Tip – Export for Email

Here’s a cool tip I got from blog reader Jason earlier this week. I had posted about the various options for saving JPEGs from Lightroom. I mentioned email settings that I use in the Export dialog but if you want to export for email all you really have to do is right-click on the image (or images if you’ve selected more than one) adn choose Export > For Email. They’ll be ready to attach to an email and you’ve saved yourself a trip to the File menu and Export dialog box. Thanks Jason!
I hope you (all of you, not just Jason) have a great weekend!

Video – Organizing Photos By Date?

I run into a lot of photographers that organize their photos by date. Then they start using Lightroom and feel they have to do the same thing. I say abandon your date-loving folders and replace it with something much easier. Why? Lightroom automatically organizes your photos by date for you so you don’t really have to create all those folders to do the same thing. In this video, we’ll take a look at how Lightroom gives you access to all the date-related folders you need and how another method of organizing your photos may help out.

Click here to download the video to your computer. [Right-click (Mac: Command-click) and choose the "Save As" option]

A BIG Lightroom Seminar Thanks!

There’s an actual Lightroom-learning-related post below this one, but I want to give a big THANK YOU to everyone who attended my Lightroom seminars last week (in Chicago on Monday and New York City on Wednesday). I had two of the best crowds that a live instructor, standing in front of hundreds of people, could possibly hope for. On Monday we had over 400 people in Chicago and on Wednesday we had nearly 700 in New York. Both seminars went over great and I seriously didn’t have one person that stood out to me as not happy with the day. Everyone really seemed to enjoy it. In particular I’d like to thank:

• The two guys sitting in front of me in Chicago who kept giggling all day. I thought my zipper was down or something

• The woman sitting in front of me who kept asking questions (even though I kept saying I can’t answer them during class and that I’d get to them at the break). I gotta hand it to her persistence

• The kind kind kind kind gracious woman who lent me a D300 battery. Yes, I charged my battery (for the live shoots) in the morning. But what I didn’t know is that if you leave your camera tethered to the computer it keeps a constant connection going and drains your battery quickly. I thought it would automatically power off, but nope… I was wrong. So I got to the last shoot of the day with a dead battery and she had one up there for me in about 10 seconds. Thank you! (Lesson learned: Shut camera off after shoot)

• The guy up front in New York who actually started to get up for me when I said I needed a model to shoot who didn’t mind being nude

• All of you who were honest enough and raised your hands, when I asked if you really do indeed show your family and friends all 700+ photos from your vacations (and not just the select few keepers).

• And…Everyone who came up just to say hi, shake hands and tell me that they dig my training (hey, who wouldn’t like that right?!)

Thanks again. I’ll update you with any seminars or workshops coming your way as soon as I get some dates. For now, Photoshop World is my next stop at the end of September. We’ve got an entire track dedicated to Lightroom for all 3 days so make sure you check out the website. See ya!

The Truth About Saving JPEGs in Lightroom

As I’m out on the road teaching I always pick up on areas in Lightroom that people are having a hard time with. One area I realized was saving JPEGs. Why, when, how, and what settings to used are some common questions.

Why?
We need to be able to save a JPEG from Lightroom so we can email, print, post to the web or otherwise send our photo to people. We don’t want to send/post raw files so JPEG is the best format since you can compress it into much smaller files sizes (then say TIFF for example) and still get good quality results.

When?
You’ll save as a JPEG when you get to the point where you’re done editing a photo. That means you’ll probably have gone through the Develop module and done a few things to the photo. Maybe you even jumped into Photoshop and back in which case you’d save a JPEG from your PSD or TIFF file and not the raw file. Basically, its when you’re done editing.

How?
This is a little weird. There is not File > Save as JPEG feature in Lightroom. The “How” question would come up a lot less if there was. Instead, its called Export. Its under the File menu so you go to File > Export and you get a whole new dialog that lets you save your photo out into a different format – one of those being JPEG.

Now, this dialog is actually pretty big and there’s a lot of things you can do in it. But the truth is, most of them time you just want a JPEG version of your photo. In which case there’s a few simple settings to follow. First, why do you want a JPEG?

For Email: If you want to save a JPEG for emailing someone, you can see the screen capture below of the settings (click for larger view) I use. Basically, I resize so the width will not exceed 800 pixels and the resolution is set to 72 ppi. I’ll also knock down the Quality setting since I usually attach more than one photo and I don’t want to choke some one’s incoming mail. Notice we also save in the sRGB format for email and the web.

