears repeating. Last week in my LR seminar in Utah County, we talked a lot about export options - people understandably have many places to put their photos. From SmugMug to blogs to CDs to other parts in between, LR can deliver.
• Speaking of exporting, we often go to JPGs when doing thusly. For good reason. Matt K has a nice rundown of JPGness here.
• Lightroom Mistakes? People make those? Oh I have stories. Here is a rundown of 5 top mistakes one photographer sees that you should avoid.
• Lightroomsecrets.com covers some interesting Keyword issues to take note of when using tags in Lightroom.
• Luminous Landscape has some interesting video tutorials for Lightroom (and that other photo app that Adobe makes). I think these are pay to view, but they have previews. Check them out.
• X-equals reviews some portfolio gallery software for Lightroom.
• LIghtroom-Blog.com covers a nice Filmstrip selection tip here.
• Gavin Seim has a nice rundown on how to install LIghtroom presets.
• Having issues with LIghtroom’s thumbnails not generating properly? Check here.
• Nick Potter covers some keyword basics in Lightroom. He even has some downloadable keyword lists that you can install yourself and use.
• Sherri Meyer’s top ten Lightroom tweets of the week. Lots of goodness I won’t have to duplicate here.

Not Lightroom related, but worth a look:

• Battery-o-rama for Macbooks. An inverter and a 12 volt battery also works...
• One of LIghtroom’s founders is going back to work for Adobe.
• HDR - don’t do it. At least very often. Here is a tutorial for those few times.

Have a great Tuesday...

Tags:Lightroom

I gave a raucous Lightroom seminar yesterday to a group of photographers in the Utah County area. What started out as a favor to a few of my sister’s photographer friends grew into a larger crowd of enthusiastic photogs, and I was glad to be of service. Infamous Utah photo-phenom Jarvie even showed up.

We started a bit late (as usual) and didn’t split up until after 10 PM, with lots left to cover (as usual).

I pretty much followed my outline detailed in my free ebook Adobe Lightroom 2: Workflow For Busy Photographers PDF. Setup, Ingest, Edit, Process and Export. You know, the basics.

Lots of discussion about DNG, the coolness that is the Adjustment Brush and Backup strategies.

Here is my Keynote Presentation if you’re interested, although frankly it does not give much beyond what the above mentioned PDF does.

Cheers to all attendees. I hope you managed to get a few nuggets out of my extended yammering.

Tags:Lightroom

Welcome to Lightroom Tuesday! Huzzah!

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.

• This week everyone was all up on a technique to find the fastest way to export photos from Lightroom.
• Scott Kelby did a nice long Q&A about Lightroom the other day (via Matt K’s blog)
• Nik Software is putting on a bunch of webinars - I’m sure they’ll include some Lightroom integration demos.
• Look Ma, Only Lightroom. A nice demo on how to do some complex layout stuff without resorting to Photoshop.
• More tips on how to optimize Lightroom...
• How to move a Lightroom Catalog to an external drive. If you work on the road, this is a must-know as I never have enough internal drive space.
• A look at Noise Reduction in Lightroom. Personally I don’t do much NR on my work. I shot fast film and pushed it, so I’m not afraid of grain. Still, nice to know.
• Top 10 Lightroom tweets for the past week. Lots of great links I won’t have to duplicate here, so have a look...
• Jeff Friedl’s plugins are a must-have, and he supports quite a few photo sharing sites (including the best of the bunch, SmugMug). He just released a few new ones as well...
• Speaking of export plugins, DPS has a nice summary of what is out there...
• DPS this week covers how to print from Lightroom with colored backgrounds...
• An interesting look at someone’s initial thoughts at going SOOC to Lightroom...
• Get those panels under control. A look at taming the myriad panels in Lightroom.
• TTG Highside (a Lightroom web gallery) was recently updated. The Turning Gate has a plethora of great galleries to choose from. Would you say I have a plethora of galleries Jefe?
• X-Equals has a great article on grayscale mixing. Look at you Mr. DJ of Light. Vikka Vikka Vow!
• The Adobe Learning Resource people (hi Anita!) have a new blog, entitled Phosphors, that contains some great links to learning Lightroom and those other photo apps that Adobe makes. They need some design help though...
• Keywording and Tagging. It isn’t for the faint of heart. But it can be really useful.

