Archive for October, 2010

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Dark HDR Image in Photoshop

Friday, October 29th, 2010

Have you ever come across this problem:

“When I open my HDR Image in Photoshop, it is very dark. What’s the best way to fix this?”

This is a very interesting question. If the HDR image you open in Photoshop is very dark it is because the dynamic range of the HDR image exceeds the display capabilities of a computer screen. The image may also look washed out for the same reason.

However, Photoshop allows us to adjust the preview so that the computer screen may display the image correctly. The preview settings are stored in HDR image file and they are applied any time the image is opened in Photoshop. They do not affect the file itself.

To adjust the image, you can use 32-Bit Preview Options that can be found under View -> 32-Bit Preview Options. It contains two methods:

  1. Exposure and Gamma method – you can manually adjust the Exposure and Gamma, the Exposure being the equivalent of Brightness adjustment, and Gamma being Contrast adjustment.
  2. Highlight Compression – it compresses the Highlight values in the HDR image to get it withing luminance values range of the 8-Bit and 16-Bit images.

And that’s how it’s done! :-)

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XMP World (in Lightroom)

Thursday, October 28th, 2010

XmpGood morning! :-)

Today it’s XMP time. Let’s move in time to XMP world…

As you probably know, XMP stands for Extensible Metadata Platform and it is a way of storing data like star ratings, keywords, develop settings etc.

What’s great about Xmp is that it is open source, which means anyone can contribute to the project and make it available.

When you work in Lightroom, any changes you make are written into the Catalog or can be written into the XMP. If you use Catalog instead of Xmp, the changes you make won’t be available when you open a raw image in Adobe Bridge as an example . If you want the information to be available to other applications, you need to write metadata to XMP.

Not everything gets stored in XMP. Here’s what is not stored in XMP:

  1. virtual copies
  2. image editing history
  3. stacks
  4. flags

This is caused by XMP specifications limitations.

What if I use Jpegs? – I get asked very often.

You won’t see sidecar XMP files next to your Jpegs or TIFFs. The XMP for these files is written into the header of the file and it doesn’t affect the file itself.

If you want to write changes into XMP manually inside Lightroom, select an image (or a whole bunch of images) and press Ctrl+S / Cmd+S or go to Metadata -> Write Metadata to Files.

I hope you enjoyed it, that’s it for today!

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PhotoshopLightroomTV and Bridge/Dreamweaver Integration

Wednesday, October 27th, 2010

Photoshop Lightroom TvGood morning to you! :-)

I hope you are having a fantastic week and hopefully you watched this week’s Episode of Photoshop Lightroom TV. If not, head on to Photoshop Lightroom TV website to watch it.

In this Episode I am giving a review of an interesting macro/portrait lens combination – if you are looking for an affordable portrait lens that can also shoot macro, watch it! I am also revealing some Bridge/Dreamweaver integration technique in adding images to your website and I am going to expand on that next week as well.

As usual I am sharing a “Tip of the Week” as well so don’t miss it. Tomorrow I am going to get back to Lightroom and share with you some more insider information from Lightroom – make sure you visit tomorrow.

That’s it for today. Enjoy the day and hopefully see you tomorrow.

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Lightroom 3.3 and Camera Raw 6.3

Tuesday, October 26th, 2010

Lightroom updatesHi, It is not exactly what it sounds like ;-)

Adobe has just anounced Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3.3 and Camera Raw 6.3 Release Candidates. They are available on Adobe Labs website.

Release Candidate means that it is a fully working update and it just needs some feedback from the community before it appears as a a final product. It also means that there may be some additional features / camera support in the final shipping version.

New Camera Raw 6.3 brings some new cameras’ support:

  • Nikon D7000
  • Nikon Coolpix P7000
  • Nikon D3100
  • Canon PowerShot S95
  • Canon PowerShot G12
  • Panasonic Lumix DMC-GH2
  • Samsung NX100
  • Samsung TL350 (WB2000)

There is also a new feature in this release – Adobe Lens Profile Downloader. Adobe Lens Profile Downloader allows people to search, download and comment on the lens profiles that are created and shared by the community.

