Lightroom can do a lot right? But, as we all know, it can’t do everything. One of the most common questions I get asked is when/why I move to Photoshop. Wanna know the main thing that Photoshop can do that Lightroom can’t? Retouching. To that end, I thought I’d share 3 inspirational retouching links that I’ve come across recently. I really dig those before and after sites and I think these deliver not only good inspirational value, but they can also be educational as you look into the mind of a retoucher. Here goes:
1) Glenn Feron - Glenn has a huge body of work and he shows the before and after for each of his images. You’ll find lots of models and portraits but you’ll also come across some cool product photography as well.
2) Sugar Digital - This one is probably the least of the traditional retouching sites that you’ll find but it’s probably one of my favorite. They’ve got a good mix of retouching as well as some really dramatic compositing. These are definitely things that Lightroom is just not good at, so you’d need to move to Photoshop to accomplish any of this work.
3) Amy Dresser - I love this site! Not all of the images have before and afters but the ones that do are incredibly educational. The ones that don’t… well they’re just flat out inspiring as well.
Well that wraps up inspiration day. I know there’s more then 3 cool retouching sites out there so make sure you leave a comment and let us all know your favorite retouching site. (Update: make sure you check out the comments as I’ve left my thoughts on some posts from other people there)
See you tomorrow to close out the week.
It’s Tuesday and I’m in New York City teaching Lightroom at B&H Photo. I had two jam packed classes yesterday and lot’s of blog readers came by to say hi. If you’re around today make sure you stop in and introduce yourself. 
However, ever though you’ll be making your own presets I’ll give you the tools to do it with to come up with some pretty sweet looking web galleries. See, one of the things people have the biggest problems with is figuring out which colors will look good for custom web galleries. Sure, you can choose the default black template in the Web module in Lightroom and be done with it. But what do you do if you want to be creative with some of the colors and you just don’t know where to start? Well, you can use Adobe Kuler (a free web application) to find some really great color combinations and then input them into the Web module. It works like this:
If you’ve imported photos into Lightroom’s folders then everything is good right? But what happens when you want to import more photos into the same folder down the road. For example, this past week I created a folder called “Great Smokies Day 1″ and imported the photos from day 1 of my workshop into Lightroom. Then we went out and shot more photos later that day. It wasn’t until a couple of days later that I was able to import those photos. The cool thing is that I didn’t have to go through Lightroom’s whole import process again. There’s a feature that allows you to add files into Lightroom that have been added to a folder on your hard drive but haven’t actually been imported into Lightroom yet. So sit back and watch the video to see how.
Hey folks, here’s a quick news update since I just finished teaching a workshop primarily on Lightroom and I figured I’d let you know where I’ll be teaching for the rest of the year. There’s another post today (another free preset) so feel free to scroll to the next post if you’re not interested in this. 
) and thanks to the whole class for a great weekend!
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