Most of the time, it involves answers that include explanations of pixel based editing versus parametric editing, and lots of other technical reasons as to why certain things can’t happen in LR.  But sometimes (and this is the best part), I find out they are adding to their work flow because it can be done in Lightroom!  One of the most common ones is masking effects.  When I show people this, I almost always get a “Holy Cow!” or some other variation on the “cow” part.

So, today I thought I’d share a quick tutorial on how to implement masking edits in Lightroom.  Let’s take a look at the base image I am using here – a boat dock on Raquette Lake in the Adirondacks of upstate NY:

So, the dock here is a significant portion of the subject, but it’s way darker than the rest of the image, and really could be increased by a stop or two relative to the sky.  So, rather than round trip to PS, let’s see what we can do here.  I’ll start off with making a general masking selection of the entire area.  So I check the Adjustment Brush (near the top of the Develop Module on the far right hand side), and then at the bottom of the image (over on the left), there’s a box that says “Show Selected Mask Overly”.  I check that box.  Then I just start painting!

It’s a prety broad brush I’ve used, so we need to clean it up, as some of the water got caught and that will leave an ugly halo effect if I don’t take care of it.  So, to get more detailed selections completed, I zoom in, and then switch to erase mode while still showing the mask.  This is in the lower options of the Adjustment Brush, on the right hand panel – see where it has “A”, “B”, and “Erase”?  Click the erase and start painting again to undo the mask:

You, of course, will have to adjust the size, feathering and opacity of your brush to taste, and to accommodate your brushing technique as needed (hint:  Wacom tablets work better than regular mice or trackballs).  Once you’re finished with your refining of the mask, go ahead and uncheck the option to display the mask and see your results.

At this point you can actually do something else kind of cool – hover your mouse over the dot that is on display and then slide it to the left or right as you see the exposure increase and decrease for the selected area!  Pretty cool, eh?  This same technique works with other features in the adjustment brush, whether you are working on eyes, teeth, dodging, burning, or even skin softening.  The scrubby slider is a nice feature in here.  Then, finally, one thing I’ll do is make a side-by-side comparison of the image in a before and after mode to make sure my changes aren’t too garish or over the top (you can do a side-by-side comparison, top and bottom comparison and even split the screen between the two for a more detailed look):

Looks pretty good for this quick tutorial…and here’s the final image after our masking edits are done:

Now I grant you that this is probably not a portfolio image, but it hopefully was helpful in illustrating how you can mask and edit your photos inside of Lightroom without having to do the round trip as often to Photoshop!

Like this tip/trick?  Got any other comments, questions, or curiosities of how to leverage Lightroom more in your own work flow?  Sound off in the comments!  Have a great weekend and we’ll see you here back on Monday!  Happy shooting!

*****

P.S.  This is the final weekend before the contest wraps up, so if you’d like a chance to win a copy of Photo Rescue and a cool Canon coffee mug (courtesy of the folks at Photojojo), then don’t forget to get your image in soon!  Tick tock, tick tock!  Clock is ticking! Submit your images here!

Suffice to say, there is something special about black and white photography.  There always seems to be some powerful emotional draw about it.  I’m not sure if it’s the contrast between the bright and dark parts of the imagery, or some other intangible, but many people have tried black and white with varying effects.  I’ve even seen some people take it to a very powerful extreme in the form of IR photography, modifying cameras to achieve the look or going for it in their post production.  For that reason, I’d encourage you to consider adding some black and white to your portfolio, just for a sense of counterpoint from time to time.

I was dabbling a little with it over the weekend, and came out with several striking images myself – just going through various post production techniques.  Here’s a sampling of those images:

The back story behind this most comes from one of the more common questions I get these days about Lightroom.  It comes in the Develop Module and confusion about the difference between the Exposure slider, the Fill Light slider, and the Brightness slider.

It’s easy to see how there could be confusion when you start pushing sliders to their extremes, because at the higher levels, the impact does seem the same.  However, when kept within their intended parameters, these adjustment sliders all impact different areas.  Specifically:

• The Exposure Slider adjusts the brighter tonal portions of an image
• The Fill Light Slider adjusts the shadows or darker tones in an image
• The Brightness adjusts the mid-tones of the image.

To better illustrate, take a look at the images below.  First up is the default in camera settings:

See how the shadow detail is completely lost?  Having exposed for the sky, the camera was unable to capture the shadow detail sufficiently to reveal anything.  When you see this, often the natural inclination is to increase the exposure to try and bring back the detail in the shadows.  So, let’s see what happens…

See how the only area really affected is the part by the setting sun?  I’ve increased the exposure by one half stop.  Since that’s not much of an adjustment let’s take a look when we dial things up a bit more.  Here’s the next image, with the exposure increased by a full stop:

Now it’s just starting to look a little garish, and the appeal of the image is nowhere near even what the defaults were.  I could further prove the point by showing another half stop increase in exposure, but I think you probably get the gist.  So, let’s take a look at the Fill Light slider and how adjustments there affect the image.

Here I’ve increased the Fill Light to +25.  See how the area around the setting sun hasn’t been affected?  We don’t see much of a change yet, but watch what happens when we increase the slider some more.  Here’s the same image at +50.

If you look at the mountain, see how we’re starting to see some separation from the lower one in front and the one behind it?  You can see the tree line now!  This actually (I think) adds some depth to the image that wasn’t there in the original.  This is a great example of how the Fill Light slider is bringing back shadow detail in the image.

So, now that we see difference in the shadow detail, let’s take a look at what the Brightness Slider does.  As I said above, it doesn’t address the lightest tones or the darkest tones in the image, but rather tries to pull out detail from the middle tonal parts of the image.  Let’s take a quick look at that too, just to illustrate the differences here.

