It's Photoshop World (and Lightroom conference) Week!

Hi everyone! This week is Photoshop World and I’m tying up all the loose ends that need tied. Don’t forget that if you’re a Lightroom user we’ve got a whole track dedicated to LR during Photoshop World. Each year we’re asked for more Lightroom training so we made sure there’s a Lightroom class being taught at all times. What’s really cool about this conference though, is that we took a lot of time to put together different classes on Lightroom. While there are classes on using the Develop module and printing of course, there’s also stuff like Organizing Strategies, Creative Developing and Scott Kelby’s Creating Print Layouts. Classes you really won’t find elsewhere.

Just a quick FYI to all that will be attending:

Tuesday:
• Arrive in Vegas. Look for me at the craps table in Mandalay

Wednesday:
• Teaching the HDR Pre-con at 1pm
• NAPP Forum Party in the late evening at House of Blues

Thursday:
• Lightroom Basic Training at 10:45am
• Teaching at the Bogen Studio booth at 1:15
• Teaching Layers at the Photoshop World bookstore at 2pm
• Guest appearance on Deke’s “Martini Hour” show
• Photoshop World Party!

Friday
• Photoshop Restoration Class at 1pm
• Mpix.com booth signing photos at 3pm
• Midnight Madness at 10pm
• In and Out Burger at Midnight

Hope to see you there and if you do attend, make sure you come up and say hi

Worth-a-click

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

• First, scroll down to the next blog post to read a totally un-Lightroom-related (but interesting) story.

• Not necessarily Lightroom related but it’s still pretty big news. Adobe has released a new version of Photoshop Elements (version 8). And its for the Mac and PC. Terry White’s blog has a great video on the new features so stop by and check it out. Oh yeah. Scott Kelby and I have co-written the new Photoshop Elements 8 for Digital Photographers book. It’ll be heading to press next week so stay tuned for some major book promoting from me

• Lightroom has its own iPhone app! LRKeys is trivia like iPhone and iPod Touch application for digital photographers who use Lightroom.

• Congrats to our beloved Lightroom application. The latest InfoTrends survey shows that Lightroom continues to grow (over Aperture) as the software of choice for photographers surveyed. Check out the stats on John Nack’s blog.

• Timothy Armes has recently released another killer web gallery for Lightroom called Elegance. Its a gallery designed for photographers who want to show off a small number of images but in a very polished way. I think this one may be my favorite one yet.

• I’ll be at Photoshop World next week teaching Lightroom and a bunch of other stuff. Even if you’re not coming to the show you can grab a free Expo pass from the site. One of my favorite things about Photoshop World is the accessibility to the instructors. We all hang out on the Expo floor during the day when we’re not teaching so its a great chance to get some questions answered. If you live in the Vegas area, make sure you print yourself a pass and stop by.

Have a great day!

Non-Lightroom-Related Consumer Alert

I know this one isn’t Lightroom related but its an interesting story I felt like I should share since there may be others affected by it. About 18 months ago I bought an Apple Time Capsule. Well, two days ago I woke up and it was turned off. No life whatsoever. I did my hi-tech repairs on it (switched the power cable from one outlet to another) and still nothing.

So I did some research that night and found an article released about 2 weeks ago talking about time capsules going belly-up after 18 months. The article actually called out the power supply as being the culprit. After a little poking around I found some one who mentioned that Time Capsules are covered under the Applecare warranty for your computer. See, I have Applecare on my Mac Book Pro, but not on the Time Capsule so I thought this could be good news for me.

So I called Apple. The woman on the phone took my Applecare info (for my laptop) and indeed said that it should be covered, but to bring it into a store. Now, you should know something about me. I am SOOOO not an Apple geek. I avoid the Apple store at all costs. I don’t watch the Apple keynotes and honestly could care less about the latest Apple gossip. I like their products though. So I took my Time Capsule into the store last night totally not knowing I was supposed to make an appointment (who makes an appointment to go to a retail electronics store right?). I got there to find they had no appointments left for the night. But I had driven almost 30 minutes to get there so she said they’d fit me in. After waiting an hour (I got some blog posting and forum surfing done while waiting so it went by pretty quick) I was able to see some one.

He took my info and I informed him that I had Applecare for my laptop so this should be covered. He said that was true only if they were both purchased on the same receipt. Well I started screaming and making a scene and… just kidding. I was very polite through the whole thing and he was extremely patient and helpful. I did ask him to pull out the Applecare agreement. We found the area in question and sure enough it mentions nothing about the “same receipt”. He went back to his manager (who said the “same receipt thing” too by the way) and showed him and he couldn’t believe it either.

In the end, a quick call to Apple got my Time Capsule added to my laptop’s Applecare warranty. They didn’t have any in stock so I’ll probably have to wait a day or two to get a new one. And no, they didn’t just give me a new power supply. In fact, they never found an extra power supply to try out on my Time Capsule so I don’t really even know if that was the culprit or not.

Moral of the story… If you’re an Apple user check your Applecare agreement. You’d be surprised about what you’ll find in there amongst the babbling lawyer talk. Heck, if you get any kind of warranty agreement, give it a read. I know I will from now on.

First Thoughts on Eye-Fi Wireless SD Cards

Hey folks. I created a quick 4 minute video for you on my first thoughts on the Eye-Fi wireless SD cards. I’ve had some people ask me how it would work when it comes to shooting tethered in Lightroom so I thought I’d give a quick demo of it. In a nutshell, the “pros” are that I think the technology is way cool. This can seriously change things for a lot of photographers out there who want to show off their photos right away or in any situation where being first is key. Plus, for families its just cool and fun. “Cons” – there’s no CF card. Its only SD. It works fine in my Nikon D5000, which I’ve been using a lot, and all of my point-and-shoots, but won’t work for my D300. Anyway, hope you enjoy.

