Tip – The secret Identity Plate Text Formatting Trick

Hey folks. I had a killer day yesterday teaching the Lightroom 3 Live! seminar in LA. The crowd was awesome and it was great to see so many things “click” with everyone. Thanks to all who came out – you really made me feel right at home. Next, I’m on my way to San Francisco today to teach the same seminar on Friday (as well as my photowalk on Saturday) so I’m still grabbing some tips from Scott to celebrate the release of his brand new Lightroom 3 Book for Digital Photographers. Today’s tip is a very cool Identity Plate trick.

If you haven’t noticed it’s surprisingly hard to format text inside the Identity Plate Editor window, especially if you want multiple lines of text (of course, the fact that you can have multiple lines of text is a tip unto itself). But, there’s a better way: Create your text somewhere else that has nice typographic controls, then select and copy your text into memory. Then come back to the Identity Plate Editor and paste that already formatted text right into it, and it will maintain your font and layout styles.

Thanks again to Scott for letting me steal his tips this week. If you’d like to check out his new book (and a freebie disc of all my LR presets that comes with it) you can find it right here.

Scott Kelby Tip Week Day 3 – Copy Settings Tip

Here’s another tip from Scott today. Back story: I’m teaching a couple of 1-day Lightroom seminars on the west coast (LA and San Francisco) I figured it would be hard to keep up with the blog. So to help Scott celebrate the release of his brand new Lightroom 3 Book for Digital Photographers I’m snagging a few tips from his book all week long.

Here’s a cool tip when you want to copy the settings from one photo to paste to another. When you click the Copy button in the Develop module (at the bottom of the left side Panels area), it brings up a Copy Settings dialog asking which edits you want to copy. However, if you know you want to copy the same edits as you had previously (maybe you always copy everything), then you can skip having that Copy Settings dialog pop-up completely by pressing-and-holding the Option (PC: Alt) key, then clicking the Copy button (it will change from “Copy…” to just the word “Copy”).

Thanks again to Scott for letting me steal his tips this week. If you’d like to check out his new book (and a freebie disc of all my LR presets that comes with it) you can find it right here.

Scott Kelby Guest Tip Week Day 2

Today is day 2 of my Steal-a-tip-from-Scott-Kelby’s-New-Book tip week. See, I’m teaching a couple of 1-day Lightroom seminars on the west coast (LA and San Francisco), and I figured it would be hard to keep up with the blog. So to celebrate Scott’s new book the Lightroom 3 Book for Digital Photographers I’m stealing tips from his book all week long (or until Scott finds out)

Here’s an Adjustment Brush tip from the “How to Edit Just Part of Your Photo” chapter that I didn’t even know before today. When you’re using the Adjustment Brush, if you want to quickly add a new pin (without going back to the panel to click on the New button), just press the Return (PC: Enter) key on your keyboard, then start painting. Lightroom will automatically create a new adjustment brush pin while leaving the last one alone.

Thanks again to Scott for letting me steal his tips this week. If you’d like to check out his new book (and a freebie disc of all my LR presets that comes with it) you can find it right here.

It’s Scott Kelby Guest Tip Week

Welcome to my Steal-a-tip-from-Scott-Kelby’s-New-Book tip week. Since I’m teaching a couple of 1-day Lightroom seminars on the west coast (LA and San Francisco) I figured it would be hard to keep up with the blog. Scott doesn’t know this yet, but to help celebrate the release of his brand new Lightroom 3 Book for Digital Photographers I’m stealing tips from his book all week long (or until Scott finds out)

Here’s the first one and it has to do with showing Before and Afters in the Develop module. By default, if you press the \ (Backslash) key in the Develop module, it toggles you back and forth between the original untouched image (the Before view) and the photo as it looks now with your edits. However, what if you don’t want your Before photo to be the original? For example, let’s say you did some Basic panel edits on a portrait, and then you used the Adjustment Brush to do some portrait retouching. Maybe you’d like to see the Before photo showing the Basic panel edits after they were applied, but before you started retouching. To do that, go to the History panel (in the left side Panels area), and scroll down until you find the step right before you started using the Adjustment Brush. Right-click on that history state and choose Copy History Step Settings to Before. That now becomes your new Before photo when you press the \ key. I know—that’s totally cool.

Thanks to Scott for letting me steal his tips this week. If you’d like to check out his new book (and a freebie disc of all my LR presets that comes with it) you can find it right here.

Come catch the Lightroom Tour in Boston, LA, and San Francisco!

Hey everyone! I’m heading up to Boston today to teach my Lightroom 3 Live! Tour tomorrow. There’s still seats so if you can make it I’d love for you to come on out and join me. You can find out more at Kelby Training Live.

Also, next week I’ll be teaching the same tour in Los Angeles on Wednesday (July 21) and San Francisco on Friday (July 23). Those are filling up fast so if you can make it out then sign up soon.

