Presets – Hard Edgy Look

Before we get to the preset, I wanted to let you know that Datacolor (makes of the Spyder monitor calibration system) is hosting a free webinar on Wednesday March 17 from 2-3pm. Here’s the details.

OK, on to the preset. This week I’m going back to an edgier look for a preset. I’ve actually included two in this one – hard edge and soft edge. They’re both pretty contrast and come from a look that I see out there a lot lately. You’ll find there’s a little bit of everything thrown into this one. If it looks too strong (or not strong enough), I’ve found that tweaking the Exposure and Blacks sliders usually helps, as its hard to create a preset that nails Exposure and Blacks for every photo.

As always, your comments are welcome. Download ‘em and let me know what you think.

To install:
1) Unzip the preset zip file on to your desktop
2) Go to the Develop module. NOTE: YOU MUST BE THE DEVELOP MODULE
3) Go to the Presets panel on the left. Right click anywhere in it and choose Import.
4) Select the .lrtemplate files you unzipped in Step 1 and click Import NOTE: DO NOT IMPORT THE ZIP FILE

• Click here to download the preset.
• Click here to see a sample of the preset.

Tip – A Bunch of Crop Tool Tips

It’s Friday and I’m heading up north to shoot my sister-in-law’s wedding. Wish me luck Anyway, I figured I’d close out the week with a few crop tool tips.

• Press R to get to the Crop Tool. It works even if you’re in the Library module.
• Once you’re in Crop mode press the letter O (for Overlay) to change the overlays that you see on your photo. They’ll toggle between the rule of thirds, a grid, and several other overlays that you’ll never use
• Press A to toggle between constraining/not constraining to the aspect ratio
• Press Cmd-Shift-R (PC: Ctrl-Shift-R) to reset your crop all together.
• If you’ve changed the Aspect Ratio on a previous photo then press the letter S to set that same aspect ratio for the next photo.
• And finally, a really cool way to crop is to go into Crop mode. Then press the letter L twice to go into Lights Out mode. Now you have your photo in crop mode with none of the clutter of the interface. Press L again to get out of Lights Out mode.

Happy cropping and have a great weekend.

How Backing Up Just Saved My Butt

You probably always hear people talk about backing up right? Well something happened to me recently that I figured I’d share in hopes that anyone not backing up, will start to.

The Night Before My Trip to Dubai
It all started last week. I taught at Gulf Photo Plus in Dubai. The night before I left I did as I always do every night – backed up my Mac with Super Duper (it creates a bootable backup of my entire drive). I have it on an auto backup setting so at some point during the night a backup is created on to a Western Digital MyBook drive. However, since I was also traveling to teach, I always make a backup of the backup to travel with me. That way, if something happens to my computer I have a bootable backup that I can plug into any laptop and still go on teaching. At this point, everything was fine.

My Flight to Dubai (where things went terribly wrong)
First we flew to Atlanta to catch the 15 hour flight to Dubai. At the Atlanta airport I grabbed my laptop to send a quick email only to find it started into a blank gray screen. I tried every key combo I knew to start in single user, safe, whatever mode that I could think of – nothing! Then I called our IT guy (Paul) and asked what he thought. The outlook was bleak, but he asked if I had a backup and to try to boot from that. So I did. Things started booting and then froze and I got an error about my backup drive being corrupt. Ugh! Oh yeah, all of this was happening as they were boarding my flight.

On the Plane
So now I’m on the plane heading over the Atlantic Ocean and trying everything I could to figure this out (with no internet access by the way). After about an hour I lost all hope. My computer would only show a gray screen and wouldn’t boot into my backup drive. I started to weep and quickly took advantage of Delta’s free beer and wine offer on international flights

Day 1 in Dubai
Once I arrived I went up to the rooftop bar to hang out with some of the other instructors. I met David Nightingale there for the first time. As I told him my story, he immediately said let’s go check this out and spent about an hour with me trying to figure things out (seriously, this guy barely knew me and was helping me out). Again, no luck. My backup drive wouldn’t even mount to his computer. Double Ugh!

