The post Tips For Better Black & White in Lightroom appeared first on Lightroom Killer Tips.
]]>A little before the pandemic hit, I got a chance to spend a day with my buddy Jay up in Minneapolis where I shot some of the classic interior architecture in the area, and I gotta tell ya — I was pretty surprised (delighted, tickled, shocked, etc.) at some of the amazing shooting
I posted some of my favorite shots from the day in an Adobe Spark page at this link (if you’ve got a quick sec).
It’s coming up Nov. 2-3, 2021 and everyone’s invited (that means you!), and it’s going to be awesome! I’m teaching four sessions during the conference:
(1) What Makes a Great Portrait (a free pre-conference session the day before, on Nov. 1st, for all registered attendees)
(2) Mastering the One-Light Portrait
(3) Introduction to Portrait Compositing
(4) My Top 20 Portrait Photography Tips
Those are my sessions, but there are plenty more, including session from portrait masters like Joe McNally, Frank Doorhof, and many more! Hope you can make it – here’s the link for tickets and details. If you can’t make it but you have friends or co-workers that would get a lot out of it, please let them know for me).
Have a great weekend, everybody! #GoBucs and #RollTide!
–Scott
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]]>The post Virtual Copies and Snapshots and History, oh my! appeared first on Lightroom Killer Tips.
]]>[Editor’s note: This article first appeared in the October 2021 issue of Photoshop User.]
The History panel and virtual copies are unique to LrC because they only exist in the catalog file that contains all the work you do inside of LrC. Snapshots can be created inside of LrC’s Develop module but can also be written to a photo’s own XMP metadata (virtual copies and history cannot be written to XMP), which allows snapshots to be saved with the photo and even accessed in Adobe Camera Raw (we’ll explore this later). Let’s drill down a little into each of these features to better understand them, and then look at how they can be used in your workflow.
The key to understanding virtual copies is remembering that all the work you do in LrC is stored in the catalog file, and that the catalog file is only ever referencing each imported photo wherever it may be stored on your system. In other words, each imported photo has a record in the catalog (database) that contains all the information about that photo, and all edits are stored as a set of instructions that are applied to all copies created on export/output. By default, each photo has one set of instructions (represented by the preview we see inside LrC), but the virtual copy functionality allows us to create multiple sets of instructions that all reference the same source photo. Each time we create a new virtual copy we see what looks like a duplicate of the photo in LrC, but it is only the set of instructions that are duplicated along with a corresponding preview that is stored in the preview cache.
A virtual copy is visually identified by the page curl icon in the lower-left corner of the thumbnail (whereas the original has no such icon), as well as the Copy Name field of the Metadata panel will be automatically populated with the word Copy and a number that increments with each virtual copy made.
The moment the virtual copy is created we have free reign to take the edits in any direction that is separate from the original and any other virtual copies of that original. Because LrC does not duplicate the source photo this is a huge savings in disk space (keeping in mind the preview created does take up a relatively small amount of disk space in the preview cache).
Because the virtual copy appears as a duplicate copy in LrC it allows for easy side-by-side comparisons of multiple versions of the same photo. This also allows for virtual copies to exist separately from the source photo in different collections if that is useful to you (knowing that all virtual copies can easily be found in the source folder next to the original). And since these are all just separate sets of instructions for the same source photo you can even select a virtual copy and go to Photo > Set Copy as Original, which will designate that set of instructions (virtual copy) as the original photo and what was formerly the original instructions will become a virtual copy. This is useful if you prefer the edits in that virtual copy and want to ensure they are kept while relegating any edits made to the original as a separate virtual copy.
A snapshot is a way to preserve an editing state, or version, without creating a duplicate iteration of the photo. Located on the left side of the Develop module, the Snapshots panel is where you will find the functionality to create and manage snapshots. You can also find the command to create a new snapshot under the Develop menu (along with its shortcut).
Because snapshots are only visible within the Develop module you can think of these as a means to track or preserve different steps in your editing workflow, as well as a way to create different versions of edits as you explore possibilities with an easy way to go back to a former state.
The History panel is always quietly working in the background and is easy to overlook. Again, thanks to the fact that we’re working in this catalog file all the work we do is recorded to the catalog as we go without us having to manually save that work. If you switch to the Develop module and expand the History panel you will see all the individual edit steps, the import state, and more, recorded in an ever-growing list. Some steps are easy to discern, like Exposure +1, but others may indicate nothing more than that an adjustment brush stroke was applied.
