Hi Folks:
There was a question on Twitter today asking people about their favourite Lightroom plugin. While I have a few that I use (including Jeffrey Friedl’s export plugin for Flickr), one of the plugins I use the most is the LR/Enfuse plugin from Timothy Armes. In essence the LR/Enfuse plugin allows you to combine multiple exposures into one image, and I use it in three different ways: Continue Reading →
Hi Folks:
One of the basic tenets in photography is that every image has to stand on its own merit – as the saying goes, “Nobody cares what you went through to make that photograph.” Still, I’m reasonably proud of the image below because of the circumstances in which it was made.
About the middle of September Marcia and I took the ferry over to Saltspring Island to take in the market and the Fall Fair, and we caught a late afternoon ferry to return. There was a storm brewing, so, fool that I am, rather than being safely ensconced in the cabin I was out on deck making photographs of the clouds. This image is a panorama stitched together from 19 images, shot handheld on a moving ferry. The 19 images were stitched together in Autopano Pro, and the final image was pushed around a bit in Lightroom. I trust you’ll enjoy it!
Now go out and make some photographs!
Mike.
Saltspring Island Storm Clouds
Hi Folks:
I’m still editing the images I made in August, but I’m far enough along now to pick a favourite. This image actually relates to another blog post we have coming up called ‘Walking Victoria‘, but as I haven’t written it yet I thought I’d talk a bit about Lightroom presets instead. There are presets in a number of different areas in Lightroom: import presets, metadata presets, print, slideshow and web templates for example, but for most people the word ‘preset’ in Lightroom refers to Develop presets. Some people love them and others say they wouldn’t deign to use them, insisting that each image is unique and should be treated as such. To each his or her own, as the case may be. My position lies somewhere in the middle. There are a number of websites that have presets for sale; personally I haven’t found the need to buy any. There are other sites that offer presets for free, and I have downloaded and installed some of those. I’ve also made some of my own. Mostly I use presets as starting points for creative ideas, or for suggestions when I’m not sure how to present an image. I almost never leave the image ‘as is’ when using a preset, but continue to build onto what the preset has to offer. Continue Reading →
Hi Folks:
I haven’t done a photography post in a while, and Matt Kloskowski at Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Killer Tips recently posted a video on his blog called, “Everything I Know About the Adjustment Brush“. He did an excellent job in covering the ins and outs of the Adjustment Brush in Lightroom, but he left out two sliders: Flow and Density. To that end, I thought I’d cover them instead. You can find them here:
Now, by default Flow is set to 50 and Density is set to 100, and many people set them both to 100 and leave them there, but you might want to learn what they’re for as they can help you with your creative processing. We’ll start with ‘Flow’. Continue Reading →
Hi Folks:
This has been covered on other photography sites, but since it popped up on Twitter again yesterday I thought I’d do a short post on it. The question is, “Can I add rounded corners to an image in Lightroom? The answer is yes, and it’s pretty easy to do, using the Post-Crop Vignetting Tool in the Develop module. That tool is in the right panel near the bottom and is mostly used to add a vignette for creative effect or to remove the vignetting sometimes caused by wide-angle lenses. To create an image with rounded corners, use the following settings:
Amount: +/-100 – depending on whether you want a white border or a black border.
Midpoint: Start at around 25 and adjust from there.
Roundness: -100
Feather: 0
That’s it! You can play with the numbers a bit, but once you’ve set them you can also create a Develop preset using the ‘Uncheck All’ then selecting only the ‘Post-Crop Vignetting’ checkbox. Here, you can even use this one: Rounded Corners preset.
Now go out and make some photographs!
Mike.
P.S. You can find more of our posts on photography and Lightroom tutorials here, and you can find links to over 200 other sites that have Lightroom tips, tutorials and videos here.
Hi Folks:
One of the gifts Mrs. Claus gave me for Christmas was a Samsung Galaxy S Vibrant GT-i9000M Android-enabled cell phone. The name is actually longer than the phone itself; I’m not sure who comes up with this stuff! The GPS feature combined with Google Maps makes navigating the sleigh a lot simpler, but that’s another story. The phone also has a 5MP digital camera, and that’s the topic for today’s blog post. BTW, I checked the Apple Canada site and the iPhone 4 also has a 5MP camera, so I’m assuming they’re in the same ball park as far as comparisons go.
The reasons for this post are two-fold. For one, up until now I’ve never really had the chance to experience making photographs with a cell phone camera. For the second, there have been a couple of posts on Mike Johnston’s ‘The Online Photographer‘ blog recently that say that the sales of ‘point and shoot’ cameras have been steadily falling. His suggestion is that point and shoot cameras are single-use devices while cell phones with cameras are multifunctional… so more people are simply using their cell phone cameras rather than purchasing a separate camera as well. Continue Reading →
Hi Folks:
Well, it’s a little late in the day but it’s still the last day of the month, and time for my ‘Photo of the Month’. Each month I pick my favourite image of the past month, although lately it’s often been more than one image. Most of my work involves landscapes, but sometimes I also stray into macro work. My dedicated macro equipment is in storage at the moment, but I have enough to get me through temporarily. I found two new (to me) species of butterflies this month. The first is an Anise Swallowtail, seen up on the top of Christmas Hill in the Swan Lake/ Christmas Hill Nature Sanctuary. The second is a Lorquin’s Admiral I found at the Oak Bay Native Plant Garden. I trust you’ll enjoy them as much as I do. Continue Reading →
Hi Folks: It’s the last day of the month, and that means it’s time for me to select my favourite image for this past month. I’m still processing images from April at the moment, so I’m a bit behind; fortunately Lightroom is patient with me.
Although I mostly make photographs of landscapes/ scenery, as I walk around I also keep an eye out for signs that strike me as being funny, irreverent, or sometimes just a little bit odd. I’m not the only one; Ellen Degeneres sometimes profiles such images on her show (according to Marcia). Anyway, I thought I’d show one of those images as this month’s photo. As an image it’s not great, but I like to think the message is cute. Read the signs and you’ll see what I mean. I wonder if there’s an interconnecting door?
Before and After
Now go out and make some photographs!
Mike.
P.S. You can see some more of my ‘Signs’ images on our Flickr site (although not all of them fit into the above categories).
Hi Folks:
I still remember a computer teacher of mine from… let’s just say more than twenty years ago… telling us of a project where he gave everyone in the class several pages of text to type in, set them to it and waited until they were about 2/3 to 3/4 of the way done, then turned off the power to the computer system. Amid the groans of everyone who was sitting in front a terminal he said, “Let’s talk about backups.” Continue Reading →
Hi Folks:
Update, April 16, 2015: The comment below reminded me of this post. I had forgotten about it because I subsequently wrote a series of five blog posts on the different ways to use presets in the nine Lr modules. If you’re interested, you can find the first one here: The Many Faces of Lightroom Presets: The Import and Library Modules.
This is going to be a relatively short post – for me anyway. One of the (many) wonderful things about Adobe Photoshop Lightroom is the ability to use presets to speed up your workflow. There are presets for everything from importing to exporting, for slideshows, prints and web galleries (although those are called templates), but for most people, I imagine presets refer to the Develop module presets. Even in the Develop module there are presets for the sliders in the right-side panel and there are separate presets for the adjustment brush/ graduated filter, presets for the Crop tool (specific dimensions) and also for the Camera Calibration tools. Continue Reading →