Pixel Training

New Lightroom 4 Features - Email Photos

One of the new features to appear in the new version of Lightroom 4 is the ability to email directly out of the Lightroom program. The new feature allows you to send email containing your photos from Lightroom or use your default email application. Lightroom is set up to use email providers like AOL, Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo, or your own provider.

How to Create a PDF Contact Sheet in Adobe Photoshop Bridge

Creating a Contact Sheet for a photo shoot is one of the easiest ways to present your client a sheet of photo thumbnails so they can decide which ones to choose. Fortunately, Adobe created a more streamlined version of this process in CS5 by adding it directly in to Adobe Bridge under the Output workspace. In earlier versions, you had to create seperate JPEGs of the contact sheet in the Bridge menu Tools<Photoshop>Contact Sheet II. They are bringing it back in CS6 again but I like the new version because I can output PDFs directly from Bridge. Lets look at how to make a Contact Sheet in Adobe Bridge.

Tutorial: How to Sync Develop Settings in Adobe Bridge

One of the ways to make your workflow more efficient when working with Raw files in Photoshop is to sync settings across multiple images that have the same setup like in a studio table top shot or even a portrait session. Using a gray card or similar like the ColorChecker Passport can make life even easier since you will have something to measure your grey balance with. Even if you don't have a gray card you can set the develop settings in one image and sync them to the rest of images with a simple command in Bridge. Lets take a look on how to do this in Bridge.

If you're using a gray card of some sort you want to get your White Balance set first. Select the photo with your gray card in Bridge and open it in Camera Raw by going to the menu File>Open In Camera Raw… (Command-R).

Using Lightroom Collections for Creativity and Inspiration

 

One of the cool features in Lightroom is the ability to create Collections of your photographs. Lightroom Collections are a way to group photos for easy viewing in one place. They can span multiple folders and different shoots so long as they are all in the same Catalog. They can also be used to display in a slide show, contact sheet or web gallery.

High Pass Overlay Action

A new Action has been added to the Downloads page called the High Pass Overlay for creating micro contrast or structure to your photo. You can take this action way up and create a grungy look to your image. Its a great way to increase the local contrast and add a little punch to your photo. It also allows you to try different values and see it in action on your photo before you hit OK.

Download the action here.

To load the action, download the action from the link above then go to the Actions panel menu and select Load Actions... Select the saved action on your hard drive and hit Load. It should now be in your Actions panel. Open an image, select the action and hit Play.

I hope you enjoy it. Be sure to leave a comment and let me know how it works.

Tutorial: Creating Low Resolution JPEGs

In this tutorial you'll learn how to process a group of high resolution photos in Photoshop to low resolution JPEGs using automation.

 

The Backup Strategy

Many things can cause a drive failure. Power interrupt, drive enclosure failure, drive mechanisms and even outside elements like fire or water damage can all cause us to lose our data. The first thing you have to do is get your head around the fact that all drives fail at sometime no matter what the cause. It can be a low cost single desktop enclosure or a very expensive sophisticated RAID system. Its not a matter of IF they fail, its WHEN they fail.

 

Tutorial: Batch Processing

One of the next great automation tools in Photoshop is the Batch command. As the name implies, Batch will run a saved Action on a batch of files. It can be run on a set of files open in Photoshop, a folder of files on your drive or a selection of files from Bridge. Once started, Batch will run the saved Action on the files and will either save over the original files or save a new set of files in another folder specified by the user in the Batch window. Its a great way to process a bunch of files and perform some action to them. In this tutorial we'll run a saved Action we created in the Actions tutorial on a folder of files.

 

Batch can be performed from either the Photoshop menu File > Automate > Batch... or from Bridge in the menu Tools > Photoshop > Batch... The advantage to using Bridge id you can select certain files in a folder and not run the Batch on an entire folder's contents.

 

Lets take a look at the Batch window and the different options we have to choose from.

 

Tutorial: Using and Creating Actions

Photoshop's Actions commands are one of the most powerful features you can use when performing repetitive tasks in Photoshop. If you find yourself using a similar set of filters or using a set of commands over and over again on every photo then Actions will save you time and make your life easier. Below I will show you how to create an Action and use it to  resize a photo in to a low resolution version for email, convert it to sRGB, create a watermark, and save it as a JPEG.