The important thing to know about the History panel right now is that we can go back in time in our editing history of a selected photo just by clicking a previous step in the history panel. This can be useful when we’ve made a mistake (or made a creative exploration of settings) and want to go back to a last known good state, or even if we just want to compare where we are now with where we were before. By default, the Before/After view function compares where we are now with how the photo looked at import. That may be helpful sometimes, but there may also be times when we want to compare where we are now with a more recent point in our history, and that’s where this panel can help. If you right-click any step in the History panel, you’ll see an option to Copy History Step Settings to Before appear in the contextual menu.
That means you can set the behavior of the Before state to display the way the photo looked at the selected history step. For example, say you completed the edits in the Basic panel and applied a B&W profile, and as you continue to refine your edits with other tools you want to be able to use the Before/After function to compare against the moment after you converted to B&W not back to when it appeared in color after import. Simply right click the Convert to Black & White step in the History panel and set it as the Before state. Now when you invoke Before/After view (press the \ key) you will compare against that history step until you change it to something else.
You might be thinking that there are some similarities in purpose between snapshots and virtual copies, and you would be right. The main difference is that virtual copies appear as separate files within LrC and snapshots can only be accessed from within the Develop module. However, because virtual copies of a single photo all reference the same source photo they also all have access to the same snapshots created for that photo.
So, let’s say you created two virtual copies of a single source photo, which would appear as three separate previews/instances/photos within LrC. You could edit each one independently in LrC, and when you’ve finished editing you could preserve the final state of each one in a snapshot from within each instance of that photo. It can be very useful to see those different instances side-by-side, but that can also really clutter up the folder or collection you are viewing. If you no longer need to see the separate virtual copies you can simply delete them knowing that you’ve preserved the different versions in the Snapshots panel accessible from the original.
What about making snapshots from a history step? Yes, that’s possible too! Earlier I showed you how to set the Before state to a history step. In that same contextual menu when you right-click a history step you’ll see the option to Create Snapshot. This can make accessing a step in your development history a lot easier as a means to go back to a known good point or to preserve a creative exploration before going in a different direction.
Additionally, if you are the type of person who likes to have LrC write to each photo’s XMP metadata you can take comfort in knowing that your snapshots are included in that process. This is not something everyone needs to do (or wants to do), but it is worth knowing if that fits your workflow. To have LrC write the data stored in the catalog to a photo’s metadata just select that photo in Library and use the Metadata > Save Metadata to File(s) menu. You may get prompted by LrC to let you know that it will create sidecar .XMP files for non-DNG raw files but can write to the file itself for all other file types. Click Continue if that works for you.
Another cool thing about snapshot functionality is that if you use the Photo > Edit in > Open as Smart Object in Photoshop command to embed a copy of the raw photo in a smart object layer while opening it in Photoshop, then you can access your snapshots in the Camera Raw plug-in too! When you send a copy to Photoshop in this way all the edits that can be written to XMP should go along for the ride (no need to manually invoke the write to metadata command first). So when the copy opens in Photoshop, just double-click the smart object icon in the Layers panel to open the embedded copy of the raw photo into the Camera Raw plug-in. Open the Snapshots panel in Camera Raw, and there you will find all the snapshots you created in LrC, which can open up new creative possibilities for working with different versions of your photos in Photoshop too.
Hopefully this has shown you that when used together these three features have the ability to really enhance each other’s strengths and your workflow.
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]]>The post Lightroom Room Q&A appeared first on Lightroom Killer Tips.
]]>Today I thought I’d run the Lightroom Q&A column (from the Lightroom Queen herself, Victoria Bampton) from the October 2021 issue of Photoshop User magazine. Here ya go:
Q. Lightroom is asking to upgrade my catalog. Do I have to upgrade it and is it safe?
A. When Adobe releases a major Lightroom update (e.g., version 10.0 or 11.0), usually around October or November each year, a catalog upgrade is often needed to support one of the new features. The first time you open each Lightroom catalog after the update, Lightroom asks permission to upgrade to the new catalog format. If you want to use the new version, you do have to let it upgrade.
Good backups are always wise, but it’s generally a safe process. Lightroom takes a copy of your current catalog and upgrades the copy. You can select the new catalog name during the upgrade process but, by default, Lightroom adds the version number to the current catalog name, for example, Personal-v10.lrcat. The upgrade also renames the existing previews and sync data files to use with the upgraded catalog.
It’s worth keeping the old catalog for a while, just in case you come across a bug and need to roll back to the previous Lightroom version, but hopefully it won’t be needed!
