Friday Video Tip

Happy Friday folks. It’s one of those Friday’s where I was in the mood to make a video tip instead of writing one so here goes. The tip is on making Develop presets. Presets are probably one of the most popular aspects of my blog site here and I see lots of people ask questions as to how to make presets. Sure, the process of making them is simple – just click the little + icon in the Develop module under the Preset panel and you’ve got a preset. But what about the settings behind the preset? Do you include Exposure and tone-based settings in the preset? What about White Balance settings? I’ll go over my thought process in this video but I’d love to hear what you guys think as well. How useful are they to you? Do you download them and never use them or do you use them every day? Let us know in the comment area. Well, that wraps up another week. Have a great weekend!

Click here to watch the video. (13MB)

Some Weekly Odds and Ends

First off, thanks to everyone who stopped over at scottkelby.com to see my guest blog post. It seemed very well received and I appreciate all the comments. Now on to some Lightroom, photography and industry odds and ends.

• Sean McCormack over at Lightroom News has a really neat post on time lapse photography and how he’s using it. I’ve never really tried it but after reading I think I may have a go at it.

• Syl over at PixSylated (I love that name!) has a good post about Firefox 3 and color management in the browser. This is big actually. The more browsers that start reading color profiles the better off we’ll all be when it comes to displaying our photography on the web.

• NAPP members get $75 off the Epson R1900 until tomorrow (my new favorite glossy printer). I did a couple videos on the R1900 when it comes to getting started with printing as well as printing from Lightroom over at the NAPP site. You can see the videos as well as get the discount code by clicking here.

• One of our own Lightroom blog readers, Peter, has a great photography (and related) blog over at www.camerasview.com. You’ll find lots of tidbits there and even some neat tips on Lightroom.

• Finally, check out the Camera Toss blog. I had absolutely no idea there was a website dedicated to this and I totally stumbled upon it yesterday. It’s gutsy to try out but I may have to take an old camera and give it a whirl

Have a great day!

I'm a Guest Blogger today on Scott's Blog

I have the honor of being a guest blogger today on Scott Kelby’s blog so make sure you check it out and leave a comment for me. (let ‘em all know you’re a Lightroom Killer Tips visitor!) Yep, he asked me a few weeks ago and I’ve since been laboring over what I was going to write. Then, about a week ago it came to me, and about 2 days ago I began writing it. I have to say it took WAY longer then I thought it would (I’m afraid to even tell you as my boss my be reading this) but I had such a good time with it. Basically, I’ve taken a concept that we talk about in the office every once in a while and made it into a post. See, we always toss around ideas about small design changes we’d make to dialogs, palettes or the Photoshop interface. Sometimes we even come up with our own new ideas for dialogs. Well, I decided to actually create them. If you’ve never designed a dialog before, let me tell ya… it ain’t easy. I have a totally new respect for those folks because all I had to do was make mine in Photoshop and it took forever – I don’t even have to make them work Anyway, head on over to Scott’s blog to check my post out and leave a comment for me as well. It’s even got some homework for you where you can download a PSD file and make your own. Regular blogging will resume here for the rest of the week. Thanks!

Friday Vid. – Moving Between Laptop and Desktop

Happy Friday. This week I’ve got a video for you that answers the never ending question of how to move between a laptop and desktop with Lightroom. I’ve been asked this just about every time I teach Lightroom and it occurred to me that I haven’t really done a video to cover it. Fortunately it’s a lot simpler then it may seem and Adobe has given us an easy way to save out specific images or folders to move from one catalog to another (which by the way is really what is happening when you move from one computer to another). If you’ve had any experiences that are similar to what I show then let us know in the comments and if you’ve found any hiccups along the way, by all means let us know as well. So, watch the video. Enjoy it. Feel the thrill of moving freely between computers with no chains to hold you back Oh yeah, and enjoy your weekend.

Click here to watch the video. (22MB)

The Adobe Exchange Now Has Lightroom

I’ve been a long time fan of the Adobe Exchange. I mention that site as a huge resource in just about every one of my Photoshop classes. Especially since I’m an actions nut and they’ve got the best resource out there for actions. But it’s not just actions – they’ve got everything when it comes to presets and cool downloadable “stuff” (free and not free) for every Adobe program out there. How does this relate to Lightroom though? Well, the folks over at the Adobe Exchange have finally included Lightroom in the mix. Now you can download Develop presets, export plug-ins, web galleries and who knows what else. Most of it is free but there is some paid stuff too. Plus, developers can place their downloads on the site which means I’ll probably be adding my presets soon. So… the moral of today’s post: Check out the Adobe exchange. Obviously for Lightroom stuff but also for lots of little gems that work with the other Adobe programs you use.

Here’s the link to the Adobe Exchange home page.

Here’s the link to the Lightroom section.

Presets – Summer Haze

Summer is in full swing, SPF 45 and lemonade are flowing, and that inspired my latest preset. Actually, summer has been in full swing here in Tampa, FL for about 6 weeks but hey, I love the heat so it’s all good for me. This week’s preset is named Summer Haze. I was working on some photos and I was trying to get across that summery, warm, hazy feeling and this is what came out of it. The preset adjusts the white balance, Vibrance, Saturation, and Split Toning sliders. I even tossed in a bit of a Tone Curve adjustment on it in the Shadows since the other settings seemed to muddy the photo up a bit, and I thought it needed some more blacks to bring back the contrast. It works great on fun-styled photos outdoors and even makes a pretty nifty wedding effect.

