Your Questions for Adobe?

Hey folks. I’m at the airport waiting for a flight to Minneapolis to meet with the Lightroom developer team (and product manager Tom Hogarty). I’m meeting Scott up there, and part of our trip is to carry the message from you on what you want to see in Lightroom (we’ve gotten lots of feedback from people in the last few months). I’m really looking forward to it because, while I’ve met parts of the team here and there, I’ve never been able to sit down with all of them and really spend some time talking about the program that we all really dig. So, here’s my question. What kind of questions do you have for Adobe? Are they feature requests? Then post ‘em here as a comment. If you just have a question then post it and I’ll do my best to see if I can help out. Thanks and have a great day.

Presets – The Ultimate Fighter Lightroom Preset

Last week’s “Twilight Inspired” presets had me admitting that I like vampire shows. This week you’re getting a look into another favorite of mine – The UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship). There’s even a show I watch called the Ultimate Fighter. Well, a while back I had been watching a UFC match and realized they apply a special effect to all of their photos and videos. So I had to set out to recreate it and came up with some great Lightroom presets as a result.

There’s 3 versions and while they seem to work best on dark dramatic photos, they work on brighter photos as well. It’s just got to be a photo that you want to add a dramatic gritty effect to (probably not a good family portrait effect). It also works great on other types of photos too (check out the example below).

As always, your comments are welcome. Download ‘em and let me know what you think.

• Here’s a few examples (click to see it larger).

• Click here to download the presets.

To install:
1) Unzip the preset zip file on to your desktop
2) Go to the Develop module. NOTE: YOU MUST BE IN 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

Lightroom Q&A

Figured today was a good day to catch up on some Q&A’s from recent posts. Enjoy!

Q. How can I save my print templates to a JPEG like you did in your multi-photo print preset?
A. In the Print module, scroll down on the right hand side panels to the last one (the Print Job panel). The first setting is called “Print To”. Just turn it to the JPEG option and you’ll save your layout as a JPEG instead of sending it to the printer.

Q. I really like the look of that multi-photo grid preset you released the other week. But how do I get my photos in to it?
A. Just drag photos from the filmstrip into a grid square. Once they’re there, you can reposition how the photo looks in that square by holding down the Command (PC: Ctrl) key and clicking on the photo to drag it around.

Q. A while ago you talked about Adobe’s Lightroom certification? Is there an exam for Lightroom 3?
A. Nope. No updated exam for LR3 yet. I haven’t heard of if or when this will happen but typically it seems to come out within 6 months of the release of a new version.

Q. I want to create a web gallery from which my client can select and order, but I need the files to be numbered from 1 to whatever. At the moment I’m exporting the collection as DNG file, renumbering in the process. I then import these into my catalog and create the web gallery. Is there any way to avoid the export/import aspect of this workflow?
A. You can rename your photos without exporting. Just go to the Library module. Then under the Library menu choose Rename Photos.

Q. If I store my photos on an external drive, does the speed of my external drive affect Lightroom’s performance?
A. Most definitely! There’s still lots of information being read back and forth between those photos and the speed will affect how fast Lightroom feels. According to some folks at Adobe that I’ve talked to about this, a 5400 RPM drive would fairly slow. A 7200 is better. USB is going to be mostly bad and Firewire will of course be better.

Q. So Matt, knowing what you just said about storing your photos on an external drive, what do you do?
A. If you hadn’t guess, I asked myself this question figuring some one would ask it soon enough Anyway, I store all of my photos on an external 5400 RPM Firewire drive. It does feel sluggish sometimes and I’m looking at moving up to something faster.

Q. I use the Painter tool (the spray can looking thing) to paint on keywords in the Library module. It seems Adobe removed the “erase” option for this tool. I used to click to paint and then click again to erase. Is there a fix?
A. Sure is. They didn’t remove the Erase option, I think they just found that people were accidentally erasing a lot because it was too similar to adding keywords. So the change in Lightroom 3 is that you hold down the Option key (PC: Alt key) and click the photo to erase any keywords.

