Photoshop Insider

It’s Thursday, and that’s means it’s time for “news stuffage!”

First, thanks to my buddy Terry White for yesterday’s guest blog post which garnered lots of love from my readers. Had I known the interest in Lightroom to iPhoto uploading was as big as it was, I would’ve written a book on it by now (totally kidding). Here’s what up:

• This week we had Adobe Photoshop Product Manager Bryan Hughes as an in-studio guest on Photoshop User TV, and we talked with Bryan about the advantages of converting your files to DNG vs. just working with the Raw image files. Very interest stuffing (here’s the link to watch it online).
• USA Today ran an article yesterday called “Attention to lighting can make a huge difference in your photos“ and in the article they asked me for five tips about light and shooting outdoors this summer. They ran an example photo from my book “The Digital Photography Book, Vol. 1″ and if you read the comments posted in the online version of the article, people think the photo was “faked.” (Actually, they’re sure of it). The funny thing is; it’s SO not. I asked the model (who was there as part of a photo workshop), to stand in the harsh direct 2:00 pm bright sunlight, and I took the first shot. Then I asked her to move over into the shade of a large tree, about 25 or 30 feet away, and as soon as she got in place, I took the 2nd shot. The whole thing took all of 30-seconds (if that). She didn’t put on makeup (as some allege) or redo her hair (they’re sure she did)—she just walked into the shade and I took the shot. The only reason these folks think it was faked is; they haven’t tried it themselves. Once they do; they’ll be amazed. Anyway, you can read the article right here.
• I did an interview on TechTalk Radio about the upcoming Photoshop World, which aired on Sunday, but you can still listen to the interview right here.
• Here’s a workshop I’d love to take: it’s an on-location full-day architectural/interior photography workshop (held just outside Los Angeles in Santa Clarita, California), on how to light home or business interiors using off camera flash (like a Nikon SB-800 or a Canon 580 EX). The instructors are interior photographers Scott Hargis and Thomas Grubba and the full-day workshop is coming up on Saturday, August 2nd (the tuition is only $275). For full details, click here.
• Reminder: there’s only eight days left to take advantage of the Photoshop World $100-off Early Bird registration. Here’s the link for info, and to sign up.
• Lastly, Alan Hess pointed out this site called “Keep Your Copyrights” which was created by the Columbia University Law School. Here’s that link (Thanks Alan!).

Hope you all have a really fantastic Thursday! Here’s a way to guarantee it: If you want to do something that will really make you feel great, make a donation to Springs of Hope Kenya. They are building a small clinic and orphanage in Kenya. Here’s the link to where you can make a donation or sponsor a child. (I know the local family behind this project personally, and your donations go directly to help people who need it very badly). It’ll make you feel like you did something really important today (and believe me, you will have).

Great news! John Loiacono, Adobe’s Senior Vice President of Creative Solutions, will be the featured keynote presenter at the opening keynote at Photoshop World Las Vegas (the morning of September 4th). Johnny L. (as he’s known to friends, and previous Photoshop World keynote crowds) is definitely not “a suit” (if you’ve ever seen one of his presentations, you know he’s totally “one of us”), and he’s a very engaging, and downright fun presenter to watch.

But all that aside, one of the of the things I like best about having Johnny L. as our featured presenter is that he uses Photoshop World as a platform to either launch a new Adobe product (like he did when he launched the Lightroom 2 Public Beta at Photoshop World in Orlando), or he uses it to give the crowd on hand a sneak peak at some unreleased Adobe “future technology,” which is always amazing.

If you’re going to the keynote, make sure you get there early to get a good seat (by the way; our keynote theme this year is somewhat of a Star Trek parody. That’s all I’m gonna say). See you at the keynote!

Digital Photographers and the iPhone/iPod touch

More and more photographers I know are now carrying around their portfolios in their pockets. The iPhone and iPod touch makes for a perfect portable pocket sized slideshow device. At a minimum you have 8GB’s of space, which is quite a bit for small JPEGs. Also, if you were only showing your best work, you would only need to show your best 20-24 shots anyway. So storage space is not really a concern. Also these devices have really nice large 4” displays. The color is fantastic and the brightness is great.

I not only use my iPhone to show off my portfolio, but I also don’t hesitate to whip it out (the iPhone of course) when people ask me “how’s the family doing?” I have the latest shots of my two girls on it all times. I also have older photos too so that they can see how much they’ve grown. Although the iPhone integrates quite nicely with Apple’s software products such as iPhoto and Aperture, I’m a Photoshop Lightroom user. I also shoot in RAW almost exclusively. So I need a method to get those RAW files into manageable JPEG files and to get them over to the iPhone.

