I’ve heard it said that the process of creating a photograph isn’t complete until you’ve made a print.  I don’t know that I’m in complete agreement but I will confess that I derive tremendous satisfaction in the art of printmaking.   In a blog post I wrote last year tittled “Pixels vs. Prints” I wrote about how viewing a photograph on a monitor and in print are two wholly different experiences.  A master printmaker I am not.  I’ve only been making my own prints, on an Epson Stylus 2880 printer, for a little over a year.  But, I’ve learned some lessons in that time that I’ll share here with the hope that your own foray into the wonderful world of printing may be a bit less intimidating.

Printer Selection

There are three primary manufacturers of printers capable of producing fine art photographic prints: Epson, Canon and HP.  HP printers use a dye-based ink while Epson and Canon both use a pigment-based ink.  I don’t have the time to fully discuss the pro’s and con’s of each, but you’ll find a good basic explanation of each here.  Most photographers I know, including a few who are master printmakers, use pigment-based ink printers.  The primary point I want to discuss here is selecting printer size because yes, size does matter.

I can make prints up to 13″x19″ on my Epson 2880.  This was fine for a few months but once I got the hang of things I quickly discovered that I wanted to print bigger.  How much bigger?  I’d like to be able to print 24″ wide prints.  So, I’m now saving my pennies to buy a large format printer.

My advice to you is to give serious thought to how big you may want to print one year from now, when you’ve gotten past being overwhelmed with the whole process.  Generally speaking, most professional level printers on the market today come in one of four sizes: 13″, 17″, 24″ and 44″.  There are even bigger printers but seriously, who has enough space to park a car-sized printer in their home office?  If you’re inclined to go with a 13″ printer, it’s worth noting that there isn’t a huge difference in the physical size of a 13″ and 17″ printer.  There is, however, a significant price increase.  Jumping up to a 24″ printer requires a sizable chunk of real estate in your office.  These printers usually ship with their own stand and typically weigh in at over 150 pounds!

Some additional thoughts: Consider how large you are able to print based on the camera you use.  If your primary camera is on your iPhone it’s probably a waste of money to buy a 24″ printer.  That’s an extreme example but you get the point – don’t let your ambitions overreach your abilities.  As printer size increases so does the size of the ink cartridges they require.  Larger cartridges are expensive but they contain significantly more ink, which means that your per print costs decrease with larger printers.  Larger printers require larger media (paper) and you’ll need a place to store it all.

Paper Selection

This is the fun part.  There are dozens of media types to choose from and they’re all unique.  Matte, luster, glossy, metallic, canvas – the list goes on.  And, just because you’ve got two papers that are both matte doesn’t mean they’re going to print the same.  Oh no, one may be warmer or thicker or more or less matte than the other.

How do you choose a paper?  Order a few sample packs and start making prints.  Seriously, it’s such a subjective thing that you’ve got to make prints on a bunch of different papers before you can start to develop a taste for what you prefer.  I like matte papers, so I knew going into it that I didn’t need to experiment with anything else.  But, there are so many manufacturers making matte papers that I had to order a few sample packs and make a bunch of test prints before I found a favorite – Moab Entrada Rag Bright 190.

Here’s a few manufacturers to consider whose papers are well respected: Moab Paper, Red River Paper, Canson-Infinity, Hahnemuhle and Ilford.  Epson, Canon and HP also sell their own branded papers.

The Myth of the Perfect Monitor to Print Match

Many novice printmakers are quickly frustrated when they find that their prints don’t match the image on their computer monitor.  Your first few prints are usually darker and less saturated than intended.  This is common. Very common.  Don’t lose your cool, you probably aren’t doing anything wrong.

There are several things you can do to combat this problem.  First and foremost, you should be working on a properly calibrated monitor.  If you aren’t, I probably wouldn’t even bother buying a printer.  Next, you should always soft-proof prior to printing using the appropriate ICC profile.  Wait, what?  In very simple terms, soft-proofing allows your monitor to simulate as closely as possible what your image will look like on any given paper using a profile designed for that paper.  It isn’t perfect, but it’ll get you pretty close.  Here’s a great soft-proofing tutorial on the Luminous Landscape website and another more in-depth one on the Cambridge in Color website.  Finally, until you learn how each paper prints you’ll save yourself some headaches by making a small (8″ x 10″-ish) artist proof before making your final print.  Is your artist proof too dark?  Use a curves adjustment to lighten it up.  Not saturated enough?  Add saturation to compensate for the loss when printing.

