Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Killer Tips

Hey everyone. It's time for another quick round of Q&A's. As always, keep the questions coming and I'll do my best to keep answering them. Let's get started:

Q. I noticed that Lightroom 2.3 has recently popped up on the Adobe Labs site. Any thoughts on this?
A. Yeah, good question actually. There is indeed a beta of 2.3 on the Adobe Labs site. Honestly, I haven't installed it yet for two reasons: 1) I've been knee-deep in a few projects lately and haven't really had the time to "test" software and, 2) I've been pretty happy with performance in LR 2.2 and I haven't seen anything in the release notes that prompted me to go try it. Quoting the actual release notes, "The goal of this release (2.3) is to address several bugs and provide additional camera raw support.". Well, I looked at the bugs and I wasn't experiencing any of them and I don't own either of the two cameras that support was added for. So I figured I'd patiently wait until the "real" release of 2.3.

Q. I have to sign all prints digitally in the right bottom corner and know that I can use an identity plate image to do that. But is there any way to free rotate my signature? I only find 90/-90/180? Or do I have to do that in PS and then import a already rotated signature image?
A. Unfortunately this would be a Photoshop thing. As the question points out, LR only gives you 0/90/180/-90 as a rotation option.

Q. How do I properly move my photos from my local drive to my back up drive, and keep the edit and history in tact. When I've done this in the past, I end up physically moving the files via the the finder, then re-importing from the back up drive.

A. If you want to move your photos from one drive to another you can just drag-and-drop them via the Finder on the Mac (or Windows Explorer on the PC). When you do this, you'll break the link Lightroom has with these photos and you'll see little question marks on the photo thumbnails when you look at them. To fix this, you don't have to re-import though. Just right click on the Folder in the Folders panel and choose "Find Missing Folder".

Also, here's a video on a semi-related topic of moving existing folders that may help.

Q. Why was everyone hatin' on Adobe after your Post-Crop vs. Lens Vignetting video the other day?
A. OK, "hatin" is a strong word. I think there was a pretty healthy discussion but there did seem to be some people really frustrated by this difference in functionality. I really just thought it would open up a discussion on which sliders people prefer (which it did for the most part). I'm not sure Adobe did something wrong here so I wouldn't expect a fix - there's nothing really broken. They responded with a new feature that people were asking for. Edge Darkening vignettes (not the actual lens correction fix) work that like everywhere in every software you find. They add black or white around the edges. It's a special effect. All I was trying to point out is that I never really knew that old Lens Vignetting sliders did it a different way.

Oh yeah, for those of you that asked that I get this in front of Adobe, they already know. Here's a link to a discussion on the Adobe forums that's worth looking at.

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Hey folks. First off, thanks for all of the positive feedback from the multi-photo layout in the Picture package video last week. I got so many questions from it that I thought I'd cover them in one post.

What's interesting though, is that I started out to write a Q&A post but I also wanted to include some overall points about this picture package/print/album thing. I think by reading this, you'll have most of your questions answered.

The thing that started this whole discussion was when I stated that Lightroom's print module is not geared for creating books and albums. The picture package workaround/tip I gave may change that for some people but it's just that - a workaround. You're still going to have all the frustrations that you had before because this is not an album/book creating program. You still won't: 1) be able to change the color of the background, 2) Be able to screen the background photo or control it's opacity, 3) print CD/DVD stickers, 4) Add text the way you REALLY want to, 5) Add Identity plates on all pages, or 6) Add real graphics or captions to the pages.

I'm NOT saying that these things aren't possible in the Print module in Lightroom. But when they are possible they're hacks and workaround and you'll get the results and frustrations that you're used to getting with hacks and workarounds. Oh yeah, you can't get mad at Adobe (or me) for this. Why? Repeat after me. "Lightroom is not a book/album layout program". OK, now that we have that behind us, let's move on to the Q&A's.

Q. This multi-photo picture package thing is great! But how can I send these layouts to my lab in JPEG format?

A. In Lightroom 2, in the Print module scroll down the right side panels to the Print Job panel. The top option reads Print To. Change it's setting to JPEG file.

Q. I see a yellow warning triangle on the top right of the picture package when displayed. What does that mean and how can I get rid of that?
A. If you hover your cursor over the triangle, Lightroom is telling you that some of the cells on the page overlap and may not look right when printing. If you're printing a picture package (which LR thinks you are at this point), then it makes sense. You wouldn't want to cover the images up. In this case, it's OK since you have probably laid your photos out that way.

