One of the advantages of using Lightroom catalogs is while you travel or are on location shooting you can download photos to your laptop, develop them on your laptop then transfer all the work to your studio computer at a later date. This is a real common workflow for photographers who travel with a laptop and have a studio computer back at home. Without a little knowledge of catalogs and how to transfer them, this could be a headache and potentially make a mess of your studio catalog if not done right. Let's take a look at how to transfer your photos in Lightroom from your laptop to your studio computer.
With the new version of any software there's always changes that leave us asking, "Where did that go?". With the introduction of the new Photoshop CS6, it was no different. With CS6 having more changes than any release of Photoshop in a very long time, you can be certain you will be wondering where some of your favorite tools went. Some were moved, changed or renamed but most of them still exist. It's just a matter of finding them. Lets take a look at where the Mask panel went and what happened to the Adjustments panel.
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.
One of the new features to appear in Lightroom 4 is the addition of the Map module. The Map module allows you to see on a Google map where your pictures where taken if your camera has built in GPS. If your camera does not have built in GPS you can place your photos on the map manually or import a track log from a GPS device and match them up to selected photos in your catalog. The map data and screen images come from Google so you will need to be connected to the Internet in order to see the map.
Many Lightroom users are familiar with the Star Rating system for rating and filtering your photos to eventually find your selects and picks for developing but Lightroom also gives you another set of labels called the Color Label. These are another set of labels to use in your studio workflow and can be customized. I like to use the Star Ratings for finding my selects then reserve the Color Labels for labeling my photos as reminders that certain photos need to be printed, retouched, or color corrected. This can be particularly helpful if you have more than one person working on the photos in a studio setting. When dividing tasks in the Studio one can easily see which photos need to be color corrected or printed for a client.
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).
One of the ways to become more effecient in Adobe Lightroom is to learn some of the keyboard shortcuts for the more common tasks you use everyday. Unfortunately a lot of the shortcuts in Lightroom are specific to the particular module you are working in but doesn't mean you can't still make your workflow faster. Download the keyboard shortcut and print the pages you feel you use most often. It will start to make a huge difference in your workflow.
As photographers were always trying to create unique looking images and a great way to add some flavor to your photo is with color. You can enhance the mood of a photo by warming or cooling it and the color is what gives a retro looking photo its nostalgic feel. An easy way to add flavor to your photos in Lightroom is by adding color with the Split Toning panel in the Develop module. You can use this heavily adding lots of color or just a hint to nudge the feeling a bit. This can also be done in Adobe Camera Raw with the Split Toning tab.
Using the Split Toning panel when developing your photographs will allow you to add your own unique look by adding color to the highlights or shadows or both. Below is a photo with no color added and the Saturation sliders are set at 0.
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.
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.
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.
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