Lightroom Worth-a-click

Happy Friday! Here’s a few Lightroom/Photography related things that are worth a quick click if you’re surfing around.

• A friend of mine from Paris (who I shot with while I visited last year and was a HUGE help!), Serge Ramelli has a Lightroom app on the iTunes store. Here’s the link if you want to check it out.

• It’s not exactly brand new news but I had a new class go up on Kelby Training last month that’s all about Lightroom presets and how I create them. If you’re looking for a peak inside the mind of the preset creator (and some cool ideas for presets) then check out my new class “Lightroom Creative Presets”.

• Gene McCullagh has a follow up to his article on working with a Lightroom on multiple computers.

• DPReview has an interview with Lightroom product manager Tom Hogarty

Lightroom 4 and Windows XP

I’ve seen quite a few comments about the fact that Lightroom 4 Beta doesn’t work with Windows XP (and you can probably guess that the full version isn’t going to work with it either). Last week Tom Hogarty (Lightroom Product Manager) wrote about the reasons behind that decision on his blog. Here’s a quick snippet but you can go here to read the rest:

“As many have noticed, the Lightroom 4 public beta we released last week does not support Windows XP. This decision did not come lightly and was based on a number of factors. With each version of Lightroom, our goal is always to provide a consistently excellent customer experience. Developing and testing across Operating System versions and platforms to ensure that we’re achieving this goal is a significant effort that takes time and resources. XP is substantially different from Windows Vista and Windows 7, and requires a independent testing matrix, which increases the complexity of our development efforts…”

I know it’s always hard to swallow something like this (well, if you’re an XP user that is), but here’s the thing… Microsoft barely support XP anymore. The Mainstream support phase for XP has passed. And it’s 10 years old. I hate to tell ya, but 10 years in technology might as well be 50. I think Adobe absolutely did the right thing here, so that they can indeed continue to provide a good experience for it’s users, and continually enhance Lightroom and push it in the directions it needs to go (and keep the price at a place that it needs to be).

(photo thumbnail courtesy of Fotolia.com)

Lightroom 4 Beta Is Here!

Big news today! Lightroom 4 Beta is here! As you know, ever since Lightroom first came out, Adobe has been releasing each version in a public beta before the full version ships. I’ve been fortunate enough to kick the tires on it for some time now so, along with Scott Kelby, we’ve created NAPP’s Lightroom 4 Beta Launch Center with videos covering all the new features. It’s live already so feel free to jump over and check it out and please let me know what you think by leaving a comment here.

Also, I’ll be doing some free live webcasts all day today over at the Kelby Training studios and I’m thrilled to be joined by Adobe’s Lightroom Product Manager, Tom Hogarty. We’ll of course demo all the new features, but we’ll also leave time for some live Q&A so you can get all of your questions answered. Not to mention it’s a great opportunity to see if we can do our best to make Tom squirm and release some deep dark Lightroom secrets Seriously though, we have THE actual Lightroom Product Manager from Adobe here on launch day so you don’t want to miss this. We’ll be running them live at 10am, 12pm, 2pm, and 4pm EST. So feel free to jump in to one (they’re free!).

Keep an eye out on my Google+, Twitter and Facebook pages and follow me there for random updates throughout the day. I’ve got some new presets that I’ll add so that’s a good place to find out when they’re released.

Don’t forget to check out my good friend Terry White’s blog for more Lightroom 4 Beta info as well and I’ll of course be updating the blog regularity with new stuff as it develops.

More Lightroom Calendar Presets

Hey everyone! I hope you’ve enjoyed the free Lightroom Calendar templates from yesterday (thanks again to Ed Weaver for creating and sharing them). Just like last year, blog reader (Thomas Ljungberg) was kind enough to create some more calendar print templates for those of you outside the US. You can download the templates for free. He also has the full PSD files available for €10 in case you’re interested. If you download them, by all means please let us know what you think. Thanks!

Lightroom News – Lightroom 3.6 (and ACR 5.6) Are Out

Some of you may have missed the news in all of the hustle and bustle of the holidays, but Adobe released Lightroom 3.6. 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!

Animoto and NAPP – Get Two for the Price of One

Hey everyone. I just heard that NAPP and Animoto have a Two-for-the-price-of-one deal this week. Basically, if you sign up for an Animoto Pro account ($249), you get a $99 NAPP membership for free. If you haven’t tried Animoto yet then you at least need to give it a test run (it’s free). It’s an incredibly slick way to turn your photos, video clips and music into one killer video and they do all of the work for you. There’s really nothing else like it out there and people absolutely go crazy over these videos. And if you’re a Lightroom user, they’ve even got a plug-in that lets you preload Animoto video projects on Animoto.com directly from Lightroom. Just select the photos you want to use and press Export – the plug-in automatically resizes your images before exporting them to an Animoto project. So, if you’re an Animoto fan (or think you may become one) then this week is the week to do it (the special ends on Friday). Click here to sign up.

