All Entries in the "Tutorials" Category
Social Networking Advice for Digital Photographers
A student in this week’s Lightroom for Photographers Workshop at the Rocky Mountain School of Photography asked for advice on social networking for photographers. Here is a short list of books and references that I have found useful in my understanding of this new emerging way of advertising your business. Helpful Websites: Seth Godin New [...]
Searching with Metadata in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom
There have been lots of reader questions lately about how to search and organize a large image library using Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. Working with metadata tools like keywords, colored labels, and star ratings is the only way to really harness the full potential of Lightroom as an organizational tool!
Importing Images: Getting Your iPhoto Images to Adobe Photoshop Lightroom v3
Moving images from iPhoto over to Adobe Photoshop Lightroom can be tricky because each program creates its own index. To do this right, you have to understand that these two programs do not work together. Moving files from one program to the other requires “exporting” a copy of your image from one program and then “importing” that file into the other….
Using Add to Import Files into Your Lightroom Index Without Moving or Copying
Adobe Photoshop Lightroom is designed to index a lifetime’s worth of digital photography. Lightroom creates a database which acts likes a library’s “card catalog.” Thanks to the index, it is easy for a professional photographer to find one specific image out of the thousands that are stored on their computer in seconds.
Importing and Moving Files From Your Internal Hard Drive to an External Disk with Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3
Two new video tutorials today for beginning Adobe Photoshop Lightroom users on how to import and move files from one hard drive to another using Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. These videos are intended to help new Lightroom users find their photos, or the folders full of images, that currently live on their internal hard drive. Most beginning users need the extra help with this process and its great to know that Lightroom can do all of the heavy lifting.
Importing Images: Creating an Import Preset and Copying in Files from a Digital Camera Memory Card with Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3
Ingesting new images from a digital camera memory card is a repetitive task that a professional photographer will repeat hundreds of times per year. This process just got a whole lot easier thanks to Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3′s new Import Preset feature. In this article, and video tutorial, we explain how to simplify your life by building an Import Preset.
Getting Started Right: Building Better File Names with Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3
My digital camera takes great pictures but it gives them lousy filenames. This is a big problem because the file’s name is a really important detail for a professional photographer. Unique filenames make it easy to communicate with clients and they prevent confusion. Sadly, most digital cameras cannot create unique filenames.
Since I cannot teach my camera to name my file’s the right way I must solve this problem when I add files into my Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 index. Lightroom makes generating unique filenames easy once you understand how to create a File Naming Template.
Getting Started Right: Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3′s Critical Preference Menus
Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 is finally here and it is a great to get started the right way with this powerful software! Lightroom is not a hard program to figure out on your own, but there are some critical switches buried deep inside its preference menus. Preference menus are dull material in any program, but a wise man looks the under the hood before buying a used car.
Upgrading from Lightroom 2 to Lightroom 3
So, you’ve heard that Lightroom 3 is out. You’ve read about some of the new features for professional photographers. You’re sold. Now it’s time to upgrade.
Advice on Buying Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3
Life is all about choices and software purchasing is no different. To get your copy of Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3, you could buy the product directly from Adobe, you could purchase the software from an online retailer, or you could pick up a copy at your local computer box store. So does your choice make any difference?
Getting Started Right: Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 Setup and Catalog Creation
Now Lightroom is a very straightforward program but to use it properly you must rethink your entire workflow from initial capture all the way to final output. To really get your money’s worth, you need to rethink every step in your photographic routine and look for inefficiencies. We want to think everything through and setup ourselves up for long-term success from day one with Lightroom.
Getting Started: The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 View Options Menu and Library View Toolbar Customization
I released a whole bunch of tutorials recently on crucial parts of the Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 setup process. The videos in this post are not nearly as important as the ones on building your catalog on an external hard drive or the ones on the Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Preferences Menus. Still, setting the View Options Menu up right and customizing the Library Module’s Tool Bar is a big help when you are new to the program.
What Software Should I Add to A New Mac For Photography
We photographers need to buy some additional software to get a brand new Mac up and running. This article is about the software that I think a new Apple computer needs for professional-grade digital imaging, word-processing, and everyday use. Click here to read more….
Adobe Photoshop CS5 New Feature Highlights for Photographers Part I
Adobe Photoshop CS5 is out now and many of our readers would like to know which features of the new version are going to be useful for photographers. Top’s on my list of highlights though has got to be the new processing algorithms in Adobe Camera Raw 6. With the new code inside of Camera Raw, and soon in Lightroom 3, my images look better than they ever have before….
Backing Up a Mac with Carbon Copy Cloner
I am fond of a backup utility called Carbon Copy Cloner on my Mac. This wonderful little program has saved me from total disaster when one of my hard drives dies. Click here to learn more and to see my video tutorial on how I use this software to protect an entire hard drive full of photographs.
Backing Up Windows Computers Using Acronis True Image– Updated
Maintaining an up-to-date backup is painless if you choose the right software. For Windows (PC) users my favorite backup software is a product called Acronis True Image Home 2010. Click here to read more about backups and to see video tutorials on how to use this excellent backup utility.
