Wednesday Inspiration – Patrick Hoelck Photography

This week’s gallery spotlight is on Patrick Hoelck photography. I came across Patrick’s portfolio about a year ago and just found it again today. I love this kind of stuff! His work is dark, it’s edgy, and it has a ton of feeling in it. It almost has the look of some photographers like Joey Lawrence and Dave Hill but it’s also very different. For starters, I don’t think he’s doing the same type of post-processing they are (notice I said “type of post-processing” – there’s still definitely work being done but it’s very different from what I can see). Plus, it’s great to see some one’s style injected into so many different types of work and clients. So make sure you check this one out. It’s an easy site to navigate too (I just love those horizontal scroll navigation schemes for some reason).

Video – Backing Up Lightroom

I was recently reading a question asked by some folks who were upgrading to Leopard (newest Mac OS) and they wanted to know how to back up Lightroom in case a catastrophe happened in the OS upgrade process. That sparked an idea that I’ve been wanting to cover for a while, and it affects both PC and Mac users. The topic is, “How do you back up Lightroom?” I mean, what do you do to make sure that if your computer decides to go bye-bye tomorrow, that you’re safe and can easily be back up and running with Lightroom (AND ALL of your photos AND ALL of the things that you’ve done to your photos). Personally, I’ve had about 3 laptop hard drive crashes in the last 5 or so years. Maybe I’m just hard on my laptops. Personally, I always thought it was OK to toss it across the room to a friend, but maybe I’m alone on that one Anyway, that little question is what brought on this week’s video. I think you’ll find it’s actually way easier then you thought to keep Lightroom and all of its managed photos backed up and ready to restore whenever you need.

Click here to watch the video. (7 Mb)

Monday Presets – Creative Printing

A few weeks ago I posted this video on creating a custom contact sheet that actually looks more like a cool print then it does a contact sheet. If you missed the video or are just too plain lazy and never got around to creating the preset, then you’re in luck today. Even if you saw the video and created the preset, you’ll like this one because there’s an extra for you. This week I’ve created two printing presets that were born from one of the Contact Sheet presets in Lightroom’s Print module. One is a 3×3 grid and the other is a 2×2 grid. The 3×3 requires that you have 9 photos and the 2×2 needs 4 (I know, simple math but hey, it’s Monday and I didn’t want to make you think too much) . They’re an awesome way to spice up a simple print. Plus, sometimes you’ve got a bunch of photos that, by themselves, aren’t print worthy but when they’re all together easily pull of a pro-quality print. I’ve got lots more that I’ll be sharing over the coming months but here are a couple to get you going.
- Here’s a sample of what one of the presets looks like.
- Download the presets here.

Friday Tip – Cool Cropping

Today I’ve got a great tip for you that, truth be told, isn’t really mine. Yep, I’m stealing tips these days. It’s a problem I’ve had that really dates back to my childhood years Now it’s back and I find myself stealing a tip from Daryl Naumann. Daryl (just trying to do a nice thing) wrote in on the feedback form on this site and said this:
“… (nice stuff about me)… When using the crop tool to resize, it does dim the part of the photo that is going to be cropped out, but sometimes it’s not really enough to see the true effect of cropping at that edge. Hitting the L key at this point to go into Lights Out mode darkens it right down though, allowing you to still move the crop box around to see exactly what the photo will look like when cropped. I’ve found it to be a great help… (more nice stuff).”
Daryl… I agree 100%. That tip rocks! It makes cropping so much better. Have a great weekend everyone. I’ll be attending my weekly TSA meeting tomorrow (no, not the Transportation Safety Authority – it stands for Tip Stealing Anonymous).

Video Tip – Watermarking your Photos

If you find yourself emailing photos a lot, then you should watch this video. You can not only export a slideshow into PDF format so it can easily be emailed, but you can also watermark those photos with a cool trick I’ll show you. That way, you’re covered when you send the photos to some one else. They can see ‘em, but they can’t really do anything with them.

