In this video tutorial, adventure photo journalist Jay Goodrich highlights a few of the features that he finds most useful in the upcoming update to Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. He also has an up coming Lightroom workshop in Seattle, September 14-15, 2013. More information here.

5 Features for Adobe Lightroom 5
by Jay Goodrich, reposted here with permission.

This is Episode 3 of Goodrich’s In the Office series of photography tutorials. See more of Goodrich’s work here and stay tuned for more great videos from him here on our blog! To see Episode 2, click here.

Seán Duggan is a fine art photographer, author, educator and an Adobe Certified Photoshop Expert with extensive experience in both the traditional and digital darkroom. His Lightroom Viewfinders series provides photographers with the tools they need to effectively use Lightroom for organization, editing, and printing. In this episode, Duggan explains the under-the-hood settings and options involved in “round-tripping” JPEG files–that is, editing in Lightroom, then sending your file to Photoshop for more edits and then sending it back again without losing image quality or your layers.

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Adventure photo journalist Jay Goodrich highlights how he uses exposure blending in Adobe Photoshop CS6 in order to add drama to an image that would otherwise be lackluster due to constraints such as being out at a poor time of day, rapidly-changing weather, odd angle of the subject, or when using a lens that doesn’t accommodate creative exposure-assisting filters, such as a variable neutral density filter. In this video tutorial, Goodrich shows how he exposure blends a subject that rises above the horizon during sunrise and sunset. (more…)

Seán Duggan is a fine art photographer, author, educator and an Adobe Certified Photoshop Expert with extensive experience in both the traditional and digital darkroom. His Lightroom Viewfinders series provides photographers with the tools they need to effectively use Lightroom for organization, editing, and printing. In this episode, Duggan explains the under-the-hood settings and options involved in “round-tripping” raw files–that is, editing in Lightroom, then sending your file to Photoshop for more edits and then sending it back again without losing image quality or your layers. (more…)

Adventure photo journalist Jay Goodrich highlights how he overcomes diffraction issues with today’s digital cameras and lenses by stacking multiple focal point images in Adobe Photoshop CS6 via Adobe Lightroom 4. Focus stacking, also known as focal plane merging or focus blending, is the process of combining multiple images taken at different focus distances. This is how many photographers are able to get entire subjects in focus even if the depth of field if very shallow. It is very popular in macro photography but it can also be very helpful for landscape photographers.  Watch the tutorial below to see how Goodrich is able to get his entire scene in focus when normally he’d be experiencing blur due to diffraction, which often occurs in lenses after a certain f/stop is reached. (more…)

Seán Duggan is a fine art photographer, author, educator and an Adobe Certified Photoshop Expert with extensive experience in both the traditional and digital darkroom. His Lightroom Viewfinders series provides photographers with the tools they need to effectively take Lightroom on the road with them during their photographic travels. In episode 2, Duggan goes over the basics of finding your missing Lightroom files and why Lightroom loses track of them in the first place. (more…)

Seán Duggan is a fine art photographer, author, educator and an Adobe Certified Photoshop Expert with extensive experience in both the traditional and digital darkroom. His Lightroom Viewfinders series provides photographers with the tools they need to effectively take Lightroom on the road with them during their photographic travels. In episode 1, Duggan goes over the basics of cataloguing and backing up your files.

Merging a Travel Catalog with your Main Catalog
by Seán Duggan (reprinted here with permission)

Lightroom is an essential tool for the traveling photographer, allowing you to not only work on your images as your trip unfolds, but also to just enjoy them more while you’re still on the trip. Reviewing images at the end of each day, editing them, working on sequences and image pairings, is also a great way to notice visual themes and trends in your own image making during the trip. You may not always be conscious of these as you are taking the photos, but taking note of these potential creative paths during the image review process can suggest new directions, as well as help you clarify existing ideas for the types of images you want to make.

In the Lightroom Viewfinder episode below, I provide an overview of my Lightroom travel catalog setup (including regular backups and keeping the drives safe from loss while on the road). Then I’ll show you how to import the data from the travel catalog into the main Lightroom catalog back home when the trip is over. I also address the all-important practice of moving files within Lightroom so the program always knows where they’re at.

Stay tuned for next week’s Lightroom Viewfinders topic “The Island of Lost Files: Find Those Missing Files and Get Your Lightroom Catalog Back in Order!”
In the meantime, check out Duggan’s other photo tips over on his blog.