Lightroom Videos

Video – Before & After

Greetings from Dubai! I’m teaching at Gulf Photo Plus this week but I made sure I recorded a video before I left. It’s another one of those before/after videos and it takes one of my photos from a hot air balloon festival I shot last summer from start to finish. It just happens that this one required a lot of Photoshop work. I’m not sure why, but sometimes I still feel more comfortable with the Quick selection tool in Photoshop and a brush, rather than using the Adjustment Brush in Lightroom. Anyway, here it is.

Thanks for watching!

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

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25 comments

  1. Tom 27 September, 2010 at 13:08 Reply

    Matt just watched the video today 9/27, so sorry its been 6mo late – question on the step where you create sky and drag the layer mask into the sky – wasn’t that layer mask pre-spot removal? So the spots are still in the mask?

  2. Paul Fan 30 May, 2010 at 05:30 Reply

    Thank you so much for such detailed teaching video and help to gain something that we may not find from the book.

    To create an additional top layer from the two layers being heard, “command-option-shift” for Mac, I tried it and the third layer haven’t come out, would anyone please to tell me please?

    Thank you!

  3. Julian Roberts 17 March, 2010 at 17:00 Reply

    Matt – Great video, thanks. Is there any chance you would consider posting the images you use, so that we can get some practice on the same subject? Thanks very much. Have fun at Photoshop World

  4. janet grey 16 March, 2010 at 19:48 Reply

    hi – i love your killer tips..but…any idea why i keep getting the download your dubai video in the rss feed several times a day? i would hate to kill this feed, but …

  5. Diego Tabango 4 March, 2010 at 20:49 Reply

    Excellent tutorial Matt!

    Hope you’re having fun in Dubai. Seems like all the big dogs are there having a blast.

  6. Mathes 3 March, 2010 at 17:20 Reply

    First of all great Tutorial!

    @Alex
    Maybe you could use catalogues as David mentions in combination with a service like dropbox (getdropbox.com). But this means you would need a decent internet connection on every location you want to edit your images.

  7. Mathes 3 March, 2010 at 17:16 Reply

    @Alex
    I think you could use catalogs as David says in combination with something like dropbox (getdropbox.com). But this means you must have a decent internet connection.

    And of cause great tutrial.

  8. David 2 March, 2010 at 15:35 Reply

    @alex

    I don’t do this, but I read about a guy who makes a new catalog for every job he does. He puts the catalog and the photos for that catalog in a new folder, and if he wants to work on it somewhere else, just copies it to a usb.. opens that catalog on the remote systems.. does the work.. brings it back home and overrides whats in the storage folder. Not perfect but he said it worked well for him.

  9. alex 2 March, 2010 at 15:32 Reply

    Howdy. The blog changes look great! I have a general question. I have a laptop and a desktop that I like to work on. When I shoot a wedding, I find it’s easiest to edit the files in Lightroom on either my laptop or my desktop. I can’t seem to find a way to break it up and do both. For example if I want to work on some of the photos on my desktop, but then later in the day go to a coffee shop or sit in front of the TV at my house with my laptop and keep working. Is the only way to do this to export and import catalogs of the work I’ve done? Or is there an easier way? Is there a way I can set up a shared hard drive on my network at home where both laptop and desktop can access the same catalog (or sidecar files?)? I’ve thought about using a remote desktop application to just access Lightroom on my desktop via my laptop so everything is on the desktop, but I assume it’ll run slow and depend on whatever internet connection I have.

    Do you have any thoughts? Do you go between a laptop and desktop working on the same group of photos? Thanks!

    • Fred 2 March, 2010 at 16:09 Reply

      Thanks! I like to hi-jack sites that Matt posts to and completely change their look… he’ll be surprised when he returns from Dubai 🙂

  10. Blake 2 March, 2010 at 05:32 Reply

    awesome Matt, where are the best places to find your tutorials? especially your photoshop tutorials. thanks

  11. David 2 March, 2010 at 03:08 Reply

    I am sure I have a decent amount of sensor dirt as I don’t have a self cleaning sensor, I will enjoy trying that tip

  12. Martin 1 March, 2010 at 23:08 Reply

    Matt – good video thanks.
    On the subject of sensor cleaning here’s my tip to test how dirty your sensor is:
    Photograph a bright sky, or your monitor with nothing but white on it. Use minimum f stop (biggest number) to give maximum depth of field to show up the sensor dirt, use a slow shutter speed and keep the camera moving to blur the lens image, but retain the sharpness of the sensor dirt. Exposure compensate in camera about +1.5 stops.

    Then in Lightroom look at the image and apply the following settings which you SHOULD CREATE AS A PRESET:
    Exposure -1
    Blacks and Clarity +100
    Vibrance and Saturation -100
    In the Detail panel crank Amount, Radius, Detail up to the max and Masking to 26

    This will show up your sensor dirt nicely. Having a preset makes this a fairly quick and easy test.

  13. Mitch 1 March, 2010 at 11:30 Reply

    Matt

    Great tutorial ! I am a newbie to PS and are amazed at the power and capabilities of this program. I also use LR and is slowly learning how to use both programs at the same time to truly enhance my images.

    Again thank you for the great tutorials !!!!!

  14. David 1 March, 2010 at 10:04 Reply

    Matt,
    I for one spend a fair amount of time in both LR as well as PS.I very much enjoy a real workflow using both programs. Thanks again for another great tut! I got 4 or 5 useful tips Say Did I win the drawing to join you in Dubai ….I thought for sure I did ? have not seen my tickets yet……

  15. Dennis Zito 1 March, 2010 at 09:56 Reply

    Hi Matt,

    Another excellent tutorial!! Couple of things … I like the method of changing the sky (I’m going to watch that part again). The quick selection tool never works for me the way you do it … I’ve watch several of your tutorials, but I never get that same result. It jumps all over the place and I never get a quick selection. Takes me forever. Are there some option settings that make this work better? Any suggestion you have, would be greatly appreciated.

    Have a great trip in Dubai!

    Dennis

  16. DJ 1 March, 2010 at 08:37 Reply

    Great tutorial again, Matt! And fun to see a ‘Dutch’ Beemster cheese balloon in your photo. Did you take this shot in Europe?

  17. David Kelly 1 March, 2010 at 07:36 Reply

    Matt, thanks for another great tutorial – I found the use of gradient tool with the colour picker especially helpful. Hope you get some good photos from your Dubai trip. Just watch out for the dust on your sensor whilst there 😉

    BTW You do realise that, with such a teaching trip taking place so distant from the US / Canada, you & the other Photoshop Guys really have no excuses now for not travelling over here to the UK and holding some teaching classes 😉

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