Lightroom Tutorials and Tips

We have recently started our first Lightroom course and it is going really well. What we have learned from our students is that many, prior to the course, hadn’t realised the vast array of processing options available through this wonderful program. Lots of people assume it is good for sorting out a bit of exposure problems or to correct colour vagaries but have not comprehended how much improvement both technical and creative Lightroom offers. I have gathered here some tutorials available on line that you will find interesting. Often, because of the space available, the tips and tutorials are more a bit, ‘do this and you will improve your pictures’ whereas when we teach we explain how and why there will be an improvement. Understanding the process is important because it gives you much better creative control and that is what we all seek.

3 Easy Lightroom Adjustments to Add Drama to a Landscape from Lightstalking

An old adage of photography is that you should try to create the image you want with the camera rather than relying on post-production. And that’s good advice. The less post you need to do on a photograph, the easier your life will be (as post-production throws up an extra set of challenges). But sometimes, for one reason or another, you might want to make your landscapes shots pop a little more by applying a little well-considered post production to them. Here are a few ways you add the drama you are looking for.

Play With the Blacks Slider – Lightroom has a convenient little slider called “Blacks” in develop mode that allows you to have more control over the contrast in your images. Dragging the slider to the right to increase your blacks will usually result in a slightly more dramatic image in landscapes owing to an increase in contrast. Be sure not to clip too much (you can see exactly how much clipping you’re doing by holding down the “option” key on a Mac or “alt” key on a PC as you use the slider with your mouse). For a great little video on using the black slider, check out this tutorial.

“Sacrifice” (Explored #23) by Luke Peterson Photography, on Flickr

Click Here: 3 Easy Lightroom Adjustments to Add Drama to a Landscape

Using Lightroom 4 to Recover Almost Unusable Photos from Lightstalking

Adobe Lightroom 4 has some significant changes within its develop module that gives us photographers several new impressive tools when post-processing images. Adobe came out with a new image process version (2012) which is basically the image processing engine behind Lightroom and Photoshop’s Adobe Camera Raw plug-in. This new process version provides many significant updates, including more options when making local adjustments and the new highlights and shadows sliders (which essentially replaces the recovery slider in Lightroom 3). Because of these new powerful features in Lightroom 4 we can now, with much greater ease, recover those photos which we may have thought were unusable.

Tumihay the Hunter (before Lightroom 4 post-processing and then after) by Jacob Maentz

Click Here: Using Lightroom 4 to Recover Almost Unusable Photos

How to Import Photographs into Lightroom By Chase Guttman on Lightstalking

Before you can truly harness the power of Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, the most essential thing you must know is how to import your digital photography files into a catalog. As mentioned in the previous tutorial, Lightroom is a modular based program where you can organize, develop, print, share and display your photography, among many other things. In order for Lightroom’s vast number of features to be useful to you, you must first import your images into a catalog so you can work on them. The importing process is done via the “import dialogue box.” There are two ways to quickly access the import dialogue box:

Click Here: How to Import Photographs into Lightroom

There are endless numbers of site offering advice as well as the excellent Lightstalking here are some of my favourites  you might like to check out:

Adobe Tutorials

Lightroom Queen

Presets Heaven

A Killer Collection of Adobe LightRoom Tutorials

Lynda.com

 

Awesome Photography Links

From Toad Hollow via Lightstalking to you, some of the best photography links from last week

The internet plays host to so many fabulous photographers and artists, and Toad Hollow Photography searches high and low every week trying to find the best links to tutorials, great photography and blogs of interest to share with everyone here.  This week’s list is chock-full of awesome images and great posts by a wide variety of super-talented people.  We really hope you enjoy checking out the photographs and posts as much as the Toad did in bringing this list to you.

Here is a taste, see the rest by clicking here

Casting a shadow on an autumn frosty land by broo_am, on Flickr

TUTORIALS

Top 7 Natural Light Portrait tips that I’ve learnt – a fabulous list of tips and tricks for doing portrait photography in natural light settings.  Tristan Jud outlines a short series of thoughts here that can really help you make the most of this genre of image production.

DIY: Keep Your Turkey Company with Beautiful Photo Place Holders – what a neat idea!  With the Thanksgiving Holidays nearly upon our American friends now, this timely article shows how you can incorporate great photography into dressing up the dinner table.  This step-by-step tutorial takes you through the entire process.