It’s worth noting here that by default, Lightroom puts an image at +50 on the Brightness slider, so an increase to 75 here isn’t that much of a change, but we are still seeing some subtle changes in the cloudy part of the sky.  That makes sense as this is where the mid tones are for this image.  It’s even more evident though when we adjust the brightness up another notch to +100.

That sky is starting to look just about perfect for my tastes.  I could take it a notch further but again, hopefully by now you get the gist.  What’s important here to note though, is that there is no single slider adjustment for any given photo that will make it “perfect”.  Instead, it’s almost always a combination of post processing adjustments in not only the exposure, fill light, brightness, and even others that will take your snapshots and make them great shots.  For me, the end result here, is a combination of all three of these sliders, and a dash of some other adjustments to make it what you see below:

Here, I’ve done some adjustments to various sliders.  Can you tell which ones I’ve used and to what degree?  Hopefully after today’s post, it’ll be easier to tell in the final image – and in your own images!  Take some time and play with your own images inside of Lightroom and see what it can do for you!  Have a great weekend, happy shooting, and we’ll see you back here on Monday!

That software is a plugin that Jeffrey Friedl makes called Metadata EXIF Viewer, which you can download for free from his website at the link provided.  It’s based on an EXIF tool Perl script from Phil Harvey, which he links to here.  It’s just like any other Lightroom plugin as far as installation goes – download the compressed file,decompress, and then copy the folder to where ever you save plugins for Lightroom and you’re set.

Then, after installation, highlight the image you want to get extended info for, and click on File, Plugin Manager Extras, and select the plugin:

Once a short CGI script runs (that’s the Perl program for you programming types), you’ll be presented with a laundry list of more info than you likely ever wanted to know about your photos.  All this, just from the header info!  Check it out:

Like I said, a veritable fountain of info…and this is just from one photo!  The question of course becomes one of “What do I do with all of this?”  Excellent question!  In the interests of full disclosure, more data isn’t always a good thing, and for many of the fields, there’s often no data reported.  Nevertheless, there are times (albeit not everyday occurences), where being able to access everything can be helpful.

Tune in tomorrow for a more detailed explanation as to just one of many possible uses!  Until then…take a minute to stop over at Jeffrey’s website and try the plugin.  (If you want to register it, you do need to make a donation of at least one penny, otherwise it’s free to use for 30 days.  I gave $2.00)

Got your own neat little add-ons, plugins, or tools that you use in your workflow too?  Feel free to sound off with your input in the comment section!  Until tomorrow, happy shooting!

After I do this, I simply look up at the top of Lightroom while in Library mode to filter my collection for either picks or rejects. From my approach, I do the rejects first, then CMD/CTRL A to select all and delete! Then from the picks, I’ll go through and make whatever edits I need, even including round trips to Photoshop, Photomatix, or whatever 3^rd party software I happen to need or be using at the time.  This is always so much easier with Auto Advance enabled. I can fly through a shoot of 500+ images in about 20 minutes both to clean up the catalog, and make the picks of what will likely be in the final published album. Give it a whirl and see if it improves your work flow!

Got your own tips or tricks for Lightroom, Photoshop, or simple camera techniques? Share the love and sound off in the comments! Either that or share your own thoughts on what you think of the techniques I share here. Regardless, tips tricks and techniques like these are always designed to help you get through post production and do what we all love to do – get out and shoot some more! Happy shooting and we’ll see you back here next time!

Keyboard shortcuts are great ways to improve your efficiency when working on post production.  Here’s a couple that I use in Lightroom to help improve things so I can get my processing done, and get out and back to shooting that much quicker!

CMD/CONTROL+8

This takes me all the way down the Develop Module to Camera Calibration.  If I ever want to make adjustments to which profile to use (typically I use Camera Standard, but it’s always fun to experiment), this gets me there a lot quicker than scrolling with my mouse or tablet!

R

Yup, that’s it – just the letter R.  From the Library Module, this will take you to the Develop Module, turn on the crop tool and show you how you currently have your image cropped for composition.  That’s it – one letter, no fuss no muss!

Module Switching

A super slick way to move between modules is to use your Command key (CTRL Key on Windows) and the ALT key along with the number for each module.  It’s super easy to remember too:

Library = CMD/CTRL+ALT+1

Develop = CMD/CTRL+ALT+2

Slideshow = CMD/CTRL+ALT+3

Print = CMD/CTRL+ALT+4

Web = CMD/CTRL+ALT+5

That’s it – 3 easy ways to improve your work flow with Lightroom shortcuts!  Wawnt some more?  Check out the full detailed reference guide straight from Adobe here.  What ways have you found to improve your own work flow?  There’s tons out there, so share your own in the comments!  Thanks for stopping in and we’ll see you here again next time!

Over the weekend I had the distinct pleasure of joining my colleague and good friend Kerry Garrison (who you probably know from Camera Dojo) out “in the wild” as we traveled to the Breezy Point Resort north of Brainerd MN (about three hours west and north if the twin cities) and spoke at their Northern Lights conference.  Through the coordination of our sponsor, Nations Photo Lab, and the conference hosts, MNNPA, we had a wonderful time.  Not only did the coordinators treat us like Rock Stars (we did give some autographs though), the attendees were quite engaging too.

The pre-conference sessions were set to start at 12, and our gig started at 5.  After a few of the logistical things were addressed that always come up with hosting conferences (they even had a live wedding going on one room next to us – what a great opportunity for a bride to get a wide range of photographers applying their trade), we got rolling.  A mere five minutes into our introduction, we paused to add even more tables and chairs to the room as more and more people started filing in.  For a regional conference to have a crowd this big during a pre-conference tech talk was quite surprising, but also very enjoyable.  So, what did we talk about?

