2007 April | Pro Photo Show

Monthly Archive for April, 2007Page 3 of 3

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom

Published

jarrod

on April 11, 2007

in Lightroom and Software

. 0 Comments

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom

Lightroom image

I know we are all excited to hear the new announcements from Adobe. I’m very excited for Photoshop CS3. However, let’s not forget about the other REALLY AMAZING program for us photographers, Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. I received my copy of Lightroom about two weeks ago and I have to say it’s everything the critics are saying and more. From the organization of your photos to the web gallery options, Lightroom really is the workflow solution I’ve been looking for, and I’m sure you have been looking for it as well.

But what would new software be without training. Yes, we all learned something from the “playing around method.” However, if you are like me, and need some formal training here are some resources I used for training.

NAPP Logo

NAPP (National Association of Photoshop Professionals): First, if you don’t know about this site / association and you are a Photoshop user you are missing out on one of the most powerful tools we can have as Photoshop users today. Not only are they the “ Everything for Photoshop Training Site” but also they have started a Lightroom Learning Center. The Learning Center contains training and tips that are really hard to pick up by “playing around” with the program. It also contains a list of the hottest features as per Scott Kelby. Now some of the Learning Center areas are free but to get the full experience you have to be a NAPP member for $99 a year, which gets you a huge amount of benefits. NAPP has also started a Lightroom Killer Tips Podcast which can be found at www.lightroomkillertips.com .

Lynda.com, www.lynda.com: For those of you who may not know, Lynda.com is training site for almost every professional computer program out there today. And yes they have a basic training course for Lightroom. Like all their courses, the Lightroom course is broken down into small 2-10 minute videos that I can view when I want therefore allowing me to learn at my own pace. You can pay $25 per month or $250 per year to unlock EVERY training video they have in their library. So if you only want to learn Lightroom, pay the $25 watch the videos, then cancel your membership. Learn what you need to when you need to.

UPDATE: Thanks to another PPS Author Dennis for pointing this out. Lynda.com offers a FREE 7 DAY TRIAL. This is amazing!!!! I would highly suggest taking advantage of this so very nice deal.

book image

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Book for Digital Photographers: This JUST started shipping the other day so I don’t have a review of it. But, it’s written by Scott Kelby. He is an amazing author and Photoshop instructor. So I basically guarantee that this book is going to be a great reference for Lightroom. You can pick it up anywhere books are sold for about $39.

Well I hope you all learn everything you can about Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. It really is an amazing program. I’m sure we will be posting new tips with Lightroom.

Lightroom is available for a Free 30-day trial. So download it today and start having fun with it.

Until Next Time;

Jarrod Michael

A Quick Tip on Backups for Mac Users

Published

jeff

on April 10, 2007

in PPS Photography Tips, ProPhotoShow and Software

. 0 Comments

Hey Everybody,
In a recent past episode Gavin talked about backing up your data. A task that many of use agree should be done regularly, however neglect or forget to do.
I thought I would pass along a quick tips that I use on my Mac to try and keep my backups more regular and consistent.
It involves Automator and iCal and the Energy Savings System Preferences.

If you haven’t had the opportunity to play around with Automator, I would strongly suggest to take an hour and open up the program. Automator is basically a user friendly version of Apple scripts, its a program designed to take care of repeative annoying tasks, such as backing up!

Within an hour of playing with Automator I imagine the majority of users would have been able to create a basic backup application. I would have included my own automator backup program, however it would likely be of little use since everyone likely backs up to different locations. However, the majority of my steps come from the finder package in Automator. Basically its choosing the following steps, Open a location (either an external drive, or netowork location), tell Automator to Copy your particular folder and subsequently paste it to the location you selected. Then disconnect the external or network drive.

So lets imagine you have played around on Automator and created your own backup program, save it as an application in a suitable location and test it just to make sure its going to work.

Here is the tip to daily backups that can occur anytime you want. Open up iCal and create an Appointment, under the Alarm Section choose Open File and choose the newly created backup program you just made in Automator. Now choose to repeat the appointment and choose when you want to repeat it (eg daily). Now after you have setup iCal your appointment will trigger the backup program to run at the time of day you specified and the day(s) you chose to run the Appointment.