Care and Feeding of Your New Printer

Just a few years ago a common problem with inkjet printers was clogged printhead nozzles.  Newer and better technology has mostly eliminated this problem although it does still happen from time to time.  One of the main reasons for this is lack of usage.  Luckily, there’s an easy fix: use your printer!  Make a couple 8″x10″ prints each month and you probably won’t have to worry about clogged nozzles.

Don’t leave your paper in the feeder tray or on the roll when not in use.  Dust may settle on the paper, which can fall off after you make a print, leaving small areas that are void of ink.  It’s best to store paper in a dust-proof environment, such as the package in which it was shipped.

While we’re on the topic of dust, keep your printer covered when not in use.  Most printers have custom fitted dust covers available at minimal cost.  Buy and use one.  Dust inside your printer can cause the same problems as dust on your paper and even bigger issues as it works it’s way into the sensitive internal mechanisms of your printer.

You’re going to burn through a lot of ink, especially in the first couple of months.  I keep three extra cartridges of each color on hand because I don’t want to get caught without it.  If you run out of just one color of ink, you’re done making prints until it is replaced.  I order all my ink through the good folks at Atlex, which is also a great place to buy your printer.  I bought my printer through B&H but my next one will most likely come from Atlex.  They seem to consistently offer the best prices and occasionally they’ll throw in extras (like a complete set of inks or a couple packages of paper) to sweeten the deal.

Sharpening for Print

Sharpening images for presentation, whether on the web or in print, may well be the cause of more gray hairs than anything else in photography.  It doesn’t need to be.  There are old pro’s who still insist on manually sharpening their images using the Unsharp Mask in Photoshop or the sharpening tools in Lightroom.  I’m not one of them.  I cheat.  I use Nik Sharpener Pro 3 for all my sharpening needs.  I couldn’t be happier with the results and it’s incredibly easy to use.  You simply open the image you wish to sharpen in the Nik Sharpener Pro 3 software and make a few selections.  The software does the rest and it does it beautifully.  I recommend that you download the free 30-day trial, try it out and when you’re ready to purchase, use coupon code “BEDGE” for a 15% discount.

When viewing your newly sharpened image on-screen it will likely appear over-sharpened.  Fear not, the printed image will look just fine.  This is true whether you use Nik Sharpener Pro 3 or some other software like PK Sharpener, or you manually sharpen the image.

Other Considerations

You may need to trim the edges of your beautiful new prints to create even borders all the way around the image.  The easiest way to accomplish this is to use a high quality rotary trimmer.  I use a Dahle trimmer and couldn’t be happier with its performance.  They aren’t cheap but they will make trimming your prints completely hassle free and the edges will be nice, crisp and professional looking.

Unless you’re fortunate enough to sell every print you make you’ll want a place to store them.  I use an underbed box with a lid to store the prints flat.  If you roll them and keep them in tubes they’ll be a pain in the neck to share or eventually frame.  The underbed box also does a nice job of keeping them dust free.

I hope you find these tips to be useful.  As I said, I’m not an expert and am still learning as I go but these tips should help you avoid some of the common headaches.  I invite anyone with additional thoughts, suggestions or tips to please leave a comment below.

Warning: This is a long post.

Maybe I’m crazy for doing this.  Maybe I’m just opening myself up to criticism for over-processing my work or perhaps some will feel I’m making something out of nothing.  Rarely do photographers post an unprocessed RAW file alongside the finished product.  After all, it’s the final image that matters, right?  Well, I’m going a bit against the grain here because I want to help other photographers who might be struggling with post-processing their work to discover what is possible with Lightroom, Photoshop and Nik Software plug-ins.  I’m not an expert with any one of these tools but over the last ten years I’ve developed the ability to use the power harnessed within each software package to fully realize my vision.  I hope that this and other tutorials I’ve written (and will write) may help a few of you overcome whatever barriers stand in the way of your making the images YOU envision.

I made this image last week while leading a photo workshop in the Grand Teton National Park.  Nat Coalson and I took our group to Shadow Mountain to photograph colorful aspens backlit by the setting sun.  As luck would have it, sunset treated us to some nice clouds above the Teton Range that ever so kindly lit up with lovely, soft color.  The dynamic range between bright sky and shaded foreground was pretty dramatic.  Using my Canon 5D Mark II and 24-105mm lens on a Gitzo tripod and Acratech ballhead, I made a series of bracketed images with the intention of blending the exposures into a single image.