Q. I don’t like to update to a new Lightroom release immediately, in case there are big bugs. How do I stop Creative Cloud automatically updating my Lightroom version?
A. That’s very sensible, particularly for the October/ November releases, which tend to include bigger changes. Since they require a catalog upgrade, it isn’t as easy to roll back to the previous release, compared to other smaller updates throughout the year.
To turn off Auto Update, open the Creative Cloud app, which usually lives in the menu bar (PC: system tray). Click your avatar at the top-right corner and select Preferences. In the Apps section, turn off the switch for Lightroom Classic and click Done to confirm. (In the example shown here, I have Photoshop and InDesign currently turned off.) If you want to turn off Auto Update for all the apps, click the Auto-Update switch.
When you’re ready to update, return to the Updates section in the Apps tab of the Creative Cloud app and click the Update button next to Lightroom Classic.
Q. I just imported a bunch of images and videos and I want to separate out the videos to move them to a different drive. I remember that there’s a quick way to filter the videos in the Grid view, but how? I can’t remember the steps.
A. If you wanted to search your whole catalog, you’d need to select All Photographs in the Catalog panel on the left. Since you only want to search the files you’ve just imported, you can select either Previous Import in the Catalog panel or the folder into which you imported the images in the Folders panel.
The Filter Bar should show at the top of the Grid view. If it’s missing, press the Backslash key (\) or go to View>Show Filter Bar.
To show only the videos, you’ll need to click on the Attribute option in the Filter Bar. The file type icons are the last ones to the right of the word “Kind.” The icons aren’t easy to distinguish, so from left to right, they are: Original Photos, Virtual Copies, and Videos. Click on the Videos icon to hide all of the images and just leave the videos visible.
Q. Is it possible to edit more than one image at the same time in Lightroom?
A. By default, even if multiple photos are selected, your Develop slider adjustments only apply to the active photo. If you want your adjustments to apply to all of the selected photos, you can enable Auto Sync.
To do this, select multiple photos and then toggle the switch next to the Sync button. The label changes to Auto Sync and the button is highlighted to make it more obvious. As you adjust the sliders, all of the selected photos are updated at the same time.
I should add one warning, however: Auto Sync is powerful but dangerous, as it’s easy to accidentally apply a setting to multiple photos without realizing that they’re all selected. It gets particularly confusing if you often switch between standard Sync and Auto
Sync. If you’re going to use Auto Sync, make sure you keep the Filmstrip visible so you can easily see the number of photos that are selected.
Q. I primarily work in Lightroom Classic, but I want to be able to share a collection as a web gallery. How do I do that?
A. If you don’t already have sync enabled in your Lightroom Classic catalog, start by clicking on the cloud icon at the very top right to show the Sync Activity, then click Start Syncing.
To sync a collection to the cloud, toggle the box to the left of the collection in the Collections panel and you’ll see a sync icon appear. Then, to get a link that you can share with friends or family, Right-click on the synced collection and choose Lightroom Links>Make Collection Public. This makes the collection accessible to other people, but only if you give them your secret link. The link is shown at the top of the Grid view, or you can select Copy Public Link in the same Right-click menu to copy it to the clipboard.
When someone visits the secret link, they can view the photos in Grid or Loupe view. If they sign in using an Adobe ID or social login (Google, Facebook, or Apple), they can also leave Likes and Comments on the photos, which show up in the Comments panel in your Lightroom catalog.
If you log into the Lightroom Web interface, there are additional sharing options for each collection. For example, you can allow your viewers to download photos, view additional metadata, change the gallery layout and color theme, or even add additional text describing the photos.
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There ya have it – thank you, Victoria! BTW: Photoshop User magazine is published on the first business day of the month for members of KelbyOne. It’s usually around 124 pages or so, and has tons of Lightroom and Photoshop tutorials, articles, reviews and news. For more on KelbyOne photography, Photoshop and Lightroom education, click right here.
Here’s wishing you a triple-fantastic week!
-Scott
P.S. It’s just two weeks to the Portrait Photography Conference. I’ve got some killer classes lined up, along with an absolutely top-notch instructor lineup – it’s going to be epic. Details and earlybird discount tickets right here.
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]]>The post A Color Grading Feature Only in Lightroom Classic appeared first on Lightroom Killer Tips.
]]>All three programs have a Color Grading panel, and the core functionality works the same in them all. However, only Lightroom Classic has the ability to sample from the photo itself when choosing the desired hue and saturation for your color grade. It must be a holdover bit of code from the old Split Toning panel that came before Color Grading because I can’t imagine they’d only add it to Lightroom Classic and not the others if it didn’t already exist.