That is about it.

Have a great Tuesday.

Tags:Lightroom

I’ll be holding a free Lightroom seminar in Utah County tomorrow (July 21st) at 7 pm in Saratoga Springs, UT.

This started out as a favor for my sister and a few friends and has grown as more people have asked to come. Bring it on, I say. We’ll have fun.

The class will be hosted by Dustin Bess, so ping me for the address.

The Course
The course will focus on someone new to Lightroom - importing, editing and basic development/retouching. I’m sure we’ll get into some advanced topics and I’ll be around to answer harder questions. I’ll also spend some time on Lightroom integration with SmugMug. Finally, I’ll probably also get into a basic LR toolkit and describe a few third party tools for your I’m-so-Cool-Lightroom-Toolbox.

Currently we have 15 spots filled, and could probably accommodate one or two more, so don’t be shy.

Tags:Lightroom

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.

• Looking for some “get me in the ballpark” presets for your Fuji DSLR? First off, look at you fly your freak flag. You go! Now go download them.
• Want to rename folders on import? Here is a nice tutorial on how to do just that.
• Terry White talks about Nikon tethering options from Lightroom.
• For those of you who like to buy preset packs, Presetopia has some interesting offerings. Oh, I know you’re out there. Kevin Kubota is on a big boat because of you
• Want to export and Zip some photos in one easy step? Try this new plugin. Update: its Mac and Windows!
• Ok, N00b alert time - DPS teaches you how to resize images on export. No more getting angry emails back from your cousin when you sent them 200 MB of full size jpegs!
• N00b alert, part II - here are some great “getting started” videos for those of you new to Lightroom.
• Lightroom Tweets of the week.
• Nice free preset - A Farewell To Arms - from A Scenic World.
• Timothy Armes has released LR/Mogrify 2.0. This is the most valuable Lightroom plugin in my arsenal bar none. Rock on Timothy!
• Into Black & White. There is a new book on this available on Amazon. Yes, I still have another Lightroom book to review (sorry Nat) before this one...
• I love triptychs. I really love them. The masters of painting were onto something with those you know. Check out how to simplify their creation in Lightroom.
• X-Equals has a review of the KBSC application RPG Keys. Lightroom productivity is greatly enhanced by knowing a few keyboard shortcuts, but RPGKeys takes it to the next level. Worth a look.
• The eyes have it. No really, they do. Here is how to enhance the eyes in Lightroom. This tutorial focuses on animals, but it applies to humans as well. Or at least your feral child. And if you’re talking goats, you’re on your own - goat eyes are just freaky.
• Finally figured out that ACR sucks compared to Lightroom? Here is a plugin that lets you convert your presets in ACR to ones useable in Lightroom. Why they are different is a question you might ask, but without knowing the politics of Adobe, its best to smile and walk away.
• Matt K’s Lightroom O Rama tour is hitting Chicago and New York.
• The Lightroom Forums was down for an upgrade. Its back.

Well that should do it for today.

Just an FYI, I’m on the road for the next few weeks. I’m in Utah now and will be spending some time in southern Colorado with my two boys exploring the back-roads and shooting pictures. Fun!

Also, I’m going to be holding a free 2 hour Lightroom Seminar in the Lehi, Utah area Tuesday, July 21st. Location and time TBD, but if you are interested and are in the area, drop me an email and I’ll give you info when everything is finalized.

Tags:Lightroom

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.

Tags:Lightroom

Its still Tuesday night - 11:57 to be exact - and Adobe has just posted Lightroom 2.4 to their web servers.

Go get it!

http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/detail.jsp?ftpID=4507

Tags:Lightroom

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!

Tags:Lightroom

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?

Tags:Lightroom

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...

Tags:Lightroom

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!

Tags:Lightroom

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.