Back home I decided to see if it was possible to take the middle bracketed image and, using all the digital tools available to me, develop a final image worthy of sharing and printing.  Honestly, I shocked myself with the result.  Below you will see the RAW, totally unprocessed image.  The only adjustments I’ve made are cropping to 4×5 ratio and cloning out some dust spots.  Looks pretty crappy, doesn’t it?  If this were your only image, would you keep it?  Or, would you send it to the great delete file in the sky?

And, here’s what the histogram looked like in Lightroom:

Although it may appear that there are large areas of the sky devoid of any detail, there actually isn’t anything that’s completely blown out to pure white.  I know this because when I reduce the exposure slider, those areas that appear blown out regain detail AND the histogram slides to the left until all the detail hiding in those bright areas reveals itself.  This is good. Very good.  Also, the histogram above shows that I’ve got 100% shadow detail.  Nothing is blocked up to pure, featureless black.  Again, very good!

After setting the white balance, I lowered the exposure to -.25.  Next, I used a combination of two digital graduated filters to darken the sky and lighten the foreground.  I used the following settings for the grad filter over the sky:

Exposure = -1.08
Brightness = – 40
Contrast = 0
Saturation = 15
Clarity = 11
Sharpness = 0
Color = Unchanged

Next, I used another digital graduated filter to lighten the foreground.  The settings I used were:

Exposure = .99
Brightness = 21
Contrast = 0
Saturation = 15
Clarity = 15
Sharpness = 0
Color = Unchanged

After setting up the grad filters I noticed that there was still a tiny bit of sky on the far left that was blowing out.  I increased the Recovery slider to 20, which easily resolved that issue.  Next, I increased the Blacks slider to 7 to give the shadows a bit more depth.  I left Brightness and Contrast alone, then increased the global Clarity slider to 35 and Vibrance to 15.  At this point the image was really starting to come together.  My next step was to increase contrast using the Tone Curve.  I prefer to begin with the Linear setting.  I increased the Highlights by +1, Lights by +12, and decreased the Darks by -12 and Shadows by -3.

Next up, the HSL (Hue, Saturation, Luminance) panel.  I started with Luminance and decreased the orange channel to -6, the aqua channel to -4 and the blue channel to -11.  I almost always find that a +6 increase to the blue Hue channel results in a better color in the sky and that was true with this image as well.  Finally, in the Saturation panel, I increased the red, orange, yellow, blue and green channels by +10.

I then applied capture sharpening in the following amounts:

Amount = 35
Radius = 1.0
Detail = 30
Masking = 20 (Masking is an awesome tool that allows you to easily sharpen detail without affecting large areas of empty color, such as a blue sky)

I also applied some Noise Reduction to get rid of a bit of noise that cropped up when I lightened the foreground.  I used the following Noise Reduction settings:

Luminance = 15
Detail = 70

I enabled Lens Profile Corrections to automatically deal with any vignetting, chromatic aberration and distortion.  Finally, I noticed that the tops of the peaks were darker than I’d wanted because of the graduated filter I applied in the first step.  I used a brush with Auto Masking turned on to lighten the dark areas, thereby countering the effect of the grad filter and making its use less noticeable.  After all of these adjustments were done I’d arrived at the image you see below.

Next up: refining the image using Nik Software Viveza 2 and Color Efex Pro 3.

The GND filter in Lightroom is a powerful tool but just like using a real one in the field, the graduation can become quite obvious.  In this image, the sky above the peaks is lighter than I’d like it to be and is a dead giveaway of GND use.  Not a problem, as it’s an easy fix in Viveza 2.  After opening the image in Viveza 2 I first applied some global adjustments to the contrast, saturation and structure settings.  I forgot to record these settings but I believe I increased contrast by 4, saturation by 6 or 8 and structure by 15.

After making some global adjustments I moved on to local adjustments.  First up: fixing the sky.  Using control points I selected the light areas of sky and then “grouped” the control points so that making an adjustment to one point affected all points equally.  I reduced the brightness, increased the saturation and added in a little blue to more closely match the sky above.  Some gradient is natural and I was careful not to overdo it as I didn’t want the adjustments to be obvious.  Moving on, the mountains were much cooler than I remembered them so I used control points to select the mountains and add back a little warmth.  Again, I wanted this to be subtle and I liked how the golden aspens popped from the cooler background, so I made sure I didn’t completely eliminate the cool blue tones.  I selected a couple of the small clouds in the center of the sky that were a bit brighter than I’d like and reduced the brightness.  Finally, I used control points to select the colorful clouds and reduced the brightness to give them more texture and weight.