Click Here: This Many Awesome Photography Links May Be Hazardous to Small Children

Photography links, tutorials and great images

From those diligent chaps at Lightstalking we get this

Toad Hollow Photography has been working very hard all week searching the internet for the links to tutorials, great photography and interesting blogs to share with everyone.  This week’s comprehensive list features some great photography and blogs dedicated to the craft.  We hope you enjoy perusing this list as much as the Toad did in bringing it to you.

The player by Kerekes János Csongor, on Flickr

Check out the Toad’s latest feature blog post “Resurrecting Our Heritage” that discusses a wonderful old heritage church on Vancouver Island that was almost lost to developers.  A local art enthusiast has just purchased this beautiful church with plans to convert it to a community art center.  A happy ending, indeed!

TUTORIALS

A Brush of Warmth – Behind My Eyes – Jim Denham delivers an in-depth look at new features delivered in the latest versions of Lightroom and Aperture.  The newly included white balance filters now give the artist complete control over the white balance in a scene, helping to create images that appear more natural looking in nature or giving the artist extra tools to create the vision they were going for.  This is a very well written piece by Jim that features example images and screenshots to walk the reader through the concept.

Life Before Photoshop: Microsoft – this article contains some great insights into how to compose and technically work on that perfect shot without the aid of post-processing.  Joe Baraban delivers an article here that adds so much value, even if you do a lot of work in the digital realm post-processing as most of us do these days, as it will enhance your technical abilities and tools.  This will, I believe, result in better imagery.

How to Use Bracketing in Your Photography – this is a great article that discusses the technicalities behind bracketing in photography.  The post illustrates the points presented with some great example photography, allowing the reader to instantly understand the concept.  This is a well written and easy to understand piece.

GREAT PHOTOGRAPHY

Chasing The Ghosts of Gettysburg – this extensive collection of photographs by A.D. Wheeler features the site of Gettysburg and the items on display there.  A.D.’s spot-on compositions bring all the inherent drama and mystique of a place that must surely be haunted.  Each image is easily seen as a masterpiece and the collection as a whole is enchanting beyond proper description, you just have to see it yourself.

Click Here: So Many Cool Photography Links That Your Eyes May Bleed

1000 photography links, tutorials, photographers, new camera reviews – posts

Would you believe that in the last 20 months we have made 1,000 posts about photography, wow seems like it was only a few weeks ago we dipped our toes into the world of blogging. Urged on by our favourite music blogger The Recommender to get stuck in, to share our knowledge and passion about photography; to spread the word and to bring the best photographs, photographers, tutorials, camera reviews, information about exhibitions and the wonder of the world of photography to those who care, you. Since October 2010 we have had over 120,000 views, our highest day was 957, I guess we must be doing something right some of the time.

©Steve McCurry – this is probably The Great Steve’s most famous picture but you should go and see his other work start here

We have had a look at our stats and rather encouragingly find that there is as much interest from you in the fantastic photographers we have brought to your attention as there is in cameras and tutorials. A good healthy mix we think.

Here is a list of the top 12 posts the highest has got over 6,000 views

http://oxfordschoolofphotography.wordpress.com/2011/03/10/top-10-compact-cameras-2011/

http://oxfordschoolofphotography.wordpress.com/2010/12/14/light-painting/

http://oxfordschoolofphotography.wordpress.com/2012/03/14/photographer-nan-goldins-best-shots-from-the-guardian/

http://oxfordschoolofphotography.wordpress.com/2011/07/27/duane-michals-sequences/

http://oxfordschoolofphotography.wordpress.com/2011/12/06/best-superzoom-bridge-cameras-2011/

http://oxfordschoolofphotography.wordpress.com/2011/04/14/15-digital-point-and-shoot-cameras-used-by-pro-photographers/

http://oxfordschoolofphotography.wordpress.com/2012/02/10/nikon-d800-review/

http://oxfordschoolofphotography.wordpress.com/2011/01/18/cecil-beaton-photographer/

http://oxfordschoolofphotography.wordpress.com/2011/09/05/steve-mccurry-london-exhibition-07092011-24092011/

http://oxfordschoolofphotography.wordpress.com/2011/11/04/20-free-photography-ebooks/

http://oxfordschoolofphotography.wordpress.com/2011/01/24/9-crazy-cross-eye-3d-photography-images-and-how-to-make-them/

http://oxfordschoolofphotography.wordpress.com/2012/04/25/google-photography-prize-winner-viktor-johansson/

The top aggregated photographer, that is the most views across all the posts we have made is Steve McCurry this link should get you to all the articles where we have mentioned Steve

The interesting thing we have found is how many of you are interested in the less obvious photographers, Duane Michals comes top for visits to a single post, Cecil Beaton, Nan Goldin and Dorothea Lange all feature heavily, I am sure you never thought you would see those 4 names in the same sentence.

