Nicolesy » Lightroom

Photography: It’s a Marathon

Nicole — Fri, 04 May 2012 19:19:46 +0000

Canon 5DMkIII, Canon 100mm f/2.8L IS Macro lens, 1/60 sec at f/4, ISO 200
Edited using one of my Lightroom 4 Film Presets, available at onOne Software

Believe it or not, I used to be a runner. Nothing crazy or competitive (and I would never consider myself fast) but I ran a lot. I even ran (and finished) a marathon back in 2006 which was an exhilarating experience. After all of my years of running the one thing I learned about myself is that I never give up. Getting to the point of being able to run long distance takes time, training and patience. You have to work at it regularly, walk out the door and just run. You suck at first, but it gets better … and better … until you cross the finish line of your first race. But that finish line isn’t the end, because there are many more long, strenuous races to run.

As a photographer there are a lot of parallels with building up the physical endurance of running to the point of crossing a finish line many miles down the road and the learning process of photography. If you’re picking up a camera for the first time—even if it’s the most expensive camera on the market and the fanciest lens there is—you still have a long way to go before you’re able to make intentionally beautiful photographs. Good running shoes don’t make someone a better runner, they just help with the existing skill and training that has already taken place. With photography that same principle applies—put in the time to learn your craft and solidify your skills and you’ll find that eventually you may just surprise yourself with the quality of your photographs (which is always a good feeling).

Being a skilled photographer doesn’t happen immediately. You won’t walk away from a photography class, an intensive workshop or conference and have enough skills to photograph anything that is in front of your lens. I’ve learned pretty much everything I know about photography from picking up little nuggets of information in various places over several years. I also tend to focus in on one specific type of photogrpahy and dive into it 100% to get good at that one specific genre. My new adventure, and something I’m determined to learn as much about as possible, is macro photography and focus stacking. I recently purchased the Canon 100mm macro for food photography and I’m also using it for my personal work (like with the image in this post).

Giving myself new things to learn is my way of challenging my skills and building on to the existing foundations I already have. I know a heck of a lot about photography, but I don’t know everything … I’m still collecting nuggets of information and I suspect that I will always have room for more. In five years I want to have polished my skills so much that the photos I take today look like crap in comparison. And I want the learning and growing to continue until I float on up to the big’ol’ “Darkroom in the Sky”. I guess it’s not just a marathon, but a super-marathon … there’s no doubt in my mind that I’ll keep on going, and I hope to see you hitting the metaphorical pavement along with me.

Free Lightroom 4 Preset: Sun Flare (Cross Process)

Nicole — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 21:16:30 +0000

Nicolesy’s “Sun Flare” cross-processing preset. (Click on images to view larger.)

If you use Lightroom, here’s a preset I made specifically for Lightroom 4 users! (It will work in earlier versions, it might just turn out with a slightly different look). Feel free to download and enjoy. It’s a very warm, cross-processed effect that goes well with portraits, still-life, landscapes … just about anything, really. :) Here’s the link to download the Sun Flare Lightroom 4 preset.

If you’d like more if this style of preset, check out my new Lightroom preset pack, a Cross Process Presets Pack for Lightroom 4, at the onOne Marketplace, specifically designed for the new processing sliders inside of Lightroom 4. They’re packs of ten for $9.95 each … I have a few other packs in there as well, including a B&W Preset Pack and a Film Preset Pack. Also, if you use onOne Perfect Effects (including the brand-new FREE version), I have a few preset packs available as well specifically for that software (with more on the way!). Here’s a link to all of the presets available for purchase at the onOne Marketplace.

How to install a Lightroom Preset:

First, download your preset and unzip/extract the file.
Next, in Lightroom, go to the Develop module.
In the “Presets” panel on the left, select or create a folder where you’d like to place your new preset.
Right-click on the folder and select “Import…”.
Navigate to the new preset and click the IMPORT button.

BTW, if you’re interested in any of the onOne software products, use the discount code NICOLESY for 10% off. :)

Free Lightroom 4 Preset: Aged B&W Print

Nicole — Sat, 10 Mar 2012 21:16:27 +0000

Nicolesy’s “Aged B&W Print” preset. (Click on images to view larger.)

