Teaching in Santa Fe This Week

Hey everyone! I’ll be teaching a week-long class on Advanced Photoshop at the famous Santa Fe Workshops this week. Today was the first day and my class and I had a blast. We started the day off with some general Photoshop techniques for improving photos. Then we set out on a photo shoot. After lunch we came back and went through the whole digital workflow with the photos we just took. To top the day off, I just got back from the presentations where I got to see some amazing photography by some of the other pros teaching here at Santa Fe this week. I’ve got a great group of students and I’m really looking forward to the rest of the week. That said, the posts will probably be slightly behind this week but I promise I’ll make it up to you. Adios!

Highlight and Shadow Clipping

Here’s a tip that I used in Adobe Camera Raw all the time and it is now in Lightroom too. You may be like me: I’m not a huge fan of turning on the shadow and highlight clipping warnings. Why you ask? Well, I don’t care for the red and blue colors it puts all over my photo, so I usually wind up turning them off. Check this out. If you hold down the Alt key (Option on Mac) and start dragging the Exposure slider (or the Shadow slider for the darks), you’ll see everything turn black. As you drag toward the right, you’ll eventually start seeing some colors appear. That’s Lightroom’s way of telling you those areas will be clipped (all white or all black) if you don’t pull back. It’s a good visual way to set your exposure and shadow settings without leaving your clipping warnings on all the time.

Awesome Photographs

Well the site name says it all here. If you’re looking for some general inspiration or just want to see some nice photography and set up, then check out this blog site. It’s primarily geared toward wedding photography but you’ll also find some portrait, landscape, and action shots as well. There’s even a “How to submit” area if you want to submit your own photos. Click here to visit the site. (Photo Credit: Floyd Palitang)

White Balance

Lightroom has one of the best ways to preview and set the white balance that I’ve seen. In addition to the basic settings, as well as the temperature and tint sliders, there is also the white balance eyedropper, which rocks. Not necessarily the eyedropper itself, but the visual preview you get while using it is my favorite. In this week’s video, we’ll take a look at the various ways to use these settings in Version 1 of Lightroom.
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Daily Photo Tips

I just ran across this site the other week. Truth be told, I found out the site mentioned my Photoshop Elements Restoration and Retouching book and I’m a sucker for repaying favors to people who mention my books. : ) I’m kidding! Well, a little at least. Seriously, I do love to repay favors, but I wouldn’t mention this site if I didn’t just spend the last hour going through all of the archives on it. The site is called Daily Photo Tips and it has just what the title says – daily photography tips. The owner, Daniel Watkins, does a great job of doing this. It may not be everyday but I’ll tell ya’, it’s pretty darn close. Plus there’s a great variety of info — from camera tips to digital processing, all the way to cool products and links that Daniel finds. Make sure you put this one on your daily to-do list. Click here to visit the site.

Selectively Improving Colors

Often when you’re editing a photo you’ll want to boost or reduce certain colors in your photo – not all of them. That’s where the HSL panel comes in. It lets you do just that, similar to what Photoshop’s Hue/Saturation adjustment does. However, there’s a sweet new trick in Version 1 of Lightroom that steps it up a notch. It’s a visual way to boost a color (or colors) in your photo. It gives you a lot more control over exactly which areas of your photo you can improve without having to go into Photoshop and make selections. Check it out.

Click Here to Download Video

Cropping and Histograms

Here’s a cool trick with the Crop tool. When you’re in the Develop module, you’ll always see that there’s the Histogram panel at the top right side of the Lightroom window. Well, the histogram always changes as you make adjustments to your photos. But, did you know that if you crop your photo with the Crop Tool (press R as a shortcut to get to it) that the histogram will update as you make adjustments to the crop area? Give it a try. As you move your crop area you’ll see the histogram continually update to reflect only the photo inside the crop.