Archive for December, 2009
Can you believe it? 2009 is nearly over! Where does the time go? Are you satisfied with your photography this year? Do you have photographic plans for 2010?
Lightroom is an excellent program but it still needs you to feed it images. If you find yourself in a creative slump or the shooting doldrums don’t despair! Leave all that in 2009 and look to the new year with fresh eyes!
Here are ten suggestions to help you rekindle that passion for photography! You may have seen some (or all) of these elsewhere but it never hurts to see them again.
Read the rest of this story »
As another year draws to a close I’d like to thank all of you for a great year!
I wish you a joyous holiday season and a happy, prosperous, and wonderful new year! Now go and toss another log on the fire and enjoy!
Lightroom has many many features but there are still things it cannot do out of the box. Luckily, Adobe anticipated this and provided an SDK (Software Developer Kit) to allow third party developers to create plugins that can enhance Lightroom’s feature set. If you’ve ever come across the need for a third party plugin then changes are you already know Jeffrey Friedl.
Jeffrey is on a very very short list of people whose names come to mind when you say Lightroom Plugin. He is one of the most prolific plugin developers for Lightroom. An excellent photographer in his own right, Jeffrey develops Lightroom plugins as a hobby! And the Lightroom community is certainly grateful for it!
Read the rest of this story »
Digital photography has come a long way in the last few years. Few today would argue that digital cannot stand as film’s equal. In many cases the technology now surpasses film. Not only do we have a digital substitute for film, we also have digital substitutes for most physical filters. Between the built in tools in Lightroom and the many sets of plugins available there are really only two physical filters needed today.
The effects of a polarizing filter cannot be reproduced digitally. Yes, there are a few digital polarizing effects which attempt to approximate some aspects of a polarizer. But only a physical polarizer present between the subject and the sensor can remove reflections and deepen the sky’s shade of blue. You can get close with digital effects but it’s much more work that just putting that filter on the lens.
Read the rest of this story »
Tucked away in the tool strip of the Develop module is the graduated filter tool. The graduated filter tool is another non-destructive local adjustment tool that made its debut with Lightroom 2.0 and contributes to Lightroom’s power and flexibility.
The most obvious use of the graduated filter tool is to recreate the effect of an on lens graduated neutral density filter. The purpose of this type of filter is to allow the photographer to compensate for the tonal differences in different areas of a scene. For example, when shooting a landscape you may be faced with deciding to expose for the bright sky, thereby under-exposing the foreground detail. Or, you can expose for the foreground and wind up blowing out the sky detail. A graduated neutral density will block more light on one part of the filter and gradually let more light through as you progress across the filter. This allows you to expose the scene without blowing out the sky.
To access the graduated filter tool switch to the Develop module and click the icon in the tool strip on the right (just under the histogram) or press the letter M.
Read the rest of this story »