The topic was none other than Lightroom 3!  We talked about how to navigate around, some of the benefits and tips and tricks of LR to soon realize that we are very fortunate to be in the position that we are.  It was humbling to realize that we really are on the cutting edge as so many people are using Lightroom 1, LR 2, or even earlier generations of Photoshop for their workflow.  Our discussion quickly was adapted to both demonstrate why and answer questions on what makes Lightroom 3 such a useful tool for both established and emerging photographers.

The questions raised were just wonderful ranging from very broad-ranging ones like “Why should wedding and portrait photographers care about upgrading their work flow?” to ones as detailed as “Can Lightroom manage PSD files?” and “How can I keyword photos during import?”  By the time our two hour segment was up we had barely covered the import process, a little bit on the adjustment brush, and the nuts and bolts of things like cropping, selective color, and black and white conversions.

Ours was the last segment for the day and we were then invited to the after party over in one of the adjoining houses.  Food snacks, drinks and such were all available and in abundance.  With the abundance of spirits, everyone was in great spirits themselves as we laughed and talked further with lots of people about photography stuff until the wee hours of the morning.  By 1am we were done though and needed to head back to our respective cities (myself to Denver and Kerry to Anaheim, CA).  So, during our road trip back to Minneapolis for the return flight, we decided to record this show for you.  Answers to all the questions above and more are here, as well as a few photo opp stops!  Thanks for taking the time to listen, hope you enjoy it and we’ll be back again soon with more photo goodness!

Catch up with Kerry:

• Blog
• Website
• Facebook
• Twitter

Follow me on:

• Facebook
• Twitter

Learn more about the Northern Lights Conference and MNPPA here:

• Northern Lights Photography Convention
• MNPPA

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The power of Lightroom has been so well documented from various outlets across the internet and magazines, I often find it surprising that such a small amount of space is dedicated to black and white photography.  This month, I’d like to take an opportunity to delve more into the creative adjustments you can make in Lightroom to bring out more in an image than just shades of gray!

There are two areas in Lightroom where you can make creative adjustments to the color to make things pop.  The first two HSL (for Hue, Saturation, and Luminance) and Color are great resources to use when you want to massage the color palette of your image.  The Black and White “tab” though, is where it’s really at.  When you click this tab, the image will be converted to an automated black and white adjustment, where the colors are converted to shades of gray – with no color tones at all.  This is where I’d like to begin the exploration:

While this can be a powerful way to present an image, the automated method of conversion is not going to work all the time (and for my tastes rarely does the default conversion work).  So, you have to dive in and really get comfortable with adjusting color tones.  To start off, I am using a pretty basic image – a red flower, and you can see that there is absolutely nothing wrong with the colored version of the image.

It’s got some great black and white potential though, so let’s go ahead and take it into the BW adjustment panel tab.  When I do that, the automated adjustments will kick in:

It looks interesting, but let’s see what massaging the colors just in the panel can do.  To start, since the flower was red and made up nearly 95% of the composition, I started with the red slider to see what the extremes would do on each end.  Here’s the image with the red slider taken up to +100 and then to the opposite extreme of -100…

In both cases, for me it’s an absolutely hideous image.  Clearly, there is a balance that must be struck somewhere in the middle – the question is where?  Well, now it comes down to subjective tastes.  For me, the default adjustment had the red a bit too strong – which kind of hid the morning dew of the flower, so I dialed things back a bit, taking the red slider from +22 to -20.  The droplets are now much more visible as they are standing out from the petals!

So, now we are getting somewhere fun!  I tested a few more sliders, and ended up with the yellows and oranges slightly higher than the default settings, just to give a bit more contrast.  Here’s what it looks like after the black and white adjustments are made:

Of course there is always a bit of sharpening and noise reduction to make in post production, as well as lens correction, and even a little bit of vignette from time to time to help draw the viewer in.  Once these are done, the final image definitely has a creative look and feel to it:

It’s clearly not easy to decide both when, to make a black and white conversion, as well as how much to massage or tweak it to your tastes.  The ultimate decision is, of course, up to you as an artist and photographer, but you can’t get there by avoiding the Black-and-White panel!  Take some time to explore it!

***

There’s more to the article than that, and it has been modified somewhat to make for a better blog post, so be sure you subscribe to the PhotographyBB newsletter when you have a minute.  It is free, after all, and probably one of the best sources of a diverse set of reading material you can find.  Dave Seeram, the editor, has been quite generous with his kindness and patience in my contributions!  Please stop over and give him your thanks as well…nothing but learning and knowledge to gain!

As always though, I end up being more curious than informative!  What types of black and white adjustments do you make?  Do you prefer the neutral grays, or do you like to add a hint of color to your b/w images too?  What methods have you found useful versus not so much?  Sound off in the comments as I love to hear how others are working through their own images!  Happy shooting and we’ll see you next time right here!

Like this post?  Subscribe to the email version of the RSS:

I wish the birds eyes were more viewable, and the ISO was pretty high so took some serious slider dragging in LR to make presentable here.  Not sure the second is close enough to be worth it, but then again there is something to be said for negative space!  Consider it a photo critique day – so do thy worst fair readers, critique the author!

Happy shooting and we’ll see you back here again soon!

The way I understand the digital photography landscape (no pun intended), is that there are three phases in which you can (and should) sharpen your images:

1. Capture Sharpening – This type of sharpening is done on initial import from your camera to your image editor.  Whether that is through ACR in Photoshop, in Lightroom (which has ACR built in), or any other application.  This initial one is of utmost importance because of the inherent softening of images during the demosaic process when interpreting raw sensor data.  As I understand it, the settings used here are relative to the camera you are using, but not so much the specific image.


