Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Killer Tips

Happy Monday to you. I’ve got an interesting group of presets for you today but first I wanted to thank my friend Jeff Revell of Photo Walk Pro for hosting a photo walk in Washington DC this past Saturday. I had an absolute blast and met some really great people.

OK, on to the preset (or should I say presets). You’re going to love this one. Not more then me though, because I’m taking the week off (from presets that is, not work). Nick Tsakiris from www.protographytx.com sent a message last week about some presets that he’s offering for free. “Free Presets?”, I said. I was pretty skeptical because anyone offering presets for FREE must be one really cool guy Anyway, Nick sent a message and included a link. I downloaded them and I have to say that they’re really really good. They definitely get my seal of approval which is why I’m putting them here. So go try Nick’s presets by downloading them here. There’s around 18 of them in the package and they’re well worth installing.

Thanks again to Jeff for hosting the photo walk and to Nick for helping give me the week off from presets (I’m really not as lazy as I sound) Have a great day!

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First off, if you didn’t check out the online photo shoot from yesterday (www.directdaniella.com) you’ve got to do it. It’s really cool. Next…
I’ve seen quite a few comments/suggestions to cover more on folders and importing your photos. I started out writing this as a tip and it quickly grew into a long post so I figured it was just easier to make a video out of it. The one question I get a lot when I’m teaching Lightroom is how to store your photos into folders when importing. There’s a few options and if you start out wrong then you can quickly make a mess out of your library and make it difficult to find things later. So this is the first video (probably more to come) about the topic and my take on trying to make things easier for you. That said, make sure you get into the comment area and share your thoughts on how you import and your organization structure. It think it’ll be cool for everyone to see some other ideas.

Well that wraps up another week. I’ve got a quick trip tomorrow that will hopefully spawn some good photos to see next week so keep your fingers crossed. Have a great one!

PS: Don’t forget, I’m still signing copies of my Photoshop Layers book for anyone who buys it from Kelby Training’s website so go ahead and get one before my hand gives out. See ya.

Click here to watch the video. (13Mb)

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Welcome back Thursday blog visitors. I’ve rounded up a few of my interesting picks for the week so here goes:

Direct Daniella - This is a really clever little site. Basically, you go to this website and do a live photo shoot of a model (Daniella). It’s something done in conjunction with a contest for Taco Bell but I think it’s a really clever idea. You’d think we’re all above this but I found myself shooting just about every location they offer. In keeping with full discloser, the model is a world famous bikini model so the male population will undoubtedly find this more amusing, but that aside I think it’s just fun. Sorry ladies, there doesn’t appear to be a “Direct Dan” website coming any time soon. Anyway, here’s the link.

It seems that every week some one is releasing/updating a web gallery for Lightroom and this week is no exception. The Turning Gate has released a Shadowbox Gallery which looks pretty neat (one of my favorites). You can visit the website, see samples of the gallery, and download it here.

Timothy Armes Photography has released a program called Lightroom Enfuse. In a nutshell, he provides a visual interface to this open-source command line thingee called “Enfuse”. I’m actually not sure what any of what I just wrote means, but it sounds too technical for me. So here’s my take. Lightroom doesn’t offer any way to blend multiple exposures. This “Enfuse” program does but you have to be a techie person to use it. So Timothy created an interface that let’s us non-techie people use it with Lightroom.

OK, that’s it for this dose of Links and General Lightroom/Photography Coolness. Make sure you scroll down to the next post for some inspiration.

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I’ve been reading Scott Kelby’s blog this week and he’s been into food photography. It got me searching around for other photographers and websites and I came across Jeff Kauck Photography. Jeff is a food and still life photographer and he’s been in every magazine, cookbook, or package you can think of over the last 20 years. He takes food photography to a whole new level and if you’re looking for a change of pace for inspiration this is it. You can visit his site and portfolio over at www.jeffkauckphotographyadvertising.com. Enjoy! (photo credit: Jeff Kauck)

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Hi everyone. I just wanted to give a quick update on a Lightroom book that I’ve had a number of people ask me about over the last 6 months and a few other things.

1. The Layers book is still tearing up the charts and it’s been hanging in the top 500 of ALL books on Amazon (wow!). Jason D Moore has written a pretty thorough review of the book over on his site. FYI… Jason’s got a great site overall so make sure you spend some time poking around.

2. I’ve got a Photoshop Elements book at the printer right now called “The Photoshop Elements 6 Book for Digital Photographers”. Scott Kelby wrote the original version of this book and he brought me in to co-author this latest update with him. As you can imagine it was a huge honor and I told him I’d only do it if my name gets to go first on the cover (totally just kidding!). It’ll be out in the next couple of weeks and you can find/pre-order it on Amazon here.

3. The next Photoshop book I’m planning on working on is a project that started about 2 years ago called “Photoshop 101 - Your first course in Photoshop”. I think the title says it all. It got held off for other projects but it’s back and should be out later this year.

4. The Lightroom Killer Tips book. If you look on Amazon.com you’ll see that I’m listed to write this book for this June. I’ve gotten a ton of questions about it over the last 6 months so I figure I’ll set the record straight. As of now, I’m not going to write this book. The reason why is that I just don’t think the tips are deep enough in Lightroom to warrant an entire book. See, when I write a book my job is to a) pick a topic that will get you to part with 30-some-odd dollars of your money and, b) make you feel good about it in the end. I just don’t think this is the book that’ll do that yet. Lightroom is fairly discoverable and I’d much rather continue bringing the tips, videos, and news that I bring to you on this website instead of entrenching myself in another book. Then, hopefully, by the time I do write a Lightroom book you’ll be a loyal fan and decide to purchase that book. Sound good?

Your Comments
That said, I’d like to open up the comments here for ideas on another Lightroom book. The main reason I haven’t written one yet is because there are already good books on the market. Scott Kelby’s book is the bible for Lightroom in my mind, so why try to write another “me too” Lightroom book. He covers Sorting, Developing, going between Lightroom and Photoshop, and even the entire workflow from shoot to finish. That being said, if there’s something about Lightroom, Photoshop, or digital photography that you don’t feel is being covered (or covered well) out there then let me know by posting a comment.

Thanks for all of your help and make sure you read on to the next post for this week’s preset.

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