Lastly in the creative processing workflow, I brought the image into Color Efex Pro 3 and used the Tonal Contrast filter to independently increase the contrast of highlights, midtones and shadows.  I don’t recall the settings but I believe I set each to around +10.  Any more and the image began to look like so many of the cartoonish HDR images we’ve all seen too often.  I also set the saturation to around 10 to give the colors a little extra zing.  Yes, that is a technical term – zing.  I left the highlight and shadow recovery tools at their default settings.  One of the most significant changes you’ll notice between this version and the prior version is the definition in the clouds.  The Tonal Contrast filter does an amazing job of defining texture within clouds.  As with most digital darkroom techniques, a light hand is best here.  Using settings that are too high will result in a sky that resembles something from a bad alien invasion movie.  I rarely use settings above 15 when working with the Tonal Contrast filter.

The last step was to export the image to Photoshop CS5, where I would use the content aware fill tool to get rid of the photographer in the blue shirt in the lower left side of the image.  A quick and dirty selection using the lasso tool and he vanished, perfectly filled in by this amazing tool.  It doesn’t always work but when it does, it’s pure magic.   All I did after that was re-size and sharpen for web.  The image below is the final result of all this work.  For those who are curious, I spent a total of about 15 minutes from start to finish processing this image.  That’s quite a bit longer than I usually spend but this was a bit of an experiment.  All in all, I’m quite satisfied with the results.

As always, your thoughts and comments are welcome and appreciated.  I hope this walk-through of my workflow helps you gain some confidence in processing your own images.

If you’re convinced that you want to try out Nik Viveza 2 and Color Efex Pro (now in version 4), you can download free, fully-functioning 15 day trials of each on the Nik Software website.  If, after using them for a few days, you want to purchase them you can receive a 15% discount by using coupon code “BEDGE” at the Nik online store.

Lightroom (and Adobe Camera Raw) are generally very user friendly and certainly don’t require as much time and effort to learn as Photoshop.  However, some of the controls have ambiguous names.  Today I will de-mystify the Exposure and Brightness controls.

I’m often asked by guided clients and workshop participants what is the difference between the Exposure and Brightness settings.  Here’s my take on it:

Moving the “Exposure” slider to the right increases the overall brightness of an image, impacting brighter tones the most.  Moving it to the left decreases the overall brightness while again impacting brighter tones first.

Adjusting the “Brightness” slider primarily effects mid-tones within an image.  Moving it left will darken the overall image, with most of the effect being visible in mid-tone areas.  Moving the “Brightness” slider to the right will lighten the overall image, with most of the effect visible in the mid-tones.

How do you know when to use “Exposure” vs. “Brightness”, or vice versa?  Here’s how I use them: Let’s pretend I’ve got a photo with a sky filled with those puffy white clouds we all love to see in our landscapes, not unlike the one above from the Windows section of Arches National Park.  Perhaps some of those clouds are awfully bright.  So bright that they’re even close to blowing out.  Increasing ”Exposure” in Lightroom will likely cause those really bright areas in the clouds to lose all detail, i.e. “blow out”.  However, increasing the “Brightness” setting will protect those highlights while primarily brightening the mid-tones.  There is a caveat to this, and that is that if you go too far with the ”Brightness” setting you will still blow out your highlights.  Subtle adjustments are best here so don’t be too heavy handed.

There you have it.  A simple, hopefully easy to understand explanation of the “Exposure” and “Brightness” settings.  For more detail on these settings you may be interested in geeking out on these links:

A Discussion of Exposure vs. Brightness on the Cambridge in Color forum

Lightroom – Exposure vs. Brightness on the Lightroom Killer Tips website

Lightroom: Exposure vs. Brightness at Fred Miranda

I’ve been using Adobe Lightroom as my RAW converter and photo editor of choice since version 1 launched a few years ago.  Until last year I still relied on Photoshop to complete the bulk of my editing work.  Why?  Because I was stubborn – an old curmudgeon who didn’t want to change.  Looking back, I wish I’d taken the advice of my friend and Lightroom guru Nat Coalson, who for years has been extolling the virtues of completing as much work as possible within Lightroom.