Top camera before and after it’s release was the Nikon D800

The most viewed tutorial was on Light Painting

Our most favourite sources for finding the best photography on the web, and in no particular order are:

Lightstalking, fantastic for tutorials, tips, ideas, features

Digital-Photo-School similar to Lightstalking and also from Australia

Cambridge In Colour for the most sophisticated and intelligent tutorials

The Denver Post for some of the best photojournalism around

The Atlantic, same as The Denver Post, fantastic images from around the world

The British Journal of Photography, just the most complete magazine for photographers

The Pixelated Image blog, David DuChemin is just the man, what a photographer an eye with soul

Photo Tuts for Photoshop and Lightroom tutorials

DP Review, where you find out about cameras, the best review site

Steve’s Digicams, as DP Review a great place to find out about cameras

Tripwire Magazine, we like this for general articles on photography

Magnum, the world’s most famous photo agency, we love this bit Magnum In Motion

Photography Served, a place for finding new photographers with great work

Photography Now, such a beautiful site showcasing the works of the masters of photography

There are undoubtedly lots more we could include here but if you are a regular to our site you will know who we love as inspiration and as a source of great articles.

We have had such great response to the articles we post, the sharing is the thing, finding what is wonderful and putting it out there. We greatly appreciate hearing from you and would welcome more ‘finds’ from you, would consider articles or portfolios you may wish to share with the thousands of like minded people we reach. Here is to the next 1000 posts

Keith Barnes, Oxford School of Photography

10 Photography Pet Hates – It’s All About Being Professional

This rather accurate article comes from Lightstalking

This is a guest post by Phil Hill, a travel photographer from the UK based in Australia. You can see more of Phil’s great work at his travel photography blog or follow him on Facebook or Twitter.

If you fancy yourself as a pro then you have got to raise your game, and raise it high. I have a few pet hates within the photography world, things that make you look plain un-professional and professionalism is paramount.

Purely my own opinion of course, some of my gripes have been properly executed by many (professionally) and readily create fantastic imagery, just steer clear from these clichés and already you will be a step ahead.

‘Be wary of selective colour’

Click Here: 10 Photography Pet Hates – It’s All About Being Professional

A Beginner’s Guide to Colour Temperature

Before digital became the medium by which we made photographs the control of colour temperature was something that only professional photographers considered seriously. We had colour temperature meters that would read the colour of the light, not the brightness. From that we could deduce the colour correction filters we needed to adjust the colour of light to match the film we were using. Since the advent of digital cameras we use the White Balance controls to manage colour temperature. This article on the Lightstalking site  By Jason Row explains this process

“Lord Kelvin, AKA William Thomson has a lot to answer for. It was this Glasgow University based physicist that developed the scale of measuring temperature that we use in photography today. So why does a scale of temperature have relevance in photography? Well the Kelvin scale also measures the colour of light. The science of this is somewhat complicated but put in it’s simplest terms, if you have a pure black radiating object and heat it up until it is glowing, when the temperature is below 4000K it will appear reddish, above 7500K it will seem bluish.

So why is this important to us photographers?

Well, light at different times of the day and under different conditions will have different colours. Our eyes are so highly developed that we do not see this change, our brain quickly adapts to the difference but colour film and more recently digital sensors cannot adapt.

In terms of film, it can only be set to one color temperature, usually 5500K which is the average colour of the shade on a sunny day at noon, or, 3200K which is the temperature of tungsten light, for example the average household light bulb or professional photoflood studio lights. Digital sensors can be set to a range of colour temperatures but rely on one of two things to get the right white balance – the camera’s metering system or the user setting it manually.

Neither of these are entirely infallible so if we can understand a little of what the colour of the light is in a given scene, we can improve the colour rendition of our images.”.….MORE

As the camera saw it – Photo by The Odessa Files

As the eye saw it – Photo by The Odessa Files

Click Here: A Beginner’s Guide to Colour Temperature

Click Here: A Beginner’s Guide to Colour Temperature

How to Photograph Lightning

From those nice people at Lightstalking we get this tutorial on how to photograph lightning.

