• The first article by Towner is a fantastic screencast he recorded, showing a very creative way to use Perfect Layers 1.0 to generate a custom photo layout/collage. If you've been waiting to get a sneak preview of Perfect Layers 1.0, look no further than Towner's post!

• Next up is a guest blog post by yours truly (Brian M) and is hosted by the ever-prolific Ron Martinsen. Ron had asked me to create a screenflow using several Perfect Photo Suite products to give a truly unique look to one of my images. Naturally, I went with a grungy UrbEx HDR photo and worked in some PhotoTools and FocalPoint love. You can check out the guest blog post on Ron's blog!

Thank you, Towner & Ron, for including us on your great blogs!

Click here to download our 'Presets for HDR' Expansion Pack

We've also put together a quick video tutorial showing you how you can import these presets into PhotoTools, as well as share your existing presets with other PhotoTools users.

[flv:http://ononesoft.cachefly.net/content/video/PhotoTools-ImportExportPresets.flv 560 350]

To prove his point, he's started a new series in this blog called Behind the Curtain, where he shows you the tone mapped HDR image and the final image after post-processing. One of his keys to success in his post work is PhotoTools 2.5 Professional Edition. Brian has found a variety of effects that he really enjoys using to create his signature style and in this series he shares what those effects are. Take a look at his work (it's amazing) as it is sure to inspire you (it has me) to go out and shoot more and see just how far you can push PhotoTools.

So be sure to take a look at the first installment of Behind the Curtain - The Royal Clipper. It's amazing to see the before and after shots here.

So for many of you who have just updated to the Photoshop CS5 compatible versions of our plug-ins, you don't see the onOne menu that you are so accustomed to seeing and you're wondering "how do I access my plug-ins?". A quick trip to the Filter menu shows nothing from onOne. That's because, technically, our plug-ins are not filters.

Where you will find them is under the File > Automate menu. What? Where? Why? The reason is that beginning in Photoshop CS4 ((maybe it was CS3, I can't remember for sure)) most of our products were converted over to Automation plug-ins so that they could be used in a batch process or as part of an action.

Starting in Photoshop CS4, we knew that eventually we'd no longer be able to use the beloved onOne menu so we took advantage of the new panels that Adobe introduced in the CS4 release. The new onOne panel gives you all the functionality of the older onOne menu. But how do you get to it? In Photoshop, go to the Window menu and then to Extensions. There, you'll see onOne. Select onOne from the Window > Extensions menu and you'll get the new onOne panel. The onOne panel can be docked along with any of the other panels in Photoshop so you can customize your workspace.

So now you have two options, either the onOne panel or the File > Automate menu. Good luck! If you'd like to see a video of this, Dan Harlacher, our senior product manager recorded one to show you how to access the onOne panel.

[flv:http://ononesoft.cachefly.net/video/suite5/access/accessing_plugins.flv 600 375]

Genuine Fractals, PhotoTools, PhotoFrame, PhotoTune and FocalPoint are all technically Photoshop Automation plug-ins. As an Automation plugin, you can include any of these plug-ins in an action that you create in Photoshop to speed up your workflow. They can also be included in any batch processing workflow that you may have as well. As an Automation plugin, the plugin will show up in the File > Automation menu.

In previous versions of the onOne Plug-In Suite, to make it easier to find our plug-ins (because quite frankly, you shouldn't have to know or be concerned with the difference between a Filter and an Automation plug-in or where they live within Photoshop for that matter) we created the onOne Menu which is inserted between the Window and Help menu items in the Photoshop menu bar. However, over the years with changes to both Photoshop and (primarily) the Windows operating system, the creation of this menu has been, how shall I put it... delicate. Fragile. Sometimes flaky and non-existent to be honest. On the Mac OS X platform, it hasn't been a problem, but not all of you out there use Mac OS X  so we had to find a better, long-term solution to provide a single, consistent and stable place to allow you to access our plug-ins.

Enter the Photoshop CS4 Panel.

You are most likely already familiar with these panels. In fact, you use them everyday. There is a Layers panel, Masks panel, Adjustments panel, etc etc etc. Perhaps the coolest thing about panels is that anybody can create a panel. John Nack has a panel that shows his daily RSS feed from his blog. Julieanne Kost has a daily PS tip panel.

We figured since the onOne menu doesn't work for everybody in Photoshop CS4 that we would create a panel for our plug-ins. The problem is that while it gets installed automatically when you run the onOne Plug-In Suite 5 installer, it doesn't actually show up when you relaunch Photoshop. But it's easy to get it to appear after you've run the installer. Here's what you do.

Simply go to the Window > Extensions menu and then choose onOne. Up pops the new onOne Panel where you can now double-click on any of the product names and go directly into that plug-in. Alternately, if you single-click on a product name, a sub-menu is exposed showing you any preset categories that you have created with that plug-in. Click on a category name and you see the presets in that category. If you double-click on a preset name, that preset will be applied to your photo. Very slick.