It certainly isn’t required to use Color Grading. I just think it is a cool way to start by sampling right from the photo itself when deciding on the tint you want to apply to the shadows, highlights, midtones, or globally.
To use this feature you need to choose to zoom into to viewing just the single region you want to color grade. For example, if I wanted to apply a Global color grade to this photo I would click on the icon for Global at the top of the panel to zoom into the settings for that region.
Then, look for the color swatch above the Hue and Saturation sliders. Click that swatch to open the color picker.
This is where it gets a little fiddly. To use the eyedropper, click and hold down the mouse button while you drag the eyedropper over the photo.
Side note, if this is the first time you use this feature on a Mac running Big Sur don’t be alarmed if you get prompted to allow Lightroom Classic to “record this computer’s screen” to make this work. I asked the developers about this ominous sounding warning and I was told all it does is sample a single pixel to get the color values under the cursor, but that falls under screen recording, hence the need to grant it permission. If you decide to grant it permission, then be prepared to restart Lightroom Classic in order for that to take effect. Just a heads up.
Once you’ve landed on a hue and saturation value you like, just release the mouse button to have those values entered in the Color Grading panel. Now you can use the Hue, Sat, and Luminance sliders to dial in your final look.
You can of course just use the Color Wheel to arrive at the same exact settings, which is likely why we’ll never see this feature added to Lightroom or Camera Raw. But hey, why not use it if it is there!
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]]>The post Cool Little Tip For Lightroom’s Radial Filter appeared first on Lightroom Killer Tips.
]]>Get the Radial filter; hold the Command key on Mac (Ctrl-key on PC), and double-click anywhere within the image and it creates as large an oval as possible (as seen above) for you automatically.
There ya go – short and sweet, and we’re starting out this week with a shortcut most Lightroom users don’t know, but know you do!
Here’s to a kick-butt week, full of opportunities and good health!
-Scott
P.S. We’re just a few weeks from the all-online two-day, two-track Portrait Photography Conference. More into right here.
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]]>The post The October 2021 Issue of Photoshop User Is Now Available! appeared first on Lightroom Killer Tips.
]]>The October 2021 issue of Photoshop User is now live on the KelbyOne site and KelbyOne Mags for iOS and Android.
It’s October, which means it’s time for our annual tradition of giving you 100 of the hottest Photoshop & Lightroom tips by 10 of the coolest people we could find! Plus, using virtual copies, snapshots, and the History panel in Lightroom Classic; editing and organizing camera-scanned negatives and slides; using the Blend If sliders in Photoshop; adding text inside shapes; and so much more!
This issue’s cover designed by Jessica Maldonado
KelbyOne Pro & Plus members have access to 100 back issues of Photoshop User magazine all the way back to January 2012, plus all 64 issues of Lightroom Magazine. Not a Pro or Plus member yet? Click here for more information.
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]]>The post Get a Link appeared first on Lightroom Killer Tips.
]]>The most important step to making this work is that you need to have photos in Lightroom. The photos can be synced smart previews from Lightroom Classic (LrC) or photos imported directly into any of the Lr apps. The photo above is a smart preview of a raw photo synced from LrC. This cannot work from LrC alone, you need the photo in the cloud so that you can share a link to the cloud version.
From there, you can select any single photo, or a selection of photos in Grid view, right-click and choose the Get a Link command from the contextual menu. This invokes the Share & Invite dialog box where you can configure your options for this ad-hoc share.
You can set the link access to Invite Only or leave it at the default Anyone can view, then grab the short URL generated to copy to your clipboard (or share out to social media). If you wish, you can click the Customize tab and choose a theme, appearance, and modify the title and author that will display on the web page with the photo.
You can also configure various settings for allowing JPG downloads and export, visibility of metadata, visibility of location info, allowing comments and likes (if the other person is logged in with Adobe ID).
Once everything is configured, share the link with your intended recipient and all they need to do is click the link to open a web browser to the page containing your shared photo(s). Pretty cool, I think. The visitor to the page can click the photo to access the comment and like functions as well as view any info you’ve allowed to be displayed.
If you make any further edits, you just need to let the person you shared with that they’ll need to refresh their browser to see the changes.
What if you wanted to share that photo with a fellow Lr user so that they could see your edits and even tweak them too? You can! From the Share & Invite screen you can grant someone permission by entering their email address and assigning then proper permissions. I’ve previously written about collaborative editing in more depth, but I want to point out that it extends to these ad-hoc shares as well.