ACR Sharpening

2. Creative Sharpening – After import, this would be the time when selective and subjective interpretations are done on images.  Whether you choose to apply USM (unsharp mask) in Photoshop, a High Pass overlay layer, or some other means, these types of effects are always done to taste, and very much open to interpretation.


Creative Sharpening using High Pass Filter

3. Output Sharpening – Last, but not least, output sharpening is when you apply sharpening effects specific to your output device.  These settings are dependent on the output device, such as a printer, the web (screen), as well as the size and resolution of the output image (smaller size requires less sharpening than larger files).  Even within output sharpening there are settings specific to the printer you are using, and to the paper you are using,

Again though, these are just my impressions on whether sharpening is needed in a digital age or not. I know someone is going to ask, so should probably state here that an entirely different set of criteria should be used when talking about film sharpening techniques…but I digress!   Back on topic, there’s actually a couple really good resources (from my biased perspective of course) that discuss sharpening in much greater detail than I did here.  First off, a book called “Real World Sharpening” by Bruce Fraser and Jeff Shewe is one I would highly recommend.  For those with an online reading preference, here’s another good article on the subject, also by Bruce Fraser.

Am I off base?  What are your thoughts on sharpening?  Is it needed in a digital world?  When and how do you sharpen your images (if at all)?  Sound off in the newest poll (also in the sidebar):

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

My friend Sean McCormack from The Lightroom Blog has taken quite a bit of his R&D time to develop a web module add-on that uses HTML, but makes things look pretty kick butt using jquery (which is expected to be part of the HTML5 standard which is still in development – so he is very ahead of the curve in that regard, which is good for the rest of us, because we can roll out content and sites now that will be compatible not just now, but also in the future!)

He gave me an opportunity to really kick the tires, and I have to say I am very impressed with the options and customization available from the slider menu.  Typically, when you get to the web module, you’ll have maybe a screen or two of options to choose from including image sizes, borders, and perhaps a few font changes, but Sean really takes things up several notches here – I scrolled through the entire panel, and came up with 12 different pages of content areas where I can activate and insert different options, including up to 6 galleries, an about page, a home page, a contact page and so much more!  Take a look!

The First Four Panel Captures

Panels 5 through 8

Panels 9 thorugh 12

The amount of thought and work he’s put into this is really astounding, and there’s only more to come for sure.  You can check out a partially compiled web gallery I’ve put together here on the blog to get an idea of the full layout with some sample images from my own portfolio:

Lightroom Blog Exhibition

Like I said, the controls you have over your images is pretty amazing.  Sean has this up on the Adobe Exchange site, as well as at his own web presence, for only €15 plus VAT.  I think that equates to a little over $20 US, so an amazing deal for a truly customizable website of photography and artist information all at your fingertips from inside Lightroom!   I’d have taken some time to go into the settings in more detail, but it’s hard to improve upon the Youtube Video Sean has put together  on how the “sub-galleries” work within the larger gallery.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=047NxVFRBqI

It’s a few links, and about ten minutes of learning curves, then just enter your site information and you are off and running!  Go check it out and get your won web gallery today – not only will you be the envy of all your friends, it’s my personal opinion that galleries and websites with this kind of look and feel are the ones that are more likely to convert viewers to buyers…

1.  I’ve often heard that in LR post production the top-down and left-to-right approach is good, but also that setting camera profiles is a good first step, which is on the bottom right.  What’s your approach?

Once Adobe added the camera profiles, it messed up my whole top-down approach. So now I have to go all the way to the bottom to set the camera profile, then back up to the top to start developing a photo   One work around I have for it is to create a preset of the camera profiles and apply it during import. So it’s already set by the time I get to working on a photo. I have a few favorites and I usually know which ones will work (Landscape for landscapes, Portrait for portraits, etc…).

2.  Since PSU TV is more Photoshop, can viewers expect to see any Lightroom tips coming into D-Town (esp since it seems like software that is geared toward photographers)?

Actually there will probably be more Lightroom in PSU TV. Lightroom is technically “Photoshop Lightroom” and from our research most PSU TV viewers are into photography so it makes sense to cover it there. I touch on post-processing once in a while on DTown TV when I see an opening but we’re pretty packed with camera-related stuff there.

3.  Since you are asking others about keywording all the time (you can find his LR PRo questions over at www.lightroomkillertips.com ), let’s do a 180 – how often do you keyword?

Very rarely. If some generic keywords happen to work during import I’ll apply them there but if they don’t it’s rare that I come back and actually keyword after that. That said, my main areas of photography are landscapes and portraits so I don’t miss them much there. If I want a photo from Moab, I just click my Moab collection and they’re there. Same with the portraits. I very rarely have an editor call me and say “Can I get a photo of a waterfall, with a woman wearing red standing near it, during the summer, on a Thursday?”. I always teach people that if you constantly find yourself looking through for your photos based on some collection of descriptive wording then by all means they should keyword. I fully believe in it for some photographers – just not me

4.  Other than Photoshop, what program in the Creative Suite is the most useful for your own creative endeavors?

I’ve always loved Illustrator. From an artistic standpoint, Illustration is probably one of my favorites. I just really dig crisp clean vector illustrations so Illustrator is probably top on the list for me.

Special thanks to Matt for taking the time to stop in and share his thoughts and insights with the LDP crowd.  You can find Matt in several places online:

• Lightroom Killer Tips
• Photoshop User TV
• Dtown TV
• Twitter

Don’t forget, tomorrow is the grand finale – when Scott Kelby comes in for a few of his own questions with the LDP crowd!  We’ll see you then!

