The Many Faces of Lightroom Presets: Slideshow, Print and Web Modules

Hi Folks:

This is part 4 of a 5-part series on Lightroom presets. The segments are:

Slideshow/Print/Web Modules

The Slideshow, Print and Web modules all use presets in a similar manner, although the outputs of each are quite different. In these modules the presets are called Templates, and in each module Lightroom ships with a certain set of standard templates. One can also create user templates based on the sliders in the right panel, and/or download presets online. Templates for each module are available for free and in some cases for sale. In each module one can also create a ‘Saved’ output – i.e. a Saved Slideshow, a Saved Print or a Saved Web Gallery, and in doing so Lightroom will create a speciall Collection that combines the settings for that output module with the image(s) associated with it. As with the Book module, these Collections are merely collections of images and more can be added or images removed. Continue Reading →

The Many Faces of Lightroom Presets: Map and Book Modules

UPDATE: December 12, 2018:

As of November 30, if you have any version of Lr older than Lr 8 CC, the Maps module will no longer work. As I understand it, Google updated their API key and Adobe had already claimed it would no longer support older versions. So, if you’re renting Lr via subscription, run the updater and it should be all good. If you have a standalone version of Lr, all is not lost. Jeffrey Friedl has a plugin for Lr that enables geolocation support and is much more powerful than the Lr Map module was anyway. More here:

Jeffrey’s “Geoencoding Support” Plugin for Lightroom

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Hi Folks:

This is part 3 of a 5-part series on Lightroom presets.  The segments are:

Map Module

The Map module doesn’t use presets in the way that the previous modules have, but there is one facility for presets in the Map module called ‘Saved Locations’. If you’re familiar with the Map module (if you’re not, you may want to read our Lightroom, Geolocation and .GPX files post) you know that there are several ways to add geolocation data to your images and associate them with Lightroom. One of these is to select known areas and to mark them as ‘Saved Locations’. Continue Reading →

The Many Faces of Lightroom Presets: The Develop Module

Hi Folks:

This is part 2 of a 5-part series on Lightroom presets.  The segments are:

Develop Module

As mentioned in the previous post, there are a number of sites devoted to Develop presets, some of which are free and some of which are for sale. There are actually two (three) different presets in the Develop module. One set of presets is for the sliders in the right panel of the Develop module and the other (two) are for the sliders in the Adjustment Brush Tool and the Graduated Filter tool (although these both share the same presets).
Continue Reading →

The Many Faces of Lightroom Presets: The Import and Library Modules

Hi Folks:

If you mention the words ‘Lightroom’ and ‘preset’ in the same sentence, odds are pretty good that the person is referring to Lightroom’s ‘Develop presets’.  There are a number of sites devoted to sharing and/or selling Develop presets; ‘Lightroom Queen’ Victoria Brampton has an excellent list of such sites here and you can also check out the list of over 200 website links in our ‘Lightroom Links‘ post.  For those who haven’t used them, presets are ways of assigning a series of steps or actions to a one-click movement.  I have a number of Develop presets installed on my computer and I sometimes use them for inspiration when I’m stuck on an image that I’m not sure what to do with, but I rarely use them without tweaking them a bit.  We’ll get to Develop presets in their own time, but there are many, many other presets in Lightroom that can make your workflow smoother and more efficient and I thought I’d highlight a few of them based on each of Lightroom’s modules.  I wrote this originally as one post, but since it’s over 3500 words I thought I’d break it up into segments.  They are:

Continue Reading →

Snapseed for Cell Phone Photography

Hi Folks:

There’s a saying among photographers that the best camera is the one you have with you in the moment.  To that end, both Marcia and I prize our Android-based cell phones, and Marcia especially has a certain notoriety among our photo group for her landscape and macro cell phone photography.  We’re not personally fans of the ‘retro’ look offered by programs like Instagram, and although we do use Camera360 Ultimate on both of our phones, most of the time we shoot the images as ‘unprocessed’ as possible and do post-processing work in Lightroom.  There are times, however, when one simply wants to be able to make and share an image without having to run it through a computer first.  Enter ‘Snapseed‘, from Nik Software. Continue Reading →

Photo of the Month – Ocean Waves

Hi Folks:

I didn’t do a lot of photography this past month, but did escape down to the shore for a bit one afternoon. I love the endless patterns in the way the water meets the shore, and have photographed it with varying degrees of success. Today’s ‘photo of the month’ is one of these but processed a bit differently. Rather than trying to illustrate the water itself I played with the colours and contrast in Lightroom, adding a blue split tone value to the highlights to render an abstract image of swirls and shapes. Could be water… could be marble… could be…? I trust you’ll enjoy it.

Swirls

Now go out and make some photographs!

Hugs,
M&M

Learning to See… Again.

Hi Folks:

This post has been brewing for a while, but for one reason or another I’ve put it off. Yesterday R.C. Concepcion posted a beautiful poem called ‘Every Moment‘ and I thought maybe it was time.

I’ve been a photographer for so long now that it informs how I see the world. I look around me and see my world in frames of images, colours, nuances of light, shapes, textures… this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but sometimes it can be. Let me explain. Continue Reading →

Film: A Leap of Faith

Hi Folks:

Just a quick thought, appropos of nothing really, but I invested a good portion of the day sorting through thousands of old 35mm slides… I started photography seriously when I was about 15, and started shooting digital back in 2005 (a few years later).  I still shoot both film and digital and won’t come out in favour of one over the other, but in looking at those images from decades ago it occurred to me that shooting film always involved a leap of faith.  There was no live view, no instant review on the camera’s LCD, no histograms.  As a photographer one took one’s accumulated knowledge and experience, working knowledge of the camera and film in use and made an exposure or series of exposures based on a ‘best estimate’ – but it was often days or weeks before the results could be viewed. By then the moment had indeed passed and could never be brought back again. In shooting slide film the image ‘in hand’ was the finished product, which put great onus on ‘getting it right in camera’.

I fully appreciate the latitude and the options digital processing offers, but to me there was always a certain mystery involved in shooting film.  I don’t think I’ll ever lose that feeling.

Now go out and make some photographs!

Hugs,
Mike.

IMG0005

Swift Current Creek, SK, 1982 (Kodachrome 25)

Photo of the Month – Winter Storm

Hi Folks:

Through the winter months we can get some very high tides (and consequently very low ones) known as ‘King Tides‘.  Winter here  also tends to involve a fair bit of rain and some really powerful winds.  The combined effect isn’t as strong here in Victoria as it is on the west coast of the island, but it can still be pretty amazing.  I went out a couple of years ago to try to photograph this remarkable occurrence and ended up with my camera (and me) getting swamped by a rogue wave!  Both of us survived the encounter, chronicled here: Photo of the Month – Winter Storm. Continue Reading →

S.O.O.C. (straight out of camera)

Hi Folks:

This is a short (for me) and somewhat tongue-in-cheek rant because I always find it amusing when I see people post images they’ve made on the various social networking sites, along with comments that say, “No Lightroom!  No Aperture!  No Photoshop!  No iPhoto! No _____!” as if it’s a badge of honour they THEY do not stoop to post-processing their images.  I find it funny because it’s also completely false.

“The moment an emotion or fact is transformed into a photograph it is no longer a fact but an opinion. There is no such thing as inaccuracy in a photograph. All photographs are accurate. None of them is the truth” ~ Richard Avedon

Continue Reading →