The new onOne Palette

Preset categories displayed

So if you have installed Plug-In Suite 5 and you are not sure where all of your favorite plug-ins are located, just go to the Window > Extensions menu and select onOne. You will have a nice new palette with everything in one place. Oh, and by the way, you can dock it alongside your other panels as well by dragging it into either the panel bar or next to a panel that is already open like the Layers panel.

[flv:http://ononesoft.cachefly.net/video/phototools2/flash/PT2presets.flv 600 375]

Click here for the DSLR Camera Remote for iPhone Troubleshooting Guide.

The Problem

For those of you shooting with the DSLR Camera Remote and wanting to have those photos be automatically imported into a Lightroom catalog, you may notice a problem similar to the outlined below by reader Brendan:

One problem when I use DSLR remote in tandem with Lightroom:
DSLR uses a watched folder, and displays the latest entry to this folder on my iPhone.
Great so far.
Lightroom also uses a watched folder, but as soon as something shows up in that folder Lightroom moves it to another folder.
Problem being, as soon as the image is moved, it disappears from my iPhone screen.
Not your fault, but it would be wonderful to have the latest image appear on the laptop as well as my iPhone.
It doesn’t seem to be possible to stop Lightroom from moving the image out of the watched folder.

Brendan - you're right. When the DSLR Camera Remote app on the iPhone displays the photo that you just took, it is getting that photo from the pictures folder you defined or setup in the Server Software. Further, there are no options in Lightroom 2 that will allow you to NOT move a file from a watched folder before importing it into your Lightroom catalog.

Under the Auto-Import Settings dialog box, you have to enter a subfolder name in the Destination portion of that dialog box. If you don't Lightroom will at least, put in an underscore character. So how do we get around this? On a Mac, it's pretty straight-forward. Here's how I was able to get my photos automatically imported into Lightroom 2 while keeping the files where the Server Software and the DSLR Camera Remote on my iPhone expect to see them so I can still get previews on my iPhone.

For this scenario, Folder A is the folder where the DSLR Server Software stores the photos, Folder B is the watched folder as defined in Lightroom's auto-import preferences. Folder C is where the images will ultimately end up after being (moved and) imported by Lightroom 2.

The Solution

I opened up the Automator application that is included with Mac OS X 10.5 {  (( I believe it is also included with Mac OS X 10.4 ))  } and did the following.

Step 1 - Create a new folder (Folder A)  where you want the DSLR Camera Remote Server Software to store the files. I can be anywhere you want. Create Folder B - this is the temp folder. Create Folder C - this is where the images will ultimately end up via the Lightroom 2 Auto Import.

Step 2 - Launch Automator and from the Wizard-like sheet that appears, choose Custom.

Step 3 - From the Actions category, select Files & Folders and then Find Finder Items.

Drag the Find Finder Items action over into the big empty window space on the right. Under the Where: section, choose Folder A. Be sure to set the Whose: section to be Date Created equals today.

Step 4 - From the Actions list on the left, locate the Copy Finder Items action below the action created in Step 3 above. Choose the location of Folder B - this is where you are going to tell Lightroom 2 to look for the auto-import.

Step 5 - Now you're ready to save your creation. Go to the File menu and choose Save as Plug-In... in the next dialog box that appears, give it any name that is meaningful to you. Next, and this is important, choose Folder Actions from the pop-up menu for the Plug-In for: section. In the next drop down menu, click once and then select Folder A that we created above.

What's going to happen is every time a file shows up in this folder from Step 1 (i.e. our photos being captured remotely) it will get COPIED from Folder A to Folder B. Because it's a folder action, it will run whenever ANY FILE created "today" shows up which is going to be all the time since we're shooting.

Step 6 - In Lightroom 2, go to the File menu and choose Auto Import and then Auto Import Settings. Define where you want the files to go or if you wish to append metadata, etc upon import.

Finally go ahead and fire up the Server Software if it's not already going. Grab you iPhone and fire away on  your supported camera. If Lightroom is in the foreground you'll see the photos show up. Further, the photos are still on your iPhone preview because the originals are still in Folder A, where we are looking.

Folder B becomes empty due to the nature of the Lightroom auto-import behavior. Folder C and it's sub directory is where the files from Folder B get automatically moved to due to Lightroom's Auto Import Settings. That's all there is too it. Pretty simple really, even if you've never used Automator before.

When you're all done, you can delete Folder A as it is now just a duplicate of the files that have already been moved and added to a Lightroom database.

As for Windows, I'm not very well versed there in order to provide any type of solution. But if anybody reading this is, please feel free to drop a comment on your solution.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nvkwviwr0LE]