Thanks for all the questions. I hope this helped a little. Have a great weekend!

News – Worth-a-click

Here’s a few news items for the day:

• There’s been lot’s of talk about printing and calibration lately. Well, X-Rite is hosting a free webinar on Sept. 28 called Beyond Monitor Calibration – Get Prints That Match Your Display! Definitely looks like it’s worth checking out.

• Check out PADDY for Lightroom 3. Don’t let the name throw you off. It’s a Windows only plug-in for Lightroom that let’s you assign any adjustment setting – including moving the sliders and applying a preset – to keys, your number keypad or external keypads. Looks cool!

• A good buddy of mine, Howard Ignatius, is speaking at an event called Morro Photo Expo along with others like George Lepp. If you’re in the area here’s the link to find out more.

Presets – The Twilight Preset

It’s official. I’ve jumped on the vampire bandwagon too. It’s impossible not to with all of the movies and TV shows out there. It doesn’t help that my wife is totally addicted to True Blood on HBO. Anyway, I’ve got a new group of presets this week that were inspired by the Twilight saga movie posters. There’s actually a few movie posters with a lot of different looks, but I’ve settled on the ones here. They do a few things with color saturation, white balance, split toning and some vignetting of course. The first two give a nice effect that can be used on various portrait photos (probably best for dramatic portraits though). The last one really takes a lot of the color out of skin tones so be careful with it but hey, you never know when you want that vampire look.

As always, your comments are welcome. Download ‘em and let me know what you think.

Here’s an example of the medium version. (click to see it larger).

• Click here to download the preset.

To install:
1) Unzip the preset zip file on to your desktop
2) Go to the Develop module. NOTE: YOU MUST BE IN 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

Video – The Trick to Borderless Printing in Lightroom

Laying out your print is probably one of the first things you should do when you get to the Print Module in Lightroom. Part of this means picking the printer and paper size that you’re going to print on. Once you do that, the layout settings become more useful and you’ll be able to fine tune the layout. Since I see a lot of questions around this topic, I thought I’d take a few minutes to talk about borderless printing and some general print layout tips.

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

Presets – Dramatic Skies

This week I’ve got some sky-enhancing presets for you. I created some similar presets a couple of years ago, but I’ve replaced them with the ones you’ll see below. There’s 3 versions (Lite, Medium, and Strong) and they do a few things. First, they add some extra punch to the blues in the sky. It’s actually more of a deepening effect, rather than just saturating the blues. They also increase the contrast of the clouds so they stand out more. They definitely work in different ways on different photos, so don’t be surprised if you see changes for a sunrise/sunset photo vs. a photo taken in mid afternoon.

As always, your comments are welcome. Download ‘em and let me know what you think.

Here’s an example of the medium version. (click to see it larger).

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 preset.

News – Metal Prints Photoshop World Offer

Just wanted to let you know that Photoshop World attendees, get 30% off MetalPrints through September 30th. Just go to BayPhoto.com. Then enter Promo Code PSMETAL30 in the Order Review area of Bay ROES. The code is good through 9/30/10.

News – Sports Photography Webinar from Manfrotto

Hey folks. Just found out that a Sports Photography webinar from Manfrotto is happening this afternoon from 2pm-3pm EDT. Here’s the link.

Video – The Trick to Getting Brighter Prints

The other week I posted some presets and a tip on how to get brighter prints. Basically, the idea was that our LCD screens (or at least mine) seem to cause my photos to look brighter on screen than they do when I print them. It’s not something that soft proofing would fix so I typically have some presets to adjust the Brightness slider. Another thing I do is create a test print. Well, this video will show you a way to create less test prints and also help identify what the sweet spot is for your prints when it comes to brightness.

Also, I mentioned a Facebook and Twitter link at the beginning of the video. Here they are:

Matt’s Facebook (just click “Like”)

Matt’s Twitter

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