• Saturday Aug 28th – Denver, CO
• Workshop will be held at:
• Arvada Center for Arts & Humanities
• 6901 Wadsworth Blvd Arvada, CO 80003

*****

On the free front – the August contest is underway on Flickr and the prize this month is a 50 sheet pack of Polar Metallic Paper from the folks at Red River Paper.  You all likely know how much I love this paper and this company – here’s your chance to find out why with your own pack of paper to push out some super prints for clients, family, friends, or even your own walls!  Submit your own image to the Flickr thread (the theme is Metal).

*****

Last but not least, the eBook has been flying off the virtual shelf, and the response there has been overwhelming too.  Read the reviews, and get your own copy from the eBooks page here!  It’s still a super deal at only $4.99 for the digital download – it includes 49 Photo Tips, explained in detail and with accompanying images to demonstrate the effect when appropriate!  Add this one to your virtual library today!  (An iPad version is due out shortly – working on the ISBN now…)

*****

That’s it for Friday!  Have a great weekend, and we’ll see you here on Monday with the Super Exciting News that I can’t share yet!  Are you ready for some excitement though?  Stop back in to find out!

It was a great conversation, and I’d like to thank Tyler for taking the time to sit down and chat with me – here’s the show notes for everything that was covered on the latest episode:

News:

• Eye-Fi expanding coverage
• Polaroid 300 bringing back instant film
• World’s Largest Photo

Conversation With Tyler Stableford:

• Website: www.tylerstableford.com
  
• Video:
  • 5 Point Film Festival
  • Colorado F-16 Fighters
• News: www.tylerstableford.com/news
• Social Media:
• Twitter – www.twitter.com/tylerstableford
• Facebook – www.facebook.com/tylerstableford

Listener Questions

• Digital Frame Resolution Problem
• Older Cameras and Newer Batteries
• Joint Copyright

That’s it for the show – lots to listen to, and Tyler was super cool to chat with.  Be sure to stop by his site or catch up with him on Facebook to share your thoughts on him and his work.  One thing that didn’t come up during the show was the May giveaway for a copy of PTGui Pano Software.  Be sure to check out the giveaway thread and get your own photos in before the end of the month here.

We had a bunch to talk about ranging from:

• iPad release from Apple
• Lightroom 2.7 RC from Adobe
• Lightroom 3.0 Beta 2 from Adobe
• Drobo FS release from Data Robotics
• and then there was that one about Photoshop CS5!  Here’s the topics we cover:
  • Content Aware Fill
  • Merge to HDR
  • HDR style adjustments to single images
  • Noise Reduction
  • Add Grain
  • New Vignetting
  • Lens Corrections based on Camera/Lens
    • - Shared lens profiles
  • Natural Media Brush tips
  • Mixer brush tool
  • Puppet Warp

Add in the listener questions and we talked for nearly two hours.  It was a lot of fun and there was some awesome information for everyone that we just kept rattling off.  Some of the links to products we talked about in the show are listed below…if I miss any let me know in the comments and I’ll come back and insert them as needed.  Additionally, I have a couple reminders that are specific to LDP, so here you are:

1. Zosh
2. Don’t forget you can now call your questions into the show for free at:  866-809-8663!  You can call in from any phone, whether it be land line, cellular, or Skype!
3. The monthly winner for the Cheetah Stand was Josh, so congrats to him for his shot, and the April contest is now live.  Check the Guidelines, Rules of Engagement (new!) and submit your photos in the Flickr thread.  This month’s theme is Balance and the winner (lucky dog) will get an Expo Disc from the generous folks over at Expo Imaging!

Phew!  Lots of content for  a Tuesday including web links, podcasts, software and hardware news!  Take some time and soak it up!  Happy shooting and we’ll see you back here tomorrow for more photo goodness!

So, in the interests of putting some sort of creative graphic design effect together, I started playing around in Photoshop when I got home with a few different tools, effects, and all that fun stuff.  When all was said and done, the effect of all of this playing produced something that I thought would be worthy of a Photoshop tutorial.  However, I did run out of time to put all the screen shots and steps together for a blog post, so here is a teaser of what you might be seeing later this week!

The End Result

The ones that got me there…

The final result is a little surreal, but using the various effects were fun.  It also took some rather plain photos and turned them into…well, something not so plain!  When’s the last time you played in Photoshop?  Can you identify the effects used here?  Share your own pictures in the comments (remember, we have image upload now!), as well as any thoughts and or feedback.

Special thanks and shout outs to Brian for hosting the DALPUG meetings and for encouraging our creativity- he puts a lot of time and effort into these and it shows!

Only a couple blog notes for today, first that the Monthly Giveaway only has a limited amount of time left for submissions, so make sure you submit your Circles themed photos to the Flickr thread before the deadline!  Happy shooting and we’ll see you back here again tomorrow for more creative encouragement!

This plugin comes courtesy of Jeffrey Friedl, and one of the greatest features of it is the cost – absolutely free!  Well, that’s not exactly true, you do need to spend one cent via Paypal, but for a penny, check out what you can do:

I started off downloading the ZIP file (and it works for Windows or Mac) and expanding the archive.  Then I moved the plugin to the root of my Applications folder on the Mac (you can choose where ever you want to store plugins, you just have to tell Lightroom – and for me this is an easy place).  The icon for it looks like this:

Flickr Uploader Plugin Icon

Nothing too spectacular yet, and there’s a little bit of installation and customization needed.  Your needs may vary based on how you want to use the plugin, Flickr, and Lightroom, but the cool thing is that Jeffrey has put together a plugin for most online locales including Smugmug, Zenfolio, Facebook, Photobucket, and many more.  So, if you use another resource, it’s worth checking out.  I’ll continue here for the Flickr plugin and you can decide for yourself if it’s worth adding this tool to your workflow.