So, keep this in mind the next time you need to share a photo with someone and you already have that photo in the Lr cloud just waiting to be shared.
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]]>The post Such a Great Little Tip For Getting Your Lightroom Spot Healing Brush The Right Size Every Time! appeared first on Lightroom Killer Tips.
]]>Try this one – I think you’ll super dig it.
Here’s wishing you a way better than usual Monday!
-Scott
P.S. We announced “The Portrait Photography Conference” last Friday, and it is taking OFF!!! Get more details and tickets right there.
The post Such a Great Little Tip For Getting Your Lightroom Spot Healing Brush The Right Size Every Time! appeared first on Lightroom Killer Tips.
]]>The post A Cool Little Lightroom Tip (and we announced a new conference today) appeared first on Lightroom Killer Tips.
]]>Details, the full class schedule, instructor list, and tickets are available right here. I’m super psyched, and I hope I see you at the conference!
When you’re using the Adjustment Brush, one of the options you have to paint a tint over an area of your image using the Color Picker that appear when you click on the little “X” swatch near the bottom of the Adjustment Brush sliders, as shown here.
The problem happens when you add a tint, and then change your mind. If you click the color swatch again, it just brings up the color picker, and if you’ve chosen a color, there’s no reset button in the color picker. So…how do you reset the color to “None?”
The trick is to not go back to the Color Picker. Instead just double-click directly on the word “Color” to the left of the swatch (as shown below), and it resets the tint color to ‘None.”
That’s it – it’s the little things, right?
Have a great weekend, everybody. #GoBucs! and #RollTide!!!
-Scott
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]]>The post The Creative Way to Make Money Off Stock Footage appeared first on Lightroom Killer Tips.
]]>Whatever stopped you back then shouldn’t stand in your way now. Selling stock footage is a great way to help you make some extra bucks! So, it’s time to pull out the best of all those clips sitting in your hard drive and make some money off them. That’s why we’re here to help. We’ll tell you some creative ways to make money off your stock footage. So, let’s get started.
Sunrises, waves crashing on the shore, or airplane videos are some of the most commonly found stock videos – unless, of course, you can capture these elements differently. Picking a unique niche and filming it with a fresh, never-like-before perspective is what you need. With it, you’ll set your footage apart from thousands of others out there.
Try to come up with innovative and saleable video concepts. It could be something as simple as filming yourself cooking your breakfast, but with a creative twist of your own. Almost anything and everything that we do in our everyday lives is worth selling as stock footage.
So go out there and shoot videos of anything you feel is worth capturing. The best part about video content is that you don’t even need to step outside – you can capture amazing videos right from the comfort of your home!
Your footage may be the best, but it won’t get the visibility it deserves if you don’t have the required keywording skills. With an on-point keywording game, the probability of your footage getting noticed on a stock footage platform is high.
Regardless of the kind of footage you have, you need to use the right set of keywords. A little effort to hone your keywording skills will help you increase your sales. Along with keywords, focus on the perfect title and clear category descriptions to accompany your video.
Apart from stock footage platforms, you can also look for potential buyers on social media platforms. LinkedIn is one of the best platforms to find people who would be interested in purchasing your footage. You can browse LinkedIn and find marketing departments of organizations, producers, or content managers. You’re sure to find a lot of people actively looking to purchase stock footage.
Creating that buzz around your work is something you’d have to do yourself – at least until you are famous enough. For this, you can use Instagram, Facebook, Youtube, and other social media platforms to publicize your work. Put out short videos, clips, or snippets of your behind-the-scenes to garner more attention from the audience.
Consistency is the key, so make sure you regularly keep your social media pages updated with fresh content. Social media will not only help you build your network but also your brand. Lastly, honest feedback on these channels would also help you improve your work.
In the end, what’s going to help you the most is the quality of your content. So, this is one aspect you shouldn’t compromise on. Perfect footage is what most people out there are looking for – so steer clear of poorly lit scenes, jerky movements, and out-of-focus shots.
Experiment all you can to ensure you have unique content. Capture subjects from different, interesting angles to give potential clients a point of view they’ve never seen before.
Keep in mind the length requirements of stock footage, too. Every platform has slightly varying criteria but keep your video between 5 seconds to 1 minute long. Editing is another important aspect that you cannot compromise on. Use proper editing software to enhance your videos and add to their visual appeal and saleability.
Consistency is essential when it comes to selling stock footage. You may not see results immediately, but over time, with ample time and effort, you will reap the rewards of your hard work. Until then, keep putting out all your creative work out there!
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