• Tethering? Oh yes. David Tejada talks about a tethering to Lightroom with a new piece of software from MountainStorm. Mac only AFAIK.
• Adobe’s Anita Denis has posted a link to some updated help and tutorial content for Lightroom. Is it just me or are the Adobe Lightroom blogs so freaking ugly its embarassing?
• This bears repeating: there are many great video tutorials on using Lightroom available here.
• The DNG profile editor is super cool. Here is a video from the Lightroomblog.com on how to use it to create an IR profile. (via Lightroom News)
• Matt K has a series of questions/answers on his Q&A post this past week. Zooming, Tiff vs. PSD etc. Good stuff.
• I get asked periodically about my strategy for catalogs. I tend to create one every 3 months. But there are other takes. Here is one.
• Matt K’s has reworked and reposted his Summer Haze preset, in honor of it being summer and all.
• The Auto-Write XMP setting in the Catalog Settings dialog is important. I cover this in V2 of my Adobe Lightroom 2: Workflow for Busy Photographers PDF. Note the caveats.
• New metadata plugins. Geeks rejoice! This one from the Lightroom-blog.com lets you append an image with a model or property release. Very cool.
• Preset Overload. 180 free presets would choke a horse. Take this one nice and slow. Having trouble managing all those presets? Me too. I was chatting with Troy Gaul, LR engineer extraordinaire, and this came up just yesterday. Oh, and on some of these, your milage may vary.
• Spent too much time reading Vampire books? Here is a tutorial on how to use LR’s adjustment brushes to make Creepy-Eye!
• Smart Collections are for smart people. They really are. Here is how to be Mr/Ms Smart.
• Sean McGrath at McG Studios has released a series of new presets (with examples) on his website. Nice! If you find them useful, throw a few bucks his way. Or Euros! Or Quid, as I learn on those great beat-em-up British movies.
• Eric and I worked really hard to make sure merging catalogs was easy. And it is. Here is a tutorial on how to do it.
• Another take on the Star/Rate/Flag process of culling your images. Editing is a skill. Cultivate it. For our sakes.
• Getting that “rounded corner” look from Lightroom. Should you so desire...
• Wow, a new review of Lightroom 2! Only 10 months of solid pondering! I kid.
• A new web gallery from The Turning Gate: TTG Highslide. I just don’t use web galleries like I used to, what with my affiliation with SmugMug and all.
• Wanna overcomplicate your workflow? Wanna export repeatedly and relive that great destructiveness that only non-raw workflows can give? Read this.
• A few free presets here. Mmmmm. Pastelly. Not to be ungrateful, but did I mention how much I hate these “free file sharing” sites that try to make you get a “premium membership” to download a 12 k file?
• DNG - use it. A nice treatise on said file format from X-Equals. I’ve actually used the converter this week as LR’s DNG/Import routine was bogging down on me for some reason (still troubleshooting - methinks disk issues with my Drobo).
• Camera feeling slow? Check your CF card.

Non-Lightroom, but interesting:

• 5DMark II video a bit shaky? Try this.
• Need a way to suspend that speedlight over something. Try this.
• Check out yesterday’s Inspiration Monday for some great photography and a way to help people in India get clean water.

And from the weirdy files:

• This bizarre blog popped up today. Its pretty amazing in a “word salad, multiple computer translation, inadvertent mash-up, look-at-me-i’m stealing-other-peope’s-content-and-mangling-it” kinda way. And a hint to you new pirate bloggers: you really should not run with the pre-filled hint text. isn’t a good entry for your “About Me” box.

Tags:Lightroom

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.