Next up, I went ahead and configured the plugin from inside of Lightroom to use my Flickr account.  Here’s what I did. To start, click on Export, just as if you are exporting to disk or some other resource

Open Export Dialog

One the export dialog box is open (and here’s the tricky part), look to the far right of the gray bar across the top that says “Export to Disk”.  You’ll see two little arrows which means there are menu options:

Files on Disk

If you click on those arrows, you’ll get a new dialog box (bet you didn’t know that was there – did you? ), and the Flickr option will show up.  Select the Flickr dialog one for our purposes here:

Flicker Exporter

Once you select the Flickr Exporter, you will get a new dialog box that will start the authentication process that Lightroom will use to log into Flickr.  If you have multiple Flickr accounts, or specific authentication methods you prefer, these steps may change a little based on your needs.  But here, I am doing things the most straightforward way:

Flickr Authentication

Next up, if you are logged into Flickr already, the plugin will open a page that will grant access to the plugin.  So, it helps if you are already logged into your Flickr account on the internet.  So, you’ll get a dialog box that looks something like this from the plugin to that effect:

Warning Notice from Plugin

On clicking the OK button, it will take you to the grant access page, and you’ll get another dialog box that grants the plugin access to post photos to your Flickr account (which, after all, is the goal, right?).  The one notable difference you will see in yours is that my face won’t be staring back at you like here.  That is the avatar for my Flickr account, so your screen should show your avatar – if it shows something different, then you are in the wrong account (but I guess that goes without saying)!

Granting Access from Flickr Side

A second confirmation screen from Flickr will also let you know that this is a 3rd party application, and just acts as a security measure to make sure you are aware of what that means.  Click the button that says “OK, I’ll authorize it”, as shown below.  Again, while it goes without saying at this point, your dialog will look a little different different.  If it doesn’t and you see my avatar in your Flickr account, I am gonna be calling soon!

Authorization

Finally, you will get a confirmation screen on Flickr, noting what you’ve done (they make it pretty clear what you’ve done, and how to delete it if needed on the Flickr side):

Flickr Confirmation

On return to the Lightroom interface, you’ll get a confirmation screen there as well – just click it to continue:

Lightroom Confirmation

On granting access, you’ll get an authorization code, which for obvious reasons I am not going to post here, but make a note of that code and enter it back when you return to Lightroom.  On completing that you will be presented with the Flickr Uploader Dialog.  Here I am going to show you a few key ones that you have to scroll down to be aware of in making your uploading preferences.

This first shot (above) shows the top part of the dialog, and shows how you are authenticating on Flickr.  Now, use the scroll bar on the right side to move down through the options.  First stop, the Photo Set.  On authenticating, the plugin will pull your complete list of photo sets from Flickr.  If you don’t have any photo sets built, then none will be here.  Since I do have photo sets, it will default to the first one alphabetically.  You can change the sort order, and specify what photo set (if any) you want the uploaded image to be added to, as desired.  For this example, I did not add the photo to an existing set, or create a new one.

Photo Set Choice

Pretty straightforward, but let’s keep scrolling through a few more key items you will want to think about utilizing or disabling depending on your work flow.  The next one I think warrants mentioning here is the groups.  One of the ways you can increase the visibility of your photos on Flickr is by participating in groups.  More people look at them, you’ll get more feedback, and sharing our photos with others is the goal anyway, so go ahead and add the appropriate groups here.  I selected the group “CanonBlogger” for obvious reasons!

Publishing to a Group

Only a few other options that I think are useful from this plugin, so we’re almost done.  Next up, is another social networking one that I tend to use fairly regularly – Twitter:

Twitter posting

Last but not least are the meta tagging options you have available to you from the plugin interface.  The options are just to diverse to go into detail here, and I prefer to tag photos on Flickr differently than in Lightroom, so I leave these blank, but in the interests of full disclosure, here are some of the tagging and naming options in the plugin dialog:

Tagging Photos

If you think about it, for a penny, this is a pretty good deal (I went ahead and made a donation, which I would also encourage you to do as well – Jeffrey has clearly put a lot of time into developing these plugins, and he needs to eat, just like the rest of us).  So, there you have it – the process of finding, downloading, installing, configuring and using the Lightroom Flickr uploader.  As I mentioned at the beginning of the post, there are other uploaders available as well, and I am going to probably go get the one for Smugmug as I have an account there too.  It just makes the sharing of your photos that much easier.  (Who knows, the Facebook one may also make its way into my utility belt at some point once I get more comfortable with it…)

If you have questions or problems with the installation or the uploader itself, Jeffrey has a good FAQ page here that should answer most questions for you.  If not, I am sure he has an email address available somewhere for specific questions not addressed online.  For my work, I think this plugin totally rocks!  It’s going to become a staple in my work flow, and if you are into social media at all, I would highly recommend it for those purposes as well.

In talking about all of this, it bears mentioning that some of us are not fans of Flickr, Twitter, or Facebook, and while I can understand the hesitation of some, it’s really a matter of personal preference, and maximizing the time you spend on your computer.  if these outlets aren’t your cup of tea, that is totally fine.  But if you have the Flickr plugin – it is that much easier for you to participate in the Monthly Giveaways here at Canon Blogger/Learning Digital Photography!

With those thoughts, I’ll leave well enough alone as this post has gone on long enough for one day.  Happy shooting (and uploading) and we’ll see you back here again tomorrow.

