A Cautionary Tale

So this story is true, it was told to me today by a good friend and if you are lax should send shivers down you spine.

My friend was working on images on her laptop, it was a very important project, hundreds of images shot all over the country and almost unrepeatable as most of the subjects were in their 90’s. My friend, she shall remain anonymous, was feeling unwell and so took her laptop to the sofa and in a short time felt unwell enough to lie down to have a little snooze. She has two cats, one came and settled and my friend fell deeper into sleep. Vaguely aware of the other cat trying to get comfortable but too far in the land of nod to do anything about it my friend continued to sleep.

spoiler alert – this is not the cat in question

When she awoke and settled back into her work she couldn’t find the folder with all her images. She searched her laptop but no they were not there. Panic rising she worked out they must somehow have got into the trash or waste bin so opened that folder and no they were not there……I think by this time panic was no longer rising but had reached it’s zenith of terror. It was clear her images, all of them, the year’s work, were no longer in existence on her computer. I believe we can all imagine how this felt. She worked out that the other cat in trying to get comfortable had hit the delete key and then either out of stupidity or malice when asked “there are too many files to trash these to the bin would you like to delete them permanently” had said yes, or at least pawed yes.

My friend went to a computer store to see if they could help but no they couldn’t, maybe a data recovery company could extract them from the hard drive but it was unlikely and the cost would be hundreds of pounds even if they couldn’t.

Well the story has a happy ending, my friend had backed up her files and so had only lost the processing work she had done since her last back up. All the RAW files still existed.

So have you got your files backed up. I back mine up when I load them into Lightroom, I use the back up to second drive function and later I back them up to a third external drive that I locate somewhere else. I could use the ‘cloud’ but the number of images I have would take a pretty large cloud. If you haven’t backed up recently, or god forbid ever, do so this weekend.

Here are some links that might help you

Your Photo Backup Needs a Backup

Best backup software 2015/2016 UK: 13 best file- and system backup utilities

The 5 Best Ways to Backup Digital Photos

The best way to back up a photo library, back up photos online, back up photos to iCloud

Photography Courses For 2015

well we have done it again, created a new course to get you making better pictures. It has the most unwieldy title because we couldn’t think of anything better, sorry.

Basics of Landscape, Travel, Flower and Black and White Digital Photography

The course is based on our observations that these are the main subject areas along with portraiture, (which is covered in our separate Portrait Photography course), that interest our students. Each session we look at one of the four subject areas.

This course is aimed at students who already have a good understanding of how to use their cameras. There will be no instruction on camera use therefore it might be worthwhile taking our Understanding Your DSLR course first if you tend to use the fully auto mode when photographing. All areas of photography rely on technical and visual skills and although there will be references to camera use and composition there will be no in depth discussion of these areas and if you do not understand basic compositional methods our Composition In Photography course would be a great asset to you. Get full details here

We now have our course schedule sorted out for the next term, here are the dates

Understanding Your DSLR Camera Evening Class £85 Start Dates: 26.01.2015;  11.03.2015

Understanding Your DSLR Camera Saturday Morning Class £85 Start Date: 07.03.2015

1 Day Understanding Your DSLR Camera £95 Dates:  01.02.2015; 01.03.2015; 29.03.2015

Intermediate Photography £97 Start Date 26.02.2015

Flash Photography £85 Start date 05.02.2015

Understanding Lightroom £85 Start Date 03.02.2015

Introduction to Photoshop and PS Elements £97 Start Date 25.02.2015

Composition In Photography – Seeing Pictures £85 Start Date 03.02.2015

Portrait Photography £85 Start Date 10.03.2015

Basics of Landscape, Travel, Flower and B&W Photography Start Date 09.03.2015  £85

 

Adobe makes photography program price permanent, unveils 14 new apps

You cannot buy Photoshop now, for some time it has only been available as a subscription program. This means you pay about £9 a month and get the full version of Photoshop and the full version of Lightroom. These are updated when newer versions are available. You can still but Photoshop Elements as a stand alone program and currently the same is the case for Lightroom. For about a year Adobe have been running a special offer, the £9 saying the full price might be double that when the offer closed. well now they have back tracked and the full price will be £9, until they put it up anyway. If you need the full program and use LR this is a good deal but for many people Elements is more than sufficient for their needs.

 

Here is what Digital Camera World say on the  matter

As well as announcing updates to 14 desktop apps in its Creative Cloud suite, Adobe has confirmed that its photography program, which was previously billed as a special offer, will be a permanent feature.

The plan includes access to the Photoshop CC and Lightroom desktop applications with free upgrades when they are available, mobile and web apps, 20 GB of cloud storage and a Behance ProSite for £8.78/US$9.99/AU$9.99 per month when you sign up for a one-year plan

New to Photoshop CC: Blur Gallery

Like Adobe’s other desktop apps, Photoshop CC is being updated with a host of new or refreshed features including the addition of two new motion blur filters in the Blur Gallery.

