Presets – Contrast Boost

Here’s another set of presets right from my personal workflow. They’re all contrast-boosting presets (there are 5 of them). I use the Tone Curve to add contrast to my photos. I used to just click on the Point Curve options at the bottom of the Tone Curve panel (Linear, Medium Contrast, Strong Contrast) to see which one I liked the best. Finally I just created some presets for them, as well as a couple other settings, because I found the difference between the 3 was a bit too broad. So now they’re yours for the taking. The “0″ preset is a flat Tone Curve while the “4″ one is fairly steep and the largest contrast boost out of all of them. What’s nice about these is that once they are installed you can just hover over them in the Develop module and see the preview in the Navigator panel so you don’t even need to click on them to apply. Have fun with ‘em!

Click here to download Matt’s Contrast Boost presets
Click here to see a video on how to install presets

Lightroom 1.3.1 Update

It seems like it was just a couple weeks ago that I was writing about the Lightroom 1.3 update and now there’s another one. Really though, there’s nothing major here. Just a few bug fixes and tweaks that some folks have experienced since updating to 1.3. Personally, I haven’t experienced any issues but I’m not running Leopard yet either. Anyway, below are the Mac/PC links if you need to download:
- Lightroom 1.3.1 for Mac
- Lightroom 1.3.1 for Windows

Friday Tip – Lens Vignetting

Think of this tip as a public service announcement. I’ve seen many questions on how to get Lightroom’s Lens Vignetting slider to work on cropped photos when you want to darken the edges of a photo. See, the vignette (edge darkening) gets added to the original uncropped image – regardless of the crop you’ve applied. It actually kind of make sense. Think of it this way. The Vignetting adjustment wasn’t really added so we could use it to darken edges creatively. It was added to counteract the effects of lens vignetting with certain lenses (especially when shooting wide open). Since you’d only be removing a vignette from the entire uncropped image it makes sense that it works this way. It’s really only later that people started using this creatively. Anyway, currently (as of Lightroom 1.3) there is no way to change this. So if you find you’d like to slightly darken the edges you could always edit the photo in Photoshop. Then click the Filter menu, choose Distort > Lens Correction and use the Vignette settings in there. That said, make sure you ease up on the settings for this. The edge darkening technique looks nice when used sparingly but tends to look too fake when used at too high of a setting.

Video – PSDs and Lightroom

I have to say, one of the best things I’ve done on this website is turn on comments. Not only does it provide good information to a lot of you, but it also sparks some good ideas for new videos for me. While reading a post last week by a friend of mine, Glyn Dewis, I realized there’s a decent amount of “stuff” around Lightroom and how it handles the PSD files that we go back and forth with to Photoshop. So that’s the topic of this week’s video. How does Lightroom handle the process of going between itself and Photoshop? Where are the PSD files and what do we do with them? And finally, will I ever stop asking questions and get to it?

Click here to watch the video. (22Mb)

Monday Presets – Dark Web Presets

For those of you who followed Friday’s post, I’m happy to report that the Christmas Tree (yes, I said “Christmas”) tree is up. Casualties: 4 glass ornaments, 1 argument between my wife and I on tree placement, 2 large scratches on my arm from placing the tree (my wife won), and 1 tormented black cat (I think my kids kept trying to poke him with the ornament hooks).
Now… let’s get to the Monday preset. This week I’m making two of my custom web gallery templates available. I like black. I think it’s sleek and elegant. Lightroom comes with a couple of black “midnight” web gallery presets but they have one problem (OK, a few). The light color areas in them are too bright. Mainly, I can’t stand the cell rollovers on the Lightroom “Midnight” template. Nothing screams loud and obtrusive like they do. Also, it totally turns off the grid. I’m just not crazy about seeing the photos floating on the page like that. I like grid – I’ve embraced the grid – I’ve become one with the grid. Actually, I just think it brings order to the page. Next, the Midnight preset also turns off the Cell Numbers setting so you don’t see any numbers on the cells. I’m all for that except when it comes to client proofing. It makes it harder for some one to tell you which photo they like best. So my version has the numbers the same color as the cells except when you rollover. They become visible (albeit barely) so a client can easily tell you which ones they want. I’ve also included a darker flash template then the one that comes with Lightroom. Again, the default preset was a good start but other areas were just too bright.

Click here to see a sample of the preset.
Click here to download Matt’s Midnight Web presets
Click here to see a video on how to install presets.