Q. Can you change the Opacity of each image in the layout?
A. Nope.

Q. Can you change the page color of these layouts?
A. Nope. I do have a workaround in this video though.

Q. Is there a way to change the way the photo appears (the crop) in the frame?
A. Yep. Check out last Friday's tip.

Q. Is there a way to customize the text in the Identity Plate?
A. I saw lots of "Identity Plate" questions. The identity plate is actually pretty basic. You can put simple text and some fairly simple graphics in there. If you're trying to create a fancy layout with it, you're going to get frustrated. It's just not meant for that. I'm not saying you can't do it, but there's other products out there that are better suited for creating more complex layouts with text and graphics.

Whew! I hope I took care of most of your questions. In the end, I think the workaround is definitely cool and it does open up the possibilities of what we can do in the Print module. There's still room for improvement though and unless Adobe decides to make a "Album" or "Photo Book" plug-in module for Lightroom, I'm not sure we'll see a dramatic change in the layout features of the Print module. I think it does what it's supposed to do (print photos) better then anything else in the industry. That said, this book layout thing sounds like a great place for a 3rd party plug-in company to jump in doesn't it. Oh well. We can hope right? Thanks for reading.

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Woo hoo! It's Friday which means it's Tip day. Here's one on the heels of yesterday's post about the Picture Package layouts in the print module. I saw a few people posted a question in the comments area that I should have answered while recording the video (but I didn't). So the question was how to change the crop of the photo inside of the picture package frame. For instance, when I put a photo into a picture package, a person's head may appear to be cut off because of the way the frame crops it. While not immediately apparent, you can indeed change that. Just hold down the Cmd key on the Mac or the Ctrl key on the PC and click-and-drag to readjust your photo inside the frame. See, I told you it was easy.

Well folks, thanks for following along with me for another week. I hope you have a great weekend!

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Hi everybody. It's time for another round of presets. This week I was tinkering around with the Duotones that you can find in Photoshop (Image > Mode > Duotone). As is usually the case, I always try to recreate whatever I can in Lightroom and I think I've come pretty darn close here in volume 1. So we'll kick the Duotones off with the yellow presets I found in the list. They're actually called "Yellow bl 1", "Yellow bl 2" and so on but we'll just called them Yellow 1, 2, 3 and 4. I hope you like 'em.

UPDATE: I realized that I did not include the Black and White conversion in the original presets (which is a big part of them). So if you downloaded these any time before 3:30 EST then go ahead and re-download them for the new ones (and delete the old ones). Thansk :)

Click here to see a sample of the preset.
Click here to download Matt's Yellow Duotone Presets
Click here to see a video on how to install presets .

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Time for another round of Q&A directly from the comments here on the website:

Q. Matt, I've been following your site for a while now and have become curious about what your develop preset menu looks like, i.e., how do you manage the thousands of presets you seem to have?

A. Unfortunately I don't have a very good management scheme. If you saw the video from last week on Managing Presets you saw my Presets panel and you can see I don't do a good job of managing them. I'm trying to get better and I think the one thing I plan on doing is creating a "Favorites" folder like I showed in the video. I think I'll probably start to create separate folders for "Special Effects", "Black and White", "Edges" etc. so I can tame the list a bit.

Q. When printing to JPEG in the print module, is there a way for the name of the image/file you're printing to be used in the Save As dialog box? This would save tons of time/typing. Thanks!

A. Nope. You'd think a default of that image name would pop in there automatically but it doesn't. Great idea though.

Q. Is it possible to create a print (either for printer or JPEG output) that has different images of different sizes?

A. No. You can have different sizes if you create a picture package, but it's going to be the same image. You can put different images using the contact sheet option but it's going to force each cell to the same size.

While we're on this printing topic, I do get questions in this form or another very often. It usually revolves around people wanting to print album pages with specific ideas in mind. Right now, the print module is made primarily for contact sheets, one-photo prints, or picture packages. It's not a book layout engine and it's not meant to print album pages or pages that could be used in books (even though we can "force" it to with some creativity). I'm not sure if that'll change in the future (I hope they'll add some sort of book module or printing options) but we can always hope. Either way, once you understand that the Print module is not really meant for books and photo albums and complex layouts, I think it helps to come to grips with what you can/can't do.

Q. Here's an HDR question. If I select 5 photos and File > Plugin extras > Export to Photomatix Pro, where are the .TIF files being stored at? I can't find them on my computer anywhere and they have to be here. I want to delete them so as not to clutter my computer.

A. I've wondered about the same thing actually. I asked the folks at Photomatix (HDRSoft.com) and they told me the files are created somewhere in temporary storage and are deleted when you're done processing them into the file image. I have yet to verify this but, from what I've seen, they're a very thorough software developer so I have no doubt that they wouldn't leave all the high quality TIFFs floating around out there to clutter your computer.

Thanks for all of the questions folks. As always keep 'em coming. Have a great day!

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