For a web page: For the web, things are pretty much the same. Of course the size can vary but 800 is a good rule to go by for the larger version of a photo on a web page. You want it large enough to appreciate, but not large enough to really print out at a decent quality.

To Print to an inkjet printer: If you’re saving this as a JPEG to give to somebody to print to an inkjet printer then I go all out. I’m not worried about compression here. In fact, I want as little compression as possible since I want the best print. That’s why there’s no resizing and Quality is set to 100. Also, notice that the Color Space is set to Adobe RGB. That’s generally known as the best format to save for inkjet printers. Some will argue [and I'm sure they will in the comments section ], that you should use ProPhoto RGB but that’s still debatable and if you know that much about it then you’re probably not reading this so use it if you’re comfortable.

To Print via a lab: Pretty much the same as the inkjet settings above. The only difference is that my lab (MPIX.com) prefers you send in the sRGB color space. Your best bet is to call or email your lab and ask them what they prefer. Again, since we’re printing and want the highest quality here I don’t use compression.

Well folks, I hope that helps to clear up some things around saving JPEGs from Lightroom. As a Lightroom user, do I wish it were actually called “File > Save for Web and Email or Save as JPEG”? Yep. As an instructor, I guess it’s job security because the whole Export thing seems a little counter-intuitive. But luckily, once you do it a couple of times it tends to stick pretty easily. Thanks for reading!

Worth-a-click

Here’s a few links worth checking out while you’re web surfing today:

• Got Lightroom questions? Scott Kelby did a monster Q&A the other day on Lightroom based on some ideas he got from a recent workshop. There are a ton of questions answered in the comments so make sure you stop by and take a look through and I think you’ll be amazed at what you learn.

• Scott Bourne interviewed me on Photofocus Episode 8. I’ve got to say that Scott is an absolute class act in this business and the quality of the show proves that. We had a good time talking and you can listen to the interview right from their website. Its around the 47 minute mark in the show, but Rick Sammon is on before me and he’s well worth listening to as well.

• Just one more day to sign up for Bogen’s free Extreme Sports webinar with Michael Clark. Its on July 17 (Friday). Its free too! Here’s the link.

• Speaking of webinars, NIK Software is putting on a whole slew of them this summer. They’ve got everything from Landscape to portrait to wildlife, wedding etc… covered. Here’s the link to register.

• One of the blog followers, MoreThanWords from www.morethanwords.be/blog did a cool video tutorial called “Look ma, only Lightroom”. Its about creating a great looking print template with just Lightroom. You can watch it here.

• Any of you participating in Scott Kelby’s worldwide Photowalk may enjoy the mini-Lightroom course I’ve put together for working on your photos from the photowalk. You can watch them right here.

• Keeping with the spirit of video goodness, Nikon has a site that showcases video done with the D90 and D5000.

Have a great day!

Presets – Morning Glow

Hey there! I’ve got another summery preset for you today. First, don’t forget that I’ll be teaching a full-day Lightroom seminar in Chicago on July 20th and New York City on July 22nd. You can sign up over at KelbyTrainingLive.com. I’d love to see ya there. OK, now on to the preset. I was experimenting with the Summer Haze preset I created a while back and came up with another one that looks similar but different enough to create a whole new preset. I’ve named it Morning Glow. Its got a very warm morning-ish glow feel to it and even has a soft-ish look as well (sorry for all the “ish” words).

What I found really cool-ish about it (sorry, that’s the last “ish” I promise) is that it looks it works great on different kinds of photos. I created it for portraits, but was pleasantly surprised when I tried it on a few landscapes too. Anyway, the download is below so have at it and let me know what you think. Thanks for stopping by.

• Click here to see a sample of the preset.
• Click here to download Matt’s Summer Haze Preset
• To Install the Presets just unzip them to your desktop. Then right click in your preset panel and choose Import and choose the file you unzipped. MAKE SURE YOU UNZIP THE PRESET ZIP FILE FIRST. DO NOT TRY TO IMPORT THE ZIP FILE AS THE PRESET.

Tip – Selecting Multiple Photos for Print

Happy Friday fellow Lightroomers. Here’s a cool tip that came directly from a question I was asked this week. Let’s say you’re in the Print module and have selected 3 photos to go into your print layout or to just print on separate pages in general. If you want to add more just go to the filmstrip and Cmd-click (PC: Ctrl-click) on any photo you want to add to the queue. To remove a photo just do the same thing and Cmd-click on any selected photo to deselect it. In fact, this little tip works in any module when you want to select multiple (but non-contiguous) photos.

