List Additions
- Lens distortions and abberations got you down? Spend a measily $15 and get PTLens, a good tool that can be run as a Lightroom Editor (and it streamlines the workflow some from a standalone app). I’ve tried it, and it works well. Not as well as a correction module, but that isn’t yet on the radar. Until then, working on a rendered tiff is what you get - and its worht noting that this is Aperture’s solution to everything and it kinda sucks compared to being able to do this fancy stuff on Raw images. See LR 2.0’s Local Corrections for example. Zing! (Via the Lightroom Blog)
- A reader, Mike Solomon, pointed me to a tutorial and a couple of Lightroom presets on his blog. He says they give photos the “it” that sometimes is needed for advertising photographs. Worth a read.
- Like to put your stuff on the web from Lightroom? Check out all the galleries on Lightroomgalleries.com
A Big List of Fun Things
- Why DNG? I’ve covered this before, but here is a video of Bryan Hughes (a former student of mine) on Photoshop User TV covering this very topic.
- Lovely portraiture - Les Africains (via The Travel Photographer)
- Like disecting political imagery? - BAGnewsNotes has it covered. Today’s entry is spectacular.
- Hate what people do with Photoshop? What about those “rush” jobs or “hacks” that shouldn’t have been published? Somtimes it makes great entertainment.
- From Lightroom to your iPhone. Sweet.
- Flickr is cool. Here are some great add-on’s to make it better.
- Practical Exposure Advice - A book review from Studiolighting.net.
- Photoshop Velvia. Tips on how to give your color photos that velvia look.
- Doing Black & White in Lightroom. (via The Travel Photographer)
- With Lightroom 2.0 imminent, you might need a tablet to do all that brushing.
- Man, I get alot of questions - the two most popular: “What bike to buy” and “what entry level DSLR to buy”
- Ride a bike? Like cool T-shirts?
- Learn to edit your photos. And by edit, I don’t mean Photoshop them. I mean culling for the good shots. This is a skill that takes years to develop. Its like dancing. Only with pictures. And you can do it sitting down and avoid the russian woman with the yard stick.
- Copyright Issues? Listen up. I met Jack a few years back in his studio on a site visit.
- Have an iPhone? Need a photo-related application to waste your time with?
- LR/Mogrify is a great tool for doing extra things with Lightroom. Watermarking for example.
- Panasonic has a new high end Point/Shoot. I have the LX2 and like it. The LX3 looks even better.
- Looking for some awesome used photo gear? Check out my ebay auctions right now.
Ride Report:
Road. 25 miles from my home to Carnation and
back. Lovely ride. The leg is feeling good and
I’m riding strong. I sprinted up a 800 ft climb
for the hell of it.
Stephen Johnson on "The Intrigue of Complexity "
A quote:
“I would
strongly urge people to see simply, and edit simply.
Your photographs are your asset, much more so than
your Photoshop skills. Those image-editing skills may
well be critical to your craft, but they are
secondary to your photographic vision. “Fix it in
Photoshop” is a prescriptive attitude that often
leads to making images not worth investing time
trying to salvage through image editing.”
Amen to that. I resisted digital photography for
quite along time, only really shooting digital
seriously starting in 2007 with the arrival of my
Leica M8. I stuck with film mostly because the prints
I could get in Black & White were better with the
analog process. I have a darkroom and used it
extensively for years, but the last year has seen it
become a storage room (like many others I suspect)
because the technology (camera ergonomics, printers
and paper) improved. While there was always
manipulations in the darkroom - dodging, burning,
flashing, and cropping, the image generally had to
stand on its own merits in that rectangle on the
easel. Things have certainly changed, and often not
for the better. We all get fascinated with a certain
look, style or feel and sometimes its post-processing
that gives us what we are looking for, but its always
secondary to vision. That frame still has to have it
before a pixel is tweaked. I’m really grateful I
spent years working with film before I went digital
because it taught me to see and to edit. These two
skills mean more than anything else, and they take
years to learn.
As one who works on Lightroom and has contributed to
other Adobe software related to digital photography,
it always strikes me as odd when a great photographer
comments on his “lack of photoshop skill” as if to
appologize for his work when we talk. These are
tools. They help you acheive your vision, but they
are no subsitute for it. A crappy photograph is still
crappy after 10 actions in Photoshop and some layer
magic. I really like Scott’s cajones for publishing
this article - as one could easily point out his
culpability in the “tips and tricks” arms race.
Another quote:
“Solid
image editing is far less about secrets, trickery,
hidden features and shortcuts, than it is about
starting with a strong photograph, knowing your
goals, and methodically working toward them. Craft is
not tricky; it is most often plain hard work and
care.”
To the point, this past week I was in the field with
a friend shooting a story for the National
Geographic. We spent a lot of time focusing on
getting it right - there were long days (and nights)
working with a bag of techniques to make sure that it
was perfect. After a few hours of shooting a
particular object, we decided that something wasn’t
quite right and we’d need do something a bit
different. More shooting and more work lay ahead. Of
course, the knee-jerk was that we could “just fix it
in photoshop” but Alex pointed out that was the easy
way out. His comment (and I’m paraphrasing - I was
holding a big silk scrim in windy conditions) was
fitting:
“This is
the National Geographic - we get it right in camera
because it matters.”
Preach on, brother...
Making Lightroom Faster
Sure, as software developers we always make improvements and talk in terms of seconds, milliseconds and even X times faster. And we mean well.