Now most people really don’t want to run backups while there working on there computer, they can take up a lot of time and memory. The best time I found to run them is while I’m asleep, however I really don’t like to keep my Mac awake 24h a day 7 days a week. This is were the Energy Saving System Preferences comes into play. You can wake up and put your computer to sleep at specific times by going to the system preferences, Energy Savings (the lightbulb icon) and clicking on schedule. There you can setup when to wake up your computer and when to put your computer to sleep. Choose at night for it to wake up and then go to sleep shortly after. Allowing your computer to be awake just before the iCal event triggers the Backup program

Here is an example of a daily backup
I close my laptop and put it to sleep around 11pm when I goto bed, at about 4am my computer is told to wake up by Energy Savings. At 4:05am my iCal appointment is triggered and automatically runs the backup program which opens up a network connection and copies all the files in my Picture folder to the network drive. The backup takes about a half hour, so I also told my Mac to sleep at 4:45am. Thats it.

Every day, my computer repeats these tasks ensuring that pictures are stored elsewhere. The great thing about this is that I don’t even think about backups now, I just know its there if I need it. Furthermore with daily backups, even little changes I make get saved just in case anything bad happens.

Cheers
Jeff Tindall
Tips and Tricks Photography

Photoshop Lightroom Tip: Keyboard Shortcuts

Published

dennis

on April 9, 2007

in Dennis Zerwas, Lightroom, ProPhotoShow and Software

. 2 Comments

Just wanted to share this handy Photoshop Lightroom tip I came across while playing around in the menu bar. This one goes out to all you keyboard shortcut freaks out there. You know who your are (command or control+a)!

If you press command and forward slash (control + / on a PC) while in PS Lightroom, a menu pops up with a list of keyboard shortcuts. It can also be found up in the menu bar under “Help-(currently selected module) Shortcuts.” Cool huh? There is a different list of shortcuts depending on which of the five modules is currently active. To get the shortcut list to go away, simply click on the shortcut window to make it go away. Why even mention this? To save you the time of looking for the “close window” icon that doesn’t exist!

PS Lightroom doesn’t really give you an easy way to print out these cheat sheets if you wanted to do so. One way around this on a Mac is to do a screen capture (shift+command+4) of each shortcut list and combine them in Photoshop to fit on a single 8.5 x 11 page. Now you have a PS Lightroom keyboard shortcuts cheat sheet taped next to your monitor to refer to until you have them all memorized. Ok maybe not all of them but your most frequently used ones at least.

For information on Photoshop Lightroom or to try it free for 30 days, visit Adobe.com. Already using the trial version? Remember there are just 21 days left with the $199 introductory price and then it goes up to $299! For even more Photoshop Lightroom information check out PPS Episode #24 and check out all of the resources listed by Gavin in his “Picks Of The Week” section.

Dennis
DZ Photography

The Future of Photography

Published

todd

on April 6, 2007

in PPS Photography Tips and ProPhotoShow

. 1 Comment

In Gavin’s most recent podcast, he briefly touched on the future of photography. It had me wondering…

In an earlier post, Gavin gave us the news of the new Better Light, large-format digital scanning camera. At a price tag of $23,000 and a sensor that can accommodate 416 megapixels, it brings the term MEGA-pixel into a new light. The specs on this camera are truly unbelievable and had me thinking about the future of digital photography.

It’s a future that can be both intimidating and exciting.

First, a quick look at the past. It’s a lot of fun to read about the early digital cameras, when manufacturers bragged about “a whopping 4.0 megapixels”. Digital cameras have grown exponentially in a short period of time and there is room to grow even more.

ANTI-SHAKE

In many ways, the future is here NOW and it begins with anti-shake technology. It was originally introduced for lenses alone, but it’s now being incorporated into body styles. I am still amazed at how this technology works and the more - the better! There will always be a need for a tripod, but there is no doubt that anti-shake technology will be a staple in future camera bodies. Personally, I hope manufacturers don’t abandon the technology on lenses, in favor of bodies, as it’s nice to use an anti-shake lens on an older model camera.

DIRECT EMAIL

Nikon recently introduced a feature that will get refined and perfected over the next few years. Coolpix S7C

The new COOLPIX S7c offers wireless LAN support, and when used with Nikon’s COOLPIX CONNECT service, you can take a picture and wirelessly email it to any email address. This technology is very exciting. Soon, the air will be filled with invisible images floating from cameras to email servers.

What a great back-up idea!

Imagine coming home from a wedding to all your images properly stored on your PC in its proper folder (or in Gavin’s case, three separate hard drives!) The sky is the limit for photojournalists, as they will have no problem meeting deadlines. In fact, in today’s digital news environment (all the news fit to post NOW!), it’s almost a necessity.