• How to move your Lightroom world to an external hard drive. - moving beyond the default Lightroom setup and taking control of where your images are stored. I talk a lot about this in my short “Adobe Lightroom2: Workflow for Busy Photographers” PDF, but it bears repeating.
• The Lightroomblog.com has released an interesting metadata plugin that lets you tag an image with a model release.
• The Graduated Filter - a quick tutorial on using said tool.
• My buddy Eric Scouten points to an upcoming Lightroom workshop by Andrew Rodney focused on Lightroom to Photoshop printing. If you’re in the Seattle area, might be a great opportunity.
• The LightroomLab.com has posted a short, action packed video walking you thru suggestions on setting up Lightroom’s preferences for maximum goodness.
• Lightroomsecrets.com has a short look at renaming files in the Library.
• Another before and after with Matt K. A short hands-on with a portrait that gives you some ideas of the things you can do with Lightroom.
• Looking for some inexpensive yet extensive online tutorials for Lightroom 2? Kelby Training has some great stuff - and for cheap - you can subscribe and watch them all. If you’re ready to go beyond reading books, but can’t swing an expensive workshop, try these.
• The OnOne presets were released quite awhile ago, but they still bear repeating as they have some good starter presets. Here is a short video from Jack Davis on using them.
• Generating previews takes too long. I know, no thumbnailing application will ever be fast enough, but previews are the bane of my existance. But you gotta make them. Here is how to do it if you got impatient and cancelled them when importing.
• LRB Portfolio was updated. This is an all-in-one portfolio site creator for Lightroom.
• Are you a Lightroom Abuser? I sure hope not...
• Printing in the Print module? Then watch this short video on printer profiles...
• Speaking of printing, here is a short look at the guides in the Print module.
• A few interesting new plugins for Lightroom from John Beardsworth.
• Using GPS data in Lightroom is easy. If that sorta thing floats your boat, that is.
• More on GPS here. What is it this week?
• 10 easy steps to Lightroom Grunge.

That is it for this week. Have a great Tuesday.

Tags:Lightroom

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 dear readers.

• Thomas Hawk has a great article on his Lightroom Workflow. Well worth a read.
• Fixing blemishes is something we all have to do at times. The spot tool is capable of quite a bit...
• The Digital Darkroom - a video tutorial for Lightroom newbies that starts at the beginning.
• 35 Lightroom Presets - adding some variation to your presets panel.
• Here is a good tutorial from Matt K on how to install presets once you litter your desktop with them.
• A split toning tutorial walks you thru the process of toning your image. No selenium poisoning for you!
• Foto-Biz.com covers my main arguments with the existing backup tools in Lightroom. Your catalog needs to be backed up, so grit your teeth and set it up to backup at least weekly. As I’ve probably mentioned before, I pushed for an overhaul to the process in 2.0, wanting a solution that was more “on demand” but we just didn’t have time given teh compressed development cycle. 3 maybe?
• If you’re in MN, the Twin Cities LR user group has some interesting programs setup. The LR team is located in the area, so you get a wealth of knowledge when you attend. I even attended a few when I was visiting.
• The Santa Fe Workshops is presenting Derrik Story’s Beginning Workflow with Adobe Lightroom in July. More here...
• A short article on Deleting Keywords. Sometimes you gotta clean house...
• Dave at the LightroomLab.com has an interesting article on how he backs up his work. He recommends a two disk setup with Carbon Copy Cloner (Mac) to keep them synced. This will work, but its extra work and in my experience, is prone to failure. A drobo or other RAID enclosure is a much better solution.
• Matt K’s weekly “Worth-a-click” list has some interesting stuff this week...
• Brandon has a great article on Camera Profiles in Lightroom you should read.
• Save $25 on Lightroom from the Adobe online store until May 31st.
• LIghtroom Q&A from Mr. Prolific (AKA Matt K) is also worth a read.
• A quick rundown on Virtual Copies. VC’s are super cool and I prefer them over Snapshots because they create another item in the filmstrip/grid so I won’t forget about it.

Not Lightroom related, but cool:

• Stephen Zeller is making/selling a gel kit for your speedlight. I’ve been meaning to buy, but have been put off by prices on the other options. This is 1/2 the cost. Just ordered mine.
• Want to learn to integrate video and stills together to put you above your competition. Robert Evans and Curt Apanovitch will teach you how to do this in their 2 day PhotoFusion Tour currently traveling around the country. Check it out.
• Mad Mimi for email marketing. Pretty darn cool.
• Fashion retouching tips from The Fashion Photography blog. Good stuff.
• Have a SmugMug site but don’t like the default look (me neither). SmugMug just released the Easy Customizer that lets you point and click your way to a custom SmugMug site - build it the way you would like. The Easy Customizer is available in your Tools menu as well as the Control Panel > Customize tab. I demand awesomeness!

Thats it for this week. Have a great Tuesday!

Tags:Lightroom

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 dear readers.