Sometimes, it depends on a myriad of factors beyond our control. Have a slow drive? An old computer? Lacking reasonable Ram (and whatever you have, its probably not reasonable enough). Take good care of your computer?
Well, there are lots of
things you can do, and the guys over at shootsmarter.com have a nice article by Michael Clark
on tips to speed up Lightrooom (you may need to
sign up to view the article).
Link-O-Rama
1. The Inside Lightroom blog has a great tip for how to speed up your editing process in Lightroom - and this is one that I inadvertently discovered recently - and now use all the time.
2. Strobist has a set of DVDs now
available - everyone is talking about this. Great
idea. $140 isn't a bad price for what you get.
3. Zack Arias (a blog I've been
pretty into lately) also has a lighting DVD for
sale. Looks good as well - not priced yet though.
4. Scott Kelby has an interesting
proposal for Lightroom and Photoshop development.
And now for something
complete different...
1. DIYBike. I'm building one.
Yeah, with all my spare time. Ugh.
2. Weezer has a new single from an upcoming album.
Its been on a "one song" rotation all afternoon.
Pork and Beans. Sweet. Man, I
love Weezer. Geek Rock, uh, Rocks.
3. I'm getting old. I missed an internet thing. I
finally learned what a Rickroll is - someone inserts
this into an email link or
other public event. Funny! Love the dancing in the
prision-chique denim Rick. I wonder if he knows
about this phenomenon. Yes, I just Rick Rolled
you, but in a very obvious and non-threatening
way. Baaaaam!
As an aside, its been an interesting week. I've
gotten the flu and wasted a whole sunny Memorial Day,
my 8 year old nephew was diagnosed
with Leukemia and I finally managed to get out on
the road bike for a 63 mile jaunt up to Snoqualmie Pass and
back in less than 4 hours. It was cooooooold up
there in the fog and it took awhile to get feeling
back in my toes. And I flat with less than 5
minutes to home. Ugh.
I'll leave you with a picture...
Cheers!
Lightroom Round-Up
- L7Foto has a short video tutorial that talks the basic Pick/Reject/Rating editing task. This is something that every photographer needs to hone - and it takes years.
- Bridge/ACR/Photoshop or Lightroom? Scott Kelby covers this in his blog post on The Photoshop Insider. I worked on Bridge/ACR and then moved to the Lightroom team a year ago. There was a reason why I jumped ship - Lightroom is a much more focused, organized, efficient tool for 90% of the raw processing task. Period.
- Peachpit Press has revamped their Lightroom Resource Center. You can even get access to Martin Evening's LR 2 book before it is printed.
- Matt Kloskowski has revealed some of his deepest, darkets confessions in "Confessions of a Lightroom Addict"
Hangin' with Da Kost
We'd met before, but I've never spent much time with her until today. The booth was booming - lots of questions about Lightroom and one thing that people asked was where they could get a bit more information on how to warm up to Lightroom's way of working. I've always recommended the NAPP tutorials and the stuff that George Jardine (our pro photog evangelist) does on his podcast. Well, I should have probably put 2 and 2 together knowing what Julianne does, but she has a plethora of great resources on her website as well.
She has some great
tutorials for "quick starting" with lightroom,
quick editing and a host of
individual tutorials on specific features. If you
are looking for more great Lightroom resources,
please browse to her site and get some popcorn.
There are also some short PDFs that cover even
more.
I'd also recomend checking out her portfolio of images.
Thanks Julieanne.
So far WPPI is going great. We have a nice booth and
I was non-stop Mr. Answer for almost 5 hours. I
really enjoy booth duty, and while its exhausting,
its a lot of fun to chat up working photographers who
live and die on your software.
So thanks to you guys too. Lightroom is a great
product because you help us build it. Go team!
@ WPPI
A few things from around
the web:
- Your Camera Matters - Michael Reichmann's take on the old adage "Its the photographer, not the camera".
- Photoshop Disasters - Image editing faux-pas or "how not to use Photoshop"
- LRG's Complete - LRG's gallery of galleries web template (how many times can I put Gallery in this sentence)
Shooting Tethered
A
few weeks ago, I ran across a blog by Joe McNally
that showed his setup for shooting tethered...
http://www.joemcnally.com/blog/2008/01/28/the-mcnally-tripod-rig/
I've been doing some tethered shooting recently, and
this setup makes it so much easier to see what is
going on. I'm pretty excited about this and hope to
employ it at the studio soon. The small LCD on the
back of the camera isn't big enough for the client
(especially picky ones, like dancers) to see the end
result.
Sweet.
I had to reshave Liam's mohawk Sunday. Here are some
pictures from a few weeks back...
BTW, I'm in San Jose this week (again). More work for the next version of Lightroom.
Further Lightroom Tutorials
Steve Paxton's Digital Image Processing Tutorials
I'll be looking over his workflow stuff on the plane
ride home from Prague, and will give an update when i
get back, but in the meantime, check it out and leave
a comments if you have some thoughts...
As to training, thanks to all those who have
contacted me about the Lightroom Bootcamp training
sessions that I offer for photographers. I've
booked several sessions as a result of a post on
Seth Godin's blog and hope to
be sharing some insights as I progress.
Just a note: the pricing for the
sessions is currently at $150 for the first two
hours. This introductory pricing will last only until
January 31, so be quick if you want to score a super
deal.
Also, please check out my series of pictures from
Prague (Set 1) (Set 2) pictures...