Workshop – Shooting Fall Color in the Northeast

Bill Fortney and I are co-teaching a “Fall Color” landscape workshop in the northeast from Oct 9-15. It was sold out but I just heard from him that about 3-4 spots opened up from some people that couldn’t make it. We’ll be shooting in Bar Harbor, Acadia National Park, New Hampshire and Vermont over the course of the week. Plus, we’ll have lots of classroom time to cover Lightroom, Photoshop and photo critiques. It’s a great chance to sharpen your photo skills and get some awesome photos while you’re at it. Just head over to Bill’s website (which is worth the visit anyway just to see his photos) and hit the Contact button to get a hold of him and snag a spot. Hope to see you there.

Lightroom News – Lightroom 3.5 (And Camera Raw 6.5) Are Out

Some quick news for the day. Adobe released Lightroom 3.5. There’s some new overall camera support as well as some new lens profiles too. There’s also some minor bug fixes. The best thing to do is check out Tom Hogarty’s blog for the full write-up. And of course, you can download the update over at Adobe’s website or simply just go to Help > Check for Updates after you launch Lightroom. Have a good one!

Lightroom Video – Colorizing Presets

First off, I wanted to let you know I’ve been posting over at Google+ as well. If you haven’t started an account yet, give it a try. It seems to be a great place for photographers. And Circle me while you’re at it A while back I created some presets that colorize specific colors in a photo. I wanted to do a quick video today, though, to show you why I create several versions of each one. As you’ll see in the video, presets in Lightroom offer a great added benefit of live previews without even applying the preset itself. It’s something we don’t get if we were to create presets, say, in Adobe Camera Raw or even any of the presets that come with Photoshop.
Also, here’s the link to the Colorizing presets that I mention in the video. Hope you enjoy!

Lightroom Print Preset – Multi-Photo Portrait Grid

I’ve been working with the print templates a lot lately. A while back I released a multi-photo travel template that turned out to be pretty popular. I went back to it yesterday to work with some portraits, and made a few tweaks since the last time I’ve used it. Mainly, I went in and modified some of the spacing options and added some templates with a wide space between them and some others with a narrower space. There’s also a version with a black background and one with a white background.

Some tech specs: It only works in Lightroom 3. It’s based on a 12×12 inch paper size. There’s room for 16 photos in it which makes a really nice way to show off a portrait or engagement session.

Here’s how it works: First download and import the new print template. Look at the directions below and make sure you DON’T install this in the Develop module like you do the rest of the presets. In the Print module, go to User Presets and select the new template. It’ll show a blank page and all you have to do is drag your photos from the filmstrip into it.

Here’s a few samples (Click for a larger version).

(White Thin Border Preset)

(White Thick Border Preset)

(Black Thick Border Preset)

Also, here’s some other samples from the last preset, so you can see what it looks like with different photos as well as with the Photo Border option (in the Print module) turned off and on.

(Photo Border option turned off)

(Photo Border option turned on, Page Background Color set to white)

(Photo Border option turned on, Page Background Color set to black)

Customize – you can also customize this one by changing the “Page Background Color” option (which is in the “Page” panel in the lower right side of the Print module), as well as the Photo Border settings.

These are a little different to install than your usual Develop presets:
1) Click here to download the preset.
2) Unzip the preset zip file on to your desktop
3) Go to the PRINT MODULE (NOTE: THESE ARE NOT DEVELOP PRESETS SO DON’T INSTALL THEM THERE!)
4) Go to the Template Browser on the left. Right click on the words User Presets and choose “Import“.
5) Select the .lrtemplate file you unzipped in Step 1 and click Import (NOTE: DO NOT IMPORT THE ZIP FILE)

Lightroom Q&A

I figured I’d catch up on some Q&A’s today as well as going back to some old ones that I was asked again recently.
Also, don’t forget, if you’re in Tampa I’m teaching a Lightroom/Photoshop Workflow class at Dave Cross Workshop’s next week. Sign up here.
And I’m taking the Lightroom 3 Seminar Tour to Phoenix and Indianapolis in late October. You can find out more about the full-day seminar and sign up here.

Q. I watched your eyeglass reflection video the other day. Would onOne Software’s Perfect Layers do the same thing.
A. Almost. Perfect Layers doesn’t have the Auto-Align feature that Photoshop has, but as I mentioned in the video, that feature doesn’t always do the trick and I end up resorting to changing the blend mode or opacity of the layer anyway.

