Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Killer Tips

Hey folks, here's a quick news update since I just finished teaching a workshop primarily on Lightroom and I figured I'd let you know where I'll be teaching for the rest of the year. There's another post today (another free preset) so feel free to scroll to the next post if you're not interested in this.

Thank youI just wanted to say a great big huge thank you to everyone that came to my Great Smoky Mountains workshop this past weekend. We had a fantastic time and I made some really friends along the way. It was great getting to know all of you and the laughs we shared will stick with me for some time to come.

I also wanted to thank my friend Alessandro, from the workshop, for leaving such a nice comment here on the site. Here's a peak if you're interested. He totally made my day I can't tell you how cool it is to see that I've helped people out like that. Thanks Alessandro (your pay off check is in the mail ;) ) and thanks to the whole class for a great weekend!

Coming Up
OK, here's where I'll be for the rest of 2008 in case you're thinking of coming out to a workshop or conference.

• May 5-6 - New York City: I'll be teaching some Lightroom sessions at B&H photo on these two days. They're totally free and you can find out more as well as register right here.

• Tuesday June 3 - Philadelphia, PA: I'm not sure about the details yet but I'm teaching a session for a CDW event (that is open to the public) that morning. I'll update with details as they become available but I'll definitely be there.

• August 9-16 - Hawaii Cruise: I'm teaching along side Dave Cross, Moose Peterson and Laurie Excel on a week long cruise through Hawaii. Folks, if you can make it out to this (I know it's a stretch) it will be one amazing week.

• September 3-6 - Photoshop World Las Vegas: This is my favorite event of the year. It's a 3-day Photoshop Love-Fest and hosts the best instructors in the world all in one place.

• October 15-18 - Bar Harbor/Acadia Natl. Park, Maine: This is another workshop for the Great American Photography Workshops (just like the one I taught in the Great Smokies last weekend). I've been to Bar Harbor before and I liked it so much that I'm going back. Sign up soon though. This is a hot spot for workshops and this one will definitely fill up.

That's about it for now. I know there's some more Lightroom training that I'll be doing toward the end of the year but I don't have the specifics yet. I'll update here on the website as soon as I know. Thanks and I hope to see you out.

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It's time for another preset day and I thought I'd give away a brand new one that I've been working on. This preset is the one I apply to my photos as I'm importing them. Now, if you've watched any of my earlier Lightroom videos (from earlier in 2007) you may recall that I never applied a preset to my photos as I imported them. That's changed as of late. I've been working on this preset and I've had some really good results from it. Here's how to use it:

When you import your photos there's a section in the Import dialog that allows you to apply a preset. Once you add this preset to your Develop module presets, it'll appear there and you can select/apply it on import automatically.

A few things to note:
• This preset works great on just about everything I threw it at. However, realize that the Auto settings that it uses tend to overexpose the photo sometimes. Not all the time, but I found some of the photos a bit bright after it was applied (especially portraits and studio work). If that happens, the first thing you can do is adjust the Exposure setting and bring it down a little.
• Just because you applied an auto adjustment preset when you imported doesn't mean you're done. It's a starting point, so you'll definitely have to do some adjustments after.

I hope you enjoy it. Make sure you let us know what you think by leaving a comment.

Click here to see a sample of the preset.
Click here to download Matt's Auto Adjustment Preset
Click here to see a video on how to install presets.

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Happy weekend folks. As you've noticed it's an unexpected blog day. I'm trying something new out by blogging on Saturday. Not because I plan to continue to blog on Saturday's but more because I just finally got internet access on Friday night (my hotel's wireless apparently is more like connection-less). Anyway, I've got some photos to share from the workshop I'm teaching at, but if you want to skip straight to the tip just scroll to the end of this post.

Great Smoky Mountains Workshop Update/Photos
I'm about halfway through my workshop in the Great Smokey Mountains and we're having a blast. As always, I'm meeting some really great people and within a few hours you'd think we all knew each other for years. Plus, I'm incredibly impressed at the number of great photographers in this workshop. It really is inspiring to be shooting along side these talented folks. I thought I'd share of few of my photos so you can see the kind of scenery that we're in.

Photo 1 - Here's one from our sunrise shoot on Thursday (shot with my Nikon D300 and a 17-55 lens)

As you can see, the sky wasn't anything spectacular and was pretty much a bust. So, I did what any self-respecting photographer would do... I ditched the wide lens and put the 70-200 zoom on and started looking for the photo within the photo. Here's a few more

Photo 2 - Another from the sunrise shoot (Shot with 70-200 Nikon VR lens)
Photo 3 - Yet one more from sunrise (Shot with 70-200 Nikon VR lens)
Photo 4 - This is a church we saw on the drive through Cades Cove (Shot with 17-55 lens)

And Now for the Saturday Tip
I was actually reminded of this tip by Garth (Alan Sisto) Brooks, a guy in my workshop this weekend. We joked around because if you put a cowboy hat on him, he's a dead-ringer for Garth Brooks. Anyway, let's say you apply a bunch of changes in one of the panels in the Develop module. For example, maybe you tweak a bunch of sliders in the HSL panel. Later, after making a bunch of other changes, you decide you want to reset the sliders in the HSL panel. You could manually drag each slider to 0 but that's a giant pain the butt. Instead, hold down the Alt (Mac: Option) key. The panel will then display Reset Saturation (or whatever panel you're in) button. Just click on it to reset the sliders for that panel but not everything else in the Develop module. It works for all the panels though so make sure you give it a try.

