Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Killer Tips

Happy Friday folks. It's one of those Friday's where I was in the mood to make a video tip instead of writing one so here goes. The tip is on making Develop presets. Presets are probably one of the most popular aspects of my blog site here and I see lots of people ask questions as to how to make presets. Sure, the process of making them is simple - just click the little + icon in the Develop module under the Preset panel and you've got a preset. But what about the settings behind the preset? Do you include Exposure and tone-based settings in the preset? What about White Balance settings? I'll go over my thought process in this video but I'd love to hear what you guys think as well. How useful are they to you? Do you download them and never use them or do you use them every day? Let us know in the comment area. Well, that wraps up another week. Have a great weekend!

Click here to watch the video. (13MB)

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First off, thanks to everyone who stopped over at scottkelby.com to see my guest blog post. It seemed very well received and I appreciate all the comments. Now on to some Lightroom, photography and industry odds and ends.

• Sean McCormack over at Lightroom News has a really neat post on time lapse photography and how he's using it. I've never really tried it but after reading I think I may have a go at it.

• Syl over at PixSylated (I love that name!) has a good post about Firefox 3 and color management in the browser. This is big actually. The more browsers that start reading color profiles the better off we'll all be when it comes to displaying our photography on the web.

• NAPP members get $75 off the Epson R1900 until tomorrow (my new favorite glossy printer). I did a couple videos on the R1900 when it comes to getting started with printing as well as printing from Lightroom over at the NAPP site. You can see the videos as well as get the discount code by clicking here.

• One of our own Lightroom blog readers, Peter, has a great photography (and related) blog over at www.camerasview.com. You'll find lots of tidbits there and even some neat tips on Lightroom.

• Finally, check out the Camera Toss blog. I had absolutely no idea there was a website dedicated to this and I totally stumbled upon it yesterday. It's gutsy to try out but I may have to take an old camera and give it a whirl :)

Have a great day!

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I have the honor of being a guest blogger today on Scott Kelby's blog so make sure you check it out and leave a comment for me. (let 'em all know you're a Lightroom Killer Tips visitor!) Yep, he asked me a few weeks ago and I've since been laboring over what I was going to write. Then, about a week ago it came to me, and about 2 days ago I began writing it. I have to say it took WAY longer then I thought it would (I'm afraid to even tell you as my boss my be reading this) but I had such a good time with it. Basically, I've taken a concept that we talk about in the office every once in a while and made it into a post. See, we always toss around ideas about small design changes we'd make to dialogs, palettes or the Photoshop interface. Sometimes we even come up with our own new ideas for dialogs. Well, I decided to actually create them. If you've never designed a dialog before, let me tell ya... it ain't easy. I have a totally new respect for those folks because all I had to do was make mine in Photoshop and it took forever - I don't even have to make them work :) Anyway, head on over to Scott's blog to check my post out and leave a comment for me as well. It's even got some homework for you where you can download a PSD file and make your own. Regular blogging will resume here for the rest of the week. Thanks!

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Happy Friday. This week I've got a video for you that answers the never ending question of how to move between a laptop and desktop with Lightroom. I've been asked this just about every time I teach Lightroom and it occurred to me that I haven't really done a video to cover it. Fortunately it's a lot simpler then it may seem and Adobe has given us an easy way to save out specific images or folders to move from one catalog to another (which by the way is really what is happening when you move from one computer to another). If you've had any experiences that are similar to what I show then let us know in the comments and if you've found any hiccups along the way, by all means let us know as well. So, watch the video. Enjoy it. Feel the thrill of moving freely between computers with no chains to hold you back :) Oh yeah, and enjoy your weekend.

Click here to watch the video. (22MB)

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I've been a long time fan of the Adobe Exchange. I mention that site as a huge resource in just about every one of my Photoshop classes. Especially since I'm an actions nut and they've got the best resource out there for actions. But it's not just actions - they've got everything when it comes to presets and cool downloadable "stuff" (free and not free) for every Adobe program out there. How does this relate to Lightroom though? Well, the folks over at the Adobe Exchange have finally included Lightroom in the mix. Now you can download Develop presets, export plug-ins, web galleries and who knows what else. Most of it is free but there is some paid stuff too. Plus, developers can place their downloads on the site which means I'll probably be adding my presets soon. So... the moral of today's post: Check out the Adobe exchange. Obviously for Lightroom stuff but also for lots of little gems that work with the other Adobe programs you use.

Here's the link to the Adobe Exchange home page.

Here's the link to the Lightroom section.

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