Tag Archives: Adobe Photoshop Lightroom

2015 Photo Calendars

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Update: If you’re looking for our 2016 calendar templates, please click here!

Hi Folks:

This is the fifth year now that we’ve made our MS Word photo calendar templates available, and as with the past couple of years, we’ve also created a series of templates and calendar images you can use with Lightroom or other graphics software. I created a template in MS Word that allows people who don’t have Photoshop, Lightroom or the equivalent to make their own photo calendars, so we’ll cover that first; the Lightroom stuff is at the bottom of this post. I used MS Word 2007 to make the template, but saved it as both a Word 2007 file and a Word 97-2003 compatible file. Basically it’s a series of tables, one for each month, that look something like this:
Continue Reading →

Photo of the Month – June: Collecting Stories

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Hi Folks:

There’s an old adage that says ‘A picture is worth a thousand words’, and since we’re both writers and we’re both photographers, in a given month we can collect a lot of ‘words’. In June we shot nearly 600 images between the two of us, and choosing one image is never an easy task. That’s my excuse for choosing two images for June. 🙂 These two images were chosen both because they’re good images in their own way and because of the stories they have to tell… Continue Reading →

Lightroom History, Snapshots and Virtual Copies

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Hi Folks:

I was thinking I should subtitle this post, “Where is the Save button in Lightroom?” because I see that question pop up on social media from time to time and that’s really the basis for this post.  The short answer is: There isn’t one.  A slightly longer answer is: There isn’t one because Lightroom doesn’t need one.  Basically, when you open a file in most computer programs – whether it be MS Word, Photoshop or TurboTax for your income tax – and you make a change, you’re altering the file you have open.  In order to keep those changes, you need to save the file by either overwriting the original file or creating a second copy (Save As…)  Now Lightroom is essentially a database program, so when you import an image into Lightroom what you’re doing is referencing wherever the image is stored on your hard drive or other device.  Lightroom creates a line in its database that says, “This image is located here.”  From that reference Lightroom creates its own preview images and works with those previews.  When you export an image from Lightroom what it does is to take the information from the originally referenced image file, optimize and add in the changes that you’ve made in Lightroom and create a new image file based on the original image, the changes you’ve made and the export parameters you’ve set.  If you’re working with a rendered image file (.jpg, .tif, .psd, etc.) technically you can export an image to the same folder as the original referenced image and tell Lightroom to overwrite the original image, but that’s rather missing the point of the entire ‘non-destructive’ pipeline.  There are pros and cons to both pixel editing and parametric (non-destructive) editing and a place for each, but this isn’t the place for that discussion. Continue Reading →

Happy Holidays!!

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Happy Holidays!!

Hi Folks:

Whether you celebrate Christmas or Festivus, Solstice or Saturnalia, Hannukah, Kwanzaa or something entirely personal, we wish you and those close to you a safe and happy Holiday Season, and a New Year with as much joy, love, adventure, peace and excitement as you can handle!!

The blog has been a little quiet of late, but we’ll be back with much more in 2014, so our continued thanks to you for stopping by!!

With Hugs,
Marcia and Mike.

P.S. The photograph is a composite made from 75 images, shot on the corner of the Legislative Grounds. If you’re not familiar with Victoria, the Inner Harbour is on the far left, then there’s the Empress Hotel, the Royal BC Museum and then the lights of the Legislative bldg.

2014 Photo Calendars

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Update: If you’re looking for our 2016 calendar templates, please click here!

Hi Folks:

This is the fourth year now that we’ve made our MS Word photo calendar templates available, and as with last year, we’ve also created a series of templates and calendar images you can use with Lightroom or other graphics software.  I created a template in MS Word that allows people who don’t have Photoshop, Lightroom or the equivalent to make their own photo calendars, so we’ll cover that first; the Lightroom stuff is at the bottom of this post.  I used MS Word 2007 to make the template, but saved it as both a Word 2007 file and a Word 97-2003 compatible file. Basically it’s a series of tables, one for each month, that look something like this:
Continue Reading →

Adobe DNG Converter

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Hi Folks:

This was planned as a fairly short blog post (for me), but it didn’t work out that way.  It describes an experiment that I thought would work, and it does.  Before we get started we need to iron out a few terms.  A ‘RAW’ file in the world of digital photography is essentially the raw data from the camera sensor.  In order to be able to see that raw file as an image, it needs to be run through some software called a raw converter.  Don’t worry, we’re not going to be throwing around terms like linear demosaicing here – suffice it to say that the raw converter takes the original image data and massages it into an RGB image that looks like a photograph.  Now, one of the challenges for people that make raw converter software (ACDSee, Adobe Camera Raw/ Lightroom, Apple Aperture, Bibble, Capture One from Phase One, etc) is that camera companies regularly put out new camera models and these same companies seem to take great delight in creating new, proprietary raw formats for each camera they release.  In response, the software companies need to regularly release updates to their software that include these new camera profiles.  Going from Lightroom 3.x to Lightroom 4.x for example is a software upgrade and includes a number of new features.  Going from Lightroom 4.3 to 4.4 includes some bug fixes and updates, but it also includes profiles for two dozen new cameras.

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Using Lightroom’s Filter Bar

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Hi Folks:

Last month we did a series of posts on “The Many Faces of Lightroom Presets“, but there is one other area in Lightroom where you can create presets that we set aside because it deserves its own space.  That’s the Filter Bar.  As seen below, you’ll find the filter bar in the Library module at the top of the screen.  If you can’t see the filter bar, press the backspace ( \ ) key to reveal it.  One aspect of the filter bar connects to the Library module’s toolbar options; if you don’t see the toolbar at the bottom of the screen, press the ‘T’ key.  Together they look like this:

Filter Bar and Toolbar

Filter Bar and Toolbar

Continue Reading →

The Many Faces of Lightroom Presets: Export Module

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Hi Folks:

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

Export Module

Well, we’ve come full circle. Your images have been imported, selected, keyworded, marked, processed, output, etc. and none of them have been touched by Lightroom (except if you specifically instructed to delete images from the hard drive). The most common way of showing your images – whether in an online gallery like Flickr, Smugmug or 500px, on a site like Google+ or Facebook or simply on a flash drive or by e-mail is to export them from Lightroom. When you choose to export an image, Lightroom takes the initial information from the image file, applies the Develop settings and other changes you’ve made and creates a copy of each image that is then exported to an external plugin, a publish service, website, hard drive or e-mail location. While Photoshop has a facility to export multiple sizes of an image or image simultaneously, Lightroom does not. Lightroom does however allow you to create presets with various export options. Continue Reading →

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

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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

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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 →