Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Killer Tips

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.

Bookmark It

It’s funny how things happen sometimes. Just when I was trying to decide which preset I would share this week I got a email from some one asking how I accomplished that gritty/HDR-looking/surreal/dramatic effect. If you recall from a while ago I had made a video on this technique and it became wildly popular. Well, I went to point them to this website to download the preset and realized I never did a preset for this technique (insert light bulb above head sound and graphic here). So that’s what you’ve got this week.

Here’s the low-down on the specifics of the presets in this bundle. There’s 4 of them in total ranging from light to really dark. Because of the nature of this preset I had to adjust the Exposure and Blacks settings but feel free to adjust them after you apply if needed (try watching the video link above for some ideas). You’ll find most of your changes will revolve in those two settings to either lighten the photo or enhance the blacks more. Personally, I find myself going for the dark or really dark versions but every once in a while the light one works great too.

As usual, please let everyone know in the comments what you think and if you have any other suggestions for this one, or if you find another setting that works well. Thanks everybody!

Click here to see a sample of the preset.
Click here to download Matt’s Surreal Edgy Effect presets
Click here to see a video on how to install presets.

Bookmark It

Good morning everyone. I’m back from Photoshop World and I had an absolute blast. It was the funnest/most tiring week I’ve had in a long time. I’ve got some presets for you so feel free to scroll down but first a couple of quick news bites.

NewsTerry White wrote a quick review of my Layers book over at his Tech Blog site. I’m really excited to say that the Layers book was a total hit last week at Photoshop World. I had no less then 100 people ask me to sign it and it was an honor each time. Thanks to everyone who came up. Anyway, as much as this is a chance to plug my Layers book (you know I love those ), it’s also a chance to send people to Terry’s Tech blog because he gives the flat-out best tech advice out there.

Lightroom 2 Beta was announced last week (see previous post) and I got a ton of question both here at the blog, and at Photoshop World. Tomorrow (which could be Wednesday… or not) I’m going to post a Q&A to answer them all.

PresetsNow for the presets. This is one that I’ve had an idea floating around about for a while. It’s a black and white preset but it’s primarily meant for outdoor photos. They could contain people, animals, mountains, trees or whatever but there’s one key ingredient that they must have - skies. These presets target the sky and give you three different choices: light, medium, or dark. So you can push your skies toward white, a medium grayish color, or get dark skies if you’d like.

Well I’m about to dig myself out of email-inbox-hell after it piling up for a week. Make sure you stop back tomorrow for the Lightroom 2.0 Q&A session. Have a great one!

Click here to see a sample of the preset.
Click here to download Matt’s Blue Sky B&W presets
Click here to see a video on how to install presets.

Bookmark It

Happy Monday! The preset info is below but here’s some quick Photoshop World info as well. This week is Photoshop World in Orlando, FL. It’s always nice when I can drive to the conference on Monday and back again on Friday. Plus, I’m really excited as my wife and kids will probably make it over for a day or two. Believe it or not, my kids have never seen me teach. Anyway, here’s a recap of what I’ll be teaching -
- Tuesday - “Layers 101″ pre-con.
- Wednesday - “Top 10 Photoshop Technqiues” and recording Photoshop TV Live
- Thursday - 1) Lightroom Basic Training, 2) Lightroom and Photoshop: Connecting the dots, 3) Automating Photoshop for Photographers
- Friday - I’ve got a session on the show floor
Photoshop World is always my favorite week of the year and if you’re going make sure you stop by and say hi and let me know you visit the blog (I just brush off anyone who doesn’t visit - totally just kidding!).

Preset Stuff
OK, on to the preset stuff. This week’s preset comes from my “Suggest a Preset Day” a while back. Some one had requested a Bleach Bypass preset and after researching a little I think I came pretty close in Lightroom. A Bleach Bypass is basically putting a black and white image over a color image. The end result is usually lower saturation and increased contrast (almost like what would happen if you did this in Photoshop with a blend mode). I’ve got two in the included set here. One has more color saturation then the other. Also, be aware that this one increases your Exposure by about two thirds of a stop over what you normally set exposure at so you may need to adjust it down. But it’s supposed to look a little blown out so don’t reel it back too much. Enjoy!

Click here to see a sample of the preset.
Click here to download Matt’s Bleach Bypass Presets
Click here to see a video on how to install presets.

Bookmark It

You guys probably thought I wasn’t going to make it today didn’t you (you have to read Friday’s post to know what I’m talking about). But I’m here, chocolate hangover and all. This preset is a little different from the rest since it’s an Identity Plate. These plates are basically ways to get custom graphics (and text) into Lightroom to use in the Web or Print modules. Well I’ve created a signature ID plate that I think is pretty cool and I wanted to share how I did it. Here’s a quick sample and the steps are right below.
Step 1) Create a new Photoshop document that is 8 x 2 inches at 300ppi. I made mine pretty large so it would work for all print sizes. You can always scale it down later.
Step 2) Download a script font. You can find a bunch on this website. However, here’s a direct link to the font I downloaded (it’s called Scriptina). Then install the font (I’m leaving it up to you to figure that part out).
Step 3) Now create a new type layer; select the script font from Step 2 and type your name. Then drop the opacity of the type layer to around 10-15%.
Step 4) Now create another type layer above the script one. This time pick a different and much more ordinary font (I chose Gil Sans Light). Then type your name again and leave the opacity at 100%. When you’re done it should look like this.
Step 5) Go to File > Save As. Save it as a JPEG file somewhere safe. Then, when you go into Lightroom, add this JPEG graphic as a custom Identity Plate (click here to see a previous video on how to do this). You can use it in the Print module or the Web module and it looks really neat.

Here’s a recap of the resources used and a sample:
- Click here to see a sample of the ID Plate in action.
- Website with script fonts
- My PSD file if you want to look at it. Note that the fonts are rastersized but you can still see the layer order and stuff.

Bookmark It