Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Killer Tips

Happy Friday afternoon everyone. I’m a little late on the post today because I had an early flight to Las Vegas this morning and, like always, I waited until the last minute to pack. But hey, I’m here right? Anyway, I’m in Vegas for some work on Sunday and Monday but my wife and I decided to come out early and have a little mini-vacation (no kids! woo hoo!). Here’s the tip and stuff.

The tip, and the link below, really centers around backing up. When it comes to Lightroom there are 2 main areas that need to be backed up. The first is your catalog and the second are your photos.
1) The Catalog: This is all the “stuff” about your photos. The changes you’ve made to them, collections, metadata, etc… You know, the stuff. You can back this part up by going to the File menu and choosing Catalog settings. Make sure you’ve got a backup scheduled under the Backup area. That will backup the catalog file which is the first part. However, just backing it up onto your computer’s hard drive does no good in case of a disaster. You’ve got to backup the backup. So make sure you store this backup on to some sort of external hard drive, CD or DVD (click the Show button at the top of the Catalog settings dialog to have Lightroom show you the folder where your catalog is stored).

2) Your photos. This should already be done. You should always be backing up your photos as soon as your put them into Lightroom. But how about your Lightroom library of photos (I call this the working library). Surely that can differ from your entire photo backup that you make right after the shoot. Here’s what I do. I store all of my photos (when I import them in to Lightroom in the Import dialog) into one folder called “Photos”. That’s where Lightroom will always look for the photos that it manages. That way, I only have one folder to backup and restore if ever needed. So you can just drag this folder (your working library of photos) to a backup device and you’re set.

Here’s a recap:
Lightroom library catalog (.lrcat file) + Your photos folder(s) = Lightroom’s library.
If you have both backed up daily then all you ever need to do is restore them in case of a disaster.

Ok, last thing if you’re interested in some weekend reading. I found a cool article the other day about backing up online. I’ve been tossing the idea around for a while so I found it a really interesting, yet quick read. My take: Basically, I think I’m holding off from any online backup for now. I have another external hard drive that I keep at the office so I essentially have 2 backup devices in case 1 gets stolen or something like that.

Enjoy your weekend folks. My wife has allotted me $50 to gamble with this weekend. Truth be told I’m going to try to sweet talk her into $100. I just know that if I can start with a hundred it’s a sure bet I can turn it into a least $30,000 or $40,000. Seriously, I feel it. I’m on a roll. How can I lose!? Wish me luck.

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Here’s a few things to chew on for the day if you’re looking to get inspired.

The first one if from a frequent visitor to this very website. His name is Hendrik van der Veen from Friesland (located in the northern part of the Netherlands). While not a professional photographer per se, you’d never know it from his work. He’s got some amazing landscape work as well as some equally amazing portraits. Make sure you pay his website a visit by clicking here.
Disclaimer: 99% of Hendrik’s work is PG rated. There is 1% though, that some may consider a little racy so if that offends you, then you may want to skip the “Portrait/Glamour” and “Still Life” sections of his gallery. I’m just sayin’…

The next gallery is something really different. His name is Andrew Wheeler and he’s a pro photographer that specializes in shooting motorcycle racing events. I first came upon his work in the latest issue of Photoshop User magazine (one of his photos is on the cover) where he talks about how Photoshop Lightroom fits into his life. I just love this stuff! The color, the sharpness, the speed he conveys is absolutely amazing to me. He’s got a website with a photo gallery here, but the best place I found to see his latest and best stuff is his blog.

Well campers, that’s it for today. I’ll be back tomorrow to close up the week.

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Hi Wednesday video watchers. I’ve got something very different this week when it comes to video tutorials. Instead of teaching you how to use a specific feature in Lightroom, we’ll take a look at how to use several of them together. The topic deals with processing photos and then coming up with a cool way to output them. It’s something I came across while preparing a site for a friend of mine but then I realized it had a lot of potential to anyone who wants to present different versions of photos to their clients (ie. color, black and white, tinted, etc…). So stop reading and click the link below to download the video and start watching. See ya!

Click here to watch the video. (12Mb)

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Today I’ve got the first visitor-suggested preset download. Last week I got a ton of ideas and suggestions for presets and one of them came from Julie Mcleod. She suggested the “Midnight” effect from Nik Software’s Color Efex. It turns a daytime photo into something that looks more like it was taken at night. Not totally at night but it’s a cool cinematic styled effect nonetheless. As I usually like to do, there’s a few different levels of the effect that range from light to dark so you have a choice when applying the effect. Many thanks to Julie for the idea. She’ll get a free month subscription to Kelby Training’s online training site. Happy presetting!

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

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Like a lot of folks I’ll be gearing up for the big game this weekend. My Tampa Bay Bucs didn’t make it so I’ll probably have to go with the Giants (I lived in New Jersey until I was 18). Sorry New England fans Anyway, I thought I’d combine the tip and the video again this week and cover another button that a lot of people miss out on. It’s the Previous button in the Develop module. If you’ve never used it, you’ll be happy to know it does exactly what it says. It’s another one of those little features that, once you use it one time, it gets mysteriously addictive after that. So sit back, grab some popcorn, and check out the latest video tip.

I hope you have a great weekend. Like most of you out there, I put some big money down on the game too ($8500) so I’ll be watching closely. I’m totally just kidding My wife would kill me if I put any more than $4000 down on a game. I’m kidding again. I did bet $20 bucks on one of those little office pool pick-your-square thingees though. Wish me luck!

Click here to watch the video. (4Mb)

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