Luckily, whether you’re on a Mac or a Windows PC, you can use Adobe Photoshop Lightroom to automate the entire process. It’s all in the Export presets. I have several Export presets setup in Lightroom for all the various ways I share photos. I also have one setup specifically to go to iPhoto. Now I realize iPhoto is a Mac only app. Don’t worry PC users, I’ve got you covered too. Hang in there with me. Since the iPhone can sync which ever photos and albums you specify in iTunes from iPhoto, it makes sense to take advantage of this app since it comes with every new Mac.

Let me be clear! I don’t use iPhoto to manage my photos. I use Lightroom. However, I do take my best/favorite shots from LR into iPhoto as JPEGs. Once those shots are in iPhoto I can then sync them to my iPhone, iPod or Apple TV.

Here’s how to set it up:

1) Open LR and select one or more photos

2) Either click the Export button or choose Export from the File menu to bring up the Export dialog box.

3) Next you’ll need to set up your settings. First you’ll need to choose a folder to export your images to. I’ve created one in my Pictures called “For iPhoto”. You can also setup if your File naming if you want it to be custom. Otherwise it will use your existing file names.

4) The next section is for File Settings. Here is where you set the format to JPEG. Color space to Adobe RGB and quality of 60 or higher. I like 80 personally.

5) In the next section we have Image Sizing. This is where you set the maximum size of the images that are going to be exported. If your images are going to only be shown on an iPhone or iPod touch, then you can set the dimensions to 480 x 480. If your images are going to be shown on an Apple TV or an iPhone/iPod connected to a TV, then make the width 1920 and the height 1024. This is 1080 HD resolution. There’s no need to go any higher than that as the TV won’t show them any bigger than that. I set mine to 1920×1080, which is the most I’ll ever need, and the iPhone and iPod touch will size them appropriately as they sync. As far as the resolution goes, 72 PPI works fine.

6) There’s not much of a need to do anything in Metadata here as these images are just for show and not being seen on a computer. So you can skip down to the Post-Processing section. If you’re a PC user. You’re done. That’s right, your export will go to the folder we setup in step 3 and you can use iTunes to point to that folder to sync your images to your iPhone, iPod or Apple TV. Simply click the Add button to add this as a custom preset and give it a name. Have a nice day. However, if you’re on a Mac, you can take it to the next level by having LR send the photos directly to iPhoto after they’ve been exported. There is an “After Export” popup menu in the Post Processing area. Click it and choose “Go to Export Actions Folder Now”. This will take you back to the Finder and show you your Export Actions Folder.

7) Find the iPhoto application icon in your Applications folder. You’re going to make an alias of iPhoto into your Export Actions Folder. The easiest fastest way to do this is to hold down the Command and Option keys and drag the iPhoto icon into your Export Actions Folder. You should see an alias of iPhoto (an icon with a little curved arrow on it) in your Export Actions Folder. Also your iPhoto application should still be in your Applications folder. You can now close these folders and go back to LR.

Now from the After Export popup, you should be able to choose iPhoto. Once you do, click the Add button on the left to add this custom export preset to your menu. You can click Cancel and give it a spin. Choose Export from the File menu and choose your new “For iPhoto” preset. This will export the JPEGs to a folder that are the right size and resolution and then if you’re on a Mac, it will import them automatically into iPhoto. From there you can arrange them into albums.

Hey, if you want to see me do this whole thing from start to finish, check out this video:

…one of my very favorite people in the whole world. He’s the co-author of two of my books, he’s the host of “The Creative Suite Podcast“, his official title at Adobe is Director, Creative Pro Technical Sales, North America, he’s a photographer, designer, Photoshop World Instructor, he’s produces the popular “Terry’s Tech Blog,” and he’s one of the greatest, most genuine, most gracious, and most humble guys you’ll ever meet…Terry White.

Make sure you check back tomorrow to catch Terry’s post, which I am told may include a video as well (ya know those tech guys—never satisfied with just words and pictures alone).

You know how as photographers we go through phases with our gear? For example, I go through phases where if I go to a shoot and I don’t have at least three big lenses, two camera bags, three cases of lights and a tripod that weighs more than my kids, I feel like I’m out there naked.

Well, right now for me, the pendulum has swung completely the other way. Now I’m in my “shoot light” phase, where I’m shooting with just one lens if I can get away with it, a very lightweight (but sturdy), tripod and if I have to bring lights, I want to bring one; preferably a off camera flash, like a Nikon SB-800. OK, maybe two SB-800s, but if I have to bring lightstands, they have to weight less than my daughter’s stuffed animals.