Denver Adobe Lightroom & Photoshop Users Group

No, this isn’t spam, the blog has not been hacked, and I am not speaking in tongues here.  DALPUG refers to the Denver Adobe Lightroom & Photoshop Users Group.  Started relatively recently by a guy I know named Brian Reyman, it’s a great local resource for photographers to not only learn from one another, but also to network and get an opportunity to see some of the latest developments in the industry.

I had a chance to attend the meeting last night, and the mini-workshop that Brian ran on plugins included quick looks at things like OnOne Software, Topaz Labs, Nik, and a bunch of others.  Not only were they showing you how to use the plugins, they were offering up giveaways too!  It’s a great group, offering people opportunities to learn, share, and network with others in the field in the area.  Definitely worthy of a diversion from the regular blog schedule to give some shout outs here today.

I’ve also learned that these sorts of groups are all over the place – Adobe sponsors user groups across the globe!  So, here’s a chance to sprad the word about your area groups.  Got one you know about?  Attend any regularly?  Let me know here in the comments and link to your website or user group site so people can find you!

Short but sweet, so keep on shooting and we’ll see you back here again tomorrow!

Also up today, a little shout out to Dave Zarzacki, who owns a like new Canon XSi in mint condition, but just doesn’t need it in his gear bag (he’s trying to round out his collection with an SLR that will take all his current lenses).  It’s a great deal which includes the following:

• XSi body (black) – $640 value from B&H
• Canon 18-55 IS lens – $60 value as part of above kit from B&H
• Tiffen UV filter – $7 value from B&H
• 2 4GB SDHC cards – $25 value from Amazon
• Gary Fong Puffer flash diffuser – $20 value from B&H
• M-Rock Yellowstone bag ($54 value)

Individually, this would sell for over $800 easily, and Dave is only asking for $650 plus shipping.  I know the guy personally and can say that he knows how to take care of gear – this stuff will not have a scratch or scuff and will work as though new.  A great deal for someone starting out!  Any takers?  Drop me a line to get his email address and information.

Finally, for today, the Sigma lenses are in, and I can’t wait to start the review process on these this weekend!  Already found a few features that are just too cool for school!  Some other gear review items are on deck too – but I want to hear from you!  What do you want to learn more about in the way of products, gear, accessories, and such?  Sound off in the comments or with me via email!

Happy shooting all and we’ll see you back here tomorrow!

Grab the feed

The rules were simple:  Take any two pictures you like in May, share them on Flickr thread (& be family/work-safe) and you are eligible to win a copy of Adobe Lightroom – courtesy of the good folks over at Adobe (especially Tom Hogarty who was kind enough to make an appearance on the podcast to talk about the product and to take so many listener questions!

Anyway, I said that after the close date (end of May), I would pick the ten images I thought were best and forward those on to him for a grand prize winner decision (not that there’s a 2nd place, runner-up, or anything like that).  well, in perusing the images Monday and Tuesday, I really couldn’t decide on ten.  There were just too many images that I felt deserving.  Such is the case of contests and giveaways though – and the role of judge is a lot harder than I thought it would be.  But, I did winnow the entries down though – just couldn’t go lower than 14.  So, without further ado, here are the 14 finalists!

Lightroom Giveaway Finalists

Naturally, rather than display the images in the blog, I figured it’d be appropriate to do so in a web gallery, created at the hands of Adobe Lightroom!  Hopefully, this will also give people a little more insight into not only Lightroom, but into critiquing your own work and prepping contest submissions.

That’s it for today – congrats to all the finalists, ant thanks to everyone who participated – it was a lot of fun to see everything.  We’ll see you back here again tomorrow, and hopefully I’ll hear from Tom soon on who the lucky winner is for the free copy of Adobe Photoshop Lightroom!  Keep on shooting, and we’ll see you back here tomorrow!

Grab the feed

• The last day to enter your photos for the Lightroom giveaway is super close – so get your shots in the Flickr thread here pretty soon!
• Adobe updated the ACR to 5.4 (still in beta), and is downloadable here
• Canon announced some firmware updates and break/fix news on some of its SLR lines.  Tune into the podcast for details.
• My Pick of the Week:  Photoshop Insider
• Scott Kelby’s Worldwide Photowalk
• Chuck Conder’s Flickr Thread (listen to find out why…)
• Wireless USB Dongle from Engadget

Seriously folks, don’t miss out on your chance for a free copy of Adobe Photoshop Lightroom!  Get your photos in today!  A $30o retail value and free from the folks over at Adobe – in this economy we could all use a little help and Adobe is being very generous here.

Well, that’s about all for this week.  Thanks for tuning in and we’ll see you back here on Monday – as we head out for the weekend, don’t forget to have fun out there.  With that in mind, here’s my favorite WTD from this past week – so fitting for my job in IT!

Happy Shooting!

ETA:  Thanks to reader Don for reminding me about the link to the PhotographyBB magazine article.  You can download the full magazine here

Grab the feed

Here at the blog though, rather than take sides on such post processing methods, it’s more fun to show people how to do things, and then let you all take your own liberties either with the approach or with your processing afterward, or both to get results that appeal to you!  With that in mind, the feedback I’ve received from the previous discussions included a large number of people that asked for visuals of the process (I guess they are all visual learners).

Well, rather than take several dozens of images showing all the various settings and then explaining how I got toeach, a video seemed a more appropriate approach.  So, here’s the video short for those of you that requested visual aids.  It’s not the most professional but you should be able to get the gist.

This would also be a good time to remind everyone that we are in the dwindling days of the Adobe Lightroom contest.  You can win your own free copy of Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, courtesy of the folks at Adobe, simply by entering images you’ve taken in May over at the LDP Flickr thread.  Limit two images per person, but there’s still room for many more entries (no limit on the number of PEOPLE that can participate!)  just join the group for free and post your images.  Good luck to all and may the best photo win!  (Final results will be posted in June – I’l send my top ten picks back to Tom Hogarty for final judging when he’ll pick the winner!)

