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Lightroom 4 Develop Module

February 4, 2012 / posted in Lightroom, Reviews / No Comments

Job Fair Portrait As promised, this post is a more in depth look at the changes up-coming in Lightroom version 4. The Beta has been out for about a month giving a lot of folks plenty of time to test and put it through it’s paces. Since this is a Beta version, there are likely to be some problems. Watching the forum, the major complaint right now is speed. It seems that this Beta version is very sluggish – surprise! What you have to remember is this a Beta software, meaning there is still a good portion of debug code in the software which will – you guessed it – slow it down!

Anyway, what I wanted to address in this post was changes specific to the develop module. Now the develop module is nothing new, but the new “Process 2012″ portion of the develop module causes some rather significant changes in the user interface of the develop module. Notably the sliders are all zeroed in the center and have a range from -100 to +100. This can take some time to get used to because for example, in LR3 the blacks slider ranged from 0 to 100 and increasing this slider would increase the amount of black clipping. In LR4, to increase the amount of black clipping you will move the slider to the left (to a negative number), to reduce the black clipping you will move the slider to the right (to a positive number). Small movements make a big difference as the sliders are sensitive. Another change in the adjustments is the Fill Light slider is gone, replaced by the Shadows slider which does a much better job of opening up the shadows in your images.

lr4adjustbrush Another notable change is that for the adjustment brush and gradient tools (adjustment brush sliders shown here), all of the basic development module sliders are available with the addition of a few other sliders, including the noise sliders. What does this mean, well for starters it means that you can use the adjustment brush to change the white balance of only the portion of the image where the brush is applied. Additionally, you can apply area specific noise adjustments. For example, if you use the adjustment brush to open up the shadows in a specific portion of your image and find an increase in the noise in this same area, you can now adjust the noise along with the shadows adjustment to balance things out.

Need to warm up just a small portion of your image, now you can using the adjustment brush and the Temp and Tint sliders. Want to adjust the really dark areas of your image, apply an adjustment brush and use the shadows slider in combination with the other sliders to fine tune the look you want. The possibilities are endless.

The image at the beginning of this post was processed entirely in Lightroom 4 Beta 1. This new version of Lightroom gives a lot more control of specific parts of an image to the photographer, and is a welcome enhancement.

Lightroom 4 Beta 1 First Look

January 10, 2012 / posted in Lightroom / No Comments

The big news for today (actually released last night) is that the public beta for Lightroom 4 is now available for download. You can download it at labs.adobe.com

Some of the new features include the ability to use the adjustment brush for white balance and noise corrections and better controls for highlights and shadows. Additional features include video editing, book creation, and soft proofing for print or display. My favorite feature so far is the soft proofing – way easier to do in Lightroom than in Photoshop!

There are many other little things that have been enhanced for a better workflow and save lots of time in the post processing. Check it out – it’s definitely worth it. I’ll be doing more in depth postings soon. Have fun with it! Love to hear your thoughts – leave a comment below.

Escalator to Heaven

January 9, 2012 / posted in Impressions, Thoughts / No Comments

Escalator to Heaven Sometimes I get lucky when taking pictures, and this I think is one of those times. I had just got on the escalator and my camera was still on, so I just placed the camera just below my knees, angled it up a bit, allowed it to focus and then fired off a shot. Since I only got one chance at it I think I got pretty lucky with the outcome. With just a little minor editing in Lightroom I was able to get this result.

I should tell you though, I had no idea what kind of image I was going to get. I was not looking through the view finder, just holding the camera in the approximate position and hoping I had it right. In fact on this image, I didn’t even think about the f/stop or shutter speed, I just took the shot.

One day my luck will run out, but in the mean time, I will enjoy the shots I get. It seems however, that my better shots are when I don’t look through the view finder – go figure!

Photoshop Weight Loss Video Tutorial

December 29, 2011 / posted in Learning, Photoshop, Tutorial / No Comments

Here’s an interesting weight loss tutorial in Photoshop. This is an older video, but it demonstrates the effects very well.

Use Photoshop to virtually put someone on a diet in Photoshop! Music: Kevin MacLeod

Photoshop Effects For Posters

December 29, 2011 / posted in Photoshop, Tips / No Comments

Content provided by webdesign14.com, edited for clarity

If you’re not used to poster making within Photoshop to shade your paper prints, then this list of effects will definitely be of help. These are by far the most favorite Adobe Photoshop effects that poster creative designers choose to use. They’re all the essential tools along with features to help anybody produce attractive looking posters with Photoshop. So keep reading and also make a note of all these effects.