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

Updating Your Presets

Here’s a cool little tip if you work with presets a lot and you find out you want to change one of them. Let’s say you start your editing in the Develop module and apply a preset to an image. You like it. Great! But then you realize you wanted to tweak one of the settings and you like the new changes even more. If you decided you actually don’t just want to keep the changes, but also change your preset’s settings all together, you can update your preset by right-clicking on the old preset and choosing Update with Current Settings from the contextual menu. Lightroom will use the current Develop module settings for the updated preset.

Thanks for stopping by everybody. See you next week.

Wes From Wacom Talks Lightroom

Try saying that 5 times fast. “Wes from Wacom talks Lightroom… Wes from Wacom talks..”
OK so its really not that hard after all. Anyway, your job for today is to make sure you’ve read Wes Maggio’s (Application Specialist for Wacom Technology) guest blog appearance on Scott Kelby’s blog. Wes specifically talks about the pen/tablet combo and how it plays a role in today’s workflow with Photoshop and Lightroom. See, it used to be that whatever we did, we did in Photoshop. And if you’re in Photoshop its kind of a no-brainer to use a tablet. All of your major tools are pressure sensitive. But with Lightroom things change a little. Sliders have gotten so powerful at letting us target specific parts of our photo that we do a little more slider sliding then we do painting. Does that mean tablets don’t help out? Well Wes has some good insights but personally, I don’t think so.

True story. And I’m not writing this for Wacom, I’m writing it because I know the inevitable questions will come after reading this entry, on whether or not I use a tablet. So here goes: When I first started using Photoshop 8 months ago (kidding!). But when I first started, I swore by my tablet. But I gradually started getting away from it about 3-4 years ago. Partly because I did most of my work on a laptop while moving around or hanging out on the couch trying to be close to where the action was going on with my family. I got to the point where I never used my tablet anymore. But the Intuos 4 came out earlier this year so I decided to try it out. I’m proud to say I am again hooked. And I’m not just saying this because Wes (and Wacom) are friends of mine. Honestly, I’m hooked. So much so that I grabbed the small version of the Intuos 4 for traveling because my travels were really starting to beat up my medium sized tablet. And now I’m also facing a crisis at home because I don’t have a medium size tablet there and I really don’t want to get a 3rd one. So why am I hooked again? I think its a combination of a few things. First off, the Intuos 4’s just feel better. I can’t explain it but there’s a definite difference between the way that they feel from earlier tablets. That alone doesn’t do it though. The shortcut buttons on the left are cool and I use the wheel-shaped button a lot (not so much on the other ones). Its great for scrolling web pages, zooming in in Photoshop and changing brush size in Lightroom (yes I said Lightroom – it works there too!). Again though, I don’t think that sells it. But I think the main reason I’ve fallen in rekindled my relationship with my tablet is that it just makes sense. Regardless of cool new features and all that, using a tablet for what we do as photographers just makes sense. Even if I’m not using a pressure sensitive tool, being able to paint with the accuracy of a pen instead of the mouse works better for me.

Anyway, make sure you check out Wes’s post. Its quick and to the point. And very applicable to us as Lightroom users. In fact, its got me curious to see what most Lightroom users out there are doing so try leaving a comment to let us know. Do you use a tablet? Do you own one but don’t use it? Use it sometimes? All the time? Thanks!

Lightroom 2.5 (Camera Raw 5.5) Available

There’s a new preset post below this one but I wanted to give you a quick update. Lightroom 2.5 update is out (and Camera Raw 5.5). Its mainly a camera update (D3000 and D300s) but there’s some other very minor stuff as well. Check out Lightroom Product Manager Tom Hogarty’s blog for more details and visit the link below to download the updates.

Click here to go to Adobe’s Update page.

Presets – Standard Print Sizes

On the heels of a few related printing questions lately, I realized its actually not quite as intuitive to set up a print for say a standard 8×10 or even 5×7. I’m not talking about photos in a picture package, but just one 8×10 photo per page. So I went ahead and created a few presets for some of them. Its not all of them but its a start and I’ll be updating them over the coming weeks. Right now I’ve included print presets for an 8×10, 5×7, and 4×6.

To install:
1) Unzip the preset zip file on to your desktop
2) Go to the PRINT module. NOTE: YOU MUST BE THE PRINT MODULE
3) Go to the Templates panel on the left. Right click anywhere in it and choose Import.
4) Select the .lrtemplate files you unzipped in Step 1 and click Import NOTE: DO NOT IMPORT THE ZIP FILE

Click here to download the presets

TIP – Zooming to a Specific Point

Hey there! Here’s a neat one that I think a lot of people miss because its kinda buried in the preferences dialog. When you click to zoom in on a photo, Lightroom zooms in close to the area that you clicked but just in that general area. If you wanted the area you clicked on to appear entered on the screen, the try this preference change. Press Cmd-, (that’s a comma – hold Ctrl if you’re on a PC) to open the preferences dialog. Then click on the Interface tab, and at the bottom, turn on the checkbox for Zoom Clicked Point to Center (or centre depending on where you’re from)

Thanks for stopping by. See you next week.

Video – Reordering Photos in Slides (and web and print)

You can bet that just about any time I’m out teaching Lightroom I get this question. And every time I get it I swear that I make a mental note to myself to make sure I cover it in a tip. And every time I get back to the office guess what? I forget But I finally remembered (after 2 years). The question deals with rearranging your photos and the order that they’ll appear in a Slideshow (or even in the Web and Print modules too). We all want control over which photos come first and I’ll show you how to get it in this video. Thanks!

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