That’s it for today – I should have the podcast up tomorrow, but as always, no promises as my schedule has been fluctuating at work lately.  Happy shooting, and I will be back with more news, information, insights, tips and tricks tomorrow, whether in written or audio form.  Thanks for tuning in and we’ll see you back here again tomorrow!

Grab the Feed

1. Create your slideshow as you normally do in Lightroom.
2. Export the show to jpg files in a folder of your choosing.
3. Close Lightrooom
4. Open Garage Band
5. Mix a track of audio music that will fit the theme of your slideshow
6. Export that audio track to the folder with the pictures.
7. Close Garage Band
8. Open Photoshop CS3 (or your favorite pixel based image editor)
9. Create an intro and closing image for your slideshow and save as jpgs to the folder
   *Hint* Make sure you keep the dimensions consistent with your previous images so you don’t get pixelation
10. Close Photoshop
11. Open iPhoto
12. Import the photos from the folder you created earlier with the jpgs to a new album
13. Create a slide show from said album
14. Rehearse timings and check for image/audio quality
15. Export to desktop (it will export as a Quicktime movie file by default)
16. Take said movie file and upload to YouTube
17. Add titles, descriptions as needed…
18. Voila!

The key to this is iPhoto.  You don’t necessarily need Garage Band to make a legal audio track.  Many open sourced audio files are available for use, though a lot of that content is classical.  iPhoto has the built in ability to export slideshows as a movie than other applications like Lightroom, Powerpoint, Photoshop, and others.  Lightroom is also rather key too though as the backgrounds and text effects for the titles and everything were done in there.

On Windows, it’s a whole different story – you can do the Lightroom thing, but then you have to go out and buy a slideshow program to accomplish this for you.  While there are many options, and at varying levels of price entry, the ones that I’ve used that are good are Proshow Gold and Camtasia, from Photodex and Techsmith respectively.  The former prices out at $80 while the latter runs for a pricey $299 but allows you to also do screen captures, and lots of other stuff.  Either way, shelling out additional money to do something that is native on the Mac gives just another reason to consider the bundled functionality that Apple brings to the table with it’s computer lines.  (And this is coming from someone who has worked in Windows almost exclusively for the better part of ten years… as I tell people these days though, I work in Windows and play on my Mac!)

Finally, as we head into the weekend, there’s a couple fellow photographer/blogger types that are hosting contests and seminars in the upcoming weeks and months.  So, if you’re interested in improving your craft, there’s no better way than to either participate in a seminar and learn something new, or submit to a juried contest…and that’s just what Rob Jones of Towner Jones Photography is doing and Scott Eccleston, of Weekly Photo Tips!  Rob is hosting an impressive summer photo contest, and Scott is runing a Maine Photography Workshop that is sure to ignite the creative energies.  Act soon on Scott’s as registration is almost over!  Make sure you take these guys into consideration when planning out your summer activities!

That’s it for this week – I am off Monday for the holiday, so there may not be a blog post then.  Next week is the last week for the Lightroom giveaway contest though, so be sure you are getting your entries in to the Flickr page to win your own free copy of Adobe Photoshop Lightroom – a $300 value!  Happy shooting and we’ll see you back here on either Monday or Tuesday!

Scott is also known for his annual worldwide photo walks that he started last year.  This year response has just been enormous to the walks, with several cities (including Denver) filling up within the first 24 hours.  Well, on his blog this last Monday, he wrote a Q&A post describing the photo walks, what they are, how they work, and all that stuff.  One question he snuck in though was that he would be in Denver and did anyone know of any good places to shoot in the downtown area.

Since I work downtown, (pretty close to the Convention Center I might add), I have a fairly good understanding of where things are, and what’s fun to shoot.  So, I posted a comment on his blog of where he could go and what might be fun.  To my astonishment, he actually wrote me back via email, asing if I’d be interested in going on a photo shoot with him to kinda show him around!  Not give him a few locations, not recommend a restaurant – he invited me on a photo shoot!  With him!  My jaw about hit the floor, but I did respond that it’d be my pleasure to show him around the area.  He sent me some info on where he’d be staying and to come on over after work on Tuesday!  My jaw hit the floor again.  But, regaining my composure, on Tuesday after work, I walked over to his hotel to meet him.  Knocked on the door and sure enough – Mr K. himself!  The maker of the Kelby Kool-Ade!

For the next 2 hours, we walked around the downtown area -  talking shop, and all that stuff.  I was silent for about the first 30 minutes, afraid I would say something utterly stupid to embarrass myself, but as I walked and we talked, found that he’s just a regular guy (despite his amazing base of knowledge, and…well, the fact that he’s Scott Kelby!)  After a few hours of shooting, I then enjoyed an amazing dinner with him and his crew – names like Bert, Ben, Moose, Matt, Corey, etc., etc., were bandied about in the regular conversation.  Needless to say, I kept quiet for most of it, trying to keep my jaw off the floor.  I know, I know – they are all people too, but every time someone’s name was mentioned, I just kept thinking to myself, “Yup, I read their blog too!”  Oh, and then for the next day’s seminar – he reserved a front row seat for me!  It was an incredible day, and I just wanted to take a day here on the blog to give a nod to Scott for being so open and friendly, and just – so, well….cool!

My shots from the day were pretty much lousy as I totally wasn’t paying attention to my technique or anything – just trying not to look like an idiot.  Nevertheless, in honor of his visit to Denver, and in hopes of his return: