With the wedding season right around the corner, it is time to find a solution to improve last year’s workflow. Most event photographers complain about the same thing: culling. It can quickly become a very time-consuming task, and it is far from being the most interesting part of the job.
I am sure we have all had those days where you stare at an image and just start moving sliders up and down to see what they do. What happens if I take this slider all the way up and this slider all the way down? For the most part, the results are entertaining, but not really aesthetically pleasing. But every once in a while, you can stumble onto something pretty awesome.
Imagine yourself under a starry night sky. Wouldn’t it be great to capture the Milky Way to show it at home or on the web? Unfortunately, you are left with a black frame after you’ve pointed the camera upwards at settings you are used to. It's time to open up the aperture, lengthen the exposure, and bump up the ISO. You will introduce noise, but do you really care?
Nik software is one of the heavy hitters in the Lightroom and Photoshop plugin world. They are so big that in 2012, the company was bought up by Google. After Google's acquisition, they lowered the price for all the desktop plugins and made their mobile app (Snapseed) free of charge.
I’m a big fan of getting images right in camera, and it's something that strive to do. I think there is something to be said for the skill that it takes, especially when shooting an event like a wedding. Getting the perfect light, the perfect composition, and the perfect moment while dealing with all the different variables of the day is quite a feat.
I've started to embrace the mobile and web sides of Lightroom a bit more. The ability to access my catalog on the go, easily create and sync collections to show to clients, and cull and make basic edits while standing in line at the market has been a great boon in convenience for me.
There's this nifty piece of software called Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, and in my time as an educator in the craft of photography I have seen its use frequently abused and mishandled. The issues affect beginners and pros alike, and stem from multiple issues, everything from technical oversight, all the way to a fundamental misunderstanding of what Lightroom is meant for.
Great news for Lightroom users on Android: Adobe has just updated the app to version 2.0, introducing an in-app camera with DNG raw file capture, shoot-through non-destructive presets, split toning, and more.
I don't rate my photos nearly as much as I should. And part of it has been because I've been too lazy to look this exact tip up! Thankfully, Adobe has provided us with one of their now famous under-a-minute Lightroom Coffee Break videos to quickly explain how to auto-advance as you rate your photos. This trick also works for auto-advancing while flagging photos.
Today, Adobe released version 2015.4/6.4 of Lightroom, which adds support for many new cameras and lenses, speeds up performance, and introduces an intriguing new feature: Boundary Warp.
Adobe launched a new YouTube series through their Lightroom channel to give Lightroom users some extra tips on features they may not have come across yet.
If you enjoyed learning How to Create That Urban High Contrast Desaturated Look in Lightroom, then chances are you will like learning how to create dramatic black and white photos with Lightroom presets. In this tutorial, Serge Ramelli again teaches us some methods for editing in Lightroom.
One of the more popular styles on Instagram is urban photography that sports a high contrast look with some desaturated colors. When trying to reproduce this look though, a lot of people run into problems. When adding contrast to an image, oftentimes the colors become more saturated, which is the opposite of what is needed for this look.
We've all been there, we work so hard preparing, shooting, editing or whatever it may be when we're involved in taking photos. After everything is finished and the photos look amazing, we cannot wait to share our photos to the world. But are they the highest quality possible?
Adobe’s last quarter results are out, and they’re better than ever. Adobe’s Creative Cloud and media business rose 35 percent thanks to a 23 percent beat on subscriber expectations, while the company’s overall net income more than doubled from $88.1 million to a staggering $222 million. Adobe’s fourth-quarter earnings report shot its stock to all-time highs.
Ever since the middle of high school, I've been immensely interested in "the process." You know, that middle bit between point A and point B that nobody but the artist ever sees. I've always loved peeking behind the scenes to see where something started and what kind of work and thought went into creating the finished product.
Adobe released today the version 2.1 of Lightroom for mobile devices. It comes with a bunch of interesting new features making full use of the possibilities offered by iOS 9 and the iPad Pro. Some of the new features also could make one think that Adobe is becoming serious about making great apps for mobile devices.
Totally Rad are the producers of the film emulation presets titled Replichrome.
I think the only thing that has changed photography more than the invention of digital cameras is the ever-growing involvement of photography and social media. Sites like Instagram, Twitter, and Tumblr are the perfect platforms for sharing not only your work, but also behind-the-scenes images and other content that draws interest towards your brand.
Lightroom users everywhere have reason to celebrate! Today, Adobe released version 6.3/2015.3, which in addition to bug fixes and a slew of updated lens and camera profiles, brings back the much-missed features of the old Import dialogue.
Astropad Mini, the app that allows iPhone and iPad users to turn their device into a graphics tablet for the Mac, received a major update on Tuesday. The app now includes support for Apple's 3D Touch, meaning it can now recognize 256 levels of pressure, bringing it even closer to turning your iPhone into a fully functioning graphic tablet.
Lightroom does some things really well, but one area I always wished I had more control over was web culling. After some investigation, here's the best method I've found for efficiently sending out photos for clients to peruse and select.
Capture One has been known amongst high-end retouchers and commercial photographers for quite some time, the main reasons probably being its powerful tethering and color editing tools. Wedding photographers seem to think Capture One is not tailored to suit their needs. At least, that is what I thought.
Great news for Lightroom users: today, Adobe announced another update to the program, confirming that they will be reinstating the old Import dialog, which was replaced by a newer dialog that received harsh criticism for its excessive simplicity and removal of features.
After Monday's release of Lightroom, many users were upset to find the release had seen changes that removed features and worse, had a tendency to crash, rendering it essentially unusable.
Many photographers recently upgraded to the newest version of Lightroom, only to have their work come grinding to a halt as the program became completely nonfunctional. Others found their standard workflow disrupted by the removal of longtime features. Either way, many are very displeased with the latest update and have taken to the Internet quite vocally to make their concerns known.