Day 2 in Dubai (my birthday by the way)
After Mohamed Somji, the guy who basically runs GPP, found out of my computer problems, he had someone take me to a computer repair store that he knew of (and one that specialized in Apple computers). I wasn’t there for 5 minutes when they diagnosed that my laptop’s hard drive had crashed. They were able to put a new drive in and have me up and running in less than 2 hours from start to finish (not bad huh?).

But just having a working computer was the least of my problems. I had to teach like 6 classes at GPP and all of them were on my previous hard drive (and backup drive). My photos were safe of course because they’re on a separate drive. But all of my outlines, materials, Lightroom library and everything else were gone.

So I called RC Concepcion at work and asked if he’d run to my house to get the other backup drive. He did and called me later to say that the drive wasn’t working. Triple Ugh!!! After some troubleshooting he realized the power supply was bad and luckily we had another one. Folks, I know this sounds crazy but all of these things were working 24 hours before this. I swear! Anyway, RC and Paul (our IT guy) tried a few things to get me the files I needed but ended up FedEx’ing me my backup drive (I also have a Time Capsule running at home so I knew I had yet another backup in case something happened to the drive in transit).

Day 3
Still no drive. Checked online and my drive was due to arrive the next day (which is when classes started).

Day 4
I went out sightseeing in the morning. Came back and about 1 hour before my class, the drive arrived at the hotel. I attached it to the laptop, restarted and booted from the drive and I was right back to where I was the night before I left for Dubai.

The Rest of the Trip
The rest of the trip went great. I had to continue to boot from my hard drive as the cable that was sent with it was USB and I couldn’t do the laptop hard drive swap (in the amount of time I had) without firewire. No sweat though. All I wanted was the stuff on my drive. I didn’t care where it came from.

Today
Today everything is good. I got back from the trip and was able to transfer everything from my backup drive at home to my laptop drive. It’s as if nothing ever happened. I did do one quick photo shoot the morning I left but I borrowed a camera and CF card from Brad Moore at the office. I deleted the files, but Brad had not reformatted or used the card and was able to use SanDisk RescuePro to recover the photos off the card so I literally lost nothing in this whole ordeal (aside from many hours of sleep and my sanity for a few days).

Moral of the Story
Backup your computer and anything else that’s important. When you’re done backing up, backup again. And heck, while you’re at it, back up one more time just to be sure. If you travel, and having the stuff on your computer is vital to you (as it is for me), then don’t just rely on the backup you travel with. You never know what can happen (as I painfully found out). Your computer bag could be stolen for all you know along with your backup drive. I know I can always find another computer to use, but if my backup druve was gone I wouldn’t have all of the important files that I needed to work with.

Thanks for reading. I hope you either a) feel the need to reevaluate and double check your backup process or, b) feel reakkt really sorry for me

The 5 Places I use Lightroom Presets The Most (And the least)

If you’ve ever looked into Lightroom’s Presets folder (Lightroom Preferences > Presets area) you’ll see there are actually a lot of different areas in Lightroom that have presets. So which ones do I use the most?

1. Import – This one is pretty much on autopilot for me. Whenever I import, I have a Metadata template defined (bottom section of the import dialog) with all of my contact and copyright information. It’s something I rarely ever change or tweak.

2. Develop – Of course, this is probably the biggest area of presets for me. If you’ve followed this site for any amount of time you know I have way too many

3. Export – I use these pretty often as well. When you go to File > Export to save out JPEGs of your photos you can create presets. I often find myself always saving a small web/email sized file so I create a preset for it (just click the little plus icon at the bottom of the dialog). And I often find myself saving larger print sized files so I create a preset for this as well.

4. Adjustment Brush – I use these ALL THE TIME. A while back I created Adjustment Brush presets here on the Lightroom Killer Tips site. I still use those same exact presets nearly every day. I love ‘em!

5. I have a lot of Print module presets. I use them, just not as often. I have a few that I use all the time and I have a bunch that just look way cool. However the way cool ones, are a bit more specialized (4 across, pano layout, etc…) and I just don’t have the need for them as much. Now, if I were a portrait or wedding pro shooting several times a week, I think I’d find myself using them more. But for what I do, they make the list – just not the top of the list.