Adobe Photoshop Lightroom vs. The Adobe Bridge
This article is a follow-up to a recent post on how Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Photoshop Lightroom differ. This time, we will explore the differences between the Adobe Bridge and Adobe Photoshop Lightroom.
Lightroom vs. Photoshop
Do I need to buy both Adobe Photoshop Lightroom and Adobe Photoshop CS4? Digital photographers ask me this question all the time. It’s a good question and one that deserves more than just a simple yes or no answer. Each program has it’s own strengths, and although the two programs share some common features, they are not competitors.
Printing in Lightroom with Virtual Copies
If you do a lot of printing from Lightroom, there are situations where using Virtual Copies (VCs) can streamline your process. A VC exists only in the Lightroom catalog; it’s simply another instance of the original photo within the database. When you make a VC, there’s no file actually saved on the hard disk unless [...]
Keyword Sets Make Repetitive Keywording Push Button Easy
Everybody loves what keywords do, but most folks dread the data-entry time required to add them into each and every image. I think that most Lightroom users dread the data-entry time required to keyword their images for two reasons; a, because they lack an efficient keywording strategy and b, because they are unaware of the huge speed boost that is hidden inside of the keyword sets feature. Ready to see what keyword sets do?
John Beardsworth on “10 Things I Wish I Could Tell a Slightly Less Novice Lightroom User”
Today, I came across a post from Lightroom expert John Beardsworth entitled “10 Things I Wish I Could Tell a Slightly Less New Lightroom User.” I believe that this article is worth your time. I am especially pleased with Mr. Beardsworth second point: “Unless you really know what you’re doing, never use Explorer or Finder for moving or renaming files that are catalogued in Lightroom” since I recorded a tutorial on this very topic just a few months ago. For more information read on…
Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 Beta Help Now Online
Adobe posted a new website today to support the Lightroom 3 beta release. Scott and I are already signed up as moderators for the new site and are looking forward to helping folks learn Lightroom v3. Here’s a link to the new Adobe Lightroom 3 beta help site.
Scott Kelby’s “10 Things I Would Tell New Lightroom Users”
Scott Kelby, president of the National Association of Photoshop Professionals, posted an article recently that might help Lightroom beginners. If you are new to Lightroom, I encourage you to read his “10 Things I Would Tell New Lightroom Users” in addition to browsing all of the articles in our Getting Started Tutorials section.
I don’t agree with all ten, though. Read on to find out where I disagree.
Adding Metadata Adds Value to Your Photographs
Metadata is the new term for the descriptive information that accompanies any digital file. For photographers, metadata makes it easy to search through a huge library of images using tools like Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. Searching for a picture based on its metadata terms is far more efficient than scrolling along and looking at each and every picture in your computer until you find the right one.
Camera Raw Profiles in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom
Reader Question:I recently shot some pictures with a Nikon D300 in raw. When I downloaded these raw files into Lightroom 2.5 the brilliant colors that I saw on the camera changed to dull within Lightroom. It actually happened as I watched, one after another, the pics on lightroom changed from brilliant to dull after the download was complete. Any Clues?
Moving Folders with Adobe Photoshop Lightroom
Months ago, I posted an article on how to move your Adobe Photoshop Lightroom catalog files over to an external hard drive. So for today’s video tutorial, I am going to show you how to move your photos from one hard drive to another without upsetting Lightroom. As a bonus, I’m also going to show you a little trick on how to create new folders from within Lightroom, and how to rename your folders.
The LR2Mogrify Plug-in for Adobe Photoshop Lightroom
Today’s topic is on extending Adobe Photoshop Lightroom further with an export plug-in. From the factory, Lightroom is capable of doing amazing things, but it can’t do everything that I want when it prepares images for my email messages.
As you will see in today’s video, I believe that presentation–the wrapping, framing, “the polish”: around an image–is almost as important as the image itself. Anyone can email a photo; but I believe that a professional photographer should send out something that looks a touch more elegant. This is where LR2/Mogrify comes in.
Optimizing Lightroom for Best Performance: Top Ten Lightroom Speed Tips
It’s hard to argue that using Lightroom to manage and edit large collections of images is much faster than “the old way,” but we’re always looking for that way to squeeze out just a little more speed.
Here are my top ten tips for optimizing Lightroom for speed.
Keywording and Tagging in Lightroom
It’s not hard to get a lot of photos in Lightroom … and I do mean a LOT of photos. Ten-thousand, twenty-thousand, one hundred-thousand. I’ve seen some pretty big catalogs. What do you do when you need to find one of those images?
Proper Exposure With a Digital Camera
The digital camera’s sensor does not see the world the way our eyes do. With our eyes, brightness and tonal variation are linear, but for the camera this scale is logarithmic. Basically, this means that the camera can record lots of tonal variation at the brightest end of the spectrum but it captures very little tonal variation at the darker end.
