Lightroom Plug-ins make Life a Breeze.*

*Ok, maybe that title is a bit of an overstatement.

We all know Lightroom is powerful. Most of my editing is done and post processing these days, and no longer in Photoshop. In fact, I would say with the advent of Lightroom 2 and local adjustments (see my video HERE) 95% or more of my work is done in Lightroom now. But there are fun little secrets that make this application even more powerful useful for more than photo processing. How many of you use Flickr, Photoshelter, SmugMug? Did you know that Lightroom, with the added help of a few free (yes, free) plug-ins can make your life soooo much easier?

Here is how it works. I am going to show you with the Photoshelter plug-in, but it works the same with all the above and more. There are two ways to start. The easiest is to follow this link to Adobe's Lightroom Exchange HERE. This is a warehouse of Lightroom plug-ins. Here you will find plug-ins for exporting to the sites I listed above. But, you will also find all kinds of cool plug-ins for web templates, develop presets and more. Most are free! So poke around and enjoy. I said there was two ways to start. The other way is to open Lightroom and go under the new to Lightroom 2 "Plug-in Manager." This is a handy dialog box that will take you to the Adobe Exchange site by clicking the button on the bottom left of the window. But it is more useful than that, because it now is the simplest way to import your plug-ins. Once you download the plug-in you want to use, in this case the Photoshelter plug-in, then just hit the ad button and ad it to your list of plug-ins. Simple, no more searching for the folder where the plug-ins reside, it does it for you.

The new to lightroom 2 "Plug-in Manager."

So now you have the Photoshelter plugin loaded or the Flickr plug-in or whatever one you want. Now, you need to select the images you want to load. I chose the Arches of Delhi gallery I made last week. Make sure you have captions and key words already embedded in the image. This is the beauty of this method. Now export like you would do normally export a photo and bring up the export dialog box. Here you will see at the top of dialog box a small pane, click on it and choose which plug-in you want to use.

You must choose which plug-in to use.

You will see the list appear. Once you choose the plug-in you will need to log in to your account. Don't forget, you have to have an account with any of these services to use them. That may seem like a no-brainer, but... Anyway, then just work your way down the dialog box panes. Name the file, make your setting choice, your size choice, sharpening, etc... Finally choose an existing gallery or make a new one.

Just work your way down the dialog box panes.

Then upload.



Once uploaded, Lightroom will tale you to the site and you can make any changes to the photos in Photoshelter or whatever site you uploaded to.


Your captions and other IPTC data that was embedded from Lightroom 2 follows your image to Photoshelter.




These plug-ins will save you a ton of time and make uploading to your favorite site a breeze. I hope this helped. You can view this gallery in Photoshelter HERE.

Steve McCurry Sharp

One of the fun and quite frankly, thrilling things that digital imaging has been able to deliver that film never did, is the ability to give you truly razor sharp images. Yeah, we had sharp images in the film days, but not like what we can get now. With the digital cameras ability to grab detail and photoshop's many techniques in sharpening, we have surpassed film by miles. Over the past two Lumen Dei workshops we developed an expression that might be taken disrespectful toward the Guru of travel and world photographers, Steve McCurry. The expression is, "Steve McCurry sharp". It is not meant to be disrespectful. Let me explain and give Mr McCurry his truly just dues. First, Steve McCurry is outstanding and has set the bar for all of us to reach for in our photography. But once you visit an exhibit of his you will notice something odd. Many of his images are slightly soft. Some of the focus is soft, others there is slight movement. You can't say this is bad, when the man defines "excellence". Prior to digital images, one would never had noticed these things. When we shot film we were never we able to get the sharpness we are used to now. But something else is happening. Let me illustrate it here.

This is full frame. Click to enlarge.

Here is a shot that all my readers will know. It is of a little Gujjar girl in Kashmir. One of the fun things about this image is it is so very, very sharp. Here is the EXIF data from the image:

Camera: Canon 5D
Exposure Time: 1/500 sec
F-Number: f/3.5
Exposure Program: Aperture Priority
ISO Speed Rating: 400
Exposure Bias: -1 EV
Metering Mode: Pattern
Focal Length: 85.00 mm

I was, if I recall correctly, a good 6 to 10 feet from her. Below you will see that this image is so sharp, that you can see the scene behind me, when I photographed her, reflected in her eyes.

Click to enlarge.

So what is all this about? Why blog on how sharp digital images are? We all know they are sharp. Is it because this makes me better than Steve McCurry? Ha! If only that were true! No, it is because I bet you have started doing something that I have found myself doing. That is tossing away images that are not razor sharp. Any slight softness, slight movement and out it goes. I found I get so obsessed with sharpness that I loose sight of the beauty of an image. I don't see the moment in the image for the slight blur. For an image to work it doesn't have to be this sharp. Maybe even sometime it shouldn't be. Let me show you some images that I almost tossed, but I have now changed my mine and feel they are worth keeping even though they are not all that sharp. I will compare a nice sharp image with a soft or even blurred image taken at the same time, but a different "moment".

Click to enlarge.

Here is a shot of a man clutching his Qu'ran. It is a nice image. Sharp. Yes, there is glare in his glasses. But, even with out the glare there is emotion missing here. It is not a bad image and technically it is perfect.

Click to enlarge.

Here is the same man a few seconds earlier. His head is bowed and he is not looking at the camera. But the look give much more emotion, a since of thoughtfulness, or contemplation. You don't get that in the previous image. The soft focus or movement as it is here, work to make this a stronger image. Let's look at an even more stark example.

