Video: Upgrading Lightroom 3 Presets to Lightroom 4

I’ve heard a lot of talk about what happens to presets that were created in Lightroom 3 (or LR2) and now used in Lightroom 4. I know a lot of people have presets that they absolutely loved in Lightroom 3 and they simply don’t seem to look the same in Lightroom 4. That’s because of the differences in sliders in the Basic panel. Sliders that were in Lightroom 3 simply don’t exist in Lightroom 4. So Lightroom does it’s best to “guess” what the should look like but you’ll see it’s not always right on the money. So today’s video goes over a few options you have if you had a preset in Lightroom 3 that you want to use in Lightroom 4. As always, leave your thoughts below. I’d be interested to hear if you’re having any “they don’t look the same” issues with your older presets and if you find yourself converting them over to Lightroom 4, or just tweaking the preset each time you apply it. Thanks!

Video: A Quick Make-Your-Photo-Better Setting in Lightroom

After the last few stops in my Lightroom 4 Live Tour I realize there was a lot of questions on the Camera Calibration settings that basically, let you make your photo better with just one click. So I thought I’d take a minute to, not only go over the settings but also show you a couple of ways that you can have Lightroom automatically apply those settings to your photos so that you’re not left doing it manually each time. Also, here’s the link to the Lightroom seminar page that I mentioned in the beginning of the video. If you’re in Washington DC, Lansing, Richmond or San Francisco, I’d love to see you out at one of the seminars next month. Thanks!

Join Me for a Free Photoshop CS6 for Photographers Webcast Today

First off, I wanted to say thanks to everyone who came out to my Lightroom 4 Live seminar in Minneapolis yesterday. There were almost 350 photographers there. We had a great crowd, lots of laughs and everyone I spoke to seemed to learn a lot throughout the day (in spite of my poor drinking habits – sorry inside joke… you had to be there – and no, it has nothing to do with alcohol)
If you’re in LA or Chicago, you can still sign up for seminars this week (Thursday in LA and Monday in Chicago).

In other news, Adobe officially announced CS6 yesterday. In celebration of the announcement, the Photoshop Guys over at NAPP are doing some free live webcasts called 6 Days of CS6. It started yesterday and continues throughout the week (schedule is below). I’ll be on today with a free webcast that goes over Photoshop CS6′s new features for photographers. I’m traveling the rest of the week doing more Lightroom seminars, but you can catch the guys doing webcasts all week. Here’s the schedule and I hope you’ll be able to join us.

Video: Soft Proofing and Print Brightness in Lightroom 4

Soft proofing has been a feature request that I’ve heard quite a bit over the years so you’ll be happy to know it’s included in Lightroom 4. This week we’ll take a quick look at the Soft Proof feature, as well as one of my favorite new features for printing that solves the “my print is too dark” problem that I (and plenty of other people I know) have.

Lightroom Video: Lightroom and Photoshop Before/After

Ever since I first started using the new sliders in the Basic panel in Lightroom 4, I was hooked. So I started out to record a video on how I use them but realized I use them in different ways for different photos. Then I realized, there were more things I wanted to do to this photo. Before I knew it, I had a full before and after video using Photoshop and all. You gotta love it when your video starts taking over right? Anyway, my main goal here is to show you the Basic panel sliders in Lightroom 4 and just how powerful moving 4-5 sliders can be for your photo. In fact, you’ll see that most of the work is done before we ever leave Lightroom to Photoshop. I hope you enjoy!

Lightroom Video – Making Selective White Balance Changes

I always like it when new features come out in Photoshop or Lightroom and I end up using them in ways that I didn’t originally think I would. Take for example the addition of Temperature and Tint to the Adjustment Brush and Graduated Filter in Lightroom 4 Beta. When I heard about this feature, I thought of specific examples where I’d use it. But none of those examples actually fit what I just noticed this past weekend on a recent trip. I realized I’m going to use them for a problem that I’ve usually gone to Photoshop to fix. But now since those adjustments are in Lightroom I can just do them there. Gotta love it when that happens right? Enjoy!

Lightroom Before/After Video – Eiffel Tower and Plug-ins

I haven’t done one of those Before/After videos in a while so I thought it was time for another. The photo I’m using here was a photo I took in Paris last year. It was a rainy day which I actually find can help sometimes. I’d always seen a lot of the same photos of the Eiffel Tower, so I went looking for a different view. I remember seeing the movie, Inception, and noticed this really cool bridge (You know, the one that twisted on top of itself in the movie). It was the Pont de Bir-Hakeim, a bridge that crosses the Seine River in Paris. So I kinda set my sites on that being a good location to shoot from. The original photo itself definitely needed some work, as you’ll see in the video. The Lightroom part of it was pretty easy actually and since Lightroom 4 Beta has been out, I find myself re-editing a lot of my photos using the new Develop module controls. There’s a little Photoshop touchup work and lots of plug-in work that I used too. Enjoy!

Lightroom Video – Dynamic Watermarks (well… not really, but kinda)

I always like to do videos that answer questions I get, rather than just doing a video that I “think” everyone wants to know about. Well, this weeks video comes from a question that I’ve gotten in several forms over the last couple years. Recently, some one asked if they could add a watermark to their photos with the current year on them. So basically, Lightroom would have to figure out the year from the metadata (probably not hard) and dynamically add it to the photos when you export them into JPEGS (not so easy). So, there’s really no way to do this, but there is an pretty decent workaround using the Filter Bar which is an area I think a lot of people miss out on. Enjoy!

Lightroom Video – Using External Drives

I saw a great question on my Facebook page the other day (btw… here’s my Google+ and Twitter pages too) and it’s one that I get asked quite a bit whenever I’m out teaching Lightroom. The question was basically this: let’s say you store all of your photos on an external drive (like I do). Eventually that drive gets full and you buy a larger drive. How do you get your photos to that new drive and make it so Lightroom can see them. Luckily it’s really simple and it works the same with just about any version of Lightroom. Check out the video below to see how.

Lightroom Video – Creating Calendars in the Print Module

Hey everyone! I hope you’ve enjoyed the Lightroom Holiday template ideas that I’ve shared this week so far (and if you did, please share via Facebook, Twitter, Google+, etc…). Sadly, today’s the last day, but I’m sure I’ll be covering other ideas next year as I come up with them. I did save one of my favorites for last though – creating calendars in the Print module. It’s really simple to do and looks great for the new year. You can create one calendar each month or you can create a whole year’s worth so it’s pretty flexible too. Here’s the link to the iStockphoto image(s) that I used, but as I showed you in the video, there’s a ton of other ideas out there as well.