Posts Tagged ‘lightroom’
Wednesday, September 1st, 2010
Earlier this month Adobe released “candidates” for Lightroom 3.2 and Camera Raw 6.2 and today they have released the final versions of these updates.
These final version contain even more bug fixes and support for 16 new cameras (up from 12 on the candidate releases) including support for the just recently announced Canon 60D.
To check out the new features, big fixes, new cameras supported check out this article on the Lightroom Journal.
To download updates, click on the appropriate links below:
Follow Juan on The Digital Photo Experience
Tags: adobe, camera raw, Juan Pons, lightroom, Photo News, updates
Posted in Quick Tip, Software Updates | No Comments »
Wednesday, September 1st, 2010
Lightroom 3’s Crop Tool makes it easy to change your photo’s orientation from horizontal to vertical or vice-versa. Press the ‘R’ key to activate the Crop Tool, then press ‘X’ to change the orientation of the crop. You can do this in previous versions of Lightroom by dragging a corner, but LR3 makes it easier and quicker.
Learn more about Rob, view his images and check out his workshops at his website.
Tags: crop, lightroom, Rob Knight, tip
Posted in Articles, Quick Tip | No Comments »
Wednesday, April 28th, 2010
"Flower Man" Savannah, GA
There are many ways to find your photos inside Lightroom. The Library Filter bar contains several tools that make finding specific images easier. You can apply these filters one at a time or in different combinations to see only the images you’re looking for. To apply multiple filters, command(cntrl) click on the filter names in the filter bar. This is a great way to find and organize your photos for creating collections, as filters can be applied to individual folders or your entire catalog.
To open the Library Filter bar, make sure you are in the Library Module and press the backslash (\) key. The Library Filters will drop down at the top of the grid window. It looks pretty unassuming at first, but let’s open the tabs and see what’s inside.
Here are the Library Filters with all of the tabs open. From top to bottom (and left to right in the bar): Text, Attribute and Metadata.
First on the list is ‘Text’. The graphic below shows all of the options expanded for the Text filter. This filter seems simple, but there are a lot of options that allow you to get very specific results.
Text filter with its options expanded
Next is the ‘Attribute’ filter. This filter is not as self-explanatory as the Text filter, but it makes sense when you open it. Here you can filter your results by pick flag, star rating, color label or copy status. If you click on the ‘≥’ before the stars you can change this setting from “greater than or equal to” to “less than or equal to” or “equal to”. I use pick flags, star ratings and color labels in my regular workflow, and these filters come in handy for me. Copy status allows you to view original photos or virtual copies separately.
The last filter is ‘Metadata’. This is probably the most powerful of the Library Filters because it allows for so much customization. You can search for everything from EXIF data to upload status. You can add or remove a column from the filter using the drop-down menu in the top right corner of a column. Change the metadata category using the menu in the top left corner of the column. You can select multiple entries in one column by command(cntrl) clicking on multiple categories.
Metadata Filter
Lightroom includes Custom Filter presets like “Flagged”, “Rated” and a few others, but you can add your own to streamline your searching and organization. Create a search or filter you would like to save, then choose “Save current settings as new preset” in the Custom Filter menu at the right side of the filter bar. You can apply filter presets from the Custom Filter menu, or from the drop-down menu on the right side of the filmstrip.
“Flower Man” photo shot with a Nikon D300s and an 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 VR lens. Black and White conversion made with Nik Software Silver Effects Pro.
Read more about Rob Knight at his website, and learn about Rob's workshops at Edge of the World Workshops.
Tags: adobe, filters, instruction, learning, lightroom, tip
Posted in Articles, editing, tips | No Comments »
Friday, March 12th, 2010
Jekyll Island, GA. 3-shot HDR processed in Photomatix Pro, Color effects Pro and Silver Effects Pro.
Using Stacks in Lightroom is a convenient way to group similar photos together in grid view and the filmstrip. This is especially helpful if you regularly end up with multiple images of the same subject. You may have multiple shots of the same pose from a portrait session, a string of images from shooting wildlife, or you can even group your bracketed shots together for your HDR work. Stacks are also a good way to manage virtual copies, or different treatments of the same image.
Two HDR treatments and the source files take up lots of space in the grid view…
To create a stack, select the images you want to group together in the grid view and go to Photo > Stacking > Group Into Stack. You can also right-click on one of the selected photos and choose Stacking > Group Into Stack, or press command(Cntrl)-G. The images will collapse into a stack, and the top photo will have an icon indicating how many photos are in the stack. To expand the stack, click on the stack icon or press S. Press S again to collapse the stack.
