Adopting A Photoshop Lightroom Workflow - Lightroom Tutorial
Download the Adopting A Photoshop Lightroom Workflow PDF (660KB).

If you are a photographer who wants to take a laptop on location to review your work-in-progress, here are the four essential steps that you need to take to ensure you stay organized when using Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. This workflow is optimized for a photographer who owns:

• A laptop computer.
• An external large-capacity hard drive or studio/home-office desktop computer with a large hard-drive capacity.
• A smaller pocket drive that can be powered via the USB or Firewire port off the laptop computer. Some photographers may prefer to burn DVDs using their laptop instead of using a USB/Firewire pocket drive.

The four steps in the workflow are as follows:

1. Create a master Lightroom catalog.
2. Import images on location into a working catalog using a laptop computer.
3. Export the working catalog to your USB/Firewire pocket drive or burn the catalog to a DVD.
4. Import the catalog from the location shoot into the master catalog and transfer the images to the main hard drive.

Free PDF Tutorial
Download the Adopting A Photoshop Lightroom Workflow PDF (660KB).
See more Mark Galer tutorials.

Order The Book
This articles is taken from the book Digital Photography Essential Skills (Fourth Edition) by Mark Galer and published in by Focal Press. The book is available from Amazon.com.

Digital Photography Essential Skills is the ultimate beginners guide to digital SLR photography everything you need to start taking great images. Looking to take your photography to the next level? Need guidance on the basics, from choosing cameras to perfecting capture, managing files, editing images and developing a creative, critical eye?

Packed with quality images to inspire and enthuse, Digital Photography Essential Skills takes a refreshingly practical, focused approach to cover exactly what you need to know develop a creative, competent style and a seamless photography workflow.

As a working photographer and teaching lecturer, Mark Galer is the perfect guide to take you through the skills and knowledge needed to take fantastic images. Now updated to cover file management and editing in Lightroom, Adobes popular workflow software, for a stream- lined process from capture to output.


Adobe Photoshop Lightroom - Who Needs It?

If you have managed to live without Photoshop Lightroom up until now, what makes it so fantabulous/damned hot that you need to place it at the top of your software wish list? Read Adobe Photoshop Lightroom - Who Needs It? by Mark Galer for some thoughts on Lightroom's top features. From the intro:

Photoshop Lightroom has had somewhat of an identity crisis amongst the general population of photographers since its release in early 2007. The Adobe engineers built it to fill a gap in the Photoshop family of products (Photoshop CS3 and Photoshop Elements being the other two family members) but many amongst the photographic community have not been able to identify its primary task to make it the ‘must have’ product that Adobe hoped it would become for all digital photographers.

Adobe would like to think that no photographer could imagine living without this product, but in reality, most digital photographers have survived without it for years and question why thy need it now. Much of the confusion for many photographers exists because the feature set of each of the Photoshop products overlap, e.g. they all allow you to adjust the brightness and contrast of your image. Why buy two products when the one I have does the job nicely?

Read the rest of Adobe Photoshop Lightroom - Who Needs It?.


New Photoshop Actions Sets — Surreal Colors And Tritones

I’m talking with Gavin Phillips, owner of ‘Photographers Photoshop.’ What’s different in your latest set of Photoshop ‘actions’ & movies?
With our ‘Surreal Colors & Tritones’ we are combining not only different colors & techniques, but also giving artists several different ways to customize the effect. So they have several creative ways to go with many of the ‘actions.’

Give me an example of how they can customize one of your effects?
In our make-believe effect, after the ‘action’ finishes, they immediatey have 3 different effects to chose from by looking in the ‘history palette.’ They can also remove the tint from any part of the photo by ‘painting’ on a mask. And they can change the tint by moving sliders in the ‘hue/saturation’ layer.



This sounds complicated. What if I don’t know how to do this?
Firstly, we insert short messages into the ‘actions’ informing our clients to look in the history palette. If it requires more explanation, we show you the technique in a 2-minute movie. You just click on different tones in the history pallete.

What are the differences between your ‘actions’ & free ‘actions’ ?
I carefuy develop each ‘action’ to do something different creatively. Hundreds of hours are invested in testing the ‘actions’ to make certain they work on different kinds of images, and offer our clients other ways to customize the effect quickley.

We work closely with professional photographers and designers for input and critical review. And you receive the movie tutorials, custom photo borders and Tritone presets as well, not only ‘actions.’