Click to enlarge.

Here is a similar shot. A Ladakhi woman sitting looking off to the left of the frame. A nice shot, right? But look at what the much softer shot below communicates.

Click to enlarge.

Here she is holding the beads to her head and there is real emotion here. Yet, this image is soft by all account. Not with movement, just soft focus. Now I admit, I should have been better at nailing the focus, and I think this might have been a better image had it been in focus. But does this make this image unusable? Not in the least! In fact this image is fast becoming one of my favorites.

I want to make sure you understand me. I am not talking about accepting sloppy camera work. But none of us get it right 100% of the time. I have known I am capable at getting razor sharp images like above, so I have not even looked at some of my more emotional images if they are soft. Of if I did, I cursed under my breath at my bad luck and tossed the image out.

All I am saying is we need to not forget what is good art. I cannot continue to throwout soft images just because I know I can get razor sharpness and didn't get it. You cannot say that McCurry's images are any less impressive or beautiful because of the softness of film or camera movement. So, if it is good enough for a Master like McCurry, I think I need to stop and realize technology has, dare I say, blurred my vision. I am missing the art for the mechanics and in danger of trashing some real jewels.

Who says there is no "Un-Suck" button?

David DuChemin is fond of telling me and others there is no "un-suck" button in Photoshop. Hmm, I thought I was sure I saw one. Then yesterday I found it. You just have to look in the right place. Come on David, you know it's there!

Sometimes a picture is worth the extra effort.

Final image

Original #1

Original #2

Yesterday, my wife and daughter and I went with some Malay friends to the Kampon or village. We played in rice paddies and ate a lot of good food and drank a lot of fresh coconut juice. I took a few images of our host's children. One was particularly nice, but... not quite. It looked as if I had started taking pictures of war amputees. Poor girl. Poor me, what a lot of potential! So, I decided to work a little extra on this image. I thought you might like to see how I did it. It wasn't really that hard. I don't normally work on an image like but, this there was something about this little girl and the setting that I wanted.

First I took the images that had the "good" face, and simply copied the face.


Then I pasted the good face onto the not-so-good face but good body of the next image. I then made a layers mask and softened the edges so it would blend well. I also transformed the size of the face to match the size of the host image. To do that select the layer of the image that needs to be sized. Then do a Command T (Control on a PC). This gives you a selection that you can now size. To size uniformly hold the shift key and then pull the corners till the image looks right. It is all subjective.


I also cloned out some of the "old" face to make the blending easier.

Here you can see all the layers and masks. Click to view larger for more detail.

Then I added some more room below the coconuts and did the same thing. Made a layer mask and softened the edges.

Trust me, this is pretty simple. Anyone can do it, but you have to start using layer masks. I am always amazed at how many people use Photoshop and do not use layer masks. It is very simple and non-destructive. I am sure there are other ways I could have blended these images but this was quick and easy.

Any questions, just email me or skype me. Here isone more shot from yesterday. These kids are just too cute.


Oh! and Salamat Hari Raya Aidilfitiri!

The Stock Jungle

I am not talking about the stock market, not that jungle. The jungle I am hacking through is the stock image jungle. From monsters like Getty Images and Corbis to the micro stock agencies where you can pick up a great image for $5 or less. Who are they and how does this all work. Here is what I know:

Most stock agencies sell images based on size and usage. So an image that is small and will only be used once in a limited small run may only cost you a few bucks. But an image that will be used on a hording (that is a billboard for us Americans) and plastered all over New York or London will run you big, big bucks. The photographer lets these agencies represent their images for "right of use". He makes his money from a cut or a percent. It can be anywhere from 25% to as much as 50% of the image sale. Micro stock is different. These guys deal in volume and will sell your images for pennies compared to the large stock agencies. In fact you won't even get a check till you have sold $75 to $100 worth of images. Not much profit for the amount of work that goes into imaging. So, the idea is to have large volumes of photos online and key worded so that when some one wants an image of a "crying boy" they key-in those words and your image pops up. That is of course, along with 150 other crying boys, so you still have to have great images that stand out above the rest.

So who are these micro stock agencies? Here are just a few. The most famous being iStockPhoto also Shutter Stock, Dreams Time, 123rf.com, Feature Pics. Feature Pics actually let's photographers set the price for their images. Then there is Stock.xchng, these guys even have many images that are free! I found images on Stock.xchng that were priced images on iStock. Not sure how they do that, but for the end user it is a great deal.

At this time I have not taken the dive into the micro stock agency. I am represented by IndiaPicture. Of course they specialise in ..er.. Pictures ...of India. One thing they have just started on their site, that I have not seen of the others is Live Support. Not sure how this is used but I guess it is at least fun to talk to someone in India for once about your image needs and not your credit card statement.

Not Magic, Just CS3 Auto Align.

This afternoon, I did a photoshoot of a friend's two little girls. As often when photographing children, they were wiggly. So I have one ok shot of the two girls in the grass (fig 1) and one not so good (fig 2). But if I could combine them, I would have a winner. Enter, CS3's Auto Align. Using Auto Align, I opened the two images and dragged one of them onto the other. Then I highlighted both layers and ran CS3's auto align command (fig 3). Once it aligned them, I simply made a layer mask on the top image and erased the unwanted part of the upper image in by painting black on it's layer mask (fig 4) and then we have a great image that the parents can me proud of (See above, click for larger view). Better to shoot it right the first time, but when it just doesn't work out that way, auto align just might help.

fig 1

fig 2

fig 3

fig 4