The first image you selected will be the top image in the stack. You can choose a new top photo by expanding the stack, right-clicking on the photo you want on top and choosing Stacking > Move to Top of Stack. You can also select a photo and press shift-S to move it to the top of the stack. To move a photo up or down within a stack, press shift-left bracket or shift-right bracket.
… but when they are stacked with the final image on top, the source files are out of the way unless I need them later.
Lightroom can also stack photos for you automatically by capture time. Select a folder in the Library and press G for the grid view. Go to Photo > Stacking > Auto-Stack by Capture Time. This will bring up the Auto-Stack dialog box where you can specify the duration between capture times from 0 seconds to 1 hour. You will see the results of the Auto-Stack dialog in the grid as you move the slider. The longer duration you specify the fewer stacks you will end up with.
To remove a photo or photos from a stack, select the photo or photos and go to Photo > Stacking > Remove from Stack. You can also select multiple photos and select Photo > Stacking > Split Stack to create a new stack with the selected photos. The photos in the new stack will be removed from the original stack. Ungroup a stack by selecting one of the photos in the stack and pressing Shift-Command(Cntrl)-G.
There are a couple of things to remember about stacks… The images in a stack must be in the same folder. You cannot stack images in a collection, even if they are in the same folder. You can add stacked photos to a collection by expanding the stack and selecting the photos to add, but the stack will not move into the collection. If you want to access photos in a collapsed stack in the Develop module, right-click on the top photo of the stack in the filmstrip and choose Stacking > Expand Stack.
I hope this helps you keep your Library tidy!
Read more about Rob Knight at his website, and learn about Rob's workshops at Edge of the World Workshops.
Tags: adobe, lightroom, stacks
Posted in Articles, HDR, tips | No Comments »
Friday, January 29th, 2010
 The spot removal tool in Lightroom has to be one of my favorite features. With Adobe adding this tool, I can now spend more time in Lightroom than in Photoshop, increasing my workflow and my productivity.
The spot removal tool looks like a big O with an arrow pointing to the right. It can be found in the Develop panel, in between the crop tool and the red eye tool. When clicked, you will see an option to Clone or Heal the spot. You can also adjust the size of the area and the opacity you want to use for the removal. Typically I use "Heal" and adjust the other sliders to match the spot. The really nice part of this tool is that Lightroom will try to fix the spot on its own by finding a matching area! However, if the fix is bad you can just drag and drop the matching area to find one that works. Simple, right? It really is!
Here is a great example of a one shot HDR photo that I've been working on. This shot was taken during the Mark Wallace PocketWizard Meetup in Jack Studios. All of the dirt and spots you see are the window, not on my sensor. I really love this photo because it is so industrial. It gives me the "Gotham City" vibe. However, the spots are really annoying!
Even the helicopter at the top of this image gets annoying when the photo is small enough where you can't tell what it is…
…or that really long smudge from the top
 All of the circles you see in this screen shot are where I told Lightroom to make the removal. In Lightroom, when you put your mouse over one of the circles you will see another one appear with an arrow pointing to the original. That is the area of pixels that Lightroom took to fix your spot. As I stated before, move that new circle around and you will see the original spot's area change.
Neat, isn't it?
Getting rid of all of the spots on the window in this photo took me about 15 minutes of Lightroom work. Yes, it could take the same amount of time in Photoshop if you are quick about, it but the key is staying in Lightroom to improve your workflow. While the photo isn't complete, here is what I have done in a matter or 15 minutes:
If you didn't know this tool existed please give it a try. If you knew it existed and never thought it was worth a shot, please give it a try. I'd love to see your before and after photos too, so please post a comment with a link to your photos. Thanks for reading and happy shooting!
Scott Wyden Kivowitz
http://scottwyden.com
Tags: Clone, Heal, lightroom, Removal, Spot, Workflow
Posted in Quick Tip, editing | 3 Comments »
Wednesday, July 15th, 2009
When processing an image in Lightroom it is useful to check your work against the the original image you started out with. You an always revert back to your original image by going to the history panel on the left hand side of the develop module and selecting your original starting point titled “Import” which indicates the state of the image when it was first imported, then clicking back on the top most history entry to see the changes you have made. In my opinion this is just too much clicking to simply toggle between the “before” and “after” states.
Luckily Lightroom offers a little known keyboard shortcut to toggle between “before” and “after” and that keyboard shortcut is simply the “\” key. Try it you will be amazed at this simple time saving shortcut.
-J
Tags: lightroom, tip
Posted in Quick Tip | No Comments »
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