Every year's Adobe MAX conference marks the an obvious time to expect updates throughout Adobe's product lineup. So what's different this time? Mobile. Adobe has the monopoly in the area of creative applications for media editing, but for the first time in a while, it feels like they're competing with some unknown entity.
Creator and editor of Lonely Speck, pro night sky photographer Ian Norman is back with another great tutorial. Being nothing short of passionate when it comes to astrophotography Ian always seems eager to share what he has learned over the years.
Watch as photographer/retoucher Simon Plant walks us through one of Lightroom's coolest new features, RAW panoramic stitching. In this video Simon takes us step by step as he stitches two images together to make a panoramic image, which can then be processed with all that benefits of a RAW file.
If you’ve ever wanted to know just how many photos you typically shoot in August, or how often you’re really using each lens in your bag, or what seems to be your go-to aperture, there is a free web-based tool that can show you.
So you bit the bullet and invested in Lightroom 6. Then Adobe announced their new Creative Cloud program and you decided you would stick with Lightroom 6 until there were new features added that could justify the jump to that monthly payment plan. Well now there is this fancy new tool called the dehaze tool.
Some photographers like that soft, ethereal feel as they specifically seek out types of plastic to stick in front of the lens, or even go so far as to buy defocus control lenses and LensBabies that will allow them to distort an otherwise true image. That has its value. But this isn’t for that.
Adobe has updated their image management and editing software Lightroom Mobile for Android devices. First debuting on Android in January, the Lightroom companion app allows users to sync photos between the desktop version and edit on the go with their mobile devices.
It’s officially hot outside in my neck of the woods, but that doesn't mean I can to take a break from shooting outside! I still have to sweat it out, hauling my gear around from location to location and that means my clients have to feel the sting of the summer heat as well. Although it’s steaming out, I don’t want my images to look like they were taken inside the nearest oven set to broil.
In Part 3 of the Dramatic Beauty Portrait Tutorial, we will finally get into the first main step of the skin retouching process. Basic skin retouching involves addressing subtle skin and texture issues on our portrait images. We will not only look at techniques for skin retouching in Photoshop, but also discuss the theory behind our decision process during the retouching process.
A lot of people associated HDR with over-processed, surreal images. This is not always the case. Shooting HDR can be very useful in different circumstances. It is often seen in real estate and landscape photography and can be very useful to balance a wide range of light levels.
In Part 1 of our Dramatic Beauty Portrait Tutorial, we looked at the lighting setup, gear breakdown, and shooting of our dramatic beauty shoot. In Part 2 of the tutorial we will now look at two different ways of exporting and preparing your image for retouching. The first method involves creating versions in Lightroom and exporting directly to Photoshop.
This is Part 1 in what will be an 8 part series for a dramatic beauty portrait. In the series of tutorials, we will go through everything from the gear used, to the lighting setups, and all the way through the complete retouching process. In Part 1, I will breakdown my gear list used for the shoot and I will thoroughly go through my lighting setup.
Lightroom has become the industry standard for editing images quickly but when it comes to viewing and culling images, it's still incredibly slow. On1 has recently launched Perfect Browse 9.5 as the fastest way to burn through hundreds or thousands of raw files and then import your favorites into Lightroom for editing.
There are three things in life that photographers will clear their schedules for: Apple announcements, Nikon/Canon late-night pre-orders for new flagship bodies, and Adobe product releases. So clear your schedules, guys and gals; because Adobe’s Lightroom 6 is here with more speed (FINALLY!), more features, and rich mobile integration.
I will soon be releasing a start-to-finish retouching tutorial video here at Fstoppers on my most recent fashion editorial photoshoot. But before I do, I wanted to start warming our readers up with a complete gear list.
As I spend more and more time around other photographers, I’ve had the opportunity to sit back and listen to everyone’s take on what makes a retouched image successful. Some photographers spend minutes retouching, while others spend literally hours on an individual image.
Black and White conversions programs are a dime a dozen. You have the ability to do black and white conversions in Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop and also in third party software like Silver Efex Pro and Perfect B&W, but if you're just learning how to edit, I always recommend sticking with Adobe Lightroom because of the easy user interface.
How do you move beyond using someone else's actions and presets to tone your images? It’s a lot simpler than you’d think. There are so many different ways to achieve similar results in post-production, and having so many options can be extremely intimidating when you’re just learning how to edit.
Matt Kloskowski from onOne has released another great Lightroom tip video that can help with recovering shadows from your images. In some situations, you might need to recover more out of the shadows than you originally intended when taking the photo.
Expert night sky photographer Ian Norman has created an easy-to-follow video guide on how to photograph and process images of the beautiful constellation Orion. Starting tonight using any camera and a standard prime lens, you too can get amazing results by following this tutorial.
It's amazing how adding just a little bit of shadows can drastically improve the depth of your photographs. Contouring faces is a little trick that can take a few minutes to do, but ultimately increases the overall image quality.
It’s the middle of winter; everyone is looking a little pasty and pale, and you wish the subjects you are photographing had that healthy summer glow. So what do you do? Should you send them to a solarium or get a chemical spray? If you are a fan of black and white photography, this is a fantastic Lightroom technique that will give your subject a natural looking suntan.
One of the most noticeable differences between portraits taken outside using natural light as opposed to artificial light is the background. Images using artificial light tend to have darker backgrounds. This is crucial in catching the eye of the viewer and allows him or her to focus on the subject. This article is a guide in achieving this look using natural light only.
Photographers around this time of the year, portrait and wedding photographers especially, tend to have clients banging down their doors for holiday photos and other must have product deliveries in time for Christmas. While the rest of the world is gearing up for a relaxing holiday, we often experience anything but.