• First off, its “Relaunch and Optimize your Lightroom Catalog” week. Hot on the heels of my twitter post about squeezing some performance out of lightroom, Matt K reminds people to Optimize every once in a while. Sage advice. Matt also does a before/after video to show his editing prowess. You go Matt!
• Speaking of sage advice, Brandon over at X= has a few gems for us today - Sharpening Tutorial from Mike Gray and points us to a great article on using a second monitor in Lightroom.
• Before & After. See how far you’ve come. Or how screwed up you just got. Meet the \ key. This keyboard shortcut will display a “before” state so you can see the effects of your work. Hit it again to go back to your changes. Then, maybe Revert to start again?
• Remember taking Art History as an undergrad? Remember all those tri-panelled paeans from the 15th century extolling some saint’s achievements. Time to use that same presentation with your photographs. Triptych’s are very cool. Choose wisely. Didn’t take Art History? Really? Shame on you. I sure hope that weight lifting class and booze-filled stupor was worth it. I kid, I kid.
• I’m quite fond of ye olde vignette. Like visual crack, I love using this tool to direct the viewer’s attention. I remember doing it in the darkroom, but it was a bit of work there. In Lightroom its easy.
• OCD got you in its cold, calculating hands? You’re not alone. The first step is to admit you have a problem. The second is to buy Peter Krogh’s ode to the fussy control freaks everywhere, The DAM book. Also, forgive him for the obvious pun, but you’d do it to. Third step, stop washing your hands so much, its damaging your skin. Seriously, if you really want some great advice on how to structure your workflow to the nth degree, this is where you get it.
• Speaking of control freak. Are you a keyword, ahem, afficionado? Then mosey on over to LightroomNews.com to read up on how you can edit your keyword lists more efficiently outside Lightroom.
• Watermarking is a must if you don’t want your photos splashed all over Myspace without reference. Lightroomers.com covers the same tool I use to watermark my photos. Its as powerful or as simple as you want it. Perfect.
• Keyboard Shortcuts are cool. They’re a pain to design into a product sometimes (especially legacy software with history) but there is no arguing that they can speed you up. Well, research has show that sometimes the gain is imaginary, but that is good enough for me. So learn from Lightroom-Blog.com how to White Balance via the keyboard for that 1/200th of a second boost you may or may not get.
• Stephen Zeller has a nice video on how all the new Nik softaware plugins for Lightroom work. Good to see how the interaction model works.
• A little Lightroom Web module love from the Lightroom Journal - covers web galleries and paypal integration among other things.
• Nik updated Sharpener Pro for Lightroom. Never found this necessary, as I think the sharpening controls in LR 2 are more than adequate, personally.
• RAM or CPU to make Lightroom faster. Some data...
• A newbie question I see all over the place - why do my photos look good, then after a second they go all blah?
• Smart Collections are cool. I pushed for these in LR 2 because they have some great uses. Here is a short blurb on them.
• Some more performance tips from the Queen of Lightroom. I didn’t vote for her (insert rest of Monty Python peasant skit here)
• I mentioned Terry White’s “My Photoshop Lightroom Workflow” webcast last week. If you missed the live performance, they have this great technology that actually “preserved” it somehow for later use. Very cool.
• Lots of people know about Develop Presets. Not so many know about Local Adjustment brush presets. They exist and they are cool. Read more from Kelly Castro, Lightroom team QA guy.
• Finally, a shout out to a few Lightroom Twitterers - LR_Melissa, lightroomblog, Scouten and the Big Dirty of Lightroom LR_Phil

Well, that is it for today. A lot of great stuff to keep your head spinning for at least a few days.

Have a great Tuesday.

Tags:Lightroom

I recently saw a tweet from someone requesting a basic rundown of how one sets up Lightroom. That reminded me of something I’ve been meaning to do for some time.

A few years back, I’d authored a quick PDF to distribute to friends as they pondered getting into Lightroom. It was 2006/2007 and software like Lightroom was new and the hegemony of Bridge/ACR/Photoshop hadn’t yet been broken.

It has been extremely popular ever since, despite not making it all that public, and I’ve sent thousands of copies to photographers over the past few years.

