One onOne with Mike Wong

For those submitting entries to the 2008 Art of Photography show, the deadline is nearing.

he Art of Photography Show 2008 is a world-class international exhibition featuring all forms of photographic art -- images shot on film, shot digitally, unaltered shots, alternative process, mixed media, digital manipulations, montages, etc. The Art of Photography Show will be exhibited at the two-level Lyceum Theatre Gallery.

The online entry process is very easy, simply filling out a short registration form and then uploading your digital files. Entry deadline is March 3rd at 11:59 pm (California Time).

If you live in the San Diego area (or maybe you'll be vacationing there), be sure to check out the exhibit which runs April 25 - May 23, 2008.

Posted by Mike Wong at 4:30 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Sometimes, when you're trying to solve a problem you learn something new. That is the case for this tip - Solo Mode. When I was trying to solve The Case of the Missing Presets, I discovered this very cool, and as far as I know, undocumented feature (though to be honest, I've never read the Lightroom documentation so maybe it is in there) called Solo Mode.

What is Solo Mode you ask? One of the coolest features in Lightroom you've probably never heard of. Allow me to set this up...

When you have a bunch, and a bunch could be more than one, panel open, finding the contents in one of the panels can be difficult because you have to scroll up or down to get to the panel you want. For example, I like to keep the History panel open so I can glance down and see what I've done to an image. I also have a huge list of presets, including the onOne PhotoPresets and a bunch that I download from Matt Kloskowski's Lightroom Killer Tips blog. So when the Preset panel is open AND the History palette is open, I have to scroll up and down constantly which gets annoying - especially if I'm only working on my MacBook Pro and I don't have my mouse (like now).

So here's the tip, Control-click on any of the names of the panels such as Presets, Snapshots, History or any panel name except the Histogram panel (that one is exempt from Solo Mode) and you'll get a contextual menu that has several items in it. The one we want is about three-quarters of the way down and it says, you guessed it, Solo Mode. Just click on that and you'll notice that the disclosure triangles next to the panel names (except Histogram) change from a solid gray to what looks like a top down view of a set of gray bowling pins.

Now when you click on one of these bowling pin formations, only that panel is opened and the rest are closed. I love it! It really comes in handy on the Develop module for all of the develop settings. And it makes perfect sense because in theory when you finish doing your Basic adjustments you can move on to Tone Curve and you don't need Basic anymore. Brilliant as they say here in England (nobody says Awesome, and I've gotten funny looks when I have so I'm going to stop until next week).

Give it a try, it's my new favorite feature in Lightroom 1.1.

Posted by Mike Wong at 4:51 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

In preparation for my Lightroom presentation tomorrow at Focus on Imaging, I was going through my demo files and making sure that everything was working properly when it dawned on me that I didn't have any of my PhotoPresets for Lightroom anymore.

For this demo, I wanted to show how you create a Lightroom catalog from scratch, so rather than deleting all of my photos in my current (and previously only) Lightroom catalog, I created a new one. Lightroom 1.1 allows you to have more than one catalog and you can pick which one you want to use when you launch Lightroom. I remember checking a box when I created the new catalog to store the Develop presets with the catalog, not reallly knowing what it would do (dumb I know) but I did it anyway.

Okay, so I figured I'd just find the presets folder and copy my old ones in because I knew where they were. Previous versions of Lightroom let you control click on a preset and you'd have an option to say "Show Preset Folder" and it would pop open. No such luck in Lightroom 1.1.

After a few minutes of frantic searching, I realized where Lightroom looks for CATALOG SPECIFIC presets. Are you ready...they are with the catalog! Duh. Okay, I felt pretty dumb, but now you don't have to worry or panic if you do the same thing.

Find where your new catalog is and in there you'll find all of the presets for each of the Lightroom modules. Just copy your old preset files in and relaunch Lightroom and you'll be good to go. Seems simple, and maybe it is, but if you have a brain cramp like me and are looking for them, hopefully this helps.

Posted by Mike Wong at 4:42 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Today was my first full day in Birmingham and surprisingly, I felt pretty good today. Usually the jet lag gets me, but I did manage to sleep for about 9 hours last night so that might have something to do with it. We'll see how it goes tomorrow after a full day at the show.