That’s why when I went to David Hobby’s (of the Strobist fame) excellent Off Camera Flash seminar last year (here’s the link to that story), he was speaking to my “less is more” mindset. I went and bought his exact on-location set-up (putting an SB-800 on a super compact, lightweight light stand with a hot shoe adapter clip and firing the flash thru a shoot-through umbrella), and I find myself using it more and more (see this link for more on me using it in the field). That’s a photo the basic rig below.

In fact, I use his rig so often now I bought a few (they’re very inexpensive, which is part of the beauty of it), and I wanted to keep one in my trunk, so I would always have a location lighting kit with me at all times. Anyway, after searching every “real” lighting case, I have found the perfect solution (which isn’t a lighting case at all).

It’s a Hakuba PSTC 100 Tripod Case and I swear this baby rocks!!!! (photo at the top of this post, and below by RC Concepcion). There are five things that make it so perfect if you use a David Hobby kit:

1. It’s only 27″ long, 7.5″ high, and 6.5″ wide. It’s just slightly bigger than the lightstand itself, and that was the main challenge; finding a bag that is big enough to hold everything, but not too long, and it has a shoulder strap.
2. It’s incredibly light; weighing only 1.92 lbs. (0.870 kg).
3. The bag comes with a perfectly sized side-pouch that holds (you guessed it), an SB-800 (or a Canon 580 EX flash). The whole case is padded.
4. The bag holds not just one, but TWO full kits easily (2 lightstands, 2 umbrellas, 2 clips, and yes—-two SB-800s, or one SB-800s and a Nikon battery extension pack).
5. The price is right; it sells for only $34.95 at B&H (here’s the link).

The case is surprisingly rugged, it’s super-lightweight, and I used it on Friday for a formal bridal shoot, and I was reminded at what a great bag it really is. Anyway, for those of you whose pendulum over to the “less is more” side, like I have, I think you’ll totally dig this bag. As for the David Kit itself, he arranged his kit through Midwest Photo, and here’s the link to their site with the details on all his kits (they now carry 14 different Strobist kits, and I couldn’t figure out which one was the kit I bought back in April. This is an example of the “More is Less” thing in action).

Below is exactly what I bought at the time (and still use today), which is 1-1/2 kits (I didn’t need the 2nd umbrella):

Hope that helps.

Yesterday I flew up to Atlanta for the day to shoot the Atlanta Braves vs. the Washington Nationals at Turner Field. Despite the sweltering heat (and the Braves loss), I had a blast shooting, and hanging out with Braves team photographer Paul Abell.

I didn’t really have time to go through all the shots, since my flight got home last night, but here are a few that caught my eye upon import in Lightroom (the shot of me above was taken by Paul with my iPhone). Click on any photo to see a larger view—I think they look much better larger, too)

I also didn’t have much time to really do anything to these except sharpen them and tweak the exposure a bit.

I was shooting my Nikon D3, with a 200-400 f/4 VR lens, mounted on a Gitzo monopod. I shot wide open at f/4 most of the day in Aperture Priority mode. I wanted to keep my shutter speed around 1250 to 1600 of a second (to freeze the action), so I had my ISO set between 200 and 320 most of the day, based on the light at the time. Most of the shots were taken from the 1st base dugout, 3rd base dugout, and behind home plate. Later in the day I went up to the first deck to set a few shots shooting down, but most were taken from field level.

Two interesting things to note:

1. What a difference a year makes: The Nikons outnumbered the Canons (only by one, mind you, but come on—that’s sayin’ something).
2. Turner Field recently instituted a policy which a lot of ballparks have started to enforce and that is they no longer allow fans to bring in pro cameras with lenses longer than 5″. Apparently, some fans were literally coming to game with 400mm and 600mm lenses; shooting the game from the stands, and then selling the images cheap online, so the ballparks have started cracking down across the Major League.

Thanks to Paul, and everyone at the Braves for a really great day !

Hi, Jack and Ed here. Seeing that there were a bunch of questions and comments from our Photoshop TV interviews in the last two weeks, we both thought we’d answer and clarify some of questions and comments. We’ll be going into more depth to some of these questions in our two Photoshop World sessions in Las Vegas. And we’ll also answer some in our upcoming column in PhotoshopUser Magazine.

As far as the paper VA form, it is being phased out. Bummer. It’s easier than the online registration, in Jack’s opinion. If you have any VA short forms you can still use them or you can still request them to be mailed to you from the copyright office. Jack keeps a blank VA PDF form on his computer. But you can no longer download the VA form from the Copyright Office site (www.copyright.gov). The Copyright office will still process VA forms, but the Copyright Office is no longer making the VA forms easily available in an effort to encourage online filing.