Finally I got smart and listened to Nat’s advice.  I now do about 90% of my processing within Lightroom, only using Photoshop to blend multiple exposures or for complicated cloning – both of which just can’t be done in Lightroom’s current version.  Even then, I import the finished product back into Lightroom so my entire image collection is in one place and easily searchable.

Lately I’ve noticed that many of my photo workshop clients are just now diving into Lightroom.  Many of them are doing so with trepidation.  Some of them are taking the plunge because I’ve badgered them into it.  Regardless, if you’re new to Lightroom I’ve got a few tips to share that are guaranteed to save you time and effort down the road.  These tips come from my own hard won experience.  I hope they help you find Lightroom bliss.

Keyword From the Start

You may not be a professional photographer or even have any aspirations to become one.  It doesn’t matter.  Metadata is king and you should keyword your images from the very beginning.  I also recommend that you enter a title and description for each photo.  Why?  If you ever plan to upload your images to flickr, your own website or any other photo sharing sites, the title, description and all of your keywords will automatically carry over.  I didn’t keyword from the start and as my stock photography business grows, I’m really wishing I had.

Buy A Lightroom Reference Book

The Adobe engineers did a remarkable job of designing Lightroom to be extremely powerful while remaining user friendly.  Nearly every adjustment in Lightroom can be accomplished through the use of sliders.  However, some of the terms may be confusing to those who are new to Lightroom.  Clarity, vibrance, black point – huh?  Additionally, there are keyboard shortcuts, presets, camera and lens profiles, catalogs, collections, ratings and more that aren’t exactly intuitive.  A good reference book, like Nat Coalson’s “Lightroom 3: Streamlining Your Digital Photography Process” will save you get you up and running with a minimum of time and frustration.  There are also several fantastic websites with tons of useful information.  One I visit regularly is The Lightroom Queen. 

Keep It in Lightroom

This one took me a while to adopt.  I really wish it hadn’t.  I use Lightroom for 90% of my processing, switching over to Photoshop only to do exposure blends, complicated cloning and image prep for print.  Until Lightroom offers layers and a better cloning tool I’m forced to use Photoshop for these techniques.  However, Lightroom does have a powerful printing module that I simply haven’t yet explored.  I will soon.

Why keep everything in Lightroom?  Lightroom’s database capabilities are second to none.  By cataloging all of your images inside Lightroom you’re ensuring that they’re always easy to reference.  You can search for images using a number of variables, including keywords.  If you’re a stock photographer this is especially important as it eliminates the hassle in trying to find images for photo submissions.  All of your images under one roof?  Nice!

Back-up Your Lightroom Catalog Early and Often

This is probably the single most important advice I can offer.  We all know the value of backing up our data yet not all of us do it as often as we should.  I’m guilty of it in some regards but not when it comes to my Lightroom catalog.  Luckily, Lightroom makes it stupidly simple to ensure you never forget this critical step.  Lightroom can be set up to prompt you about a back-up every time you quit the program.  At that point you have the option to back-up the catalog or just close the program.  Take it from someone who learned this lesson the hard way: back up your catalog every time you close Lightroom. In my early days of using Lightroom I was far too lax about this.  My catalog became corrupted and, because I’d never backed it up, I lost all the work I’d done on every single image in the catalog.  All of it.  Hundreds of hours worth.  Don’t let this happen to you.

Presets Speed Up Your Workflow

Lightroom allows you to create presets for certain functions, such as exports and keywords.  Generally speaking, you’ll save quite a bit of time and effort if you set up presets for commonly used actions.  For example, if you spend a lot of time photographing in Arches NP you can create a preset containing keywords that apply to all images from Arches.  One click and the keywords are automatically populated.

I also frequently use export presets.  A recent photo submission consisted of almost 200 images that needed to be at a specific size and in jpeg format.  First I added all the images for the submission to a “collection”, then I created an export preset, selected the entire collection and started the export.  A few minutes later the entire submission was ready to be burned to a CD and shipped off to the client.  You can read more about how I use Lightroom collections to speed up my workflow here.

Bonus Tip: Plug-ins Are Your Friend

No, you don’t have to use plug-ins to really benefit from Lightroom.  But, I find that they make my life much easier.  Unless you’re new here, you already know I’ve got a love affair with the Nik Software Complete Collection (use coupon code BEDGE for a 15% discount).  There are dozens of other plug-ins that allow you to work faster and smarter, some of which are even free.  This link to the Adobe Lightroom website will give you an idea of what types of plug-ins are available.  If you find a few that work for you, you’ll soon realize just how much of a timesaver they are.