Just a quick FYI about the tour. Scott and I went through the entire tour from the previous Lightroom 2 version and streamlined our workflow as well as included all the new Lightroom 3 stuff. Basically, the whole day is about learning Lightroom step-by-step and our workflow from start to finish. So I hope you’ll come check it out. Make sure you come up and say hi too. I always enjoy meeting people from the blog. Take care!

Is Lightroom the Darkroom?

Over the years I’ve heard (and probably even said it myself) that Lightroom is the “digital darkroom”. Lately, the whole digital darkroom thing has got me thinking though. Are we doing anyone justice by keeping the word “darkroom” around in our current world of digital photography and equating Lightroom (and post processing) to it? You can’t argue that, for the majority of people, the traditional darkroom simply doesn’t exist anymore.

Does it depend on the age group? If I’m teaching a group of people my age-ish (37) and up then maybe it does make sense. We’ve seen the darkroom, shot film and know what it’s all about. Those concepts probably help a lot of people understand newer technologies by comparing them to something they’re used to. But does it help newcomers into the photography field to know all this?

My kids growing up today (and really anyone born within the last 10-15 years) will never know what film or the darkroom were. They wouldn’t even know what it looks like. Do we force it on them like we force history lessons on them? My 14 year old nephew is interested in photography but the last thing he wants is stories of “Back in my day, we had to (insert your film/darkroom story here)”. It it wrong that he just wants to have fun with it. And just how important is it for people to know how hard things were “back in the day”.

Lot’s of questions I know. I guess my main question to you is this: does it make sense to call Lightroom the “digital darkroom” and does it make sense today, to equate anything to the darkroom (or “film” and “negatives” for that matter)?

Lightroom Worth-a-click

• The folks over at Unified Color have caused quite a bit of stir with their new HDR Expose program. It’s got a plug-in for Lightroom as well so you can use it seamlessly. Here’s a couple of videos if you want to check it out.
- Using HDR Expose
- HDR Expose and Lightroom

• Timothy Armes has released a new plug-in for Lightroom 3 for FTP Publishing (still works in version 2 but LR3 really takes advantage of it

• Matthew Campagna at The Turning Gate has released a new version of the popular TTG Highslide Gallery Pro web engine for Lightroom (you can now password protect your galleries).

Have a great weekend!

Lightroom – Exposure vs. Brightness

One of the questions I get asked the most is whether I’d use a tripod in a church to take an HDR photo but we won’t go there (sorry, I had to sneak that one in)

Anyway, what’s the difference between the Exposure slider and the Brightness slider (both in the Basic panel as well as the Adjustment Brush)? They both have the effect of brightening the photo right? The main difference I’ve found is that Exposure really targets the brightest parts of your photo and makes them brighter. Almost to the point of over-exposure. And it does so pretty quickly as you increase (or decrease) the slider. Brightness on the other hand still brightens the overall photo but does it more in the mid-tone (middle gray) area. Here’s a view of a simple gradient image I created in Photoshop (By the way – you can download it here if you want to try it out for yourself) with the Highlight warnings turned on. You can see the before/afters and how each slider affects the highlights.

(Click to see a larger version)

If it’s hard to visualize what it’ll do to a photo then check out the lighthouse from a photo of mine. On the left is the result of reducing the Exposure and on the right side is the result of reducing Brightness. Notice that reducing the Exposure almost immediately gets rid of that bright highlight on the very far left side of the lighthouse. Reducing Brightness makes it all darker but keeps the brighter highlight area better. This fits with the whole idea that Exposure attacks the really bright stuff harder than Brightness does.

(click to see larger)

It also has some affect on color. Another similar gradient that I’ve created shows how moving the Exposure slider and the Brightness slider all the way to the left changes the blues, the greens, and even the yellows but in a slightly different way. I usually see this the most when I’m working on the sky and it probably explains why I usually prefer the Brightness slider to darken a sky rather than the Exposure. Personally, I just find that the result looks better (remember, this is totally a personal-taste kinda thing). But they definitely do affect color in a different way.

(Click to see a larger version)

So what’s your take on it? Which one do you use the most and why? Oh yeah, if you want to download the sample gradient images I used then just click here.

The Illegal HDR Follow Up

Wow! I posted yesterday’s story because Scott mentioned it on his blog on Monday morning, and I had a couple of people ask me for the story. I honestly had no idea it would lead to the comment-fest that it did. Anyway, I wanted to post a quick Q&A follow up to it but please do me a favor. Don’t feel compelled to post a follow-up comment. I’m not going to defend anything so I don’t expect your comment to be different today than it was yesterday. Most of you agreed with me. If you didn’t, that’s no problem. I asked for it. You’re not going to change my mind and I’m not going to change your mind, so let’s just leave it at that.

Q. Why didn’t you take a 5-shot HDR photo and get out of there fast?
A. Because the lighting was extremely low and the light coming in the windows was really bright. There’s no way that +/- 2 stops would cut it. I tried it out earlier and realized that +2 stops was still WAY too dark of a photo to create a good HDR. Remember, the over-exposed photos are the most important ones in creating good HDR photos. If you’re indoors in a dark place, getting those photos means some really long exposures.