Path Blur allows movement blur to be added along a line (path) and controlled using an on-screen slider around a pin, like the other filters in the Gallery. The degree and location of the blur can be further controlled by adding pins with zero blur.

Spin blur is designed to add a sense of movement to wheels and disks in images. This size of the area affected as well as the stroke length and centre position can all be adjusted along with the intensity of the blur.

Both blur filters are non-destructive and their effect can be undone at any time.

SEE MORE: Motion Blur – how to use layers, masks and filters to create a sense of speed

New to Photoshop CC: Select by focus

Adobe has also added a new way to make selections, Focus Mask, which is ideally suited for use with images that have a sharp subject against a blurred background.

Once Focus Mask is active, it’s just a question of painting over the target area with the cursor and Photoshop will select the sharp areas.

The range of the selection can be adjusted and the refine edge controls are available to ensure that the correct area is selected.

SEE MORE: Shallow depth of field – how to fake it using Photoshop filters and masks

New to Photoshop CC: Heightened awareness

Photoshop CC’s Content-Aware technology has been improved with a colour match algorithm for better results when using features such as the Patch tool.

Rather than just blurring the edges of the cloned section, the surrounding tint is analysed and the element is merged.

See the full article here

How to use Lightroom: 8 mistakes every photographer makes

OK make that 9, this article which in general I agree with misses the first and most glaring mistake newbies ti LR make.

Setting up your system properly to make sure your images are safe and backed up, at the same time making sure your on board hard drive doesn’t give up the will to live in a few months as you stuff it with RAW images.

I teach a LR course, it is a great course even if I saw so myself, I hit the things that really matter and the first is the original set up. Most people just load LR then immediately start without paying any attention to where their images and catalogue will be stored, how the images will be filed and found and how that will be backed up. When they finally make it to my course I have to help them undo all the mess they have created for themselves.

This article from Digital Camera World is a good check on the things that can go wrong but I debate whether every photographer makes these mistakes.

Keywords are an incredibly useful feature that allow you to find images quickly.

However, applying them takes a bit of discipline and forward planning.

For example, you need to give some thought to how far you breakdown keywords.

This will probably depend upon how many shots you are likely to produce of a particular subject.

SEE MORE: Lightroom vs Photoshop – why Lightroom has all the tools you need

Someone who only occasionally shoots flowers, for instance, is likely to find giving any flower pictures a keyword of ‘flowers’ sufficient, but a professional plant and flower photographer may require more detail with keywords for specific plants.

If you find that your collection of images with one keyword grows, you can always add another sub-keyword at a later date to help break it down at a later date, but it’s better to get things straight from the outset if you can.

Keywording an extensive back-catalogue of image is a pretty daunting task, so we recommend starting with new images and applying keywords as you import each new batch.

Once you’ve built up a collection of keywords you can start assigning them to older images.

Worst Lightroom mistakes: 1. Not using keywords
Worst Lightroom mistakes: 2. Moving image files outside of Lightroom
Worst Lightroom mistakes: 3. Clipped highlights
Worst Lightroom mistakes: 4. No blacks or whites
Worst Lightroom mistakes: 5. Over-adjusted Curves
Worst Lightroom mistakes: 6. Over saturating colours
Worst Lightroom mistakes: 7. Over-use of selective colour
Worst Lightroom mistakes: 8. Over-sharpening

Adobe Lightroom is an incredibly powerful image organisation and editing software package. With just a few clicks of your mouse it enables you to tag images and add key words so you can find them quickly and easily in the future.

It also has tools to help you correct exposure and white balance problems and adjust contrast.

Of course the downside to having such a powerful tool at your disposal is that it’s possible to make some pretty significant mistakes, especially when you’re first learning how to use it.

To help out we’ve drawn up a list of the most common mistakes that photographers make when using Lightroom and have some advice about how to get things right from the outset.

Read all the advice here

Lightroom tips: 6 quick tricks for giving your portraits a professional finish

Digital Camera World brings us this brief tutorial on using Lightroom. We teach a LR course that is very comprehensive but there are always tricks and special uses that can be learned from tutorials so if you use LR have a look here and see if you can improve your output

More and more lately we’re finding Adobe Lightroom is overtaking Photoshop as the program of choice for enhancing our portraits. At first glance, with its emphasis on tonal controls and presets, Lightroom may not seem like the ideal place to carry out detailed work like portrait retouching.

However, Lightroom was developed for editing photographs and it’s surprising how far you can take an image using a few simple tools and techniques.

A big part of retouching a portrait involves making adjustments to different areas of a face, and they’re usually the same adjustments every time: we lighten the eyes, soften the skin, boost the lips, sharpen the eye lashes, and tone down any bags under the eyes.

All these adjustments can be made with one powerful tool: the aptly named Adjustment Brush. We’ll use it here to give our portrait a fully professional finish.

Another important (if at times monotonous) stage of retouching is the removal of marks, spots and blemishes. Everyone has them, but what goes unnoticed in a moving person can spoil a static image.