What Presets I Don’t Use

1. Slideshow – I just don’t use the Slideshow module that much. And when I do, I find I stick with the same simple layout (which I do have a preset for) all the time.

2. Web – Again, just not something I use a ton. I have my own website that is not Lightroom based so I don’t find myself in this module all that often.

3. Keyword Sets – I released a set of presets for keyword sets at one point. I really honestly tried to use them more often too. But lately I’ve found I’ve nearly abandoned keywording at this point. I do it to a small extent, but I know my photos are in descriptively-named collections and I usually know right where to go to get to the ones I need. (Please don’t use this as a springboard into launching a keyword-convincing war at me)

OK, now it’s your turn. Which ones are your favorites.

Video – Before & After

Greetings from Dubai! I’m teaching at Gulf Photo Plus this week but I made sure I recorded a video before I left. It’s another one of those before/after videos and it takes one of my photos from a hot air balloon festival I shot last summer from start to finish. It just happens that this one required a lot of Photoshop work. I’m not sure why, but sometimes I still feel more comfortable with the Quick selection tool in Photoshop and a brush, rather than using the Adjustment Brush in Lightroom. Anyway, here it is.

Thanks for watching!

Click here to download the video to your computer. [Right-click and choose the "Save As" option]

Worth-a-click

Here’s a few things worth checking out as you surf around the web today.

First a couple of “me” things:
• I just turned my new portfolio website live over at MattKloskowski.com.

• A good friend of NAPP (Firgs) has an interview with me posted on her website (lots of other NAPP interviews as well).

• Finally, in other “me” news, I’ve been asked quite a bit about my twittering. So here’s the deal: I’m not much of a “here’s what I’m doing” twitterer. Honestly, I turn off my email and web browser most of the day so I can just get work done. However, I realize that twitter does have it’s place. So, for me, I’m using it to just let people know what content I produce. I have something new just about every day (Photoshop User TV, DTown TV, PS Killer Tips, etc…). So that’s what I twitter about. If you want to keep up with it you can follow me here. Thanks

Enough about me already!

• Fellow Lightroom Guru and Wedding Pro, David Ziser has a Free webinar coming up on March 3. It’s all geared around his new book “Captured By the Light” (awesome book by the way).

• Jeff Revell (of PhotoWalkPro fame and avid tree shooter) released his own Lightroom Holga Preset. You can read more about it here.

• Sean McCormack has a cool video tip on fixing a weak catchlight in Lightroom.

• Makers of my favorite lens bag, Boda, have just released a new version of their bag – the Boda V3.

• One more thing. I’m teaching at Photoshop World in March. If you’re thinking of going, the early bird special to save $100 ends this weekend so sign up soon if you’re going. Also, check out the new Photoshop World iPhone app and review by the BestAppSite.com.

Have a great Wednesday!

Preset – Warm and Fuzzy Effect

Hey folks. I’ll be heading out to teach at Gulf Photo Plus in Dubai later this week (by the way, if you have any “must shoot” places out there please let me know).

Anyway, I wanted to make sure I got another preset in before I left. I called this one “Warm and Fuzzy” because that’s what it kinda looks like. Its got a warming quality to it as well as a fuzzy/soft look (from negative clarity). I’ve tweaked the Exposure setting up a bit as a default, because a glowing feel is part of the effect. If you don’t like it (or want more of it depending on your photo) then remember to go in and change the Exposure settings to your liking. Let me know what you think.

To install:
1) Unzip the preset zip file on to your desktop
2) Go to the Develop module. NOTE: YOU MUST BE THE DEVELOP MODULE
3) Go to the Presets panel on the left. Right click anywhere in it and choose Import.
4) Select the .lrtemplate files you unzipped in Step 1 and click Import NOTE: DO NOT IMPORT THE ZIP FILE

• Click here to download the preset.
• Click here to see a sample of the preset.

Tip – The Quick Way To Panels

I just got back to my hotel room from the Photoshop 20th Anniversary Party in San Francisco. You know, I knew it was going to be fun, but I have to say it totally rocked. A big thanks to all that made it out for the event. The crowd was great and the people who came up to me before and after were just so nice. Everyone had a blast. But if you didn’t get to go, you can still stop by the 20th Anniversary website to catch the video recap.

