Q&A – Lightroom and Apple's Leopard OS

Question Can / Should I upgrade to Leopard if I’m using Lightroom?
Answer Can you? Yep. Should you? Well, there have been a number of questions about upgrading to Apple’s Leopard OS and problems with Lightroom. Let’s just say this. If you’re a Lightroom user on a Mac you probably want to wait for an update. There are a few issues right now and some of them can be kinda major. Tom Hogarty from Adobe gives a good explanation of the issues on his website. Looks like an update from Adobe is on the way sometime in November so things should get better quickly. So, if you can hold off for a few weeks you’ll probably save yourself a few headaches. If not, then hey, revel in the fact that you have a cool new OS upgrade even if Lightroom has some issues with it.

Monday Presets – Sharpening

This week’s free presets deal with sharpening. Now, I know Lightroom has a couple of sharpening presets built right in (one for landscapes and one for portraits). The reason I created my own was that I felt these presets were a bit on the “not enough” side. A couple of times they worked great, but most of the time I found I was increasing the sharpening strength. So I created my own (3 for portraits and 3 for landscapes). They’re grouped into a “a little, a little more, or a lot” format. I’ll tell you right off the bat that there is absolutely no scientific reasoning behind this other then these presets look good when applied to my photos. Actually there’s a little reasoning. You’ll see with the portrait ones that the Masking setting is always cranked up, which is generally what I use when I want to preserve the skin tone. For the landscape ones I leave it at a lower setting. Anyway, enjoy them. I hope they work well for you.
Click here to download Matt’s Sharpening presets
Click here to see a video on how to install presets.

Tip – Get to Before/After View Quick

You’re going to love me for this one. I just figured this out today and it’s already one of my new favorite shortcuts (at least for a day – until I either a) forget it or, b) find a new one). Anyway, if you’re in the Develop module and you want to see a quick Before/After view of your photo, just press the Y key. Then press Y again to get back to your regular Loupe view. Yep, that’s it. Short and sweet today, but it’s a really cool shortcut. If you ever forget the shortcut just look at the before/after icon. It’s got a little Y on it (I know, I never noticed it before!). Oh, and thanks so much for all the great comments since I turned commenting on yesterday. I really appreciate the kind words. And I’ll have you know that “Mr. Angry Pants” hasn’t shown up once. What a bonus! Take care everyone.

Site News – Comments are turned on!

I’ve got some good news. I’ve turned on the comment feature for recent and new posts going forward. I’ve had a feedback form on the site that was created for feedback, not questions. I’ve realized that many of you have questions, and they’re going unanswered so I figured I’d let, you, the visitors help out with it. So now, discussions can grow and some useful information can get out there based on your experiences. There’s one big ground rule though. No mean people allowed. That means that if you’re one of those “Mr. Angry Pants” kind of people, and you like to put people down then don’t post a comment. I’ll delete it. Simple enough right? But you’re not one of those people because you’re nice and everyone here is nice right? So we’ll have fun with it and I’ll look forward to some good discussions. Thanks!

Video – Where to store your photos in LR?

Earlier today I got a call from a friend of mine. He’s a seasoned photographer that works for Nikon and he’s been in this business longer then I’ve been alive. He said to me: “Matt (since that’s my name)… where in the heck does Lightroom put the photos that I import and where should I be putting them?”. It hit me that if he has this question then what is everyone else out there thinking, right? Also, I must have received that question about 20 times last week during the breaks at Scott Kelby’s Lightroom Live tour. So this week’s video is dedicated to answer just that question (and a couple more). Where does LR store your photos? Where should you store your photos when importing them into LR? And finally, how to get to those photos and find out where they are stored if you forget where you put them way back when you started using Lightroom.

Click here to watch the video. (10 Mb)

Monday Presets – Vintage New York Look

Here’s an effect that works great for portraits. It’s got that desaturated look that is often associated with the whole vintage style that’s so popular. Plus, it’s a popular effect for city (New York-ish) style photos these days. It’s primarily geared toward portraits. One thing you’ll notice if you look at the settings after you apply it, is that I bumped up the Orange and Yellows in the HSL panel to bring back some life to the skin (you gotta love Lightroom). As I mentioned earlier, this is mainly geared towards portraits but give it a try on other types of photos as I’ve gotten some really fantastic results.

Download the presets here

- See the Before/After view of the presets here
- Download the presets here.

Tips I Learned at Scott's Lightroom Tour

Yesterday, I finally got the chance to watch Scott Kelby teach his Lightroom Live tour (click here if you want to see some photos I took). He’s always on the road teaching the tour and I’m always working so I’ve never been able to catch it. He was in our backyard the other day (Tampa Convention Center) so I went over to watch. I get really psyched when I see others speak because that means I can steal (I mean learn) a few things from them. Here’s a few tips I picked up for our Friday tip post:

1) Scott’s approach to collections is great. I used to Flag all of my picks, or the best photos (see the video here). Then I’d rate the best of the best with 5 stars and save them to a collection. Scott does something similar but he saves the Picks into one collection and then he saves the 5-star photos into a child collection. Just click on the Collection name and press the plus icon. When the New Collection dialog opens check the “Create as Child of Collection” option. That’s the way I’ll use from now on.

2) When I used to edit a Lightroom Photo in Photoshop (Photo > Edit in Photoshop menu) I used to preserve the ProPhoto RGB color space into Photoshop. I’m sure I had a reason for this, but for the life of me I don’t know why now. Scott suggests to edit in Photoshop’s assigned color space (usually AdobeRGB 1998 for photographers) which makes total sense. Since no monitors display ProPhoto RGB and no printers print ProPhoto RGB then you might as well switch to the output color space now. I’ve now switched my settings to do just that.

3) There’s a little Grayscale option right under the Basic panel name. I used to scroll down to the HSL/Grayscale panel to change to Grayscale but the option at the top is a really quick way to see your photo as a black and white. It’s a tiny thing I know, but I’ve been using it more since I saw it.

4) I totally forgot about the Impromtu Slideshow option. See, if you follow Scott’s line of thinking (and I do), that you should create a collection of your selects right away, then chances are you’ll only be developing those selects. Well, sometimes a client or friend may walk up and want to quickly see your photos. No sweat. Just press Ctrl-Return (Mac: Cmd-Enter) to launch into an Impromtu Slideshow. No need to switch modules and all that stuff. One shortcut and you’re there.

As always, whenever I watch another instructor teach I learn things (big or small). More so with Scott though because he’s just go such a down-to-earth/realistic way of approaching things. I know I picked up lots of other things that I’ll share in the coming weeks. Also, if you’re not able to make it out to one of the Photoshop or Lightroom seminars but like to learn by watching then make sure you check out my Lightroom Basic Training DVD/Online training course. It covers all the newest enhancements in Lightroom 1.1 and is probably the next best thing to watching Scott teach it live.
Get the DVD here.
See the Online Training Course here.