So, there you have it.  My five – okay, six - tips for new Lightroom users.  If you’ve got a tip to share I hope you’ll do so in the comments section below.  I’m certainly not a Lightroom expert and would love to hear how you’re using it to speed up your workflow!

Delta Pool, Utah

Back when I shot Velvia I extended the very limited dynamic range of that beautiful but contrasty film by using graduated neutral density filters.  The digital revolution has all but eliminated GND’s from the backpacks of many landscape photographers.  I use to carry three of them.  I now carry only one, a Singh-Ray 3 stop soft-sep GND.  Why?  Blending two or more digital exposures together to create a single image with an expanded dynamic range allows much more precision and control over the final image.  If you’re like me, you’re a little bit intimidated at the thought of learning yet another Photoshop technique.  Don’t be.  I put it off for way too long and now that I’ve gotten more than a few blended exposures under my belt I almost never break out my GND in the field.  The tutorials below will get you started.

Exposure Blending in Photoshop – Sean Duggan
This might be the best place to start.  It’s an easy to follow tutorial and doesn’t delve into the more complicated aspects of blending exposures that might just confused a virgin blender.

The Basics of Exposure Blending – Sean Bagshaw
Here’s another excellent primer to get the virgin blender well on their way to exposure blending bliss.  I found this one to be particularly helpful.

Blending Exposures in Photoshop – John Williams
This tutorial not only walks you through how to blend exposures for increased dynamic range but also how to blend images with different focal points for increased depth of field.  A bit more advanced than the first two tutorials.  Very useful for landscape photography.

How to Blend Multiple Images Together – Kevin McNeal
If you’d rather automate most of the image blending process, this tutorial shows you how to use the Exposure Fusion function in Photomatix HDR software.

Merging Images: Landscape Photo Tip from NANPA Summit Presenter Jay Goodrich
Jay puts a different twist on merging exposures with regard to balancing the transition zone, which for most photographers is the most challenging aspect of blending exposures.

Blending Exposures in Photoshop Elements – Richard Bernabe
Here’s a fantastic tutorial for those who are using Photoshop Elements instead of Photoshop CS5, or one of it’s earlier iterations.  Very easy, very effective.

Guest Post: Exposure Blending – Younes Bounhar
This is the technique I use most often as it more or less automates the selection process.  Anything that makes my life easier is good in my book.

Understanding Digital Blending: Three Approaches to Extended Dynamic Range – Michael Reichmann
Even more ways to blend images for increased dynamic range with a thorough explanation of each technique.

Digital Darkroom: Graduated Neutral Density Filter – Jesse Speer
In terms of digital wizardry this tutorial from 2004 is ancient.  Nonetheless, the technique is still valid and is one of the simplest to master.

Hand Blending High Dynamic Range (HDR) Images Using Luminosity Masks – Tony Kuyper
I saved the best, and most complicated, for last.  Tony is a master of Photoshop and this tutorial will deliver the very best results possible.  If you expect perfection and you’ve got time and patience, Tony’s technique is the way to go.

Got a favorite exposure blending tutorial?  Feel free to leave a comment and a link to the tutorial.

By now we’re all well aware of just how useful the Apple iPad is to photographers.  We can check our email on the fly, surf the web, keep an eye on the weather, get sunrise and sunset times, sign model releases and use it as a slick digital portfolio viewer.  Indeed, it is a sweet piece of technology.  All of this leaves me wondering – what’s next?

With it’s beautiful, fairly large screen there have to be some additional uses for the iPad beyond the current crop of “in the field” tools.  I did a little digging and found a couple possibilities, both of which I’m very interested in putting to use.

iPad As a Second Monitor – A company called MaxiVista created an app that allows the iPad to function as a second monitor.  What a perfect place to move all your Photoshop tool palettes to unclutter your main monitor!  I haven’t used it but if it works as advertised, this could be a really cool way to utilize your iPad at home.  Inexplicably, the app currently works only on Windows machines.  I hope MaxiVista (or someone else) is working on a Mac version.

iPad as Graphics Tablet - This one seems like a natural fit for the iPad.  Sure, there’s the pesky fact that the screen isn’t pressure sensitive.  Seems even that can be worked around, as evidenced by this hack by Ten One Design.  Not down with hacking your iPad?  Apple may just be working on making this one a reality.  A recent patent application for a pressure sensitive pen suggests that Apple might be looking to take a bite out of the graphics tablet market with the iPad (or a future generation of iPad).  I’ve never used a tablet but I’ve heard they’re fantastic.  I might make the leap if Apple releases this cool gizmo.

iPad as Portable Photo Storage Drive – I dreamed this one up all on my own.  How about a ruggedized iPad with a larger SSD hard drive and an easy way to download RAW images in the field?  Sure, it’s bigger than an Epson P7000, but it’s also got a much larger screen that would make it easier to weed out the good images from the bad.  The darn thing could even run a mobile version of Lightroom (or Aperture, if that’s your thing).  Yes, you can do this on a laptop but if the iPad could do it just as well, I think I’d leave the laptop at home.