Click here to watch the video. (27 Mb)

Monday Presets – Cross Process

It’s Monday again and you know what that means? Yep, Monday Night Football tonight! No… seriously, it means another preset today. This week I’m sharing my cross processing effect preset. If you’re not sure what cross processing is and want to be thoroughly confused then check out this link from Wikipedia. After you read it you’ll either be a) asleep or b) enlightened to the roots of where this effect came from or, c) wondering why my Photoshop User TV co-host Dave Cross wasn’t credited or mentioned (considering this effect does, of course, have his name in it). One quick note about this preset. It’s intended to be applied after you’ve already done your basic Toning adjustments (Exposure and Blacks). So have at it and give the cross process effect a try.
Download the Cross Process preset here.

Friday Tip – The Hover Tip

I love demoing this tip in front of crowds because it always incites lots of oooos and ahhs. I call it the “Hover anywhere” tip. One of the things that’s always a pain is when you have to actually apply a setting, only to find that you don’t like it. Then you’ve got to press Ctrl/Cmd – Z to undo. In Lightroom, there’s quite a few places that you can preview what your photo is going to look like by just hovering your cursor over a setting or your photo. For example, in Develop, if you select the White Balance Selector eyedropper thingee and hover around your photo, Lightroom will display a preview of what it would look like if you selected it, in the top left of the screen (the Navigator panel). Same thing goes for presets. Hover over any preset in any module and you’ll see the preview appear in the Navigator panel (or Preview panel, depending on which module you’re in). It even works for history states in Develop. You can see what your photo would look like if you went back in history just by hovering over that history state. So… if you just said oooo or ahhh then you’re one of the people I love to have in the crowd. It just makes me feel good… needed… important… wanted… fulfilled… Have a great weekend everyone!

Video – Creative Printing

Ever create your own printing templates in Lightroom? If you haven’t, then this video is a must-see. There are some really eye-catching things you can do when it comes to laying out your prints. Sure, everyone has seen one photo per page and how much can you really do with that, right? But you’re not restricted to just one photo per page. You can put several photos on a page and control just about every aspect of how they appear. So, if you’ve been wanting to do more with the Print module then make sure you watch this week’s video.

Click here to watch the video. (25 Mb)

Monday Presets – Colorizing

Holy cow!!! The response to the preset feature I added here at Lightroom Killer Tips was astonishing. I had no idea that you guys liked them as much as I do. So it looks like the new feature is a keeper. This week I’ve got some colorizing presets for you. A while back I did a video on saturating only one color in the HSL panel. After I started using that effect more I realized I definitely needed some presets for it. So once again, here are some Develop presets right smack out of my own Lightroom presets panel. If you like ‘em you can download them. If you don’t like them… well download them anyway (it looks good in my web stats). Enjoy!
Click here to download the Colorize presets.
Click here to see a video on how to install presets.

Back from Arizona

The Great American Photography workshop I hosted in Arizona is over and I’m back in the office. I’m bummed because we had a FANTASTIC group of people. But I can’t lie… I was really happy to actually sleep in and not see the sun rise today Here’s a shot (click for a larger version) of a few people from the group (we had 15 total). It was taken in the lower Antelope Slot Canyon and it was one of the killer highlights of the trip. At the top right is David and myself. At the far left is “sit down” Steve, then “f/5.6″ Wayne, and finally Chuck all the way at the far bottom right. If you’re wondering why there’s no photo credit here it’s because I actually took the photo. Yep, I used my wireless cable release (field tested to nearly 100 ft. – it rocks!) and it worked like a champ through the whole workshop. Good times were had and great friends were made and I can’t wait until the next workshop. I’ve gotten a number of questions asking just when that is. They’re in the process of being planned so I’ll make sure to mention them here as they’re finalized. I just wanted to give a heartfelt thanks to everyone who attended the workshop and to our host photographer LeRoy DeJolie, for taking us off the path to find some incredible photographing opportunities.