Video – Erasing the Graduated Filter

Here’s another video straight from the request lines. Recently I’ve heard a lot of chatter around erasing areas that the Graduated filter affected, that you may not have wanted it to affect. For example, plenty of my horizons also have a mountain, tree, or some other object that I don’t want a graduated filter to interact with. In this video I’ll show you how you can bring those areas back and “erase” (well kind of) the effects of the Graduated filter. Have a great weekend folks, and remember to stay away from the malls

Click here to download the video

Options for Shooting Tethered into Lightroom

First off, a BIG thanks to everyone who posted “good lucks” on the Philly half marathon I ran this past weekend. I ran with my brother and sister and we ran the whole race together (and had a great time doing it). Weather was cold but I felt absolutely great once we got going. Anyway, thanks again!

Now onto the topic of the day. A few things have changed lately when it comes to shooting tethered into Lightroom. So I figured I’d cover them all in one post. Also, I’m not doing a full tutorial on shooting tethered mainly because that’s been done a few times already. Here’s a link to Scott Kelby’s blog where he’s got a tutorial on shooting tethered into Lightroom. Sound good? OK, here’s your options:

1) If you shoot Canon then you can use Canon’s free EOS Utility. This is probably your best option if you’re a Canon shooter.

2) If you’re a Nikon shooter the waters are a bit murky here. First, you can use Nikon’s (NOT FREE) Camera Control Pro (which is what I’ve used).

3) If you’re a Nikon shooter then you also have a free option but it’s only for Windows users only. It’s called DiyPhotoBits.com Camera Control and they’ve got a video on their site on how to use it.

4) Finally, Tom Hogarty (Lightroom’s Product Manager) let me in on a plug-in for Lightroom 2 (for Mac only though). It’s called MountainStorm Lightroom Tether and you can grab it here. Of course if you find it useful, it’s nice to leave a donation considering your other alternatives are not free. I’ve tested it out and I have to say it works pretty darn good. I’ve used Camera Control Pro for so long so it’s a little weird to change, but I think I’m now switching over to the free plug-in.
(edit: Sorry everyone. I forgot to mention one small thing that I was reminded of in the comments. Some one had told me not to use the “Enhanced” setting so make sure you leave it unchecked. Seems pretty unstable in this mode)

So as you can see here, the world of shooting tethered is still a bit confusing, with a few different options. The best solution would be for Adobe to build tethered shooting support directly into Lightroom (like Aperture does). That’s not a groundbreaking request though, and I think the Adobe folks hear it loud and clear so let’s keep our fingers crossed for the future. One more thing. If you’ve got experience with any of the tethered shooting options above be sure to let us know which works best for you (or not) in the comments area. Thanks!

Tip – Changing Direction of the Graduated Filter

Here’s a tip I picked up from Scott Kelby recently. If you’re dragging a Graduated filter gradient on to your photo you can quickly change the direction of the gradient by pressing the apostrophe key. For example, if you drag from the top of the photo toward the bottom, whatever effects you’ve got set will appear at the top and gradiate downward. However, if you press the apostrophe key you can reverse it. It also works after you’ve already created a gradient. Just target the little meatball dot that appears on your photo and try pressing apostrophe and Lightroom will reverse the gradient there too. Cool little tip huh? Thanks Scott!

Well, I hope you all have a great weekend. I’m in the airport now heading to Philadelphia (and New Jersey) to run a half marathon with my brother and sister this weekend. Wish me luck!

Video – Watermarking your Photos

A few days ago I posed the question to our Photoshop Guys facebook page (click here if you want to join our page), to see what topics people were interested in. I got a lot of good responses so I thought I’d start picking away at them. This time I thought I’d cover watermarking your photos. I’ll be the first to admit, it’s more or less of a hack in Lightroom, as it’s not really meant for this. However, once you get it set up to watermark, Lightroom does offer a good quick alternative over using Photoshop, Batch Processing and Actions, etc… Hope you enjoy!

Click here to watch the video. (9MB)

Weekly Worth-a-clicks

Here’s some interesting links I’ve found in the last week:

• Photoshop CS4 Now has a trial version available so you can try before you buy.

• An interesting article called 4 Quick Ways to Boost Lightroom Performance

• I’ve been big into Facebook lately and just re-found this LR Facebook Export plug-in that’s very cool.

• Sean McCormack has updated his set of Lightroom Graduated filters to version 2.

• And finally some inspiration for the day. Actually I’ve got two sites.

1) First, check out Paris (no, not Hilton – the city!) through HDR eyes.

2) Also, check out Photography By Jolene. I don’t know why but I always have a soft spot for candid children and family photos and she captures some great moments. Enjoy!

Presets – Noise Removal

I’ve been using Lightroom 2’s noise removal sliders more and more lately and getting some decent results. I won’t lie. Personally, I still go to Nik’s Dfine for my heavy lifting when it comes to noise removal but LR does do a good job when the noise isn’t quite that bad. One of the issues I’ve had is that tiny little preview in the Detail panel in LR. Normally, it should be easy enough to adjust the sliders without presets. But that detail panel is just too small and I usually wind up zooming to 100% view in the main window. I found that having a few presets to just click on became more useful to me so now, you have ‘em too. On a side note, I also noticed that the low/medium settings worked well for most photos. I also threw in just a bit of sharpening to each one so keep that in mind as well. Have a great day!

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

Video – The Adjustment Brush Color Swatch

I’ve got another video up that goes over an area I struggled with until recently. That little color swatch in the Adjustment Brush tool (in LR 2 only), always acted kinda weird for me. Then I sat down and had a talk with it and said “Listen here color swatch thingee, we need to have a talk…” – kidding. I did sit down one afternoon and start messing around with it at extreme settings and it was then I figured out what was going on behind the scenes and I’m able to get more predictable results from it.

Well I hope you have a great weekend. The Bucs have a bye week here in Tampa Bay so I guess I’ll actually have to get the lawn mower out and cut the grass this Sunday but I’ll be in front of the TV in spirit See ya!

Click here to watch the video. (7MB)

Presets – Color Tints Volume 2

Happy preset day once again. I’ve created a second volume of color tints that picks up where the last volume left off. The first volume was a bit warmer in nature but these tints tend to be more on the cooling side (cyans, blues, purples). And to make things easier for you, if you missed the volume 1 tint presets I’ve included them down below on this same page so you can grab both of them while you’re here. Oh yeah, one more thing. Don’t forget that part of tinting involves turning the photo to black and white first. I’ve used the default grayscale B&W conversion here but this is definitely an area you should look into tweaking after you’ve applied the preset. Have a great Monday!

Click here to see a sample of the preset.
Click here to download Matt’s Color Tints Vol. 1 Presets
Click here to download Matt’s Color Tints Vol. 2 Presets
Click here to see a video on how to install presets.