The eCO (Electronic Copyright Office) system, as the Copyright Office calls their online registration system, is improved and better than the first beta version used. But there is still have a problem with the number of files you can register if you are registering a very large number of files, as Jack usually does. Recently he registered 3,093 small compression JPEG files, that are compressed even more into a zip file, and they still total about 158mb. Jack’s upload rate and their pipe in, was going to take 39 minutes according to the timer. There is a time limit of (more…)

World renowned Digital Artist (and Photoshop World instructor) Fay Sirkis has just released an in-depth DVD (from KelbyTraining.com) called “A Celebration of Art; Weddings, Portraits and Faces” If you haven’t had the chance to learn from Fay, she’s without a doubt one of the most amazing, passionate, and engaging teachers out there (her sessions at Photoshop World–standing room only, and her pre-conference workshop is always one of the first to sell-out). Her last record-breaking DVD took the digital painting world by storm, so make sure you check out Weddings, Portraits and Faces while they’re still in stock (here’s the link). By the way: NAPP members get $20.00 off.

Besides Photoshop World, you can also catch Fay live at her “Summer Photo Painting Bootcamp” at the prestigious Lepp Institute of Digital Imaging in Los Osos, California, on August 18 thru 22nd. (NAPP members get 15% off there, too!). Here’s the link for info on her bootcamp.

First, a big thanks to my special guest blogger yesterday, the amazing Dave Cross, whose message really resonated with so many of you out there. Very cool stuff, my friend!
Now, onto the News:

• One of my readers, Nicholas Van Staten, pointed out this AP article (which I’m pointing to in the Miami Herald), about how New York City has now adopted a clear set of rules for photographers and filmmakers about when they need to obtain permits to shoot on the sidewalks and streets of New York. Here’s a link to the Herald (thanks Nicholas!).
• Great news: Since I posted those two copyright interviews with attorney Ed Greenberg and photographer’s rights advocate Jack Reznicki, you all have posted loads of comments and follow-up questions, and Ed and Jack have heard ya. In fact, tomorrow I’ll have a post directly from them answering some of your most pressing copyright and legal questions, so make sure you’re back here tomorrow for this special follow-up from Ed and Jack (I love these guys)!
• Yesterday, Mattias (one of my readers here on the blog) suggested that I create a category for all the Guest Blog posts, so it would be easy to find all the guest blog posts with just one click. Well, Fred (my in-house Web guru) already added this new feature, and now when I have a guest blogger, right up in the title area (to the immediate right of where it shows how many comments have been posted), you’ll see the category “Guest Blogger.” Click on that, and you’ll get nothing but all the guest blog posts here on the Photoshop Insider. We’re going to expand that so all the posts are sorted into categories (so they’ll be one-click away, too) and these categories will appear listed on the right side of my blog (but it’s going to take a little time to go back and recategorize them, which sounds like a wonderful job for our summer intern, dontchathink?). Anyway, thanks again to Mattias for the suggestion, and thanks to Fred for getting it up and running so quickly.
• Another blog thing: earlier this week a reader asked why his comment here said “Awaiting Moderation”, and I assured him I don’t moderate my comments (I just delete the really means ones after the fact), so I was stumped. But then, when I was working on this category thing, I found that my blog’s Spam filter had more than 264 posts it thought were spam, but it was waiting for me to tell it “yes it is” or “no it isn’t,” for each of those comments. Well, as it turns out, 231 of those were indeed spam posts (you’ll be glad it caught them—trust me), but 33 of them were actual comments from readers that it might be spam because the reader put a link in their post. Now, plenty of readers put links in their comments that get right through, but something in the software flagged these 33 real posts for some reason (unknown to me). Anyway, I approved all the real comments (and deleted all the spam), and now that I know where to look, I’ll keep an eye out so this doesn’t happen again. Sorry to everyone whose posts were delayed, but the good news is; they’re there now.
• I had a number of people who watched my tutorial on how to create a calendar template for photos, ask how to create the bottom of the calendar (where the days of the month are listed). I did a search and found literally dozens of free downloadable calendar templates, and a site that creates these on-the-fly. Here’s the link to “My Free Calendar Maker” (but again, just do a Google Search and you’ll find loads more).
• My reader Joe Gass sent this my way, and if you’re a photographer, just take 20-seconds and take a look at these photos—it will crack you up (well, it cracked me up anyway)!
• Two more online classes went up this week on KelbyTraining.com; (1) Photoshop World Instructor Taz Tally’s “Professional Scanning Secrets” (here’s the link) and (2) Graphic’s Guru Lesa Snider King’s “Practical Photoshop Elements” (here’s that link). Check ‘em out if you get a chance.
• Our buddy Scott Sherman, over at “The Digital Photography Show” podcast has launched his own photo blog. He’s already got some very good stuff there, so take a few secs and check it out right here!
• Don’t forget, only 10 days left to take advantage of the Photoshop World Conference & Expo Early Bird “$100 off” special. Here’s the link. (make sure you watch the little movies while you’re at the site). Also, all the staff and instructors are staying at the Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino so, if you want to stay there with us (and join Matt and I for our traditional late night In/Out Burger run, followed by shooting craps), make sure you snag your hotel room now (use the Travel link on the Photoshop World site for special deals for attendees).
• One last thing: Just my humble thanks to everyone who posted such wonderful comments on Monday. You guys are the best, and you really make it so much fun for me to do this blog.