I hope you enjoy. Speaking of summer, I’m bailing out of work a couple hours early today to head to Busch Gardens. They have this “Summer Nights” things going on and it’s a lot more bearable later in the day. Hmmmmm… Summer Nights. Sounds like a good name for a preset Enjoy!

Click here to see a sample of the preset.
Click here to download Matt’s Summer Haze Preset
Click here to see a video on how to install presets.

HDR Tidbits (links, news, inspiration)

Happy Friday again. Everyone seems to be enjoying the HDR video so I thought I’d include a whole post about HDR stuff. First off, let’s start with some software:

Software
There’s a few programs you can use for HDR.
1) Photoshop – I’m not a huge fan of Photoshop’s Merge to HDR
2) Photomatix – definitely my favorite. Oh yeah, NAPP members get a 20% discount. Here’s the link to the NAPP member website to get the code.
3) FDR Tools – Cool enough. I’ve tried it but I like Photomatix more. It just seems more intuitive to me personally.
4) Dynamic Photo HDR – This program looks like the best of all of them to me. The interface looks awesome. However, it’s PC only so I haven’t been able to try it out yet.

Learning
• I did a 2 part NAPP tutorial on the NAPP members website. One on Merge to HDR in Photoshop and another one on using Photomatix.
• I think HDR really shines for real estate and landscapes. Here’s a neat article on using HDR for real estate photography.
• Stuck in Customs has a cool tutorial
• Ben Willmore is teaching a class on it at the upcoming Photoshop World in Las Vegas
• Another HDR tutorial I found on Flickr

Inspiration
Finally, here’s some inspirational links to some great HDR photography.
• The mother lode of all HDR inspiration over at Flickr’s HDR group.
• Photomatix’s website has some really great examples of HDR. Check out Maciek Duczynski’s portfolio there for some amazing stuff.

As always, if you’ve got some related news, links, websites or tutorials let us know in the comments area. Have a great weekend!

Video – HDR and Lightroom

Lately I’ve really been into shooting HDR images. I bracket just about everything that I can. Why? Not because I like the fantasy-like effect that’s been popular. Honestly, it’s just not my style but I can definitely appreciate it for certain photos. For me though, it’s more about having real world HDR. It saves me time in Photoshop and I’m amazed that I’ve never explored HDR for my landscape and interior photos until now. I’ll explain how, why, and how I’ve incorporated Lightroom into my HDR workflow as well as what I use to process my HDR images in this week’s video. Oh yeah, if you’ve got any cool HDR links, galleries, or tutorials out there make sure you mention them in the comments section. Thanks!

Click here to watch the video. (24MB)

Presets – Sin City Look (Sort of…)

First off, I’d like to thank Matt Pavel for posting a comment last week and suggesting a preset based on the Sin City look. I’ve always been a fan of that look and it was fun to see what was possible with Lightroom. Before we go too far, this preset isn’t the exact Sin City look. There’s a lot more going on with this effect then we can do in Lightroom. But working on it at least inspired this preset which I think comes pretty close. So here’s the deal. The main idea behind the Sin City look is pretty much a desaturated high contrast photo with some red saturation left in. The preset is mostly a desaturating effect. But it also leaves certain colors saturated (reds and oranges). The idea behind this is that you’ve got to have something in your photo that has those colors in it. Even if it’s just a photo of people though, it should work since the skin tones will fall in those saturated colors. Also, there’s two flavors to this preset – a light red one and a dark red one so it changes how bright the reds appear. So thanks to Matt for suggesting the idea and thanks to everyone who takes their time to visit the site and leave their comments. I know it takes time but it’s what makes this site better and better every week. Enjoy and let me know what you think.

Click here to see a sample of the preset.
Click here to download Matt’s Sin City Presets
Click here to see a video on how to install presets.

Friday Tip – Saving your Presets (all of them!)

Time for another Friday tip. As you’ve probably seen if you’ve followed this site for any amount of time, I love presets. If you love them too you’ll need to make sure you’re backing them up in case your computer ever crashes. Or, maybe you want to move your presets from a laptop to a desktop or vice-versa. Here’s a quick way to back up everything related to presets.

(edit by Matt K: many thanks to Mike for posting a comment on an even easier way to do this – thanks Mike!)

1) Go to your Lightroom preferences. Lightroom menu on Mac and Edit menu on PC.
2) Click on the Presets tab.
3) At the bottom of the dialog you’ll see a button that reads “Show Lightroom Presets Folder”. Click on that.
4) Backup the “Lightroom” folder to your backup device or disk.
5) Sit back and revel in the fact that your presets are now safe

That’s all there is to it. All of your presets live in that folder so as long as it’s backed up you’re good to go. Well, that wraps up another week. Have a great weekend – hit ‘em long and hit ‘em straight and if you don’t play golf then you should probably keep from hitting things all together. See ya!