Presets – How to Steal a Preset and Make it Your Own

First off, I hope you had a Merry Christmas weekend. I had a great time with my family and, of course, my kids got way too much stuff. Anyone else have in-laws that, even though you try to moderate how much you buy your kids (sorry, that Santa brings your kids), they still go out and buy crazy amounts of gifts for them? Its all good though and they had a blast which is what counts.

Anyway, its a vacation week for me but I had an idea for a quick article so I wanted to write about it. Its about stealing. Yep, I said it. Stealing! A while back there was a bit of controversy about a little program that let people see what Lightroom settings were applied to your photo on Flickr. If you followed back then, you may remember that my position on it is that its not stealing. So how can you actually steal a Lightroom preset? Its really not hard and I encourage you to try it. Lets look at mine for example (skip to Step 4 for the real education in this whole thing):

1) First install the preset just as you normally would. We’ll take the Develop module as an example. Let’s say you’ve installed my Fairytale Glow preset from this past November.

2) Now what happens when most people install some one elses preset is that they apply it and it looks cool, but not quite what they imagined. Maybe its too bright. And maybe the vignetting is too strong.

3) Then they apply it to another photo and ya know what? Its too bright again and they’re not crazy about the vignetting.

4) That’s your cue that its time for your own preset. All you have to do is change the Exposure setting and/or change the Vignetting setting to something that seems to work better for you.

5) Then right-click on the preset name in the Presets panel and choose Update with Current Settings. First, give it a cool name – you’re stealing remember, so you don’t want the same name as I use. If you haven’t made any other changes to the preset then its fine to just check everything and click OK. If you have made changes then just turn on those checkboxes and click OK.

That’s it. You’re now a thief You’ve taken something that wasn’t yours and made it your own. I’m joking of course. You didn’t steal crap did you? You’ve merely taken a recipe that I use and modified it to fit your own needs. Happy Thievery!

Q&A – Plug-in Follow Up

The other week I wrote about my all time favorite plug-in of 2009 and asked for your opinions as well. As I read through the comments I saw a lot of questions pop up so I figured I’d cover them today. Here goes:

Q. Lightroom has plug-ins? Did I miss this because I’m still on version 1?
A. Yup! And I gotta tell you. There is not an upgrade of software that I know of in our field that is a no-brainer more than Lightroom 2 over 1. So if you’re still holding out, get it!

Q. Matt, will you do a plug-in workflow video?
A. That’s actually a pretty good idea. Its not going to be revolutionary though. My plug-in workflow is simple. I process the photo in Lightroom, then I jump to Photoshop and do whatever edits I need to there, then I run whatever plug-in on the image, and finally save and jump back to Lightroom. I fit it in when I fit my Photoshop stuff in.

While I have a general order in which I do things (retouching first, and usually sharpening last), I’m not a real stickler for the order in which I do things. If I use, say Nik’s sharpening plug-in, and then decide I want to retouch more or convert to a black and white after, I’m cool with that. I’ve personally never seen it affect my photo negatively. All that said, it would be cool to see it all demonstrated so look for a video on the topic some time soon.

Q. I noticed most plug-ins have Lightroom versions and Photoshop versions. Which one do you use?A. I rarely (almost never) use the Lightroom version of a plug-in. Since all of my photos hit Photoshop at some point I find it easier to just do the plug-in stuff there.

Q. All plug-ins seem to have to work on an exported (JPG, PSD, or TIFF) version of the original raw file. Doesn’t that mean you lose the whole non-destructive-ness aspect of working in Lightroom?
A. Yep! And to the whole non-destructive thing I say Bah Humbug!
Actually, I’m not really a non-destructive purist so it doesn’t bother me to work on an exported copy. Check out a guest blog post I wrote a while back if you want to see my take on the whole non-destructive thing.

I hoped these Q&A’s helped clear a few things up. Feel free to drop a comment if you have any more questions and I’ll try to cover them in the upcoming video. Thanks!

Adobe Updates Lightroom 2.6 and ACR 5.6

Just a quick FYI. Adobe has released Lightroom 2.6 and Adobe Camera Raw 5.6 today. They’re basically updates for new camera so if you fall into that category (Nikon D3s, Canon 7D, etc…) then you’ll want to check it out. Also, a quick note for all the Lightroom 3 beta users out there. This update does not update the Lightroom 3 beta. Its only for Lightroom 2. You can find out more and download the update over at Adobe’s website.