Have a really great Thursday, and make it a point to do something nice for somebody you work with today. Hey, it couldn’t hurt.

A few weeks ago Scott invited me to start thinking about a topic for an appearance as guest blogger. I had come up with an idea that I’d been fleshing out when I read Stephen Johnson’s column last week. I’m telling you this to make it clear that my column is not in response to Stephen’s, nor it is intended as a rebuttal – if anything, it’s just interesting timing that my column follows Stephen’s.

I think it’s also important to note that after reading Stephen’s column I chose not to read any of the comments since I wanted my thoughts to be mine alone, not influenced by the comments of others (although I certainly plan to go and read those comments once this column is published). So with that bit of background information (disclaimer?), here’s what I have in mind.

In my travels as an instructor (I always wanted to start a sentence with “In my travels…”) I get the wonderful opportunity to meet and chat with lots of very interesting people. Often our discussion revolves around two schools of thought: “get it right in the camera” versus “fix it in Photoshop”. When asked which approach I take I usually answer with either “it depends” or, “there’s a third possibility” (more on that later).

Generally speaking my goal is to get it right in-camera – or at least to get it really really close to what I want, so that I can tweak it a little in Photoshop. When I was in Maine last Fall I had the time to set up my tripod and experiment with settings and I’m pleased to say that the majority of my photos needed very little adjusting. I came very close to getting the result I wanted, right out of the camera. I didn’t rely on Photoshop, but it did provide some valuable assistance here and there.

Last August I had the pleasure of visiting Alaska and ran into a slightly different situation. We had taken a boat from our ship and had been wandering around a small town for a few hours when I came across a really interesting location I wanted to shoot. Just as I started to get set up I heard the call that the boat was leaving, so I figured I had two choices: miss the boat to get the perfect shot, or grab a quick shot knowing that I might be able to get what I wanted by creating two exposures from Camera Raw (which I did and I was very happy with the resulting photo). In this case I did rely on Photoshop to “come to my rescue” because of the circumstances.

So this is where the “it depends” comes into play: I strive to get the look I want in-camera but when the circumstances call for it, I take advantage of the tools available to me in Photoshop and Camera Raw to tweak my photos. I don’t think of that as “fixing it” as much as fine-tuning to get the result that I want. So, I change my approach slightly, depending on the situation.

But I think there’s a third option, and this one excites me the most, and that is to shoot with Photoshop in mind: take advantage of digital technology to create things you never could (or would be much harder to do) traditionally. To create images that combine great photography with the power of Photoshop. There are plenty of examples of what I mean, for instance photographers such as Joey Lawrence and Dave Hill who have “signature” looks that combine great lighting/photography with post-processing. [links: Joey Lawrence and Dave Hill]

Or photographers who capture separate images with the intention of combining them in Photoshop. Here’s an example from the work of NAPP member James Quantz Jr. He creates wonderful images from photos that he takes with the express purpose of compositing them later in Photoshop. [http://www.quantzphoto.com/]

I love taking multiple photos while I picture in my mind how I will combine them in Photoshop. Does that make the end result less of a photograph? Maybe in the traditional sense it does, but I don’t think we can discount this as a photographic art form: rather than attempting to capture the scene as my eyes saw it, I’m creating the illusion of something that never was.

I think there’s a place for all these different approaches: get it right in the camera, tweak it in Photoshop and shooting to take advantage of Photoshop. I also believe that there are different breeds of photographers, and that some of us really enjoy the Photoshop process and see it as part of making a great image. And I don’t think there’s anything wrong with taking advantage of Photoshop – just as I applaud the goal of getting it right in-camera or making minor adjustments. Just as there’s many different ways to achieve something in Photoshop, there’s various ways to take advantage of our cameras and the technology that’s available to us. What a great possibility that offers us.