Q. Did you try to get permission to take the photo ahead of time?
A. Yep and I was told that if I did qualify for a media pass that I’d be taking photos from the media area which was way off to the side of the church.

Q. Matt, don’t you feel bad by doing such a thing in a house of God?
A. Not at all. My 79 year old uncle is a priest (actually a Monsignor) in the Catholic Church. I told him the story. He chuckled and absolved me from any sin. So I think I’m OK in the Big Guy’s eyes. Plus, I did make a $20 donation to St. Patricks when I walked in. And while I was originally going to send them the photo via email, your comments yesterday made me realize I should indeed send them a print.

Q. But taking a photo there is disrespectful right?
A. Nope. Remember that taking pictures in St. Patricks is perfectly fine (in designated areas which I did indeed stick to). You’re admiring a beautiful place and the Catholic church doesn’t consider it disrespectful. I stood where tens of thousands of other people have stood to take a photo. I just happened to capture a sharp/non-on-camera-flashy version of the photo as opposed to the one that everyone else gets.

Thanks again for the discussion yesterday. I know I asked for it by asking “What would you do?” and I appreciate the honesty of both sides of the fence. Great discussion.

The Story of the Illegal HDR Photo

I was recently in New York and made a trip to St. Patricks Cathedral with the specific intention of taking an HDR photo (click the photo on the left for a larger version). I got my photo but I also got a pretty funny story along the way so I thought I’d share.

First, the details. This was a 9 shot bracketed series taken on a D700 with the Nikon 14-24mm lens. The aperture was set to f/11 and the shutter speeds varied throughout the series. I processed it from Lightroom using Photoshop’s Merge to HDR Pro, then some minor retouching to remove distractions and then back to LR for some post-processing. On to the story…

I walked in to the church with my tripod and camera in hand. As you know, anyone with a tripod is automatically treated like a criminal so I was prepared ahead of time. The security person at the front informed me that I could take photos but not use the tripod in the main isle for safety reasons. Knowing the shot I wanted was in the middle I went for plan B (even though I didn’t have a plan B yet). I walked around the church for about 15 minutes trying to work a different angle but I just wasn’t happy with anything. So I decided to throw a Hail Mary.

I saw my opening. The people had cleared the center isle for a few minutes. Off to the side, I set the camera to a 9-frame bracketed series, turned on continuous shooting mode and tested the height of the legs for the shot I wanted. Then I quickly and covertly walked into the center and put the camera/tripod down. Nobody was in site so I just kinda fake-leaned gently on the camera and held my finger on the shutter. Almost making it look like I wasn’t really shooting (yes, I’m sneaky like that). Since I had my camera set to continuous mode it would continue the auto bracketed series as long as the shutter was pressed.

“Click” – went the first shot. “Click” – 2nd shot. “Click” – third. YES!!! I thought I was in the clear. But as I got to the 5th and 6th frames the shutter speeds started creeping into the 8-10 second range. “Uh oh!” I thought.

Now, anyone who shoots HDR knows that these are the most crucial frames because they give details in the dark areas. Well during the 10 second exposure a security guard walked up and told me I had to move. I asked if I could just have 1 more minute and she said no. Then I asked if I could come back later (“Click!” – only 3 more frames to go) in the day when no one was there. She said no. I proceeded to ask if I could come back early in the morning, maybe before they opened. Oh and by the way “What time do you open?” I asked. She said they opened at 8am but that I had to move now (“Click” – 2 more shots to go).

At this point I still had a 20 and 30 second exposure to go so I had to start talking really slow. I was really getting desperate so I asked if she was married and would like to go on a date. She said no (just kidding on this one). I did ask if there was a place I could go to for media credentials. I was being as verbose as possible though. When she said they had a media contact I asked for the name, number and email address (“Click” – 1 more to go – the long one though). My keen ability to read people (or maybe the irate tone to her voice) told me she was getting frustrated by this point. Knowing I only needed about 25 more seconds, in desperation I asked if she could explain why you weren’t allowed to have a tripod where I was standing. I’d hoped she would give a long answer but to my dismay I received a simple “Because we said so”. I said OK and took my finger off the shutter (the shutter was already open and it was the last shot). I bent down to pick up my bag (making sure I didn’t touch the tripod). I zipped it closed, opened and closed a pouch on the bag a few times. Right at this point another guard approached and said “Sir, we really need you to move out of here now”. Click!. I said “Sure thing!” and being the ever-so-obedient photographer I am, picked up my tripod and walked away.

The Moral of the Story
Ya know, I don’t know what the moral of the story is. I guess I kind of felt like I beat the tripod police for once. I totally understand the need to keep the walkways clear for safety reasons but there wasn’t anyone there for me to pose a safety concern to at this point. So I’m OK with my choice. All in all, I got the shot I came for, didn’t get arrested and didn’t hurt anyone along the way.

What would you have done? Thanks!