Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Killer Tips

First off, I’d like to thank Matt Pavel for posting a comment last week and suggesting a preset based on the Sin City look. I’ve always been a fan of that look and it was fun to see what was possible with Lightroom. Before we go too far, this preset isn’t the exact Sin City look. There’s a lot more going on with this effect then we can do in Lightroom. But working on it at least inspired this preset which I think comes pretty close. So here’s the deal. The main idea behind the Sin City look is pretty much a desaturated high contrast photo with some red saturation left in. The preset is mostly a desaturating effect. But it also leaves certain colors saturated (reds and oranges). The idea behind this is that you’ve got to have something in your photo that has those colors in it. Even if it’s just a photo of people though, it should work since the skin tones will fall in those saturated colors. Also, there’s two flavors to this preset - a light red one and a dark red one so it changes how bright the reds appear. So thanks to Matt for suggesting the idea and thanks to everyone who takes their time to visit the site and leave their comments. I know it takes time but it’s what makes this site better and better every week. Enjoy and let me know what you think.

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

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Happy Wednesday everyone. I just got back from teaching at the Adobe/CDW event in Philadelphia and it went over great. It was nice to meet some of the blog readers there and many thanks to everyone who came up and said hi. Now on to the presets…

A new style of presetThis week marks a brand new style of preset - keyword sets. If you’ve never seen or heard of them before you’ll find these guys in the Library Module on the right hand side in the Keywording panel. Essentially keyword sets are lists of common keywords for common types of photography. If you expand the keyword set you’ll see there are some defaults that ship with Lightroom: Outdoor Photography, Portrait Photography, and Landscape Photography. Well I’ve started to create my own and thought I’d share them with you since I’ve really been trying to be good about keywording my photos often. And since these keyword sets are straight from my library you can guess the first batch of them are going to be ones that I use a lot lately. I’ve created one called “Children” and another called “Baseball”. This mainly comes from the fact that I love to take photos of my kids, other peoples kids, and also my kids playing sports I realize that not all of you can use these but if they get you thinking about keywording more (and using keyword sets more) then I think that’s a good thing. Plus, I’ll start to add more as the weeks go on.

Installing the Keyword Sets
Installing keyword sets is a little different from installing regular presets in Lightroom. Mainly because there is no official “import” option for them. So here’s what you do.
1) First download and unzip the file that has the two keyword sets in it and place them on your desktop.
2) Navigate to the folder where keyword sets are stored.
Mac: (your computer name)/ Library / App Support / Adobe / Lightroom / Keyword Sets
PC: C > Docs/Settings > (your name) > Application Data (may be hidden) > Adobe > Lightroom > Keyword Sets
3) Drag the two keyword set template files into the “Keyword Sets” folder.
4) Restart Lightroom.

Using the Keyword SetsUsing the keyword sets is simple. Just select the set from the list. Then click on any keyword in the set to apply it to your selected photos. It makes the process of keywording a lot simpler, as you don’t have to type the keywords in anymore.

Well folks, that’s all she wrote. And by she, I mean me. Actually I have no idea what I mean so I’m going to stop now. It’s late I hope you enjoy and make sure you let me know what you think of this new kind of preset. Also, share any thoughts you have for some other ideas for keyword sets. Until next time!

Click here to download Matt’s Children and Baseball Keyword Sets

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Last month, I made my Auto Adjustment preset available for download. This was a preset meant to be applied when importing your photos into Lightroom (you can read more about it here). At the time, I had just started using it and was really happy with the results so I wanted to share. However, since then I’ve come to realize my auto fix preset had a few flaws. First off, it added Clarity to everything. Great for landscapes and still life… bad for portraits. I also realized the edge darkening (Vignette setting) was too strong (again, good sometimes but bad other times). So I’ve gone in and made a few changes to this one and I’m making my new version available. This time, though, you get two of them 1) Auto Preset for Portraits 2) Auto Preset for Everything Else. Post a comment and let me know how they work for you. See ya.

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

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It’s time for another print preset and this one came out of one of the Mothers Day gifts I prepared for my wife. Actually, truth be told, I stole the idea from Scott Kelby. See, he was photographing his kids the Friday before Mothers Day as a gift for his wife and asked that I come take some photos of all of them together. Then, almost as if a lightbulb went off (or it could have been when Scott asked “hey, you want me to leave everything set up so you can shoot your kids too”), I got the idea to do the same for my wife. So I did, and I played a nice slideshow for her on Mothers Day morning and then printed some of the photos for her. While I was processing the photos I wanted to create a neat looking print template and I just happened to have 5 vertical photos selected when I went into the print module. Now…I had actually tried my hand at creating a similar preset earlier this year but there were some issues with a Lightroom update. Anyway, after a bit of playing around these presets are what I came up with. Now, you could just as easily create this with 5 landscape photos as well but I found it looks better with portrait oriented photos or at least photos that you can force into that space. So have it ‘em. There’s actually 2 - one centers everything with no room for a name or identity plate and the other one is weighted toward the top with room on the bottom for some text. Enjoy!

PS: Oh yeah, if you didn’t get it. Make sure you install these while you’re in the Print module - not the Develop module. Sorry, as you can imagine, I’ve gotten a lot of questions on this. Just right click in the Preset area in the Print module and choose Import.

Click here to see a sample of the preset.
Click here to download Matt’s 5 Across Vertical Print presets
Click here to see a video on how to install presets.

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Happy preset day everyone. I’m going back to basics this week with a set of Develop presets that mimic an adjustment I use all the time in Photoshop - Photo filters. In particular, this week’s download is a set of warming filters that give a, well, warm or morning-ish, or sunrise-ish kind of feel to your photos. (No, that doesn’t mean you can sleep in and shoot at high-noon ) While there are some filters that you still need in your camera bag (polarizer, neutral density filters), a warming filter is something I simply don’t carry anymore. There’s really no reason, as Lightroom and Photoshop can recreate these effects easily. The presets that you can download below have 3 levels of warming. Level 1 is the weakest warming effect (closest to traditional 81a) and Level 3 is the strongest. I know I could have added lots of levels in between but, for me personally, when faced with too many choices I usually wind up making no choice so I wanted to keep it simple. That said, I’m working on some presets that warm portraits a little differently then they warm landscapes so we’ll see what I come up with. But for now, enjoy!

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

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