OK, here’s one of those tips I have ingrained in my everyday work and hopefully it’ll help you out. Let’s say you’re working in the Basic panel in the Develop module and you want to add a vignette. You can of course grab the scroll bar and scroll down to the vignette panel. Or try this. The Vignettes panel is the 6th one down from the top so just press Cmd-6 (PC: Ctrl-6). If you wanted to get to HSL then press Cmd-3 (PC: Ctrl-3) since it’s the 3rd one from the top. You get the idea. Throw the Cmd (PC: Ctrl) key in front of whatever number panel it is you want and you have a much faster way to switch between them. Personally, I don’t memorize all of them but hopefully it at least helps you get to the ones you use most.

Just How Good is Recovery in Lightroom

First off, I’m at the Photoshop 20th Anniversary Party today, so if you’re coming by the event this evening in San Francisco make sure you catch me and say hi.

This week on DTown TV (the show should be up at some point today – or maybe tomorrow) I talked a little about metering when it comes to snow and I briefly jumped into some post-processing talk about what you can do if you have blown out highlights. Below is an example of a photo I have where the snow is, well, pretty blown out as you can see.

(Click to see a larger version)

When I took this photo I saw a huge portion of my LCD on the camera blinking at me. However, one of the things I’ve learned to do is trust that Lightroom, Camera Raw, and Photoshop are really good at bringing back highlight detail. Now, of course there’s a bunch of things you can do and a bunch of different ways you can blow your highlights to the point of no return. However, take a look at what moving the Recovery slider about 10-15% of the way toward the right will do (the red highlight warning disappears).

(Click to see a larger version)

That’s pretty darn good considering how much was blown out to start with. I’d even tweak the Exposure down a little as the face was kinda bright to begin with. Moral of the story… if you’re in a sticky exposure situation keep in mind that Lightroom and Photoshop give you a lot of wiggle-room in recovering detail in those highlight areas. From my experience, I find I’m much better off overexposing a little (if I can afford the longer shutter speed) and getting the key area of the photo (the face in this example) bright to start with, instead of trying to brighten things after the fact and risk introducing noise into the photo.

5 Reasons To Stay with Lightroom (and not switch to Aperture)

Obviously there’s been a lot of buzz around lately about Apple’s Aperture 3. I read an article yesterday titled “Five Reasons For Switching from Lightroom 2 to Aperture 3″ by a gentleman named Marco. So I figured I’d take a stab at my own rendition of the “5 things” article (no offense to Marco) and write about 5 reasons to stay with Lightroom.

Let me just get one thing out from the start though. Will this article seem Lightroom biased? You betcha! Because I am Lightroom biased (you’re at a blog called Lightroom Killer Tips if you haven’t noticed). I’ve been using it for over 4 years. I know it like the back of my hand. However, as an expert in the industry I can’t just go around saying “my program is better than yours” without testing the other one. I had a copy of Aperture 3 installed the day after it was announced and have been kicking the tires since then. Here’s what I’ve come up with.

Reason #1: Enjoying the Digital Darkroom (this was reason #1 from Marco’s article)
I’ll go head-to-head with this one because I think Lightroom is better here. One big reason is that in Lightroom (the LR3 beta) we have Collections in the Develop module which keeps me from bouncing back and forth (something I found myself doing a lot in Aperture). And when it comes down to it, the only difference is tabs in Aperture compared to modules in LR. Aside from wishing the Develop module had Folders and Collections in it (like I said, LR3 beta has Collections now), I don’t find myself cursing the modules in Lightroom. If its not a module I need to use then I simply just don’t click on it. And the reason why LR has more modules than A3 has tabs, is because Adobe has located two key areas (slideshow and web) there instead of a menu up at the top.