Lightroom and Retouching

Today’s post has two purposes: 1) To show you some retouching presets that I created a while back and, 2) to let you know I’m teaching a free live webcast tonight on retouching (part of NAPP’s Retouch Week). So… first. A while back I released some retouching presets for the Adjustment Brush. Since then, Adobe has also added some presets to the default list. So if you’ve got both, you’ve got a good bunch of presets for retouching. In fact, I was teaching my Lightroom seminar in Philly the other day and some one came up and asked if I’d show how to use the Adjustment Brush to whiten teeth. I showed him to just go to the Adjustment Brush, go to the Effect pull-down list and there’s a preset for it. Just brush on the teeth and you’re done. Now, I probably wouldn’t use Lightroom for heavy duty beauty retouching but for a quick retouch, it does a darn good job. However, if you’re still on the fence about how to retouch in Lightroom, then read on.

Next, I’m co-teaching a live webcast from 6-7pm tonight with Pete Collins on Retouching. It’s part of NAPP’s Free Retouch Week. One week of free retouching tips, tutorials, techniques, etc… from NAPP. You can watch the first time for free, but the replay will live on the NAPP site for NAPP members only. One of the things we’ll demo tonight is using Lightroom for some quick retouches (mainly for wedding and event photography). These lives webcasts are always a blast. We’ll take some live questions and overall people really seem to dig ‘em, so make sure you stop by and tune in if you’re around. Here’s the link. Have a great day!

500px Has a Lightroom Plug-in

It’s finally here! 500px.com released a Lightroom plug-in that let’s you publish your photos directly from Lightroom to their website. You can create and manage your portfolios right from within Lightroom as well as edit titles, descriptions, read/write comments and even see the photo statistics (views, favorites, ratings). Personally, I’ve been wanting to see this plug-in for a long time now and it makes a perfect addition to Lightroom 3′s Publish Services panel (it works for LR 2 as well but in a limited way).

Here’s the link to download. And if you’ve tried it out then leave a comment and let us know what you think. Have a great weekend everyone!

My New Lightroom 3 Presets App Is On Sale!

Happy fake-manufactured-online-shopping day everyone! Just wanted to let you know that I’ve got a brand new Lightroom training app out. It’s called “Lightroom Creative Presets”. Of course I always provide free presets here on the site. But I get a lot of questions about creating presets so I created an app that goes through my thought process for a bunch of different styles of presets. The app is broken up into 10 lessons. Each lesson concentrates on a certain style of preset: Color Effects, Edgy Effects, Black and White, Vintage, borders, etc… Plus, you’ll get a big zip file containing a bunch of my presets to go along with it. This app (and all of the Kelby Training apps) are on sale through today only. Then they go back up to their regular price of $9.99.

OK, on to Cyber Monday. Yep, I know it’s really just a way for retailers to extend the mega holiday shopping weekend, but there’s an upside if you’re a consumer. There’s a lot of good deals to be had. I can totally tell you that the prices you get from NAPP and Kelby Training today only come on this day every year. There’s still good deals throughout the year, but none of them are ever as good as the ones you see here. So stop by and at least take a look. I know money is always tight, and if you’re thinking about buying a Kelby Training subscription, book, dvd, etc… then today is probably the best day to do it. Thanks!

One of My Favorite Plug-ins Was Just Updated

One of my favorite plug-ins, Topaz Adjust, for Photoshop and Lightroom was just updated. It’s got a bunch of new presets (I’m a preset fan if you haven’t noticed ), a Lightroom-like brush to dodge, burn and remove adjustments from certain parts of the photo, and the ability to stack presets which is HUGE for me.

Here’s the link to their website. Looks like there’s a 30% off deal right now too so the price is around $35. Trust me, this plug-in is worth every bit of that! And don’t forget that if you’re using Lightroom, you’ll need to install Topaz Fusion (it’s free).

One more thing… they’re doing a bunch of free webinars next week. It’s a great chance to get a good look at Adjust 5 and it’s new features. Here’s the link to sign up. So far, I’m diggin’ the upgrade, but if you try it out make sure you leave a comment and let us know what you think. Thanks!