Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Killer Tips

Here’s a quick tip that managed to sneak under the radar when Lightroom 2 came out. You know when you edit a photo in Photoshop and you get to choose the bit depth (8 or 16 bit), file type (PSD or TIFF), and color space. Well did you know that in Lightroom 2 you can also choose the Resolution that the photo will be rendered in when it gets to Photoshop? Yep, it wasn’t there in Lightroom 1 (Honestly, if some one had asked me, I would have bet $100 it was by the way). To choose the resolution go to your Lightroom preferences and choose the External Editing tab. In that tab you’ll see the resolution setting that Lightroom will use when getting ready to edit the photo in Photoshop and you can change it right there.

Bookmark It

Well everyone, once again I’m deferring my weekly preset duty to some one else. See, Sean McCormack has some graduated filter presets available over at his site. Here’s the deal. He’s selling a package of 70 graduated filter presets for Lightroom 2 (they cost about $7.75 US). But, he’s also got some samples available free for download. Here’s the link to the website where you’ll see some samples of the presets in action as well as instructions on how to download them. Sound good? I’ll be back next week with a cool preset I’ve been working on (hint: it’s something that lots of folks asked for in Lightroom 1 but we just couldn’t do it). Enjoy your day

Bookmark It

Happy Friday everyone. I figured I’d close out the week with a quick tip. One of the new features in Lightroom 2 is the volume browser. I absolutely love it! I use external hard drives all the time and the volume browser finally let’s me manage them in an easier with Lightroom. It’s in the Folders panel in the Library module on the left hand side. The volume browser displays what volume (A.K.A. hard drive) you have your photos stored on so if you ever disconnect the drive you’ll be able to see which one to connect to get to your photos. Here’s an example of what I mean.

One of the things that’s cool is that the volume browser displays how much hard drive space you have total and how much is left. But if you right click on it, you’ll see there’s a few other choices like photo count, status, or even none (which I can’t figure out why you’d choose none). It’s a really neat feature so if you haven’t imported any photos from an external drive yet make sure you give it a try. It’s a lot easier now. Have a great weekend!

Bookmark It

A few things that are “worth a click” here in the Lightroom and photography industry:

• Frederick Johnson from Adobe has a cool interview with John Nack (Photoshop’s Principal Product Manager)

• Sean McCormack has a Horizontal Scroll web gallery for Lightroom 2. It’s actually more then just a web gallery but an entire site with some pretty neat features.

• A VERY interesting post by Lightroom product manager, Tom Hogarty, on Plug-ins in Lightroom.

• Some interesting thoughts and comments on certification exams (both pros and cons) brought on by the Lightroom ACE exam post from a couple weeks ago. In case you missed the comments section to read them, here’s the link.

Bookmark It

Hey folks, it’s time for the first Lightroom 2 tip and I’ve got one of my favorites for you. OK, you know when you start painting with the Adjustment Brush it leaves that little dot on your photo. Well if you hover over it, it shows you a red overlay which tells where you’ve painted right? But that’s not the tip. The tip is that you can change the color of that overlay. This comes in especially handy if you’re using the Adjustment Brush on something red or close to it. So next time, try this. Move your cursor over that dot to show the red overlay. Then press Shift - O to cycle through different color overlays. Cool huh?

I hope you have a great weekend. Make sure you leave any little tips that you’ve picked up this week in the comments area. Oh, and for all of you new LR 2 users out there. Get off the computer!!! Spend some time with your friends and family. They miss you this week

Bookmark It