Tip: Black and Whites…Difference Between RAW and JPEG

I know that most of us using Lightroom probably shoot raw most of the time. But I’m constantly importing photos from my point-and-shoot as well and those aren’t i the raw format. Plus, I’ll typically work with photos my family takes and they’re DEFINITELY not in the raw format. So when it comes to black and whites this tip is kinda important. See, if you import a RAW photo into Lightroom, it automatically adds contrast to the photo as part of Lightroom’s RAW conversion process. (If you look in the Tone Curve panel you’ll see that Medium Contrast is selected in the pop-up menu.) However, if you import JPEG photos, there is no contrast applied by Lightroom (Tone Curve is set to Linear). Since, contrast is huge when it comes to Black and Whites then try choosing Medium Contrast from the Point Curve pop-up menu before doing anything else. Heck, even try the Strong Contrast option as it may work well too. The main idea here, though, is that there is no contrast being added by default (like there is with raw files) so you’ll have to do it yourself.

Presets – The Cutting Edge

Its preset time again. This week I’ve got an one with an edgy feel to it. You’ll see it works perfectly for photos like the sample below. Its a little desaturated in nature with some extra exposure and a few other things packed in there. One quick note about the preset that I found was that you’ll probably need to tweak the Exposure setting the most. Depending on the brightness (or lack thereof) of the photo, I found the Exposure setting to be something I had to change significantly for just about everything. I left it pretty bright though since that’s the whole point of the preset is a very over-exposed look so don’t change it too much – just enough so a person’s skin isn’t totally white. I hope you enjoy it!

To install:
1) Unzip the preset zip file on to your desktop
2) Go to the Develop module. NOTE: YOU MUST BE THE DEVELOP MODULE
3) Go to the Presets 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
• Click here to see a sample of the preset.

My Official Favorite Plug-in of 2009

I thought it’d be fun to find out what everyone’s favorite Lightroom plug-in is. Now, I’m going to kick it off by giving you a very specific one because saying I love Nik’s Color Efex Pro, isn’t very specific. Its got a ton filters in it. So I’ll take it one step further by saying my official favorite most-used plug-in of the last year is the Brilliance/Warmth filter from Nik’s Color Efex. I use it on everything. Seriously, I find the Brilliance part of the filter to work like Vibrance (but just, well, better in most cases) and I like the warming part of it as well. I use it on every single landscape and outdoor photo I have because it just takes the photo that one extra step. Here’s a sample:

OK, so that’s my favorite plug-in. What’s yours? Try to be as specific as possible though. If you love onOne’s PhotoFrame, which frame do you end up using the most, or something along those lines. Thanks!

Cool T-Shirts + Cool Charity

If you’re looking for a great gift (for yourself or any of your photographer buddies) then you should check out these off camera flash t-shirts. Scott Kelby came up with the idea earlier this year and showed it around the office and we all thought it was great. Its geeky but hey, we’re geeks so its fun too. What’s really nice about it is that 100% of the profits will go to a charity (The Springs of Hope Kenya Orphanage). So if you want an early gift to yourself or a friend check out the article on Scott’s blog.

Presets – Fairytale Glow

I want to give a big thanks to everyone who provided some names for today’s preset. I’m actually using a combination of two names that were suggested – Fairytale Glow. I’m really happy with the way that this one came out. I find it works best on portraits (hopefully the name implies that) and photos that tend to be brighter in nature (notice the sky is blown out in the before version already). But give it a try on anything. That’s the cool thing about presets – they’re easy to try and easy to undo if you don’t like it. Let me know what you think.

To install:
1) Unzip the preset zip file on to your desktop
2) Go to the Develop module. NOTE: YOU MUST BE THE DEVELOP MODULE
3) Go to the Presets 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
• Click here to see a sample of the preset.

Tip – Choosing a new "Before" image

Happy Friday everyone. Here’s a quick tip for you when viewing before/afters in Lightroom. If you press the \ [Backslash] key in the Develop module, it toggles you between the original image (with absolutely no changes), and the photo as it looks now with your edits. But what if you don’t want your Before photo to be the original? For example, let’s say you did some Basic panel edits on a photo, and then you used the Adjustment Brush to do some more specific changes. Maybe you’d like to see the Before photo showing the Basic panel edits after they were applied, but before you started brushing. To do that, go to the History panel (in the left side Panels area), and scroll down until you find the step right before you started using the Adjustment Brush. Then, Right-click on that history state and choose Copy History Step Settings to Before. That now becomes your new Before photo when you press the \ key. Pretty neat huh?

That’s it for this week. Hope you have a great weekend and don’t forget to put your Christmas tree up if you haven’t already

Video – Adjustment Brush Tip Extravaganza

I sat down to write a quick post about all the little shortcuts and tips that I know about the Adjustment Brush in Lightroom 2 (and 3 beta) and I realized there’s a truckload of them. So I created a video instead. I didn’t actually go through and count but there’s definitely more than 10 and I think most of them are pretty useful things to have around. Some are just shortcuts to sliders and effects you could do without the shortcut but some aren’t actually found anywhere in the interface so without the shortcut you’d never be able to get to the same result. As I mentioned in the video, I’m sure there’s something I’m missing so please drop a comment if you have anything to add. Thanks!

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