Upon opening it the other day, I discovered it was a bit long in the tooth, so I dusted it off (metaphorically speaking) and reworked it in InDesign to include some new info, omit some of the less important stuff and generally updated it for Lightroom 2. It’s not a huge thing, only 13 pages long, but it can help you get started with Lightroom.

So without much more fanfare, may I present V2 of my Adobe Lightroom 2: Workflow for Busy Photographers PDF for your perusal?

It’s technically a beta release, and I’m sure it needs some more refining, but I’ll get to that over the next while. I’m sure some will find it as useful as version 1 was way back when.

If you have edits, additions or commentary, please feel free to comment below and I’ll gladly respond.

Tags:Lightroom

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 dear readers.

• How to change crop orientation from Lightroomers.
• Using Lightroom 2’s Target Collections from Lightroomers (they’re on a roll). I remember when this was brought up during the 2 development cycle. At first I thought it was a uber-geeky addition, but it turns out I use this *all* the time.
• Noise Ninja has a “Sidekick” mode (thank you Marketing!) that lets you batch process from Lightroom.
• Matt K has a nice rundown of Q&A items this week on Lightroom Killer Tips.
• More from the big K - picking colors from anywhere.
• LightroomNews.com covers the shortcuts you should know to speed up your develop Module wanderings. I’ve been preaching G/D/N/W/R and the like for years. Go speed racer!
• Mastering the White Balance Controls.
• How many images in a catalog? I keep mine below 40K for performance reasons. Here is a Forum discussion on the matter...
• Image Info Tooltips are cool. You can be likewise if you just press the I key.
• Here are 30 (I kid you not, 30) tutorials listed at the EducationOnlineForComputers.com (I kid you not). Have not gone thru all of them, but there are some gems here.
• Stacking Bracketed Photos in Lightroom. Ah yes, I remember bracketing...
• X-Equals released their Image Kit - a zip file with all past Lightroom presets in one easy to grab file. Nice.
• An Evening with Terry White - My LIghtroom 2 Workflow. I didn’t know Terry while @ Adobe, but I do follow his blog and he has some great things to say. Apparently he is doing an online discussion via AcrobatPro Connect TONIGHT - April 28th. Learn more here...
• Anita Dennis (holla Anita!) from Adobe emailed me and asked that I highlight all the Adobe-created learning resources on the web. They’re working really hard to put together a community that benefits Lightroom users, so here are some great links. Lightroom Community Help - Help others, help yourself. Its cool. Everyone is doing it. Lightroom Help & Support Page - There are tons of great tutorials/tips here ( Getting Started with Lightroom, Watermarking your photos, Creating a Panorama)

Not Lightroom related, but kinda cool:

• The Lazy Rule of Thirds - a short treatise on rules and breaking them.
• Using a dummy to explore lighting effects.
• HDR photography is getting a bit long in the tool IMHO, but here is an interesting article on it.

Tags:Lightroom

Welcome to Lightroom Tuesday, aptly named as each Tuesday I gather together presets, tips, tricks, tutorials and the like from the Lightroom-o-sphere and post them for you, my dear readers.

Sorry for the late post today. Busy with work and I’m traveling (in Moab again).

• Split Toning is cool. Here is a tip from Lightroomers.com on how one can be likewise hip.
• Spotlight Preset
• More from Lightroomers - Show in Collection.
• Tips for improving Lightroom Performance.
• I bet you wondered how you ever got along before the Traveling Gnome Preset. Yeah, me too.
• Nerd Alert - more geo-tagging goodness.
• Noobie Alert - Getting Started in Lightroom 2
• Using Nik Silver Efex Pro with Lightroom. Personally, Im pretty happy withe b&w conversions I already get, but hey...
• DPS covers some “dont’s” in Lightroom.
• Speaking of Black & White, Matt K has some more b&w presets for your perusal.
• Dual Monitors can be cool. I was pretty excited when we worked on them in the 2.0 time frame, but truth be told, I hardly ever use it - mostly I think because my second 30” monitor is the communications monitor. Mail, IM, IRC, Twitter.
• Wonder what the Preview Options in the Import dialog do? Wonder no more...
• Other Lightroom peeps with tweets.