“The Technique for Photographing Lightning

The Simple Explanation

In a perfect scenario, photographing lightning at night should be quite simple.

Just make sure the camera is on a tripod and you have a cable or remote shutter release. Set the focus to infinity, the ISO to 100 or 200 (on DSLRs) and choose the aperture accordant to the intensity of the lightning. Then open the shutter until the lightning goes off and then shut it just after you get a flash of lightning.”.….MORE

photo © 2007 Ian Boggs | more info (via: Wylio)

photo © 2006 G Meyer | more info (via: Wylio)

Click Here: How to Photograph Lightning (With Awesome Examples)

89 Awesome Photography Links and Photographs

Another batch of tutorials and great links to give you something to read this weekend

Never one to spend too much time lounging, the Toad is always searching the internet for tutorials, great photography and interesting blogs to share with everyone.  This week’s list contains a set of links to some truly incredible pieces of art posted by some truly talented artists.  We really hope you enjoy seeing and reading these posts as much as the folks at Toad Hollow Photography did in bringing them to you.

The Toad is well into writing his second publication of eBooks intended to share some tips and insights into the world of HDR photography.  These publications are made available for free to subscribers of his Free HDR Guides, Tips and News.  If you haven’t signed up already, head on over and subscribe to get your free copy of his first edition “The f-stops Here”.

Photo by Pheanix

Click Here: 89 Awesome Photography Links and Photographs

Photoshop CS6 Beta: A Quick Look

By Jason Row at Lightstalking

We teach the basics of Photoshop on our Introduction to Photoshop and Photoshop Elelments Course so it doesn’t matter a great deal which version of the program you use, but new updates keep coming.

Very quickly Photoshop CS5 has been superceded by the new version CS6. It is not available to buy yet but you can download the Beta versions and use this as a fully functioning program until it is properly released when you will have to hand over some money, well probably quite a lot of money. This is some of what Jason has to say about CS6

“As with other recent incarnations of Photoshop, Adobe have released a beta version of their latest image editing software. You can grab yourself a copy from Adobe here http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/photoshopcs6.html If you don’t have one, you will need to register an Adobe account as once installed the software will connect with Adobe via the internet. The beta is an unlimited fully functional version that will only expire once the testing is complete and the final product is released. So what are the headline features in this new version of Photoshop.

The first thing that will grab your attention is the new “dark” interface. This is radically different than previous versions and in my opinion a welcome change, the images seem easier to look at and adjust out of the darker grey. The interface is also customizable, allowing you to create a look that suits your workflow. Another obvious change for Mac users is that images are now loaded fully in the interface and not as separate windows, although one of the less advertised changes is that it now does not support 32 bit Mac systems anymore, as it is fully 64 bit application. Another, under the hood feature is the introduction of an autosave facility. This will regularly save a version of your image in the background and is invaluable if you have taken the wrong direction whilst editing and have no way back. This is customizable from saving every 5 minutes up to every hour.

One of the headline new features is content-aware patching. Many of us use the patch tool, to remove unwanted elements from an image such as people in the background or dust spots. The new version of this tool adds to Photoshop’s range of content-aware tools first introduced in CS4. The new patch tool allows you to select the unwanted item then drag it into the area you wish to replace it with. The new algorithms blend the surrounding pixels effectively removing the selected item. From my initial tests this is a clever and valuable tool.”

New look interface on CS6

Read the full article here Click Here: Photoshop CS6 Beta: A Quick Look

20 Photoshop Tutorials

In case you cannot wait for our next Photoshop course starting on 14th May these tutorials may get your going. Photoshop is one of Adobe’s most widely used products, however most users barely scratch the surface of the features the software offers. As people who love photography we come across great things that folks are doing with Photoshop on a daily basis. Below is a list of online tutorials we have stumbled on recently to help any user get more from Photoshop:

Here is the first …

How to Use Layers

Layers are the starting point of some incredible effects for photographers and an essential part of learning about what Photoshop can do for us.

BackgroundMe by mrhash, on Flickr

For a descriptive beginning tutorial for using layers the following tutorial adds more features, such as opaqueness and creating a montage using the layers menu.

Learn the 20 tutorials here