Who knows what’s next?  The whiz kids at Apple seem to be light years ahead of my simple way of thinking when it comes to future tech.  No doubt they’ve got some really cool stuff planned for photographers using the iPad.  What apps or functionality would you like to see in the not-so-distant iPad future?

Use the rubywhat?  The rubylith.  It’s a red, semi-transparent overlay that shows you the effected areas of a layer mask.  If you use Lightroom and have ever hovered over a local adjustment pin, you’ve seen a rubylith.  You can view your Photoshop layer mask as a rubylith by pressing the backslash key on your keyboard.  Voila – there’s a rubylith!

If you’re wondering why you’d want to use it in Photoshop, let me tell you how I use it.  Hand blending multiple exposures into a single image with increased dynamic range is a tedious but valuable technique for nature photographers.  I use brushes to paint over areas of images that I’m blending together.  Unless you’ve a much steadier hand than I, you’ll almost always have some spillover into areas you didn’t intend to include in your mask.  I’ve found the easiest way to find these accidental spills is to view the mask as a rubylith.  If it’s red, it’s being masked.  If it’s red and it shouldn’t be, it’s easy to erase.

That’s all there is to it.  Give it a shot some time, and let us know if you find it helpful.

John Shaw’s “Photoshop Field Guide” has been my bible for years.  So, when “John Shaw’s Digital Processing: A Personal Workflow Using Lightroom 2 and Photoshop CS4″ was released I purchased it right away at a reasonable cost of $25.  What follows are a few of my thoughts on what, at the time, was John’s latest e-book.  Note: he has since released “Using Lightroom 3 and Photoshop CS5″ ($15).  Both e-books may be purchased on his website, which earns you a PDF of whatever book you’ve chosen.

John clearly states on his website that neither of these titles are intended to be “how-to” books.  Rather, they are a rare glimpse inside the processing habits of a seasoned pro.  In fact, the highlight of the book for me were the examples where John discusses not only the step-by-step workflow used on each image, but his reasons for making each adjustment.  Truly invaluable material.

I’ve been using Lightroom since version 1 was released in 2007 (or maybe early 2008).  I’ve read and own a couple ”how-to” books, the best of which is Nat Coalson’s “Lightroom 3: Streamlining Your Digital Photography Process“.  It’s safe to say I’m no spring chicken when it comes to using Lightroom and Photoshop.  I mention this because I believe someone newer to working in the digital darkroom will find John’s e-book much more useful than I.

Having said that, here’s what I really like about John’s e-book:

• As usual, John doesn’t use technical jargon or geek speak.  His instruction is easy to understand and flows nicely.
• I’m glad he spent a few pages discussing the importance of devising a system for organizing your digital files early in your career.
• The short chapter on “Getting Started” touches on just about all of the most important aspects of configuring Lightroom for optimal performance.
• His thoughts on the initial edit of images after downloading them to your computer were helpful.
• Shortcuts!  Using shortcuts in Lightroom can dramatically increase the speed with which you are able to process images and John details the most used ones, even providing a handy cheat sheet.

What didn’t I like?  Really, it isn’t so much that I didn’t like certain things.  I just found that for me, as a fairly experienced user, some of the content was too basic.  By no means does that make this a bad investment.  If you are newer to using Lightroom and Photoshop, this may well be the best place to start.  If you’re an experienced user, you’ll benefit from the examples and possibly from one or two of the Photoshop tutorials on such topics as image blending or luminosity masking. 

The bottom line is this: you can’t write a fairly generic book and have it appeal to newbies and power users at the same time.  ”Digital Processing: A Personal Workflow Using Lightroom 2 and Photoshop CS4″ succeeds in keeping both sides happy about as well as can be expected.  Would I spend $25 on the book, if I had known then what I know now?  Yep.  Those examples I mentioned earlier are worth the price of admission alone.  Consider the rest of the content a nice bonus.

