Capture Sharpening


Optimal image sharpening is best done in three stages— capture (do it during RAW conversion), creative (do it in Photoshop) and output (automate it).
Capture sharpening benefits all images. It compensates for inherent deficiencies in optical and capture systems. All lenses and sensors have specific characteristics and deficiencies. They don't all have the same characteristics or deficiencies.
To speed your workflow, default settings for a best starting point for capture sharpening can be determined for all images created with the same lens/chip combination and saved for subsequent use. To optimally sharpen an image, you'll need to modify these settings to factor in additional considerations—variances in noise (ISO, exposure duration, temperature), noise-reduction settings and the frequencies of detail (low/smooth to high/fine texture) in an image.


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Blurb's Bookify Plug-In For Lightroom


Now you can seamlessly flow the photos you edit in Lightroom 3 straight into your Blurb Bookify™ books with our new Lightroom plug-in.
Here’s how simple it is.
– Flow edited Lightroom images into Bookify™ (online).
– Choose your book’s layout and style from within Lightroom.
– Stream photo captions automatically into your book’s text boxes.
– Automatically capture file data for the images in your book.
Blurb’s BookSmart is also coming soon to Lightroom.
Find out more about Bookify.
Read more with my Bookmaking online resources.

Crop or Retouch ?



As visual communicators, we’re responsible for everything that’s in the frame; we’re also responsible for everything that’s not in the frame. Deciding what’s in the frame and what’s out is a critical decision that can make or break an image. Here are two essential framing strategies.
1.?Use the frame to eliminate distracting information around a subject.
Take extra care with image information that touches the frame, as it will draw extra attention. Do this with significant compositional elements.
2.?Eliminate space around a subject to focus a viewer’s attention.
A lot of space between the subject and the frame can be used to call on psychological associations with space, such as freedom or isolation. Some space between the subject and the frame can give the appearance of the subject resting gracefully within the frame. Touching the subject with the frame strongly focuses the attention of the viewer and may seem claustrophobic. Cropping the subject with the frame can focus the attention of the viewer on specific aspects of the subject and/or give an image a tense quality, evoking evasion and incompleteness—this often seems accidental if less than half the subject is revealed.
There’s more than one way to apply these strategies. While cropping techniques are simple to practice, the reasons for their application and the choices made about how to apply them, as well as the final effects, may be exceptionally complex. You have two choices ..
1. Reposition the frame before exposure.
2. Contract the position of the borders of an image after exposure
If you plan to retouch, you’ll frame and crop differently …
Read more at Digital Photo Pro.
Find more digital photography techniques here.
Learn more in my digital photography worskhops.

OnOne Free Plug Ins


Get 20% off OnOne products with this code – PRINT20 !
OnOne offers free Plug-Ins.
You can add professional photographic effects, frames and backgrounds in Photoshop with just a few clicks with PhotoTools 2.5 Free Edition and PhotoFrame 4.5 Free Edition from onOne. You can also download free Lightroom Presets and Camera Raw Presets to speed up your workflow and instantly add effects. These products are yours to keep (they don’t expire) and will save you hours of time enhancing images in Photoshop and Lightroom.
Learn more about OnOne here.
Learn more in my digital photography workshops.

Single or Multiple Catalogs in Lightroom ?


Adobe Evangelist Julieanne Kost answers one of the most commonly asked questions “If should you use a single catalog for all of your photographs or if you should you use multiple catalogs?”. As a general rule, she recommends that you use as few as possible, but discusses when using multiple could be beneficial.
Find more Adobe online training here.
Learn from Julianne live before our 2011 Iceland workshops.
Learn more in my digital photography workshops.