Tip – Unlimited Undos

Most of you use Photoshop right? That means you’re probably used to the fact that Photoshop gives you 20 undos by default. So if you do more then 20 things to your photo, Photoshop drops the earlier ones and you’ll eventually not be able to undo (you’d basically have to start over if you needed to get back). Now you can change that in Photoshop’s Performance preferences but what about Lightroom? How does it handle undos? It’s easy actually. Every single thing you do is tracked in the History panel (in the Develop module). Whether you’ve made 5 changes or 500 they’ll all be listed there. Even better, when you close Photoshop, all of our undos go away. But when you close Lightroom they stay put. Even if you opened Lightroom to work on a photo a year later, when you come back you’ll always be able to undo what you did in that History panel. Go check it out next time you work on a photo that’s been in your library for a while and you’ll see what I mean.

Take care everyone and have a great weekend!

Video – Organizing Your Presets

Happy video day everyone! This week’s video is something I’ve been asked about a lot lately – organizing your presets. The funny (or not-so-funny depending on how you look at it) part about it is that there’s not any secret tips for organizing your presets in Lightroom. Basically, they let you create folders and you can put presets in those folders. But there are a few little things you can do to help organize your favorites and help get them to where you can find the best ones faster.

Click here to download the video

Seminar Update – Thanks!

First off, scroll down to the next post for this week’s free presets. Next, I just wanted to give my sincere thanks to everyone that came out to the Covington, KY “Lightroom 2 Live” seminar last Friday. We actually had a nice surge in attendance at the end and wound up with nearly 400 people which is very cool. Even cooler though, is that I was just overwhelmed at how many people came up and said they read the blog and watch the podcasts all the time. I couldn’t have asked for a better crowd for my first Lightroom seminar and things went off pretty much without a hitch (except for the fact that I didn’t check the tethered cable during the tethered shoot and it had come loose ).

If you’re reading this and you were there, don’t forget to go to the link I gave you to download the presets I mentioned in class. I just checked and it’s up now.

Update: As I was writing this post, I just got the evaluations from the seminar dropped off in my office so I’ll be going through them today and I’m willing to bet that’ll lead to some brand new tutorials too. Thanks again!

Presets – Old Fashioned Effect

Here’s another preset that’s comes straight from the request lines (your comments). It’s an old fashioned faded kinda look and it comes complete with faded edges and everything. I’m actually really happy with it as I’ve always liked using my “Vintage New York” effect and this one adds a little more of that vintage look to a photo.

Also, after you download the presets you’ll see there’s two versions. One for people and another for everything else. That doesn’t mean you can’t use the people one on other stuff and vice-versa, but I’ve found that you can get some weird effects if you use the “everything else” one on people so be careful. Enjoy!

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

Tip – Press H to Hide the Adjustment Brush Pins

It’s Lightroom Seminar day for me and I’m gearing up for a big crowd here in Covington, KY. As I was getting ready I realized that it’s funny how tips come about. For example, the one I have for you today is something that I totally knew about months ago. As you can imagine though, with all the software we use there’s only so much room for tips and shortcuts. So as new things come into my head, my mind must just push the older ones to the back (that’s a fancy way of saying I just forget) For example, I was using the Adjustment Brush the other day and thinking to myself how annoying it was to see those little pins. Especially, if I painted over some one’s eye because you can imagine how bad it looks to see one of those right smack in the middle of some one’s face. But I got over it pretty quick and didn’t really give it much thought until I was reading through the comments, and somebody had mentioned their pins just disappeared. Another blog reader jumped in and reminded them that they must have hit the letter H to hide the pins, and to just hit H again to show them. It seems like such a small thing, but since then I’ve found myself constantly using H with the Adjustment Brush (and Graduated filter too) to get rid of the pins. The only catch… don’t forget to hit H again or else one day, when your mind pushes newer tips to the front and older ones to the back of your mind (ie. you forget), you’ll be wondering where your Adjustment Brush pins went.

I hope you have a great weekend everyone. If you’re coming to the Lightroom seminar today make sure you stop by and say hi, OK. Take care!

Weekly Worth-a-click

Here’s a few more links in the Lightroom/Photography realm that I thought were worth a quick look:

• If you’re into ring flash (or been wanting to get into it) there’s now a really affordable option. The Ray Flash by Expo Imaging. And the price has dropped to $199.

• Don’t forget I’m teaching the Lightroom 2 Live Seminar in Covington, KY on Friday (really, how could you forget – I keep reminding you!) so come on out and join me for the day.

• A very interesting video about the age old debate of film vs. digital.

• You may have heard me mention the real estate/interior photography go-to guys Thomas Grubba and Scott Hargis. Well they’ve got another Interior Lighting workshop coming up in Chicago this weekend and I’d definitely recommend it. It’s a full day work shop and, when I attended, I felt I got my money’s worth by lunch time.

• The Turning Gate has released an iPhone Portfolio gallery preset for Lightroom.