I haven’t yet purchased “Lightroom 3 and Photoshop CS5″ although I do plan to pick it up.  I’ll do a separate review on it at some point in the future.  If you’ve got either one, please take a moment to leave a comment with your thoughts and opinions on them.

Tonight I feel a bit like a mad scientist.  For some unknown reason I got an itch to try something totally new in Lightroom and Photoshop.  I made this image of bison grazing in the meadow at Mormon Row in the Tetons while there a couple weeks ago.  Straight out of the camera the image wasn’t terribly exciting but I felt it had potential.  Those of you who are familiar with my work know that my images are generally pretty straightforward.  I don’t apply creative effects and I process the images to look more or less like the scene did when I photographed it.  A little tweak of contrast here, add some saturation there, darken a sky now and again and do a little dodge and burning – voila, the final image appears.  I have nothing at all against images that have been heavily manipulated.  Photography is an art and we should feel free to create our art on our own terms.

Now, I have obviously taken some serious creative liberties with this image.  For starters, my camera doesn’t make square photos.  I used a fairly heavy digital grad filter to darken the sky with a heavy dose of clarity to give more separation in the clouds, added some global negative vibrance to mute the colors, made a curves adjustment to increase contrast, dodged the bison to make them stand out a bit more from the meadow, added a vignette and some “grain” – all in Lightroom 3.  I exported the image to Photoshop CS4 and experimented with different blurs using the gradient tool to keep the bison sharp-ish while blurring out the background.  I didn’t like the results of any of those efforts.  What to do?  Hmmm…

I decided to see what Nik Color Efex Pro 3.0 could do for the image.  I used their “Classic Soft Focus” filter first, painting on the effects only where I wanted them.  I was getting closer but something was still missing.  I tried a few other filters that didn’t work out before discovering the “Glamour Glow” filter.  A very subtle application gave me the results I was looking for, again brushed on sparingly.  I used Nik Viveza 2 to add some additional global contrast and whiten the whites.  The final step was to use Nik Sharpener Pro to sharpen only the bison.  What you see here is the final result of all that wackiness.  Total processing time: about 35 minutes.

I think one of the greatest attributes of digital photography is that it has opened up a whole new world of creativity, both in the field and in post-production.  When it doesn’t cost a penny to click the shutter most photographers are more willing to try new things, experiment with composition and stretch the boundaries of what they’re comfortable with.  Things get even more exciting in the digital darkroom with panoramic image stitching, HDR, blended exposures, an endless variety of filters and plug-ins, not to mention what is possible with nothing more than Lightroom and Photoshop.  And, if you don’t like the results of your weird science, it’s real easy to go back to square one and start all over!

What do you think?  Some have said this image is “too flat”.  Some simply don’t get it.  That’s cool.  Certainly, this is not the kind of processing that is going to appeal to everyone.  I’m just really curious to hear your comments as I really stepped out of my comfort zone with this one.  Be as harsh and critical as you dare.  I’m a big boy and I can take it.  What have you done to experiment and broaden your creative vision?  Let’s hear some ideas!

Nobody enjoys cloning out dust bunnies from their digital images in Photoshop or Lightroom.  It pretty much just blows.  So if there’s a way to go about it more efficiently, you’d probably like to hear it, right?  This tip, from Scott Martin, will make your digital life a little less aggravating.  Thanks, Scott!       

“When I was a drum scan operator in the early 90’s I had to be systematic about cleaning dust on every single scan. In Photoshop, start by zooming to 100% (option command 0)and hit the home button to go to the upper right corner. Holding down the command key turns the page up and down buttons into page left and right buttons. That trick worked in Photoshop 2 and still works today. 

Lightroom improves upon this functionality nicely. Zoom to 1:1 and hit the home key to fill the screen with the upper left most corner of your image. Hold down the shift key while pressing the page down key. Not only will it act as a ”Page Right” key, it will take you to the next column once you’ve reached the right side, like an old typewriter would.  You can continue hitting Shift-Command-PageDown until you’ve spotted your entire image. It a systematic way of “combing over” your entire image without worrying about missing anything.”

Scott Martin is the founder of onsight, a capture-to-print training and consulting business that helps digital imaging professionals optimize their workflows for quality and efficiency.  I’ve worked with Scott at workshops in Moab and can attest to the fact that he knows his stuff, he’s a heck of a teacher and an all-around cool dude.