If you’re a Lightroom user you probably already know that Lightroom 4 was released this past week. To celebrate, I’ve created some preset packs, which are available at the onOne Marketplace, specifically designed for the new processing sliders inside of Lightroom 4. They’re packs of ten: I created a B&W Preset Pack and a Film Preset Pack and are $9.95 for each pack. Also, if you use onOne Perfect Effects, I have at least one preset pack available as well specifically for that software (with more on the way!). Here’s a link to all of the presets available for purchase at the onOne Marketplace.

In addition to the presets available over at onOne, I’ve also created a special free preset just for my readers to download called Nicolesy’s Aged B&W Print! Click on the photos above to view the before and after. It’s a very bright, soft mix with sepia tones and white rounded corners. Once downloaded, if you need help installing it I’ve included instructions below.

How to install a Lightroom Preset:

First, download your preset and unzip/extract the file.
Next, in Lightroom, go to the Develop module.
In the “Presets” panel on the left, select or create a folder where you’d like to place your new preset.
Right-click on the folder and select “Import…”.
Navigate to the new preset and click the IMPORT button.

BTW, if you’re interested in any of the onOne software products you can use the discount code NICOLESY for 10% off of the software. :)

Timelapse: Creating a Moving Photograph

Nicole — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 18:06:41 +0000

As promised, here’s the recorded version of yesterday’s timelapse webinar with onOne Software. I cover pretty much everything I know about timelapse photography, including the following:

- Info on frame-rate and how to choose your intervals
- Equipment for timelapse
- Camera settings
- Editing the still images in Lightroom & onOne Software
- Exporting the images and creating the video files

Enjoy!

Photoshop Before & After: Salmon

Nicole — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 15:29:54 +0000

Yesterday I posted some white-balance tips for shooting food photography. In this post I’m going to go through the steps I took to edit the image. The photo used in this post is from the same shoot and is edited identically to the image in the previous post.

I reduced the images sizes in this post for format purposes … feel free to click on them to view in a larger resolution.

The images I photograph, whether they are for work or for fun, always go through Adobe Lightroom before I edit in Photoshop, and sometimes, if they are not “work” images, I will just export straight out of Lightroom and not even use Photoshop. I’ve been using the program ever since it was released and have found it to be an essential part of my workflow.

So, for this image, I started by editing the RAW file in Lightroom. I made some slight temperature and tonal adjustments (the changes are hi-lighted in yellow). Then I exported the image as a PSD file and opened it in Photoshop CS4 to do further editing.

When I edit images I typically use a lot of layers. This photo didn’t need too much work to it, so it’s not as complicated when it comes to my typical work-flow. I prefer to use adjustment layers to preserve the non-destructiveness as much as possible during the editing process … and so I can go back and fix anything I missed the first time around.

The first layer is a Levels Adjustment Layer – I named it “light” in my layers panel to the left (click here to view the actual RGB adjustments). One thing you’ll note is that, hi-lighted in yellow is the blending modes drop-down and I have it set to “luminosity“. I do this with my images so that I can do masking that will only affect one aspect of the adjusmtents, if necessary. In this particular image I didn’t want the red areas of the salmon and topping to be overly lightened (it was creating some ugly blotching in the darker red areas) so I used “SELECT –> Color Range…” to find the red areas, then I filled in the selection with black in the layer mask.

Next I added another Levels Adjustment Layer, changed the blend-mode to “color” and did some minor color editing. I used the far left slider on the “Red” and “Green” channels and brought them in slightly to the right until the colors looked balanced (click here to view the adjustments).

The third layer is a Black and White Adjustment Layer, the blend mode changed to “Soft Light” (I also will sometime use the “Overlay” blend mode”) and then dropped the opacity down to 20%. This will usually give a nice contrasty look to the image, and often will make the blacks stand out in the image more.

(If you want to learn more, please click here to view a quick two-minute video tutorial on this effect.)

The last thing I do in my images is add a sharpening layer. I prefer to use the “High Pass” filter and use masking to show only the part of the image I want sharpened, in this case the basil leaf furthest to the right. (I explain how to do this effect towards the end of this video tutorial, at about 5 minutes in.)

And that’s my editing process! I always save the un-flattened PSD version of the image, along with a full-res JPEG. Saving the PSD files eats up more space, but I have found it useful when I need to go back and re-edit a file (or do fun tutorials like this one).