Reason #2: Camera Calibration, Effects, Collections, History panel, tighter Photoshop Integration, Vignettes and other stuff
Remember when Camera Calibration profiles came out for Lightroom? You should because everyone absolutely loved them. It’s one of my favorite panels in Lightroom. But it’s not in Aperture. Lightroom has tighter integration with Photsoshop and the Graduated filter. Lightroom 2/3 beta has better effects when it comes to adding grain and vignetting. The History aspect of Lightroom is way better. And in the article referenced above, he dings Lightroom for not having “Books, Loupe, Light Table and Full Screen Mode”. Books definitely go into the win column for Aperture (see #3 below). But Lightroom does have a Loupe view. Even though its different, it still does the same job. Light Table…. eh, its cool but is it worth switching for? And of course we do have Full Screen mode in Lightroom. Just press the F key.

Reason #3: Printing
This is one of those areas where you can argue either way but I think Lightroom makes a stronger case. Lightroom has custom print templates (in LR 3 beta) and an entire Print module, that you have to admit, is one of the most robust in the industry. Aperture has books but that’s about it. They’re both important. Some portrait and wedding pros swear by Lightroom’s Print module and some folks swear by the great looking books in Aperture. Which is more important? That’s up to you. Personally, I’ll take the Print module in Lightroom. I can still print books elsewhere, but I can’t get Lightroom’s Print module anywhere else. Do I wish Lightroom had both? Yep. But it doesn’t so I have to make a choice.

Reason #4: Noise Reduction
This one definitely goes in the win column for Lightroom. If you look at Aperture 3’s feature list, it doesn’t even mention the word noise and as you know, noise removal is BIG. I ran quite a few images through the noise removal settings in both programs. Aperture doesn’t even come close in my opinion. Two things I noticed when comparing them: 1) The noise removal (luminance and color) is noticeably better and the edges seem more crisp as opposed to blurred in Aperture and, 2) Lightroom photos retained more of their color even after cranking up the Color Noise removal setting pretty high.

Basically, when it comes down to reading the raw data and doing something useful with it (demosaicing, sharpening, and noise removal), my money goes to Adobe. You’ve gotta realize that being the best at raw processing has to rank up pretty high in Adobe’s priority list. I’m not so sure where it would rank with Apple.

Reason #5: This isn’t an “I’m in the mood for…” game
I’m going to directly disagree with #5 from his list (supporting competition) and say ABSOLUTELY, POSITIVELY, NO WAY! As a consumer, your (and my) job is not to support competition. It’s to support the best product out there and to reward that product by opening your wallet. Your job is to pick the best tool for your job regardless of whether there’s 10 companies that do the same thing or none. Here’s something to chew on. This isn’t a game. Your photography workflow shouldn’t be “sure, I’ll use Lightroom today but maybe Aperture tomorrow”. There’s always going to be features in one program that you like better than another. It happens in every aspect of our lives. Ever buy a car one year only to find out the next year’s model (or a competing model you looked at previously) has something really cool you wish you had? Do you go out and trade your car in for a huge loss and get the new model? Some of you do I’m sure. But it’s surely not economical to do so, and it takes a lot of your time, energy, and money to play that game. The rest of us, are happy enough with our existing car and we work with it. Your goal is to pick the program that works best for you at the time you’re looking for one, and then stick with it. Whether you’re a working pro or an avid hobbyist, nobody has the time to play the “switcharoo” every 18 months.

Reason #5.5 (this is just a joke): Did Aperture Really have to copy the Cyanotype preset from Lightroom?
I mean, of all the presets to copy from Lightroom, they picked Cyanotype? Does anyone even use that preset? I can think of no better reason to just stick with Lightroom, because at least they were the first to use that horrible effect as a preset

Final Thoughts
If you’re a current Lightroom user, you’re among the group of the most used photo management/processing software in the world. There’s a reason why when you do a search for buzz, news, tutorials, presets, etc… on Lightroom vs. the same for Aperture, you find much more about Lightroom. It’s an awesome program and like anything out there, will just get better with time. Be happy with it. If your curiosity just has to get the best of you then by all means, download the free trial of Aperture and give it a try yourself. Maybe you’ll switch. If that’s the right thing for you then go for it. Just don’t do it because it’s new and different. As always, leave a comment. I welcome your thoughts on the topic (just be nice)