April 21, 2011 by Mike Wong • 14 Comments
It seems like forever ago (and in some ways it was) that we announced that we were working on a new product called Perfect Layers. All these months later, I'm happy to report that today, we are announcing that a Public Preview of Perfect Layers is now available for you to download and play with, free of charge. What is Perfect Layers you ask? Read on for more.
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June 23, 2009 by Mike Wong • Comments Off
The Santa Fe Workshops, a year-round educational center providing inspiration and education to photographers for years, has a series of workshops coming up centered around Adobe Photoshop Lightroom.
Now, before you start saying "I don't live in Santa Fe and can't afford to fly/drive/walk there", let me share with you that they are taking this workshop on the road. The workshop starts later this month with the first workshop in Boulder, CO then heading off to Australia then coming back to Los Angeles and up north to my hometown of Portland, Oregon before hitting the rest of the United States. For those of you in the United Kingdom, the workshop makes a stop in London as well. Here are the rest of the dates and information on pricing and registration.
February 23, 2008 by Mike Wong • 1 Comment
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.
December 5, 2007 by Mike Wong • Comments Off
I was recently going through some pictures that I took throughout 2007 as part of a year-end slide show, semi-movie project that I like to do for my family. While cruising through my Lightroom library, I stumbled upon this picture of my son that I took in October at one of his soccer games.
I really liked it for two reasons. First, I really liked the lighting - that late afternoon light in the fall can be really nice. Second, I liked it be because Nathan wasn't pulling a goofy face which is he prone to do at his age in just about every picture I take of him. The goofy faces are nice, but even a parent wants a straight face sometimes. Anyway, I thought it would make a good black and white photo so I quickly opened it up in Photoshop CS3 and the took it into PhotoTools Professional Edition.
I added two effects that Jack Davis created for PhotoTools. The first was a Black and White effect specifically designed for portraits (effect name: Davis-WOW Portrait-B&W). I then added the Davis-Diffuse Glow effect set to the Substantial Large setting because I really wanted to get a nice glow and blow out some of the highlights on the left side of Nathan's face so they would blend into the background. I know Jack would disagree with me about blowing out the highlights but I had almost blown them out in the original photo so I figured I might as well go to town and completely blow the highlights and get a cool effect. Finally, I added a small amount of sharpening with Jack's Davis-Portrait Sharpen effect set to Small. The result...
I really like this final result and when I printed it on my Epson R2400, I liked it even better. I can't wait to get the print home and put it up in my office.
Now if you would like to get this same type of look, you can either repeat those steps in PhotoTools Professional Edition - which will save you about 15 steps in Photoshop, or you can download this preset and import it into PhotoTools Professional Edition and get it with a simple double-click. Hope you enjoy it.
All images copyright Mike Wong 2007.
August 17, 2007 by Mike Wong • Comments Off
I posted earlier about sessions at Photoshop World Fall 2007 that you don't want to miss on Day 1 of the conference and now here are my Day 2 selections for sessions you won't want to miss.
If you enjoy still life photography or if you make a living at it, you won't want to miss Jim DiVitale's session at 9:30 in the Digital Photography Live Studio Track. The session is called "Still Life Photography Shoot Live" and I can guarantee you that Jim will teach and show you something you didn't know before. I was in Atlanta once last year and stopped by Jim's studio and he gave me an improptu Photoshop class and taught me a ton...but I digress.
If Still Life isn't your thing, go over to the Creativity Track and catch Joe McNally's session on "Shooting for Major Magazines". Joe has a resume second to none and the portfolio to back it up so I'm sure he'll be showing a bunch of his work so this will be a hard one to miss.
At the 11:00 am session block, I would do anything I could to be in Helene Glassman's "Lighting for Digital Portraiture" class. Few things will improve your photography like proper lighting and Helene is one of the best on the subject. To prove it, Helene has been living minutes away from The Brooks Institute of Photography for over 20 years since she graduated from there and has maintained a successful studio even with hundreds of new graduates to compete with each year.
You get a 2 hour break for lunch, so if I were you - here comes a shameless plug, sorry - I'd stop by the onOne Software booth (#515) at 1:00 after you eat. We're giving away an iPhone to one lucky attendee. Stop by our booth on day 1 for details on how to win.
At 2:30pm, I'd make my way over to a new session this year called "Lightroom Power Session" with Chris Orwig. Chris is a new Photoshop World instructor this year and is an amazing photographer - so you'll get to see some great stuff in his demo I'm sure - and a wonderful teacher, not to mention a great guy. Be sure to see him there if you can. If you miss him there, he's got several sessions on the Tech Expo theatre and in the Peach Pit booth.
In the 4pm session, you'll have to choose between Jay Maisel's new "Light, Gesture and Color" and Rick Sammon's "Working Hard at Having Fun in Digital Photography". Jay and Rick have opposite teaching styles so you'll most likely want to pick the session that you think you'll enjoy the most. I suspect Rick will be full of energy and will get the class invovled while Jay tends to be a little more subdued and presents in more of a lecture style. Both sessions will be great I'm sure, just pick the one you think you'll like best.
At 5:15 I'd either go back to the Lightroom track and see Tim Grey's session on "Photographic Workflow in Lightroom" - though if you saw Matt Kloskowski's session at 9:00 on workflow you might be covered. I think I might have to go see Joe Glyda's session on "How to Light for Shooting Food". I'm not a food photographer and I don't plan on becoming one, but Joe is an amazing presenter who is hilarious as well so I would go to this for the sheer entertainment value. Joe has been the top guy at Kraft foods in the creative department for something like 15 years (or more) so you know he's had to figure out some cool and creative ways to stay fresh there.
At 7:00 pm, you will not, I repeat, will not want to miss the "The Art of Digital Photography" presentation. There's no instruction, just a bunch of great slideshows by Jay Maisel, Vincent Versace, John Paul Caponigro, Jim DiVitale, Joe McNally, Moose Peterson and Joe Glyda. Don't miss it.
That's a very busy day 2 but well worth it. I'll post my day 3 recommendations next.
