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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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…)

Welcome to Cool Stuff, a weekly feature where we post our favorite links from the past week, including our favorite articles and how-tos, videos, images and more.

• We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again: any time Joe McNally talks, everyone should listen. This latest video will only be only till Feb 20, 2013, so make sure you watch it before then.
  
• Here’s another photographer you should always listen to/watch/study with if you get the chance: Gregory Heisler. From the guys over at the Profoto Blog comes a recounting of Greg’s shoot with Yasser Arafat.
• Yet another photographer we love is back with his series of image critiques. Here’s Episode 15 of Zack Arias’ “Photography Critiques.”
• Budding auto photographers should head over to Scott Kelby’s blog and take a look at his detailed post on how he shot details on an Aston Martin Vantage. Mmm…. car porn!
• And finally, from our friends over at PetaPixel, classified in the “Oh, Iran!” category: another Photoshop blunder from that country makes us chuckle all over again.

That’s it for this week’s Cool Stuff! As always, questions and feedback are welcome in the comments below.

Welcome to Cool Stuff, a weekly feature where we post our favorite links from the past week, including our favorite articles and how-tos, videos, images and more.

• I think if we could figure out a way to ship this, we might rent it. Regardless, we still want some of these, if for no other reason than we wanna play with them! I’m not talking about the Minis in the ad below, but about those long, tube-shaped light modifiers.
• Scott Kelby’s blog is on our daily must-read list. This video, where Scott explains to you why built-in video-editing in Photoshop is a big deal, is one of many reasons why.
• You know those image borders that Instagram, Hipstamatic, and all those other camera apps like to apply? Well, back in the days of film, they had an actual purpose. Check out this post from Pixiq to find out what it was.
• NBC’s coverage notwithstanding, you probably have heard that the Olympics are on. DPReview has a quick post on some truly high-def (think 8K and Gigapan) coverage of the games.
• Photographer Daniel Milnor – whose posts are quickly becoming analogous to high photographic literature to us – talks to another fellow Leica shooter, Eric Labastida. Labastida has a series of images about Tijuana, and this is one conversation you’ll want to take in.
• We absolutely love – LOVE - A Photo Editor‘s Daily Edit column. Check out this one, which features a piece from The New York Times magazine.
• We end this week with a bit about underwater photography, which is… wait. Where’s that shark going with with my gear! Come back you… oh my, what sharp teeth you have. Look, just keep the dang camera, okay?
  

That’s it for this week’s Cool Stuff. As always, questions and feedback are welcome in the comments below.

Welcome to Cool Stuff, a weekly feature where we post our favorite links from the past week, including our favorite articles and how-tos, videos, images and more.

• I posted this as part of my Op-Ed yesterday, but it’s worth mentioning again. Here are two articles by Zack Arias on wedding photography, along with a video introducing one of the posts.
  • Wedding Photographers Deserve Our Respect.
  • We Need To Be About Our Work.
    
• This article and video comes to us by way of David “The Strobist” Hobby. Photographer John Jackson cris-crosses the country in a 1960′s van, shooting cars. Talk about dedication to one’s craft!
• Daniel Milnor’s Leica Files videos have become something of a staple for me. The newest one, #10, is up now. Nothing fancy here; Daniel essential just deconstructs an image he took with one of his Leicas. Definitely worth checking out.
• Our friend Alexis Cuarezma recently put together a portrait of 19 athletes from 14 sports at his alma mater, Washington High School. Check out this video for a behind-the-scenes look.
• Seventeen magazine has issued a “Body Peace Treaty” where they promise not to change face or body shapes in their images. Is this the start of a trend? I hope so – but really, a “Treaty?” This isn’t international diplomacy, folks.
• We love photographer Jay P. Morgan’s video tutorials. Here’s his latest on ringlights.
• And speaking of video tutorials, here’s one on composition for video, by way of our friends at FStoppers.

That’s it for this week’s Cool Stuff. As always, questions and feedback are welcome in the comments below.

Welcome to Cool Stuff, a weekly feature where we post our favorite links from the past week, including our favorite articles and how-tos, videos, images and more.

• 

  The Nokia Pureview 808

  Nikon announced a 36MP D800. Did they just get one-upped by Nokia’s 41MP cameraphone monstrosity? PetaPixel has untouched photos from this thing.

• Photoshop Touch for Android tablets has been out since last year, but they didn’t get any buzz until they released it for iOS, apparently. It’s out now, for $9.99.
• Popular photo-sharing website 500px got a whole new look, and a new marketplace for photographers to sell their work.
• Speaking of makeovers, looks like Flickr is due to get one soon as well.
• And speaking of beautiful things, time-lapse photography has turned into an addiction of sorts for us. Here’s the latest, called “Temporal Distortion,” by Randy Halverson.
  
  Temporal Distortion from Randy Halverson on Vimeo.
• But wait! There’s more! Jarbas Agnelli adds a nice twist to his timelapse of Carnival in Rio de Janeiro by using a tilt-shift lens. The results are… well, see for yourself.
  
  The City of Samba from Jarbas Agnelli on Vimeo.
• More prettiness: A new venture, called SeaView, aims to do for the ocean what Google Street View did for land. Check out some amazing imagery at the SeaView website.
• And just in case you thought we were going to end this list with just pretty things, we’ll switch gears to a business topic and mention that the folks at Photoshelter have released a free workbook on SEO (Search Engine Optimization) for photographers.

That’s it for this week’s Cool Stuff. If you have something you think should be included, let us know! Email us at [email protected]