Archive for the ‘Tutorial’ Category
Some images only require a few adjustments and you’re done. Yes. You’re that good!
Other images just ask to be taken down different paths. As artists we often try to find the best expression of the moment we captured. But we don’t always know the steps from capture to masterpiece. We try different settings. Apply a preset or two. Dive into the adjustment brush. and so on. And, even though Lightroom preserves an endless stream of history on an image we don’t always remember at which step we saw one of those “looks” we liked. So what do we do?
Before Lightroom we might have saved multiple copies of an image. One for each different look. Now I know that storage is cheaper these days but how many times do you want to multiply a 25Mb file? Enter the snapshot!
Snapshots are one of the ways Lightroom lets us experiment and keep versions along the way. Even better, snapshots are virtual copies of an image that take up no room (or very very little) on the drive. These are literally snapshots of the settings at the time you take them. Great, huh?
Don’t confuse snapshots with Virtual Copies. We’ll talk about those in Part 2. So let’s see how to make these snapshots.
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Raw Processing Concentrate is described as “A real-world guide to creating stunning images with Adobe Lightroom.” The creators of this tutorial, Rob and Lauren Lim of Photography Concentrate, are two photographers based in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. They bring their experience and passion for the art of photography to these lessons.
This is not the usual module by module introduction to Lightroom. Rather it is a way to approach the processing of your raw images using Lightroom as your tool. Rob and Lauren were kind enough to give me a copy of the tutorials for review and I have to say I did enjoy them. There are over 5 hours of video tutorials. A small portion of the time is spent covering the Library module and Lightroom’s export features. The majority is spent examining the techniques available to you in the Develop module.
The techniques presented in the videos are sound and can be quite useful when you are faced with how to address an image and what road to take it down from an artistic perspective. If you are struggling with how to process your images or just a bit overwhelmed by all of the options Lightroom affords you, then this tutorial is for you.
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The iPad is an excellent tool for showing off your work. Chances are, though, if you are a Lightroom user you don’t want to fiddle with iPhoto just to get your images ready for your iPad and sorted into albums. And if you are a Windows based Lightroom user then iPhoto isn’t an option for you.
Before we look at how to export your images and create iPad albums I suggest you go read Matt Kloskowski’s recent post Presets—Lightroom iPad Export Settings. Matt describes how to prepare your images and offers two very useful export presets. Download these and then return here. Don’t worry. I’ll wait.
Welcome back! Now that you have Matt’s presets installed we can proceed. This is a fairly straight forward workflow that will make organizing your images on your iPad easy (and iPhoto free).
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We all know that Lightroom is not yet a net-workable application. While we can point our catalog to images on a network accessible drive we cannot put our catalog on a network drive. This presents a problem to those of who like to work on a laptop and a desktop.
There are techniques that we can use to work on two computers with a single catalog. Some include importing and exporting catalogs or parts of catalogs to keep everything in sync. All of that can lead to mistakenly overwriting good data with old. Or, perhaps, it gets too confusing to keep track. With a very large catalog this is our only recourse at present. However, for a smaller catalog here is a technique that leverages the cloud.
All you need is a Dropbox account! What? You don’t have one? Well before you read any further click here and get your FREE 2Gb account. Even if you don’t use it for this technique it is a very handy thing to have. The magic of dropbox is how it works so seamlessly. Each computer you install it on gets a local dropbox folder. Everything that happens in that folder is duplicated to your dropbox account in the cloud and then down to every other computer you’ve installed dropbox on. A recent addition allows dropbox to keep the folders in sync over your network for a quicker response.
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Aside from Halloween shots those glowing red eyes in images don’t belong. Of course, the best way to deal with red-eye is to avoid it altogether. So how does it happen?
When the light from your flash enters your subject’s eyes it bounces back from the retina. The retina is rich with blood vessels and colors the returning light red. If your flash is close to the lens (as are many on camera flashes) that light bounces right back into the lens and the eyes appear red. The farther away from the lens you move your flash the more you decrease the chance of red-eye. So the best way to fix red-eye is to get your flash off of your camera. I think more people are beginning to realize this.
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The start of a new year is always a time to think about change and improvement. One common resolution is to get more organized. In this age of digital media it is even more critical that we keep track of our digital assets. Lightroom has many features to help you organize your images.
Organization can come in many forms and at many levels. You can organize your images at the drive level (by using a system of folders, subfolders, and file naming conventions) and/or at the metadata level in Lightroom. You must first decide what organizational workflow fits for you. There are many websites and books devoted to this topic. You should do a little research before embarking on this adventure.
The best website I can recommend to you to delve deeply into industry standard organization practice is dpBestFlow.org from the American Society of Media Photographers and funded by the Library of Congress. The site is full of suggestions and videos. Get ready to spend some time there!
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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.
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One of the key factors in organizing and tracking your images is metadata. There are many types of metadata that Lightroom handles well. The two main groups of metadata are EXIF and IPTC.
EXIF stands for EXchangeable Information File and contains the details about the image supplied by the camera. Generally, the EXIF information should not be edited after capture. However, date and time corrections are usually allowed.
IPTC (International Press Telecommunications Council) is where we enter most of our descriptive information that does not relate to the technical capture aspects of the image. Things like descriptions, keywords, creator, copyright data, etc.
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How do you handle rejection? Rejected images, that is. When you import new images into Lightroom you are faced with the initial task of deciding what to keep and what to get rid of. If you haven’t had a chance to read my previous article on using the flags, Do You PUX?, I recommend you jump over there and read that first.
Welcome back. So now how do we handle these images marked with the Reject flag? Personally, I don’t like to delete images right away. I prefer to keep them around a little while and revisit my decision. Of course, if the shot is totally useless (too much blur, out of focus, really bad exposure, etc.) I just toss them.
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