In this area Lightroom is still playing catchup with Photoshop, but Lightroom 5 has taken a big leap forwards with the improved Spot Removal tool, which operates just like a brush……READ MORE HERE

10 Reasons Why You Should Be Shooting RAW

Shooting in RAW rather than jpeg is such an advantage I am not sure why everyone doesn’t use it. OK I do understand, you will spend more time in front of a computer adjusting your images, you will need more memory cards as RAW files take up more space but that is about it. You might think your problem is that you don’t know how to process the RAW images on your computer, we recommend Lightroom, it isn’t nearly as confusing as some image manipulation programs and anyway we run a course to show you how. I only ever shoot in RAW and could not think of a situation where that would change for me. So do you want to get better quality images?

This article on Photography Concentrate just about says it all

You’ve probably heard over and over that you should be shooting in RAW. But do you know why it’s so important? And what it really means for your images? Let’s sort it out!
First off, what is RAW? RAW is a file format that captures all image data recorded by the sensor when you take a photo. When shooting in a format like JPEG image information is compressed and lost. Because no information is compressed with RAW you’re able to produce higher quality images, as well as correct problem images that would be unrecoverable if shot in the JPEG format.

And happily many many cameras these days shoot RAW, including point and shoots! So even if you’re using a little camera, you might still be able to take advantage of the RAW file format (just check your camera manual to see!).

So, the benefits. Let’s list ‘em out.

Get the Highest Level of Quality, Record Greater Levels of Brightness, Easily Correct Dramatically Over/Under Exposed Images

These are some of the 10 reasons you should consider shooting in RAW, go here to read the full article

 

Lightroom 5 Unmasked new ebook

From those wonderful people at Craft & Vision there is a new Lightroom ebook aimed at LR5 The previous edition for LR4 was invaluable and although LR hasn’t undergone the major changes it did from 3 to 4 if you have 5 buy this now

 

 

A Complete Guidebook to Adobe Photoshop Lightroom

Lightroom 5 Unmasked is a resource like no other. This PDF is full of high-resolution screenshots, step-by-step instructions, and the tips, tricks and ideas that make digital darkroom work productive and more enjoyable.

At 356-pages Lightroom 5 Unmasked is 13 chapters deep, covering everything from an introduction to Lightroom and non-destructive editing to full discussions and detailed instructions of the Library and catalogs, to every tool in the Develop, Map, Book, Slideshow, Print, and Web Modules. Download the Table of Contents.

This massive eBook also includes an amazing collection of 69 Cases which provide context and insights on the smaller topics that often get overlooked (nine more cases than the previous edition). These additional insights put the tools and features into context, helping you learn and apply what you read along the way. Every module is covered in-depth, even third-party applications and plugins are tackled head-on. Lightroom-to-Photoshop integration is also included.

At about £12.50 for more than 350 pages it is a snip

Get your copy here

Lightroom 4 – Podcast with Piet Van den Eynde

Matt Brandon talks with Piet Van den Eynde about his recently released Craft and Vision eBook titled, “Lightroom 4 Unmasked.”  Piet shares his expertise and all kinds of tips and tricks he has discovered for Lightroom 4. Hear the podcast here

 

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

 

Lightroom 4 ebooks

We are about to start our new course on Lightroom 4 (we have places, if you are interested please email). This is a fantastic program and one we use every day, it is invaluable if you shoot RAW for conversion purposes and a really great piece of library software to organise your images, I would be lost without it. There are a couple of ebooks we recommend from the Craft & Vision stable, we also like Craft & Vision very much, if you want to see all of their publications click on the box on the right of this page.

Essential Development

20 Great Techniques for Lightroom 4

Lightroom keeps changing, and most of us don’t have time to dig around under the hood to learn it all. Essential Development is no-holds-barred guidebook that can help you explore, modify, and dig deep into the Lightroom 4 tools you need to make your post-processing efforts more productive and produce the final images your portfolio deserves! The eBook is divided into 20 chapters, focused entirely on the Develop module, covering topics such as: Understanding The Histogram, Making White White, Beauty Retouching, Dodge & Burn for Beauty, Cross Processing, Achieving a Filmic Look, Image Toning, Tilt Shift, Effective Sharpening, and Correcting Lens Issues. Click on the pages above to buy at $5 (£3.

Lightroom 4 Unmasked

A Complete Guidebook to Adobe Photoshop Lightroom

 This one is a big ebook and costs a bit more $20 (£12.70) but this is a complete guide to Adobe Lightroom 4 and we know you’ll love diving into this beefy book. At 312 spreads this PDF is full of high-resolution screenshots, step-by-step instructions, and the tips, tricks and ideas that make digital darkroom work productive and more enjoyable. If you’re looking to learn Lightroom 4 and need a resource to help you do that quickly, or you’ve just upgraded and need to get up to speed, this is a great value. Click here to buy this and download it immediately