Well that wraps up another week. Have a great weekend!

The Flickr Lightroom Preset Extractor is Back Up!

First, don’t forget to check out the next post. I’ve commented about some comments I got here on the site. Instead of burying them in the comment section, I created a post so everyone could read.

Next…Good news! The Flickr Lightroom preset extractor is back up. The original post and the following post I made about it caused nearly 150 comments here on the site. Mike Wiacek (who wrote the program) took it down to research any possible legal problems it could cause for him. But its back. Basically, if you see a Flickr photo you like, you can try out the Preset Extractor to create a Lightroom preset of the effect. The extractor looks at the metadata and tries to reverse engineer it into a preset. Of course it only works if people don’t strip the EXIF data from their photos before posting them and it only seems to work with the latest versions of Lightroom and Adobe Camera Raw. Here’s the link… again.

A Comment About Some Comments

Hey folks. I just wanted to say thank you for the time you’ve taken to participate in some discussions on the blog in the last couple of weeks. There’s been some pretty decent topics brought up and it reminds me of what I really like about this blog which is the level of participation from the community.

Also, a number of people ask whether or not I’m going to weigh in and I usually just stay out of it. However, I did want to at least leave you with my final thoughts on two topics of interest.

1) Is it wrong to use some one’s LR settings?
This one garnered over 100 comments. Well, as you already know, I don’t think its wrong at all. I saw a lot of good points on both sides but in the end, I don’t care what you do with my settings. Unless you took a photo at the same time, in the same place, with the same exposure settings, etc… my settings are useless to you. They just won’t look the same.

One more quick analogy. What if a guitar player got on stage and sets his Volume to 6, his Gain to 8 and Reverb to 7, etc… Then he proceeds to play a song and some person catches a glimpse of those settings. He wrote them down and posted them on the internet. If you took those same settings he used for his sound and played your own song, its silly to even think you committed a crime right? Now if you took his song (or in our case a photo) and played it as your own, then you got big problems. But taking his effects/settings means nothing.

Some folks pointed out that my drug company analogy didn’t sit well because the generic versions don’t come out until a patent runs out on the drug. Big deal. The key point is still the same. Whether you use my settings today or several years from now (when a possible patent runs out) is irrelevant. The key question and issue still remains – is it wrong to use that information? I say no.

2) The Retouching I did in the latest Before/After video.
A few folks commented on the retouching I did in the latest before after video (the window and the brown patch of grass). I’m posting my comments here and not creating a whole “Retouching Ethics” post because I think enough of those have been written about before. I’ll leave you with my thoughts though. The retouching I did was to make the photo look like the way it did when I was there. Honestly, when I was there I was caught up in the blue sky, the nice breeze, great weather and everything else about the scene. I never even noticed the brown spot in the grass. Everything looked green to me. But when that photo is printed as a 20×30 on my wall you’d better bet I’m going to see that brown patch. And I want everyone who looks at that photo to see the beautiful red barn, the beautiful blue sky, and the beautiful green grass all uninterrupted. I don’t want them looking at the dead brown patch of dirt and grass on the ground and the very top portion of the fence that appears to be cut off (I couldn’t compose the photo any different because of what was in front of the barn). I know Photoshop and by golly I’m gonna use it to make MY photo that hangs on MY wall, look better then the photo of the person that chose not to use Photoshop. I’ll know I Photoshopped it and I’m OK with that. I’ve created the photo that I “saw” when I was there. It was my vision. The people that visit my house and see my artwork won’t know what I did. But they will know my stuff looks better then the guy next door that doesn’t use Photoshop (sorry I’m competitive to a fault I think).

Oh… and when they ask if I used Photoshop on the photo you know what I’ll say? Heck yeah I did! I’m not ashamed of it one bit.

Well that hopefully puts those two topics to rest. Thanks again for all of your participation.

Lightroom Catalog and Preset Backup Plug-in

For a while now, I’ve had people ask if your presets were backed up with the Lightroom backup functionality. Well they’re not. But The Photo Geek has released a Lightroom catalog and preset backup plug-in that backs up your catalog and presets and templates and all that good stuff. After giving it a try, I’d consider it more of a power-user tool as its just a bit intimidating with all of the directories its asking for. Plus, to restore from its backup, you’d have to know where everything goes because you’ll manually have to restore everything. But its still cool and better then anything else currently available for backing up Lightroom. Check it out here.