Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Killer Tips

For a while now, I've had people ask if your presets were backed up with the Lightroom backup functionality. Well they're not. But The Photo Geek has released a Lightroom catalog and preset backup plug-in that backs up your catalog and presets and templates and all that good stuff. After giving it a try, I'd consider it more of a power-user tool as its just a bit intimidating with all of the directories its asking for. Plus, to restore from its backup, you'd have to know where everything goes because you'll manually have to restore everything. But its still cool and better then anything else currently available for backing up Lightroom. Check it out here.

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Mike Wiacek wrote a little program that extracts a Lightroom preset from a Flickr photo. Basically, if you see a Flickr photo you like, you can try out the Preset Extractor to create a Lightroom preset of the effect. The extractor looks at the metadata and tries to reverse engineer it into a preset. Of course it only works if people don't strip the EXIF data from their photos before posting them and it only seems to work with the latest versions of Lightroom and Adobe Camera Raw. Here's the link. Stop by and give it a try.

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Hey, its posts like these that let me get my shameless plugs in for where I'll (and my friends) are going to be teaching. So in case you're interested, read on. If not, just read the next post for today for some Lightroom stuff.

• Lightroom Seminar Tour Dates - I'll be teaching a full-day Lightroom seminar for Kelby Training in Chicago on July 20th and in New York City on July 22nd. You can find out more about the tour and the full-day schedule here.

• Great American Photography Workshops - Later this week I'm heading to the Palouse Region of Washington to teach a full 3 day Photoshop/Photography workshop. If you're scratching your head saying "What is the Palouse", then check out this portfolio I found from photographer Chip Phillips. There's some really nice photos of the area. Anyway, these workshops are a great opportunity to get some one-one-one learning, as well as learn how to bring your photography and post-processing work together since we'll be shooting as well as spending lots of time in the classroom.

• Bogen is putting on a free Webinar. It's called A Budget Safari - Wildlife Photography at Your Local Zoo: Roundtable with Julie Larsen Maher. Click here to find out more.

• Photoshop/Photography Cruise - Dave Cross, Corey Barker and I are teaching on a week-long cruise. Now, its not until October and I know that's a long time to think ahead. But, when it comes to cruises time is running out so if you're thinking of going you can actually sign-up and reserve your spot (in the seminar and on the cruise) for only $100. You can also check out the website and see the full seminar schedule.

Hope you can make it out to one of these events.

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Here's a few things that I found worth a quick visit this week.

• I get asked a lot about Lightroom and Capture NX. I thought this article summed up some pretty good points on the topic, especially when it comes to working with large amounts of photos.

• My World Wide Photowalk Page is up and I'll be doing my photowalk in Safety Harbor, FL. If you live in the Tampa area then be sure to sign up.

• The Turning Gate has a new Lightroom web gallery (TTG Highslide) that looks pretty cool. It's got a client proofing mode as well as a slideshow mode in it. Check it out here.

• An interesting read over at the Lightroom Secrets website on single/multiple catalogs.

• My new HDR DVD is out. It covers mostly HDR but there's some Lightroom integration/workflow included on it as well. Again, most of it is Photomatix and the HDR process. Here's the link.
NOTE: The DVD is the same as my online training course at KelbyTraining.com

• For some inspiration for the day, check out Jeremy Cowart Photography. He's an entertainment, travel, and portrait photographer and I think you'll enjoy looking through his work. I liked everything I saw there, but the Music category really caught my eye.

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Here's a few things that I found worth a quick visit this week.

• Adobe is putting on an eSeminar series for professional photographers. It's free so if you're around, you should plan on attending.

• Famous wedding photographer, David Ziser, just kicked off his Digital Wakeup Call seminar tour with dates going through the end of the year. In fact, he's in Tampa tonight so I'm going to head over there and attend.

• I got caught up at Photoshop World last week so I never got to mention [much to the dismay of many blog readers :) ] that Part 2 of our 3-part off camera flash series is up on DTownTV.com.

• Nik Software announced that their Color Efex Pro 3 plug-in is now available as a Lightroom plug-in. Plus, the complete edition is on sale now for $75 off. Here's the link.

• And finally some inspiration. If you like landscape photography then check this one out.

Enjoy your Wednesday everyone!

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