PREVIEW MONITORS

For the longest time, preview monitors have been reserved for point and shoot models. While shooting through the lens is the preferred method, there are advantages for a preview monitor and several DSLR’s will be offering preview monitors - Canon being the first.

You can expect many more to follow suit. This makes sense from a marketing standpoint. I will never forget handing my brand new DSLR to my wife. She stared at the back and asked, “where do I look?” I told her to look through the viewfinder and she asked, “I thought it was digital?”

While most of us professionals cringe at the idea of using a preview monitor, there are just too many “everyday” photographers who are accustomed to the monitors, so many that it’s becoming hard for manufacturers to ignore them.

SIZE

Now to what matters most in life - size! I found this article where Nathan Myhrvold of the New York Times makes an excellent point:

“You’ll own a 16- or even a 25-megapixel point-and-shoot in a few years, and it will not stop there. By some estimates, your eyes have an effective resolution of more than 500 megapixels. If you can see it, why shouldn’t a camera record it? “

Wow - we can debate how much is too much at another time!

What would you like to see? I know it’s physically impossible, but how awesome would it be to carry around a 70-200 2.8 COLLAPSABLE lens? Or how fantastic would it be to fire a shot and push one button for automatic HDR processing?

The future is now and it’s changing everyday.

Todd Rossnagel
www.keepyourphotos.com

PPS #28 ~ Vivid tack sharp images & Visual Razor PS action

Published

gavin

on April 5, 2007

in Gavin Seim, News, Podcasts and ProPhotoShow

. 0 Comments

Click Button To Listen, PPS Episode #28

To download mp3, right click above link, and “Save As”
Podcast subscription feed is http://feeds.feedburner.com/prophotoshow

PPS #28 Show Notes…

News

Yep your on the new Pro Photography Show site ( just in case you didn’t notice) Don’t forget to bookmark the new address. This is the new home of PPS

Adobe Photoshop CS3 announcements.

New Photoshop, Flash, and the whole suite coming at the end of April. Dreamweaver replaces GoLive, but Go Live will still be in production. check out the launch day videos on adobe’s sit.

Adobe announces Creative License training conferences
So you want to get an edge on the new Creative Suite from Adobe. Check out the conferences, and chances are you’ll find one in a city near you.

Canon updates firmware on digital SLR cameras.
Yep there should be one for every EOS digital body, covering various simple enhancements, and bug fixes. You can fin your here on the Canon update site

Main Topic…

Getting Really Vivid Images
I won’t go into all the details here, as you can hear all those on this PPS episode. But as promised I do have a free Gavin Seim official PS action for you. This is confirmed to work in Photoshop CS2 & CS3. It should also work in CS, and perhaps even earlier versions. But you probably have the latest version anyway so that you can use all of Gavin’s future actions… Right???

Well anyway here is Visual Razor 1 free and ready for download. It’s a good action for a general vivid enhancement of just about any image. Usually you would run this first (maybe even in a batch) and then apply any other effects you need

Download Visual Razor Enhancer

That’s goona wrap it for this week gang.My wedding is this Saturday so you may not hear from me for a bit, but don’t worry I’ll be back. In the meantime don’t forget to stop here and keep up with all the great news, and content that will be coming up on PPS from our other authors. I also plan on posting updates, and maybe even some images from the honeymoon on my personal blog

Gavin

Pro Photography Show

PPS is a Gavin Seim Production. Gavin Seim Wedidng & Portrait Photography, Ephrata Washington USA

Welcome to the new PPS

Published

prophotoshow

on April 3, 2007

in Gavin Seim, News and ProPhotoShow

. 0 Comments

Well I’ve been waiting to write this post for quite awhile now. The PPS site redesign was actually done weeks ago, and I’ve had all kinds of hassles with domain names, DNS names, and the like.

As you can see the PPS URL is not prophotoshow.net Though prophotographyshow.com will still be directing here I thought it would be better to go for an easier name.

Hope you like all the upgrades. Take a minute to explore a bit. You can not easily search, and get related posts for your query. You can look at items by category (not fully updated yet, but keep watching the categories). You’ll also find the vavigation always on your lest so you can check out the notes or recent podcasts, review in itunes, and more.

Also PPS now had four new writers helping you stay up to the minute with news, ideas, and information. Even during those tedious moments between PPS podcasts you can now feel at peace, knowing that there’s content for you here.

This is all bread spanking new folks so don’t hesitate to leave a comment if you see a problem or bug.