Tags:Lightroom

Every once in a while I’ll peruse past articles on sites I link to as part of Lightroom Tuesday.

I generally find a few nuggets worth reading, and today I found a real gem that deserves a highlight because it calls out something I’ve been pushing for years to anyone who would listen.

The article by Michael Gray as it sums up the way I’ve felt since I first imported images into a small skunkworks application in the dark halls at Adobe.

First read the article:

Now to some quick history. I was at Adobe for almost 10 years and worked on a variety of photo-related tools for them. But it was painfully obvious for several years that we were not doing the right thing with Bridge/ACR/Photoshop and that standard hegemony baloney. No naming names here, but resistance and status quo were the norm.

So when Shadowlands (what became Lightroom) came along, it was an epiphany for those of us who were not overly interested in protecting an aging behemoth at the expense of efficiency and elegance. It took forever for Adobe to realize that (lots of tell-all here that I’ll skip) but the suits finally figured it out and did the right thing. Lightroom shipped and redefined the space. Aperture, of course, primed the pump and was like a frying pan upside the heads of those that deserved it.

I quickly joined the LIghtroom team and was happy as a clam. While not perfect, Lightroom is the best photographic tool we have for the majority of camera slingers today. Supported by Photoshop or other plugin tools (Nik etc), you have a great beginnings of a workflow that actually makes sense for today’s marketplace. Instead of bouncing around in a balkanized (and pixel-destruction) space, we have something better. Huzzah.

And, while I left Adobe last year, there are some good people working on Lightroom that will continue to help it evolve in the right place. We knew it would take some time to take over the entrenched priesthood that ran the photo world, but its well on its way.

Go Team!

Tags:Lightroom, Photoshop

Welcome to Lightroom Tuesday, aptly named as each Tuesday I gather together presets, tips, tricks, tutorials and the like from the Lightroom-o-sphere and post them for you, my dear readers. After a week hiatus, I’m back with some great things from the past 2 weeks...

• Matt K has some great tips in his Q&A feature.
• I’ve shot street photography for years. I love shooting on the streets, although its taken a backseat to dance in the last few years. Here is an article on Profiphotos.com that talks about mimicking that street photo aesthetic. You could do it like its always been done: a Leica, a 35 or 50 MM Summicron/Summilux and some Tri-X pushed a bit. That gives you some contrast and speed so you can just hyperfocal it and be there...
• David Ziser talks about the latest Nik software package to hit LIghtroom... Here is a short look at how they work in Lightroom.
• TOP (you know what that is, n’est-ce pas?) outlines what he thinks is the best on-the-cheap workstation for photography...
• Getting red-eye? Hack. Ok, I’m kinda kidding. I can’t even remember the last time I had to use the red-eye tool because, well it happens because you don’t know what you’re doing most of the time. On-camera flash or a cheapy point/shoot. Doh! But here is a short tutorial if you’re still spreading your lighting wings...
• Lightroomers! has an interesting tip on Exporting photos from Lightroom and want to stack it next to the original.
• LIghtroom’s local adjustment brush lets you create masks, kinda. We designed it to be less in-your-face than Photoshop’s myriad of ways to add effects. Learn more here.
• Of all the questions I get about Lightroom, the big one is about how to keep yourself organized in Lightroom’s Library module. And on the hard drive. Most times, people dump and go and create an unholy mess. For those that know me, I’m not the most organized person in the world, but one should really take organization seriously when using lightroom. Here is an interesting look at how David DuChemin does it. Some sage advice.
• LRG Complete 4.1 updated. This is a web gallery engine for Lightroom.
• Sean McCormack’s new Lightroom 2 Made Easy book was released recently.
• Martin Evening has posted another video tutorial for Lightroom - this one is on creating an invert tone curve. You know, to convert a negative to a positive...
• A set of interesting Black & White presets from PresetHeaven.
• Matt K posted a video tutorial on using the Adjustment Brush and an interesting screed on the “truth” behind LIghtroom Backups. This is a known issue on the team - we talked alot about fixing the broken backup features, but it just didn’t fit in the 2.0 development timeframe. Personally I backup once a week using LIghtroom’s catalog backup feature because it has saved me once already and it isn’t a big deal.
• Adobe is doing some free eSeminars for Professional Photogs. More here.
• SlideshowPro for Lightroom was updated recently.
• A few weeks old, here is a tutorial by Martin Evening on controlling Vibrance & Saturation in Lightroom.
• Lightroom Newbie Tip - pressing the V key will quickly do a grayscale conversion. This isn’t a end-all-be-all black and white conversion, but just a way to quickly see if the picture works in monochrome...
• Here is a quick video tutorial on the Clarity slider’s effects in Lightroom.
• Another new Lightroom book: Adobe Photoshop (ugh) Lightroom 2: Streamlining your digital photography process” talks workflow.
• The Graduated Filter was a late-comer to the local adjustment toolset (we were much more focused on the brush tool) but it made it in and can be used for some interesting effects. Here is a basic look at its most common use-case.
• Why keyword? Because you can filter on them later.
• Split Toning is cool. Here is a tutorial on how to use the Split Toning panel.