What are Tritones?
Complex tones that combine three colors into one. We also teach clients how to create and save their own Tritone pre-sets in a movie.



So the movie tutorials show you things an ‘action’ cannot do?
That’s right. Our movies give you more creative ideas about how to use our ‘actions’, or they teach you technical things, like how to apply our art/sloppy borders to your photo’s.

So there’s a teaching aspect to this as well?
Exactly. Our clients tell us they have learned a number of useful Photoshop techniques from watching our movies.

Do you have a demo movie of what the program does?
Yes, click here to see our 3-minute demo movie.

What is the price?
For a very limited time we have special offers with up to 50% off. Please see our website for details.

Photoshop Actions & Brushes Create Realistic Painter Effects

Gavin Philips has released a new set of creative Photoshop actions and art history brushes that create painterly effects. Below is an interview with Gavin that explains his new ‘Paint like Monet’ program. (There is a free action available at Gavin's site. Try the free 'Pastel' creative Photoshop 'action' for PC or the free 'Pastel' creative Photoshop 'action' for MAC.)

What does your 'Paint like Monet' program do for photographers and graphic artists?
It shows them how to quickly create authentic painted portraits using only Photoshop and our custom art history brushes. Also included are several creative Photoshop 'actions'.

How do the creative 'actions' work?
Many photographers and graphic artists use Photoshop ‘actions’ for doing repetitive tasks, such as converting to black & white, or converting from RAW to JPG.

Our creative ‘actions’ combine many complex steps and produce stylish imagery at the click of a button. We also include text messages to give the artist suggestions about how to customize their photo during the ‘action’, or after it has finished playing.

Don't you need a program like 'Painter' to paint digitally?
Our painted examples prove that you do not. Photographers and graphic artists want a streamlined workflow where they do not have to keep switching programs.

There is also the issue of the large amount of time needed to learn ‘Painter’ in order to produce high-quality paintings with it.

I tried using Photoshop's art history brush and all I created was a mess. How are you using it to create these painted photos?
The way to make Photoshop’s art history brush a great tool is the design of our custom art history brushes. We invested considerable time creating the custom brushes in Photoshop that are all included in the set.

The settings of the brush, and when to change the settings is also crucial. Through hundreds of hours of testing, we came up with the best techniques. This is what we teach in our movies.

Read the full interview and find out more about this program.

3 Free Photoshop Actions - Plus Photo FX Actions Discount

Gavin Phillips, creator of some very popular FX Photoshop Actions, has set up a new special discount deal for all PhotoshopSupport visitors, plus he is offering 3 free Actions that you can test drive and keep. Here are the details from Gavin:



"Our creative Photoshop Actions and short Flash movies enable you to create elegant imagery in minutes. Our Actions incorporate dozens of steps in Photoshop that you can apply by simply clicking a button. In addition to the Photoshop Actions, our short Flash movies give you other creative ways to use our actions, explain a technique or finish what the Action started. Our specialized program has been published by the 'Professional Photographers of America' (PPA) twice as well as in other publications. Try my 3 Photoshop Actions for free. They produce the effects above (from left to right — Infrared, Toned and Softly).

"We offer 4 sets of Photoshop Actions and Flash movies and we are offering a special discount for a limited time. Purchase one set of Photoshop Actions and get a second set for free. Visit the special Actions discount page for details."

Gavin has also kindly written up a nice Photoshop Actions Tutorial that will give you a quick course on Photoshop Actions.

Get The Gear You Deserve - B&H Online Store - Special Deals

When we mention digital cameras and digital photography gear, we've been linking to Amazon as an online vendor. We've found their pricing to be very reasonable, but many of you have complained that it's become very frustrating ordering cameras and camera gear at Amazon because they are so often out of stock.

So we've partnered with B&H Photo, an online vendor that has a stellar reputation and great discount pricing. Visit the B&H Photo site to see their special deals — or go directly to their Canon Pro Store or Nikon Pro Store for the latest digital cameras, lenses and digital photo gear.


The Photoshop Blog offers the latest Photoshop and Digital Photography news and software updates, tips and tutorials, and random thoughts from graphic artist, digital photographer and Photoshop expert Jennifer Apple. Also includes Lightroom news!


PHOTO CREDIT: Full moon as seen from the International Space Station.