Real World Slideshows

Hey everyone. In this video I cut right to the chase and show you my favorite real world slideshow settings. I figured it this way… why show you everything about the slideshow module? Instead, I wanted to show you the settings that myself and most of the people I know use most. With a few quick changes you can create a killer template that you can reuse over and over again. So here it is. My real world slideshow template in just a few minutes.
Click here to watch the video. (18 Mb)

The Butterfly Whisperer

Click here to see the full size image from a photo shoot I did over the weekend. Yep, it’s a butterfly and yep I really know how to party on the weekends don’t I? I thought I’d share my editing process. First… the shoot. I actually bought a couple Monarch butterflies from a website. I’d tried my hand at going to a butterfly garden but it didn’t turn out well, so I figured a more controlled environment would be better (like my house). Next, I set everything up on my back porch at around 6pm with the sun still overhead but going down. I used a:

- Nikon D-200 with the Nikon 105mm Macro VR lens (which I LOVE!) and everything was shot on a tripod
- My wireless cable release really saved the day.
- Since I was outside my Hoodman Loupe was critical. It made knowing whether or not I got “the shot” so much easier.

This shot was one of my favorites so here’s what I did in Lightroom.
White Balance: The original was a little too warm so I cooled it a bit with the Temperature setting.
Exposure: The Exposure didn’t need much tweaking but I found the flower overpowered the butterfly so I decreased it a bit (more on this in a minute). I left Recovery and Fill Light alone and increased the blacks just a little.
Presence:I bumped the Clarity up to around 50 and increased the Vibrance just a little since the overall color was already pretty vibrant.
Tone Curve:Used the Medium Contrast curve.
HSL/Color:Used the Target Adjustment tool in the HSL/Color panel to increase the orange saturation on the butterfly.
Photoshop:I used a Curves adjustment layer and my painting with light technique to lighten the butterfly since I wanted to draw more attention to it. I used the Burn tool to darken a few areas on the wing and finished off with some sharpening. Finally, I add a slight lens vignette back in LR to darken the edges a little. So there ya have it. The story of how I became the butterfly whisperer
Enjoy!

Lightroom Galleries Website

This week’s inspirational site is actually a site that has lots of cool things for Lightroom’s Web module. First, the website has some great information on the template files that Lightroom uses to create the web galleries. It’s great to read if you’ve ever thought about tweaking the galleries or creating your own. You will need some HTML expertise though. Then, the same website also has some very sweet-looking galleries for download. You can preview them on the website and then download and install them in your copy of Lightroom. Appropriately enough the site is called Lightroom Galleries. You can check it out at www.lightroomgalleries.com.

Video – External Editor Settings

Hey folks! We all use Photoshop right? So it’s natural to go from Lightroom into Photoshop. However, there’s a few settings that Lightroom needs to know about before you do it. What format should it open your file as in Photoshop? What color space do you want to work in? 8-bit or 16-bit? It sounds like it’s a lot but it’s all really easy once you know what the settings are for and which ones tend to work best. That’s exactly what we’ll cover in this week’s video.

Click here to watch the video. (9 Mb)

Matt's Tuesday Blatant Plugs

Sure we can categorize these things as news. For all purposes, the things I’ll mention here are news but hey, they’re also blatant plugs right? Seriously though, whenever I do mention something it’s usually with the hopes of saving you money, time or whatever type of things you like to save. If you don’t want to read ‘em then skip down to the next item on the page. So first up:
Photoshop WorldPhotoshop World now has a dedicated Lightroom track. Yep, a whole day of nuthin’ but Lightroom. So if you like Lightroom (and I know you do because you’re on a Lightroom website) then it’s something you should consider. The reason why I’m mentioning this is because the early bird registration runs out on August 3rd. If you’re going to go to Photoshop World then sign up before then because on August 4th it’ll cost you $100 extra. See… I care. Plus I’d love to meet you. Visit the website here.

Arizona Slot Canyon WorkshopThis one is filling up quickly. It’s 3 days of killer photography in the Arizona slot canyons and surrounding areas. We had a blast on my last workshop in Banff and I think everyone who attended will tell you that you get more than your money’s worth. Here’s how it works: we shoot in the morning and evenings along side myself and another pro photographer that’ll help you get the best photos in the field. Then we go into the classroom and process those photos right there on the spot. So you get the advantage of turning around and saying “Hey Matt, what should I do for this photo” or “Hey Matt, how do I…?” or “Hey Matt, wanna go grab a drink (just kidding – we can do that at night though)”. So come on out. I’d love to see you there. Find out more here.

Tip – Deleting Photos

The TipHere’s something that you’ll run into often – deleting photos. Assuming that not every photo you take is a keeper (hey, it could just be me that takes bad photos sometimes) you’ll inevitably need to delete photos. There’s two ways in Lightroom: 1) Deleting from your catalog but leaving them on your computer 2) Removing them from your computer all together. For option 1, to delete from only your catalog but leave them on your computer just press Alt-Backspace (Mac: Option-Delete). If you want to delete them from your computer though just press the Delete key and then press the Delete From Disk button. That removes them totally from your computer.

Black and White TutorialIn other news, I just saw a tutorial from Scott Kelby for Lexar.com on converting to black and white in Camera Raw. Being some one that loves free stuff I figured I pass it along. Check it out here.

Inspiration – John Lehet Photography

Just the other day I paid a visit to John Lehet’s website and enjoyed it so much I wanted to pass it along. John has some really nice landscape, panorama, and close up work. I think you’ll immediately see his point of view on things is somewhat different then you’ll typically find out there and I enjoyed it a lot. I think of it this way… whenever I leave some one’s site and it psyches me up enough to want to go out and shoot something because now I have new ideas, then it’s a site worth passing along. I think John Lehet’s site is just that so stop by and check it out. (Photo Credit: John Lehet)

Video – Develop From Start to Finish

I’m veering off the normal “tips” video this week and doing something a little different. This time around I’m taking a photo thru the Develop module from start to finish. Basically, I’ll show you what I would do for a properly exposed photo, for the most part. I’ll go through what settings I would use and what settings I typically ignore. In the coming weeks I’ll take a look at problem photos, as well as some of the things that we’d have to do in Photoshop vs. Lightroom.

Oh yeah, if you like this week’s video but want to dig deeper into some of the settings then check out my Lightroom Online Training course over at Photoshoptraining.com.

Click here to watch the video. (13 Mb)
Click here to download the presets I mentioned in the video.

Tip – Getting Home

One of the issues that I’ve found (along with many others) is that there is no way to link to your website’s home page from a web gallery created by Lightroom. Now, if you’re the HTML savvy type then you can probably figure it out, but if you’re not then try this (only works in 1.1 by the way). Go to the Web module and turn on the Identity Plate option. Here you can do one of two things a) Type in the word “Home” or something like that. b) Create a graphic that reads “Home” or whatever it is you want to send them to. Right under the Identity Plate option you’ll see the Web or Mail Link. Enter in the link that you want your ID Plate to follow and you’re golden. Now whenever some one clicks on it they’ll be taken to the home page, or where ever you sent them. Have a great weekend everyone!

Video – Using Catalogs in 1.1

I’m really psyched about the topic of this week’s video. Wanna know why? Because my email inbox was filled with people asking how to move their library (now called a catalog) in Lightroom 1.0 from a laptop to a desktop. More importantly, folks wanted to know how to merge the library on your laptop (while in the field) with the one back at the studio so you could work between both. It was by far the most popular question I ever got with Lightroom. Unfortunately the reason no one was teaching this was because it simply wasn’t possible. Well, now with 1.1 you can do it.
Click here to watch the video. (28 Mb)