A little inspiration (and stuff) to hold you over
It’s a short week for me so here are a few things to hold you over the long weekend.
1) First, pay a visit to Rodolphe Simeon Photography. His photostream over at Flickr is generating quite a bit of traffic and his website has some really great photos on it. Definitely worth visiting.
2) A while ago I posted a link to Elizabeth Carmel’s fine art photography website. Well, she’s updated the look and added some new stuff on there so you’ll want to re-visit when you get the chance. If you haven’t seen it - well, make sure you take a look. She’s got some fantastic work.
3) Finally, I know most of you have probably seen this site before so consider this as a gentle reminder to go visit it again. It’s the Strobist and if you’re looking for a Thanksgiving weekend project, then reading through the old posts on this site will keep you busy for the duration. Great site! I don’t visit every day but when I do visit I wind up killing a couple of hours and even get some inspiration about new projects to try.
Well, that’s it for the Wednesday inspiration update (and other stuff). Happy Thanksgiving!
Happy Thanksgiving week to everyone out there. It’s a short one for me so I’m pretty psyched to have some time off. Anyway, today I’m sharing my favorite Split Tone preset. It’s not really colorful like some split tone effects I’ve seen out there. It actually only adds a slight amount of red/orange to the highlights and yellow/orange to the shadows. I think it works great when you’re looking for that subtle classic effect. Also, don’t forget that split toning really works best when you already convert the photo to a black and white. So, I’ve included two presets here. The one with the (BW) at the end of it automatically converts the photo to black and white using the “General - Grayscale” preset that ships with Lightroom. Then I’ve added my split toning effects on top of it. Since Lightroom’s Grayscale preset may not work well on your particular photo, the other one just adds the split tone effect so you’ll have to convert your photo to black and white first. Enjoy ‘em!
Looks like the folks over at Adobe have been quite busy lately. There’s a brand new update for Lightroom which brings us to version 1.3. One of the most notable of the enhancements is compatibility with Mac OSX 10.5 (Leopard). I posted a Q&A about it earlier this week. There’s also support for some of the new cameras (mainly the newer Nikon and Canon cameras). If that weren’t enough, Adobe has also released updates for Camera Raw and Photoshop CS3 and Bridge CS3. The easiest way to find out more about the updates is to check out 
I recently saw a blog post (from a totally unrelated industry) about one simple word - Why? The writer encouraged people to think about why we do things. It got me thinking about Lightroom. I teach it to so many people. I’m excited about it. I think using it over Bridge and Adobe Camera Raw (for photographers that is) is the right thing to do. But why? Could it be the fact that I had $200 bucks burning a hole in my jeans pocket? 
Probably not. After pondering away for hours (ok, 7 minutes), I did come up with one simple answer: it’s just easier. Truth be told, I was hoping for a more complicated answer. Then I started thinking about whether or not everything needs to be quantifiable and have a long drawn out answer. Is the answer “it’s just easier” enough? I don’t know exactly why, but LR is just so much easier for me to use then Bridge and Camera Raw ever felt. They worked, but it seemed like it was clunky. It felt like I was using tools that were created for the masses and not tools that were made for me. That’s where LR feels easier to me. It’s one program and it does a very finite number of things. I know that. I like the fact that I’ll eventually run out of choices in Lightroom and I’ll have to stop. It makes my photo processing much easier as a result.
Ah… the old printing on a black background trick! Sounds simple right? Actually it is but there’s a little trickery involved. A lot of folks have asked how to get Lightroom to let you print on to a black background instead of the usual white. In this week’s video I’ll show you exactly how to do just that. It involves a little Photoshop (really quick, I promise) too but I think you’ll find it’s really easy and it can make a dramatic difference with the right print.
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