1. Posterize! Naturally, the fundamental effect that you can use within Photoshop to help make the coloration posters really seem like paper prints may be the effect called “Posterize”.

As the label indicates, this effect in essence provides what will be a little more grainy outcome present with a number of the far more aged poster designs. You can find this effect in the Image->Adjustments selection. You can of course modify the intensity of the effect by changing the slider once you activate this effect.

2. Opacity effects. Yet another excellent result that is definitely for coloration poster patterns is opacity effects. The particular opacity is simply how opaque as well as clear the layer is. Sometimes, excellent poster design and style effects can be done any time one particular level is a bit more obvious above or below another layer.

3. Photo filters. Beneath image adjusting solutions, you might also have an interest to utilize a particular photo filter adjustment for the coloration cards. This adjustment helps you to include a number of coloration masks to your design. If you like “Sepia” effects that will replicate old photographs, then you might want to use photo filters for your personal custom made posters.

Photo filters also allow you to apply warming as well as cooling filters or even just personalized shades to achieve the same impact just with distinct tints. There are a number of applications or plugins to create these types of effects, and maybe they are just the thing for ensuring background scenes or even just acquiring particular effect. For more information on photo filters, Google “photo filters”.

4. Artistic filters. Now, if you want your poster to be more imaginative, you can utilize the creative filter systems with Adobe Photoshop. You get to these beneath Filters-> Artistic option. Using this pool of filters you can add wonderful creative effects just like Tinted Pad, Film Feed, and a lot of different filter effects that make your paper prints resemble a far more modern day thing of beauty. Naturally, you can certainly alter just how powerful the filters are by adjusting the various sliders.

5. Stylize filter. A different sort of filter found beneath the filter selections are classified as the stylize filters. This doesn’t seriously add imaginative addendums to your custom made poster design, but it surely manipulates the style by itself to provide a specific form of exciting influence. Some of the prevalent stylize filters have the stuck shape benefits, wind turbine side effects along with polarize effects.

6. Drawing filter. If you need your color posters to look more like paintings or drawings, then the drawing filter is a filter collection that you want to understand more about. You could basically alter your posters right into a charcoal print, a new visual painting, or the photocopy variety print out along with many other effects. This can be ideal for making certain impressionistic elements mimic what we are looking at attractive to anyone.

7. Texture and consistency filters. Last but not least, when you need your coloration styles for your posters to look just like these were branded with some type of substance, then your texture and consistency filters tend to be what you would enjoy. These filters convey a specified method of “material” for the entire layer to your design. You may make this look like it was published around canvas, throughout gemstone, with components and lots of other types involving textures. Many people also acquire further smoothness to make really specific looks. This is a plus in order to imitate diverse products inside your color poster pattern.

With almost all these seven useful side effects, your current color paper prints need to be really well beautifully made with quite eye catching images. Naturally, use all these effects together with taste, do not overdo these filters. You will want to be able to make use of them adequately and at the proper application for a variety of styles.

Read more on Cool Photoshop Effects

A New Look

October 27, 2011 / posted in Announcements / No Comments

I’ve made some changes to the look of my site so it provides consistency between the blog site (this site) and the portfolio (my photo galleries). The backgrounds are the same in both sites and I’ve made some other exciting changes here as well…

I’ve added a new menu item “Store” where you’ll find some cool stuff that I’m selling here on this site. There could be any number of things available, including photography equipment.

One of the newest items to the store is the Fatso’s Cruise’n 2012 Car Show Calendar! This is a calendar I’ve published with photos of classic cars taken at Fatso’s Diner. There is a limited number of calendars available so you’ll want to get your order in now before they are gone. Once they are gone, there won’t be any more. These calendars make the perfect gift for the car lover(s) in your family, so get ‘em now in time for the holidays! You can find them here

Also available in the store are some custom one of a kind digital backgrounds that I’ve created. I found that the license agreements were a little too restrictive when attempting to use backgrounds downloaded from stock agencies, so I created my own and thought I would make them available to you with a fairly liberal license agreement for dirt cheap! Check them out here

Coming soon – Nikon SB800 Flash unit! Watch for it!

Hope you enjoy the changes and the new look! Let me know what you would like to see, or the kinds of things you would like information on, and I’ll do my best to see you get it!

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