Well, that is a boatload of stuff to keep you busy.

Have a great Tuesday!

Tags:Lightroom

Welcome to Lightroom Tuesday, aptly named as each Tuesday I gather together presets, tips, tricks, tutorials and the like from the Lightroom-o-sphere and post them for you, my dear readers.

• Get it together - a series of tips and tricks for using Lightroom (including Photoshop integration). Great article from Chris Orwig in Layers Magazine.
• Smoke Presets from Lightroom-blog.com. Kinda annoying that you have to register to download. Just make a donate button for those that want to.
• The top ten Lightroom gotchas when working with Lightroom. I’ve seen many of these before. When I teach Lightroom, I talk about the big bump to get over - and #2 is it. Lightroom just manages the files you place at a location of your choice (defined on import) so be very explicit about choosing where and you can get to the files any time you want.
• Matt K has a tutorial on how to automate Lightroom and Photoshop using droplets. This used to not work so well, so they must’ve worked out the kinks.
• Interview with Martin Evening by Scott Bourne. Martin took the photo for the Lightroom 2 box.
• How to brand Lightroom with your studio name with the Identity Plate.
• A short look at Nik’s Color Effects for Lightroom. I can see this pluging being intersting for people serious about color. Too bad it goes outside the Raw file for the result.
• Another new tutorial from Chris Orwig in Layers Magazine looks a the Library module.

That is it for this week. Kinda short, but it’s my birthday and I’m going to go climb a mountain today (a tradition) instead of sit in front of this computer.

Cheers!

Tags:Lightroom

Welcome to Lightroom Tuesday, aptly named as each Tuesday I gather together presets, tips, tricks, tutorials and the like from the Lightroom-o-sphere and post them for you, my dear readers.

• Nik announced that it will bring all its plugins to Lightroom. (Via Rob Galbraith)
• David Ziser presents a tutorial focused on how to get “really cool lighting effects” in Lightroom.
• Matt K’s preset of the week is “Vintage New York”
• Lightroomnews.com has a tutorial by Martin Evening on how to use/differentiate between the Exposure and Brightness controls in Lightroom. Very cool.
• Lightroomers has a tutorial on understanding the Export process.
• A nice Velviaesque preset (among others - its at the bottom). Don’t know what Velvia is? Seriously, I can’t take you anywhere ; - )
• A small update to the awesome Simpleviewer Web Gallery...
• A basic tutorial on Installing and reading Presets...
• Auto Advance - very cool tip from Matt K. I didn’t know about this until Troy G (Lightroomer) pointed it out one day after I complained about my Caps Lock misadventures.
• Finding missing photos in Lightroom. Some times you need to clean up your mess.
• Sharpening in Lightroom has come along way since 1.0. Here is part 1 of a two par tutorial on understanding sharpening.
• Hey Noob! Got dull photos? Fix em.
• Imaging Insider has a review of the Visual Quickstart Lightroom 2 book.
• Feeling Geeky? Read up on color management and printing...

Thats it mes amis. Its a busy day and I’m off to design-la-la-land.

Tags:Lightroom