by Barry Howell: I have been a professional photographer since the early 80’s and am in the throws of embracing change like I never could have imagined. I have photographed hundreds of weddings and thousands of high school seniors. I was honored with the first ever Haga Wedding Album award for the best wedding album in Minnesota, and have entered many competition prints over the years. I began shooting weddings for a couple of studios, worked part time on my own for several years, and bought a very large studio operation in 1995. My first digital camera was a Fuji S2 and that is where my journey into the digital world really began. A good friend (and former employee) encouraged me to take a look at Lightroom and then Gavin’s presets from Seim Effects.
My years of experience (and significant volume) causes me to very careful how much “post production” we commit to. Having studied with the likes of Monte Zucker, Frank Cricchio Don Blair, David Ziser and others, I learned to produce near perfect images in the camera. There just wasn’t much editing we could do with our C-41 in-house lab printing from medium format Hasselblad negatives. I am the “techie” guy that loves everything shiny, new and cool, but I didn’t jump into digital until I felt the cameras and output options rivaled film quality. My journey from film to digital has been a long and at times very frustrating path. If you are just starting out (i.e. have never shot a roll of film-I know you’re out there), appreciate my story and be glad you can develop a workflow without transitioning from anything else. Take the time to think about ways you can do it right from image capture to customer delivery.
If you didn’t receive yesterdays copy of the Photo Couch newsletter which included the PPS/Seim Effects Christmas gift pack, I figured I would post it here along with a big Merry Christmas to all you readers. It’s been great having you part of the community in 2009.
PPS has teamed up with Seim Effects again this year for our annual gift pack. This years download has a nice selection fresh photo editing goodness including some Lightroom presets and photo textures. The best part is their free. Hop over to the Seim Effects download page below to get your copy, then share the joy. Also check out the deals page for some the promo codes and specials we’ve worked out over the past year.
Here’s to a great new year. Lets keep out businesses, creativity and kindness alive and well in 2010. Merry Christmas and see you on the forums… Gav
by Gavin Seim: Adobe is taking things up a notch once again. Lightroom 3 will bring lots of revamped and new features that should keep it’s current user base happy and continue to bring Lightroom converts into their fold.
Export HD video sideshows with music.
Yep, it just went into public beta and is available for everyone as a free download that stays active until April of 2010, so presumably the retail version will be out near then. The beta does not support upgrading of LR2 catalogs however. Obviously the final version will, but for now it’s still in the feedback stage so you’ll have to make a fresh catalog to use it.
Lightroom 3 will bring major architecture changes under the hood to help speed things up and run faster, but also a host of new features and perhaps even more when the final version ships. Here’s a few quick and dirty screenshots, musings and details on whats new.
by Gavin Seim. My new Lightroom Power workshop just launched and is available for groups organizations and conferences. It’s a fun relaxed single day session that I’m looking forward to taking abroad.
I’m also considering the possibility of doing a live online workshop. I have to look into the possibilities. I won’t blather on. If you’re interested in learning more, heres the page on Seim Effects.
by Gavin Seim: It’s amazing how much information is in files coming from today’s cameras. I do a lot of HDR photography, but I’ve also been working to bring out dynamic range on single files. I can actually pull out more tones using LR than I can in Photoshop.
Today I recorded a quick video to look at brushes masking and Luminance tools to control tones. There’s an HQ download version on Seim Effects. I’ll also be speaking on LR at the PPW Fall Conference so if you’re in the region stop by. Why am I still typing? The video explains it all.