I hope you're having a good weekend. We've got an early AM shoot on Saturday morning (I'm writing this on late Friday night). It looks like it's going to rain so we'll be heading under some trees to shoot the streams in the mountains. Cross your fingers that I don't fall in : )

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It's Q&A day again. I'm actually leaving for Knoxville, TN this afternoon for the Great American Photography workshop I'm teaching at this weekend. I've got a sold out workshop and we'll be shooting the Great Smoky Mountains all weekend. I'm psyched and I'm really looking forward to meeting everyone this evening. If you ever get a chance to go on one of these workshops (with me or anyone for that matter), trust me, you'll love it. They're always a fun, inspirational, and learning-packed weekend and I come back with some great new friends from every single workshop.

Anyway, on to the Q&A. Here it is:

Question: Why should I use multiple catalogs in Lightroom?Answer: There's a few different reasons to explore using multiple catalogs. I'll list the reasons as well as some candidates for multiple catalog use here. I'll also tell you how to create another catalog at the end.

1. Your existing library is getting too big. When I say too big, I mean in the tens of thousands of photos too big. Originally, it seemed like 30,000 photos was thrown around as a limit for the catalog size before Lightroom started to slow down too much. I was actually talking with Tom Hogarty (Lightroom Product Manager) at Photoshop World earlier this month. Tom said that the 30,000 limit isn't necessarily true. He's coming across plenty of folks that have catalogs twice as large as that and Lightroom still runs just fine. At any rate, you'll start to see things slow down if you get too many photos in there. If that happens, it's a good idea to start breaking your catalog apart into another one.

2. You share a studio and computer with some one. This is another good chance to use another catalog. If you share a computer with somebody else then consider making a catalog for each of you. That way you won't get mixed up or potentially do something to the other persons photos that they didn't want.

3. If you're a wedding photographer and you're filling up your catalogs in a matter of weeks then multiple catalogs may be the way. A few wedding photographers I know actually make a new catalog for every wedding they shoot. It helps them keep the catalog sizes down as well as making it easy to keep things organized. There is a downside to this. Your keywords and collections and all that other fun stuff won't be shared across multiple catalogs. So if you're in the "Smith Wedding" catalog, don't think you can search through to find photos from the "Miller Wedding" catalog. Not such a big deal for wedding photographers since you'll typically want to keep things separated. That doesn't work so well for me though, as I like to open Lightroom and find all photos that were keyworded with, say, 'ocean' no matter where they are. I couldn't do that if I did the multiple catalog thing.

4. You've got lots of personal photos and lots of work-related photos. This is another great reason for multiple catalogs. I actually have a separate catalog for all of my work photos from photos shoots and trips etc..., then another catalog for all of my personal family photos, and finally another one that I teach from. That way, when I start Lightroom I can fire up the catalog that I need at that time.

Question: How do I create another catalog?
Answer: Lastly, if you're not sure how to work with multiple catalogs just go to the File menu and choose New Catalog. Lightroom will ask you for a name and place to store this catalog (I choose my photos folder) and you're set. If you want to switch between catalogs just choose File > Open Recent and your recent catalogs will be there.

Question: How can I move photos from one catalog to another one?Answer: No sweat. Open the catalog with the photos you want to move. Go to the File menu again and choose Export as Catalog. That creates a folder that I store on the desktop (that's not where your photos will be stored though). Then open the new catalog that you want to put the photos into and choose File > Import from Catalog.

Well that's it for Q&A day. I'll be shooting and teaching a lot over the next few days but I'll try to post some shots here. Oh and make sure you let me know in the comments if you have another way or reason of working with multiple catalogs. Take care!

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Happy Tuesday everyone! I've got a brand new set of presets for you this week targetted directly at blue skys (or lack of). Here's the deal: There's 3 different presets in this one each making the sky a deeper blue. Go ahead and develop your photo first (Exposure, Recovery, etc...) and then apply this preset. But there's a couple of things to note:
1) You've got to have some degree of blue in your sky for this to work. Don't think you can hit a gray overcast sky with this preset and turn it blue. It's got to be somewhat blue to start with.
2) Anything else that's blue in the photo is going to be affected so watch out if you've got people in there (Thanks Dave Alton for mentioning this in the comments)
3) Just because you can, doesn't mean you should. Meaning, your sky may be just fine to start with. These presets will really bring out the blues and if you use them (especially Level 3) on a sky that is already pretty blue it's going to look fake.
Sound good? Well, I hope you have a great day. Enjoy the presets and, as always, let me know what you think by leaving a comment.

Click here to see a sample of the preset.
Click here to download Matt's Deep Blue Sky presets
Click here to see a video on how to install presets.

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