Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Killer Tips

Guess who’s birthday it is this week? Nope, not mine (that’s next week in case you want to send presents). This week marks the one year birthday of the official release of Lightroom 1.0. Yep, it’s been a whole year. Actually, it’s been longer then that since LR was out for about a year in beta before that. But most people didn’t really start using it until the launch last February. So happy birthday to Lightroom. What was your workflow like 1 year ago?

EVB (sorry, they didn’t leave their full name) posted a comment yesterday that I wanted to share with everyone. He/she pointed out a link to a video interview done with Jill Greenberg. Her photography has been talked about here a number of times as well as a lot of other places on the web. While she doesn’t share exactly what she’s doing both in camera, and in Photoshop, you can get a good insight into some aspects of her work. I found it really interesting to look at the catch lights in some of the work to see the lighting setup. Anyway, here’s the link.

One last thing. I forgot to mention that the Lomo preset from yesterday was actually on the list of suggested presets from the other week. So congrats to Tiffany for winning a one month subscription to Kelby Training’s online training site.

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It’s a brand new week and I’m kicking it off with a really cool preset. First off though, I have to thank everyone who pre-ordered my Photoshop Layers book. I posted about it on Friday and got a few responses from folks that pre-ordered. However, the pre-order sales I saw over the weekend showed me that a lot more of you actually ordered then commented here and I just wanted to say thanks - so Thanks!

Now for the preset. This one is based on a Lomography effect, hence the name “Lomo”. Sorry for the lame Styx reference but everytime I hear the word Lomo that’s all I can think of Anyway, Lomography really has it’s roots in an old camera that produced a certain styled photo (you can read more about it here if you’d like) but I’ve seen a bunch of requests over the months to recreate it in Lightroom. If you think it sort of looks like a cross-processed effect then you’re right. It definitely has hints of it. However, this one is a little bit different and doesn’t produce quite the “greenish/yellowish” effect that a cross processed look will. So have at it. There’s only one version and I’ve found it works great for portraits as well as landscapes.

Click here to see a before/after sample of the preset.
Click here to download Matt’s Lomo Preset

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Here’s some quick Lightroom news, websites, inspiration, and yes… one of Matt’s blatant plugs (I know, we haven’t seen one of those in a while). Let’s get started.

First up, let’s start off with my blatant plug. I’m ecstatic to report that I held a copy of my newly printed Photoshop Layers book yesterday. See, I wrote this book back in June of 2007. Because of some publishing schedules and a few other factors it’s just now being printed. As you can imagine (after having waited nearly 7 months) it’s a really cool feeling to finally hold a printed copy. So if you’re a Photoshop user (and I know you are) and you’re trying to get your head around that whole Layers concept this one is for you. Everyone that has seen it so far, loves it. Oh yeah, I’ll be signing the book for anyone who orders it from Kelby Training’s website so click here to get your copy signed.

Update: I forgot to mention, the Layers book hit the top 250 of all books on Amazon yesterday. It made it to the top 7 of all books in the Computers and Internet category. And it’s not even out yet! Sweet!!! Thanks to anyone who has already ordered it.

OK, now that we have that out of the way, check out some results of the aged texture preset from the other week. I love this stuff.

If you’re looking for some inspiration then you’re gonna like this one. I just spent about 15 minutes on Chromasia.com. It’s got a mix of documentary, portrait, beauty, and landscape photography and is well worth a visit.

It’s old news but one of my blog readers started a Flickr group for all of my presets a while back (now over 420 members strong!). That’s not the real news though. There’s a Lightroom Flickr group that’s really gained some traction over the last year. It’s not only got some great photos to look at but the comment section has spurred some really valuable discussions. Make sure you pay it a visit here.

If you’re looking for a Lightroom forum then here’s a couple of resources. First off, if you’re a NAPP member then the NAPP member website has a dedicated forum for Lightroom. The folks in the NAPP forums are awesome and you’ll thoroughly enjoy your time there. If you’re not a NAPP member, check out the Adobe forums or the ones over at LightroomForums.net.

Finally, if you need even more Lightroom stuff to keep you busy over the weekend, Adobe has been doing a great job of keeping up to date Lightroom content out there. So if you get tired of hearing my voice or reading my stuff make sure you take a look at their Lightroom Design Center. I’ll warn you now though, I pop up on there a few times so if you are tired of me, seeing my stuff there could push you to that tipping point where you destroy all of your camera gear. So stay away from anything with my name on it

That’s all I got for today. Thanks for listening to my blatant plug. Make sure you stop by Kelby Training and buy lots of signed copies (hey, I’m excited). Of course, if that’s not your thing, just make sure you have a fun and safe weekend. See you next week!

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It’s been a while since I’ve posted a Q&A and I’ve been getting this question a lot lately. So here goes:Question Is Lightroom destructive to JPEG photos?
Answer You probably know that you can import JPEG, Raw, TIFF, and other image formats into Lightroom just fine. We know that nothing we do to a Raw photo is ever destructive but does the same hold true for JPEG photos? Are the changes we make to a JPG in Lightroom actually changing the photo permanently? The answer… nope. It’s basically the same deal as when developing a Raw photo. Lightroom is storing each change, every slider move and preset click in some little database on your computer somewhere. It’s only changing a preview of the image on screen which is why it looks like you’re changing the photo permanently but you’re not. Just like a raw file, if you ever want to get back to the original JPEG just click the Reset button in the Develop module and it’s like nothing happened at all.

Now, the next logical question is how do I permanently change the JPG file? Say you want to email a processed photo to some one or post it on a website. No sweat. Just go to File > Export and export the modified photo as a JPG. Lightroom will apply the changes you’ve made and save a new JPG to where ever you point it to. Your original will still be stored in Lightroom safe and sound without any destructive changes made to it. The JPG you exported is essentially a copy of it with changes applied and it doesn’t change anything about the original that you’re working with in Lightroom.

Well my questioning (and answering) friends, there you have another edition of Lightroom Q&A. I’ll see you back tomorrow to finish up another week.

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As you may have seen, I took a couple of days off but I’m back from my quick trip out west and I’ve got another free preset for you. This one was actually inspired by a poster I saw in Las Vegas this past weekend. The effect was a very strong burned feeling and I set out on the flight back home to recreate it.

When you download the presets (and unzip the zip file), you’ll notice that there are two presets in this package. One of them is for people and the other is for anything with a sky in it. One thing I noticed when creating it is that skies reacted differently (mostly in a bad way) to the people preset so I made a couple of changes to account for anything with sky in it (which ended up doing bad things to skin tones, hence the “sky” name). That said, rules are made to be broken so feel free to give either preset a try on any photo to see which one you like better.

Click here to see a before/after sample of the preset.
Click here to download Matt’s Burnt Tone Preset

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