March 9, 2009
Posted by Martin Evening
Click to view movie
The humble Blacks slider plays an important role in allowing you to optimize the contrast of your photos as you process them in the Develop module. This movie clip is all about how much to safely clip the blacks when working with different types of images as well as how the black clipping point you set in Lightroom relates to the black clipping point of the print output process. The answer to the question ‘how black should I make my blacks’ may be easier than you think.
Note that in the final section where I compare different output profile conversions, the Black Point Compensation box must be kept checked (which is the default setting). You would also want to make sure this box is checked when making a print via the Photoshop Print dialog. And in the case of Lightroom printing, this is always enabled anyway.
Please note this video is in Quicktime format. A player can be downloaded from apple.com.
March 5, 2009
Posted by Martin Evening
Just released recently from HDR Soft is a plug-in that allows you to export photos from Lightroom directly to Photomatix Pro and automatically reimport the processed tone mapped HDR image back into the Lightroom catalog. To use this plug-in you will need to download and purchase the latest version of Photomatix Pro which includes the export plug-in and instructions on how to install in Lightroom for Mac and PC. Here is an initial test I carried out that shows how the plug-in works in Lightroom after installing.
March 2, 2009
Posted by Martin Evening
Click to view the movie
Shortly after the release of Lightroom 1.0, I made a video tutorial which showed how you could use the HSL panel controls to achieve improved, reduced noise Grayscale conversions in Lightroom. That particular problem was resolved with one of the later Lightroom 1.x updates and it is now fine to use the Grayscale panel controls to achieve optimum black and white conversions. In this movie I wanted to show how you can also fine-tune the Grayscale conversion setting by combining these with Camera Calibration panel adjustments.
February 2, 2009
Posted by Sean McCormack
With apologies for the extended delay in following on with the series, here is part 6 in our continuing series on writing your own web gallery. Please note that the code section doesn’t wrap, but still can be cut and pasted to a text or code editor. In this case I’ve sacrificed readability to usability.
In our last look at creating a HTML gallery, we showed the need for Live Update, and prior to that we introduced the method of adding CSS in Lightroom. One thing I should mention about CSS generated in Lightroom, is that it doesn’t generate in the order you put in the model section of the galleryInfo.lrweb file. In fact I have no idea what sets the order. It seems quite random to me!
Anyhow, one of the easiest additions to the page that looks nice is the ability to have the images scroll along the page. Normally this would be simply put into a CSS file that Lightroom can reference. Let’s look at this initially and then add it to the main galleryInfo.lrweb code, where it can then be manipulated in a panel.
November 11, 2008
Posted by Sean McCormack
Based on a question in Lightroom Community Help, I’ve created a short movie showing how to create a triptych from 1 photo in Lightroom.
September 28, 2008
Posted by Martin Evening
While I was in Las Vegas earlier this month for Photoshop World, I recorded a couple of Lightroom 2 tips for a Peachpit ‘Author Tips’ podcast. This first podcast demonstrates how you can speed up the process of using Lightroom 2 to export a series of images to build a Panorama or Merge to HDR image in Photoshop.
September 13, 2008
Posted by Sean McCormack
Continuing from our last post about creating your own Web Galleries for Lightroom, we now tackle adding Styles to our gallery.
Probably the easiest way to get a look going in your gallery is to simply add some CSS code. In the <head> section of our HTML file, simply add a <style> tagset and enter CSS info.
<style>
body{background-color:#000000;}
<:/style>
That will give you a black background. You could also place the body section in a text file and call it. Create a blank text file and call it gallery.css. Enter body{background-color:#000000;} into it and save it in the folder with the other files. Instead of the <style tag, we now need to use a link tag. In the <head> section: <link rel=”stylesheet” type=”text/css” media=”screen” href=”gallery.css” />. Now even though we done this correctly, Lightroom also needs to be told we’ve added a new file to the gallery. This is done in the manifest.lrweb file and uses a new command.
September 5, 2008
Posted by Sean McCormack
Welcome to Part 3 of our introduction to creating Web Engines for Lightroom 2. We’ve looked at the galleryInfo.lrweb file, so now we need to look at the other 2 files we need to make a gallery, the manifest.lrweb file and a HTML file.
Manifest
As the name might indicate, the manifest.lrweb file tells lightroom what files we need to make the gallery. Here we map template files to real files, and keep resources to help with our gallery, such as CSS and Javascript files. Here’s a very basic manifest.lrweb file:
importTags( "lr", "com.adobe.lightroom.default" )
AddGridPages {
template='grid.html',
rows=5,
columns=3,
}
August 17, 2008
Posted by Martin Evening
Following on from the recent demos of what’s new in Lightroom 2, here is a tip on working with Lightroom and Photoshop, where I suggest how Lightroom can be used at the front end and back end of your image processing workflow, leaving Photoshop to do what it does best, for carrying out all the tricky retouching in the middle.
August 6, 2008
Posted by Martin Evening
Just as you can use the Lens Correction sliders to remove a vignette, you can use them to apply a vignette too. I often like to deliberately darken or lighten the edges of a photograph and use the Lens Correction sliders as basic dodge or burn tools for the corners of a photograph. Here are some suggestions as to how you can extend the vignetting options when working with Lightroom 2