Q. I use Photoshop Elements 9 in combination with Lightroom 3. Do you know why it’s not possible to open images as layers in Elements 9 (Photo > Edit In > Open as Layers in…)?
A. I really don’t know “why” you can’t do it with Elements other than you simply can’t. However, the workaround is to open one photo in Elements, then open the 2nd one and put them into the same document manually. It’ll take an extra 20 seconds but you can definitely get to the same place without that feature.

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 a while back. 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. If I store my photos on an external drive, does the speed of my external drive affect Lightroom’s performance?
A. Definitely! There’s still lots of information being read back and forth between those photos and the speed will affect how fast Lightroom feels. From what I’ve found, 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. OK, I really asked myself this question I store all of my photos (not my catalog) on a Lacie 1TB external 5400 RPM Firewire drive. It does feel sluggish sometimes but for the most part things move along pretty quickly.

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

Lightroom Photoshop Video – Before and After Eyeglass Reflections

Hey everyone! I’m back today with another Lightroom/Photoshop workflow video. These are always really popular and this one comes from a request a got a while ago. This time I cover removing eyeglass reflections. There’s really not much you can do to remove them in Lightroom since it doesn’t have layering or good enough cloning/healing. But with a couple of layers in Photoshop and a quick blend mode change you’ll be amazed at how easy it is. Also, as I mention in the video, I’ll be teaching some Lightroom seminars coming up this fall in Phoenix, Arlington, TX, Tampa, Indianapolis, and Philadelphia. Here’s the link in case you want to find out some more info. Thanks

Worth-a-click

Happy Friday! Here’s a few links worth stopping by today.

• I’m teaching a Lightroom/Photoshop Integration and Workflow class at Dave Cross Workshops in Tampa, on Sept. 29th. There’s limited seating. Click here to snag a spot soon.

• Here’s a quick semi-review/mention of my Photoshop Compositing book

• I was a guest on the Nikonians “Behind the Lens” podcast with Ray Valdovinos.

• onOne Software announced their Perfect Photo Suite 6 which basically takes all of their products and puts them into one interface/home. It also includes Perfect Layers 2 for Lightroom (with some new features) which basically gives layers functionality in (sorry with ) Lightroom.

• Rick Sammon recently interviewed me on the Digital Photography Experience podcast

• The Manfrotto School of Excellence is hosting a free webinar on September 20th called Datacolor presents: How to Get Great Prints!

Tips – 10 Things You Need to Know About Compositing

Graphics.com posted a list of “10 Things You Need to Know About Compositing”. It’s taken from a small section of my latest Photoshop Compositing Secrets book, where I wanted to include some tips and tricks for compositing that just didn’t seem to fit into a regular tutorial. Here’s the link if you want to check it out.

Lightroom Presets – Wedding Fantasy Style

We’re just back from Photoshop World and I’ve gotta say… it was a blast. Check out Scott Kelby’s blog today for a quick recap. Anyway, it’s preset time again. I’m going to update an oldie but goodie this time – the Wedding Fantasy preset. It was really popular a couple years ago and I’ve changed a few settings based on newer features in Lightroom since it was released. You’ll see this style a lot in wedding and engagement photos but it works for just about any outdoor photo with lots of colors. Its got that ultra saturated bright look with lots of vignetting to it. Hope you enjoy!

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.

Lightroom Tip – Resetting Your Presets

What better way to start off a Friday on a holiday weekend (here in the US at least) than with a Lightroom tip OK, so have you ever ruined the Lightroom default presets or deleted one of them all together or just done something plain bad to them? Now you can’t get it back to the way it used to be right? Well, if you go to Lightroom’s preferences dialog by clicking on the Lightroom menu on Mac (Edit menu on PC), you’ll see a Presets tab. Go ahead and click on it. You’ll get something that looks like this window here:

The bottom of the dialog shows a way to reset all of Lightroom’s presets. But not just all of them in one full swoop. The cool part is that you can reset any one area you want by clicking on the button. So if I just want to get back to my original Export presets then I just click that button instead of resetting all presets in Lightroom. Plus, as a side tip, it’s always a cool way to find your presets if you’re not sure where Lightroom keeps them. There’s a button right in the middle that will show you where they are.

That’s it for this week. Have a great weekend!