• And some inspiration for the day. Check out Michael Clark Photography. He’s got a great mix of sports and adventure photos with some beautiful portrait work as well.

Presets – Max Payne Movie Style

Howdy folks. I hope you had a great weekend – I know I did. I’m gearing up for the Lightroom 2 Live Tour in Covington, KY this Friday so make sure you come out and see me if you’re in the area. Now, on to the presets. I was watching the NFL playoff games yesterday and saw a commercial for the upcoming DVD release of the Max Payne movie. I caught a quick glimpse of a neat effect that I quickly tried to replicate in Lightroom. It’s basically all red. At first it looked really weird but I tweaked a few other settings as well as added some edge darkening (doesn’t every effect have that these days) and it turned out pretty cool. One word of caution though. This preset is meant for a very specific style of photo. Photos that have that edgier look and especially sports or senior portraits will probably benefit most from it. In other words, don’t try it on photos of small babies, warm family portraits or tiny kittens

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

Video – Interview with Adobe's Tom Hogarty

Today I’ve got something a little different for you. Instead of listening to my voice for 5 minutes, you get to listen to Adobe’s Lightroom Product Manager Tom Hogarty (and my voice a little). Tom was in NAPP’s headquarters last month and I pulled him aside to talk about some emerging areas in Lightroom. Topics such as some of the pro DSLRs that shoot video and Lightroom’s camera profiles as well as the DNG editor came up. It’s pretty cool to get a chance like this and I think Tom’s got some good insights. He even tips Adobe’s hand just a bit about some future development. Hope you enjoy.

Click here to download the video

Teaching Update – Where's Matt?

First off, make sure you scroll down to the next post for this week’s presets. In this post, I thought I’d give you a quick teaching update (as of now at least) for the year to come. I hope you’ll come out and join me if you’re able to.

• January 23 – Lightroom 2 Live Tour in Covington Kentucky. This one is coming up quickly. Come on out and watch the entire Lightroom workflow from start to finish. You can see the day’s schedule and find out more at the Photoshop Seminars website.
Note: I’ll be teaching a few more dates for this tour during the year. Right now this is the only one I have nailed down, but as soon as I find out more dates I’ll be sure to let ya know.

• March 24-27 – Photoshop World Boston. I’ll be teaching a brand new pre-conference session called Real World HDR. It’s hands on so we’ll get to go out and shoot and then come back to the classroom and process the HDR images from start to finish. You’ll have me on hand (as well as the Photoshop Lad Corey Barker and RC Concepcion) to help out with any questions you have. I’ll also be teaching an Illustrator class, a Photoshop Restoration class, and two Lightroom classes. Make sure you sign up before the early bird special ends to save $100.

• April 15-19 – Arches/Canyonlands Workshop with the Great American Photo Workshops. These GAPW workshops are a mix of classroom time and shooting. Be prepared to spend a lot of time doing both over the course of the weekend. I can tell you all about it, but one of the blog readers who went to my Great Smokies workshop last year left a really nice comment. Here it is.

• June 10-14 – I’ll be heading to the Palouse area with the Great American Photo Workshops. The Palouse has been top on my list for years, so I’m really excited to finally get there this year. Here’s some photos from there compliments of the Luminous Landscape.

• September 2009 – Photoshop World Las Vegas. I’ll announce the exact dates as soon as I get them.

• October 25-31 – I’ll be teaching on the Cruising Through Life Picture Perfect Caribbean Cruise (that’s a mouthful huh). I taught on their Hawaiian cruise last year and I had an awesome time. It’s one thing to stand up and teach for a while and spend a few hours with the group I’m working with. But spending a week with everyone takes it to a whole new level. I still keep in touch with a few people from last summer’s cruise and have made some lasting friendships. You’ll learn a ton but you’ll also come back with some great memories. Oh yeah, the deposit to hold your space in the class (and for the cruise itself) is only $100 right now which ain’t bad.

That’s it for now folks. I’ll update here as soon as I find out more details. Honestly though, this is a pretty full plate for me this year and I’m happy with it as is. I hope to get to see you at one of these seminars/workshops

Presets – Single Photo Flush Left/Right preset

Time for another print preset. I was creating a photo book from Shutterfly.com the other day and came across this really neat idea for a preset. See, Shutterfly’s website allows you to customize the layout of each page in the photo book. Two of the choices placed the photo flush against the left or right side of the page. I saw it and immediately thought “Hmmmm, I wonder I can do that in Lightroom?”. After a few minutes of adjusting the layout settings I realized you could not only recreate the position of the photo but you could also recreate the caption area they had as well with the Identity plate. So give ‘em a try and let me know what you think.

Click here to see a sample of the preset.
Click here to download Matt’s Single Photo Flush Left/Right presets
Click here to see a video on how to install presets REMEMBER: YOU NEED TO BE IN THE PRINT MODULE, NOT THE DEVELOP MODULE FOR THESE PRESETS.