Photoshop Curves Explained by PhotoshopCAFE
The folks over at PhotoshopCAFE have made one of the best explanations of Curves I have seen. I though I knew everything about curves and I still learned a thing or two. It’s worth a look. Lightroom and Elements also have Curves adjustments and the principles talked about in the video also apply.
A Hack for when Lightroom can’t find Photoshop
I made the foolish mistake of uninstalling Photoshop 5 after installing Photoshop 5.1. After the uninstall, Lightroom 3.5 could no longer find Photoshop. “Edit in Adobe Photoshop” was grayed out as well as “Merge to Panorama…” and “Merge to HDR Pro…” when multiple photos were selected was also grayed out. Meanwhile there is no setting I could find that would let me change it.
To make matters worse, Bridge was somehow pointing to PS CS4 which it may have been doing for a while now, I have not used it since I started using Lightroom.
I have stuff to get done and after trying to re-install the latest versions of Lightroom and Photoshop with no luck, I decided to do a little Windows 7 64bit hacking (this should also work in Vista). What I did was create a Symlink, (described in more detail here here ).
WARNING: I am presenting a fix that worked for me. You could mess things up here if something goes wrong. Chances are it wont but if it does, you are responsible for your actions. Also, this is longer than my normal stuff so hang in there, go step by step.
This assumes you have already uninstalled older versions of Photoshop and both Photoshop and Lighroom are closed.
- First find all your Photoshops, I had folders for
C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CS4 (64 Bit)
C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CS5 (64 Bit)
C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CS5.1 (64 Bit)
C:\Program Files (x86)\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CS4
C:\Program Files (x86)\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CS5.1
- Remove any presets, scripts etc that you might want to save from the older versions.
- Copy the folder names down in notepad, (press Windows + R, type “notepad“, press Enter).
Hint: If you click in the address bar, it will change the “friendly” name to the real name that looks like those above.
- Delete the folders from the uninstalled versions. DO NOT DELETE THE CURRENT VERSION(S)
- Open the command line as the administrator by going to: Windows Ball (start) > All Programs > Accessories
- Right click on Command Prompt and select Run as Administrator
- You should see a box with a command prompt of C:\Windows\system32>
- Then type the following command at the prompt and press enter
mklink /D “C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CS5 (64 Bit)” “C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CS5.1 (64 Bit)”
Hint: You can copy and paste this if your paths are the same
Hint: This line above says MakeLink /Directory FromHere ToHere
When you press enter, it will show a verification:
“symbolic link created for C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CS5 (64 Bit) << ===>> C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CS5.1 (64 Bit)”
- Do the same for the other folders
mklink /D “C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CS4 (64 Bit)” “C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CS5.1 (64 Bit)”
mklink /D “C:\Program Files (x86)\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CS4″ “C:\Program Files (x86)\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CS5.1″
Now everything looking for Photoshop.exe will find the one you want to use.
How-To: Easy X-rite ColorChecker Passport Profile Generation in Lightroom 3
My earlier post contained a link to a video from X-rite that goes into detail about how to use the X-rite ColorChecker Passport in Lightroom and ACR (Adobe Camera Raw).
This is just the quick steps to generate a profile in Lightroom 3
- In Lightroom, select a picture you took with your camera of the ColorChecker Passport
- Right click on the picture and select Export > ColorChecker Passport
- Give it a name that will mean something to you later,
I use: (camera model) – (conditions) – (Photos WB settings) - Wait… and done.
- Restart Lightroom and it will show up in Develop > Camera Calibration > Profile
Step One, Stop
You may recognize Cow in the Pasture at Sunset as the current header shot of this site. I was heading back from Yosemite about half way between where I was and where I was going when the sun was setting and I saw this cow. I pulled over onto the soft shoulder, unpacked my gear and spent about 20 minutes getting things just right.
After reviewing this picture, I decided I did not like the stand of trees on the horizon just above the cow. In the large print version there is less contrast between it and the clouds and you can see them clearly so it works. In this downsized web presentation it is just distracting.
To fix this took seconds in Lightroom 3. Going back to the full size image, I used the Spot Removal tool (also available in ACR), I just placed a spot about twice as big as the offending portion and use an area immediately adjacent on the horizon. Then I cropped, resized and saved it as a jpeg with an sRGB color space.
X-rite ColorChecker Passport with Lightroom and Camera Raw
I heard about the X-rite ColorChecker Passport on Michael Frye’s website. If you are calibrating your monitor, this is a great way to calibrate your camera. Ok, technically you are not calibrating your camera, you are calibrating your RAW images. If you are not calibrating your monitor, nothing else you do with color calibration will matter, you should stop reading this and google monitor calibration. Michael does a good job explaining the ColorChecker but I found X-rite has an excellent webinar video tutorial for using the ColorChecker Passport with Lightroom and Camera Raw to get the most accurate color from your camera. The video goes over how to use the Passport to get the right white balance in portraits and landscapes. It also shows how to make camera profiles in Lightroom without doing DNG conversions first.
Adding keywords to multiple files in Lightroom 3
To me (and a few others on the internet) Lightroom 3 seems to have a non-intuitive way to add keywords to selections of photos. I would have thought you could select all the photos you wished to keyword the same and just type them in once and it would propagate to all of the selected. Not so, all that does is update the first selected photo. There are some instructions out there about using the spray can but this seemed unwieldy to me with large selections.
1. In Library grid view, select one photo and make sure all the keywords you wish to use exist by adding them.
2. Select all the files that need the same keywords.
3. On the right side under Keyword List, find each keyword you wish to add, right click and select “Add this keyword to selected photos”
Julieanne’s got some good stuff going on here
Well, I took the plunge into Lightroom 3 hoping it would get me from download to print faster and it has been a struggle. Perhaps the Bridge / Adobe Camera RAW / Photoshop workflow are more tailored to my way of thinking. I don’t know. If you are making the transition like I am, Julieanne has some great information like how-to videos and cheat sheet PDF to get you started. Just click on over to www.jkost.com