The new Camera Raw 6.3 update brings also support for many new lens’ profiles. You can find the whole list on Lightroom Journal Blog on adobe website.

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Work with Lightroom Catalogs on the move

Monday, October 25th, 2010

Lightroom CatalogsGood morning! I hope you had a wonderful weekend. :-)

Some photographers work a lot on the move and they use more than one computer. They usually use a laptop on location and then a desktop at home/office. So how does Lightroom fit in here?

Lightroom allows you to split and merge catalogs so you could easily use two machines . There is also some work you can do on offline photographs (f.ex when you keep catalog and previews on your laptop but the images on an external hard drive and you disconnect the hard drive, you can still do some work on the images.

You can Export a part of your images as Catalog, which means you can take a folder or  a collection, and export it. Then you can create another catalog with these images. Lightroom will export the metadata and previews for you as well. Once you’re done, you can merge this catalog back into your main catalog.

To Export as Catalog, first you need to select the images you want to be exported. Then go to File -> Export as Catalog.

Export as Catalog in Lightroom

In the Export as Catalog dialog box, choose a location for your export.

One of the options you have when exporting images as a catalog, is the option called “Include available previews”:

Export as Catalog in LightroomThis option will export the previews of the images. If you don’t include previews, you will just see grey boxes instead of images in Lightroom when you import the catalog, so remember to include the previews (it should be checked by default).

Another option here (which is checked by default as well) will export the images – Export negative files – which means you will have copies of your original images.

Then you can transfer the catalog to any computer hat runs Lightroom 3 (f.ex. a laptop on location), and simply open the catalog by double-clicking on it or using File -> Open Catalog in Lightroom.

When you only export the previews and not the original images, there will be some limitation of the files, and we will talk about that tomorrow.

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Catalogs in Lightroom

Friday, October 22nd, 2010

Catalog headerGood morning! :-)

I thought I would share some interesting information about Catalogs in Lightroom today.

I’m sure you already know how to create Catalogs in Lightroom, but did you know that you could hold Ctrl/Opt key when starting Lightroom to select which Catalog you want to open? Or you can use the same keyboard shortcut to create a new Catalog.

Another topic I want to share today (still talking about Catalogs) , have you ever wondered why there are so many files in the same folder as your Catalog? Also, notice how the content of the folder suddenly changes when you open the Catalog in Lightroom:

Before:

Catalog Folder 1After:

Catalog Folder 2Here’s what these files are and what they do:

  • .lrcat file – the Catalog, keeps all settings
  • .lrdata – previews
  • .lrcat.lock – a lock file that protects your database from getting corrupted
  • .lrcat-journal – this file contains data that are waiting to be written into the database

And this is all for today. More information on Catalogs will follow shortly so stay tuned ;-)

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Getting “Missing” in Lightroom

Wednesday, October 20th, 2010

At certain point in time you may come upon missing files in Lightroom.

You may see question marks in the top right corner of image cells. It will appear on each image that is “missing”. There may be a few reasons why your images are “missing”:

  • the files have been moved
  • the files were renamed outside Lightroom (f.ex. in Finder/Explorer)
  • the hard drive holding images is not connected (external hard drive)
  • the letter referencing external hard drive has changed

What happens then is Lightroom can’t find images and it needs a  bit of your help :-)

If you have just some images missing, you will see question marks in the images’ cells. If the whole folder is missing, the folder’s name will have question mark symbol.

If you keep the Catalog and previews on your local hard drive, you can still browse through images in the Library Module but if you try to export them or edit them in the Develop Module, Lightroom will give an error message. It will tell you that the file is offline or missing or that the Folder cannot be found as on the example below:

Missing Folder in LightroomIf the Folder was moved, you just need to tell Lightroom where it can find it. Before you do anything, first check if it is that some images are missing or is it the whole folder. Then you can proceed to fixing it.

If the whole folder is missing, right-click on the folder and select “Find Missing Folder…“.

Missing Folder in LightroomNow tell Lightroom where the Folder is located and Lightroom will update the links to all the files inside the folder.

If the whole Folder structure has changed, you can relink the parent folder and Lightroom will update information about all the “child” folders/subfolders automatically.

I hope you enjoyed it. Have a great day! :-)

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Getting “Smart” – Part 2

Tuesday, October 19th, 2010

Smart CollectionsGood morning! :-)

Now you know how to create Smart Collections. What about transferring them from one catalog to another?

It’s not as complicated as it sounds. Your Smart Collections are stored withing your Catalog. If you use multiple Catalogs, you will need to create new Smart Collections in each Catalog.

Actually, instead of creating new Smart Collections within each Catalog, you can Export and Import them!

Here’s how it’s done:

Go to your Collections Panel, right-click on the Smart Collection that you want to export, and select “Export Smart Collection Settings…” from the drop-down menu and you’re done!

Export Smart Collections in Lightroom

You see how easy it is? You can import Smart Collections in exactly the same way. Open a different Catalog, go to Collections panel and “Import Smart Collection Settings…”.

Have a wonderful day! :-)

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Getting “Smart” in Lightroom

Monday, October 18th, 2010

Smart CollectionsGood morning! I hope you enjoyed your weekend. :-)

Do you know what is all this getting “smart” in Lightroom about? I think you do. ;-)

It’s about Smart Collections of course!

Smart Collections are a bit like searches that you save in Lightroom. But they are so much more than that. First of all, they show in the Collections Panel and they appear in all Modules! This is great! I mean, you can jump into Web Panel and they’re there! You go to Develop Panel and they’re there as well! Pretty amazing, isn’t it? It means, you don’t need to switch back to Library Module to move between Collections (yes, you can have more than one).

Very often I get asked:

Why would I use Smart Collections and not normal Collections or Filters Tab?

First of all, when you use normal Collections, you manage them manually – you need to add and remove images from a Collection manually.

Filters will only show the current view and you would need to move between sets of images or “All Photographs” while Smart Collections update automatically.

With Smart Collections, you can just forget about them. They will run automatically without any intervention and update remembering the settings you used.

So how do we create Smart Collections?

To create a Smart Collection, go to Collections panel and click on + (Plus) button and choose “Create Smart Collection…”:

New Smart Collection in LightroomNext, you will select your criteria (Smart Collections are based on certain criteria if you didn’t know). Additional criteria can be added by clicking on + button at the end of each row, and when you’re done just click on Create. This will create a new Smart Collection for you.

By the way, you can also name it in Name area on the top of the dialog box ;-)

new Smart Collection in LightroomMore about Smart Collections tomorrow ;-)

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Match Colour in Photoshop

Thursday, October 14th, 2010

Match Colour in PhotoshopHave you ever tried to match colour in two images in Photoshop?

Let’s say you have two images and you want them both to have the same colour tonality – now you can do that in Photoshop using Match Color! :-)

The way it works is that you can adjust colour tonality in one image to match it with the other image. You can take a series of images and make them match in colour so they look like images taken at the same time with the same colour conditions.

You will be using two images where one will be called source image and the other target image.

Make sure you have both images open and make the target image active. Navigate to Image -> Adjustments -> Match Color. This opens Match Color dialog box.

In the dialog box, at the top, you will see the name of the image that serves as a target – in my case Child.psd. In the Image Statistics area select the source image from the Source drop-down menu. Immediately you will notice that your target image changes the colour tonality.

No you can use Fade slider to fade the effect (to tone it down a bit). You can also adjust the brightness of the image using the Luminance slider and you can adjust the saturation of the image using the Color Intensity slider. When you like the effect, just press OK to accept all the changes.

I hope you enjoyed it and I hope to hear from you. You can contact me by visiting Contact page on my website. Here is the link below:

Sai Training – Adobe Certified Training – Contact Page.

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