Usually when I go on a trip like this, I either miss out on some fantastic weather at home or I escape the rainy weather in Portland and find myself in the cold and rain somewhere else. Not this time, seems that regardless of being in Portland, Oregon or in Birmingham, England, the weather is pretty much the same. See for yourself.

More tomorrow about the show and how it's going. I suspect the weather report from inside the show tomorrow will be the same as every other convention center in the world...

Posted by Mike Wong at 2:16 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Whew, it's been a long day. Just landed in Amsterdam. Almost to Birmingham for Focus on Imaging 2008 - just 2 more hours in the airport (my gate is D46 as seen in the above photo) and then time for some sleep before I run through my demos.

I'm really looking forward to doing the Lightroom and Photoshop workflow in the Adobe Booth this week. I've got two, one hour speaking slots so it should be fun.

Speaking of Lightroom, be sure to head over to Matt Kloskowski's Lightroom Killer Tips blog and read his latest tip about Option/Alt keys and the recovery slider.

Posted by Mike Wong at 5:07 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

I've been very bad about posting the past couple of weeks. We're in the process of doing a complete redesign of our site - which I've been very involved in and extremely excited about. We've gone through our site with a critical eye trying to get everything more consistent, easier to read, easier to find things, making something that took 4 steps and condense it down into 2 and so on. The end result is that our site will be easier for you to use and to find the things you need and want to find.

Also, I've been busy getting ready to head over the United Kingdom (I leave on Thursday) for the annual Focus On Imaging photography show in Birmingham (just north of London by a couple of hours). Our London office has been busy preparing for the show and in the process has scheduled some time for me to speak in a number of booths (they call them stands over there actually) including the Adobe stand where I'll be talking about incorporating Lightroom and Photoshop CS3 into your workflow.

Also, I've had a few requests lately for some more frames for the Print module in Lightroom. This time, I've been asked to create some realistic frames that you might see hanging on a wall in a gallery or someone's home. There's lots of content for me to use from PhotoFrame Professional Edition, so I'm hoping to get that done soon. Check back in a week or so.

Posted by Mike Wong at 11:50 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

If you're going to Photoshop World in Orlando in April and haven't registered yet, you still have a few days, 10 in fact, to save $100 on your registration.

Don't delay. And when you get to the conference, please be sure to stop booth 219, the onOne booth, to see us demo our latest plug-ins. We're also going to be giving away at least one very cool prize and are in the process of lining up some great presenters that you won't want to miss.

Posted by Mike Wong at 11:11 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

PC-Review Online has just posted their review of PhotoTools 1.0 Professional Edition.

Here's a excerpt from the review.

"I am quite impressed with PhotoTools Pro, the interface is clean and easy to use. It comes with a very wide range of useful effects, the ability to stack effects to create totally new custom effects is really nice. The batch processing capability is great for not only batch applying a stack of effects but for batch processing without applying effects."

"If you own a digital camera or a film or flatbed scanner and you have Adobe Photoshop CS2 or CS3 this is a must have plug-in package. The effects are very nice and most importantly they are practical and useful."

Learn more about PhotoTools Professional Edition.

Posted by Mike Wong at 2:59 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

If, like me, you have ever purchased a stock photo from Adobe Stock Photos via the Bridge application, you probably received (or will soon) an email from Adobe today.

According to Adobe, as of April 1, 2008, the Adobe® Stock Photos royalty-free image service will be discontinued to allow them to focus their efforts in other areas.

If you're interested, you can read more about it here.

Posted by Mike Wong at 2:03 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

It's that time of year again...The Art of Photography is having their annual contest for 2008 and you have 1 month to get your entries in for consideration.

You can watch a video of some of the photos that were entered in the 2007 contest by clicking on the image below.

Posted by Mike Wong at 2:15 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Like many photographers, I'm always on the lookout for a new camera bag. I've had a variety of bags from Tamrac, Crumpler and LowePro (in fact I should be getting the Lowe Pro Mag 2 AW Camera Shoulder Bag today that ordered from B&H). But I think this may be the next camera bag that I add to my wish list.

It's the Monkey Bag from Case Logic and it can be yours for less than $10. Okay, so it won't hold any of my cameras including my Canon G9, but I bet my daughter would love it.

Posted by Mike Wong at 1:36 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)