processing

We just finished a magazine shoot this week, and as usual we were on a deadline.  I actually like deadlines, it focuses my attention and crystalizes image concepts.  It might mean a few late nights in the office, but we have a Starbucks right down the street.  The model on this shoot was a man, Read More

There is a lot of great editing software out there these days.  While you can do most everything in LR and PS, sometimes it is just nice to click a few button and call it good.  The biggest issue with plugins has been the quality of the final image.  Some plugins create pixelated over processed Read More

If you are like me, you like to speed up your workflow.  I can only take so many hours in front of the computer working on images before I need a break.  But after some assignments, and with a deadline looming, I may have to edit hundreds of photos in a matter of hours.  How Read More

If you just updated your Camera Raw, you noticed a new slider above Clarity…the Texture Slider.  If you haven’t updated Camera Raw, you should do it today because this slider is fantastic. The texture slider will sharpen areas in your image that are high frequency, meaning areas with a lot of detail.  Trees, rocks and Read More

While you can probably do most of your editing in Lightroom, there are some things you just can’t do in Lightroom.  Probably the biggest reason many people shift into Photoshop while editing in Lightroom is to correct or erase objects.  Content Aware Fill gives you a lot more control and better results for removing complex Read More

I just returned from shooting in the rainforests and jungles of Costa Rica (we’re posting our Costa Rica workshop soon!), and I shot a lot of images at ISOs of 1600 and even 3200.  If you see a bird in the understory, the light is often low.  But honestly this isn’t too much of a Read More

I just returned from Fairbanks Alaska photographing the northern lights, dog mushing, ice sculptures and interesting Alaskan people.  One afternoon we set up a portrait shoot (at ten below zero) to photograph one of the staff at our lodge.  Paul was classic Alaskan…bearded, fur lined coat and rugged.  For the shot we used an Elinchrom Read More

With all the updates with LR, it is easy to overlook some of the helpful new features.  I regularly use the graduated filter tool in Lightroom to darken my skies if I didn’t use a graduated ND filter in the field.  But rarely is the transition from sky to ground an even one, especially if Read More

We just finished a portrait shoot the other day of a terrific model in a gritty local alley.  Well, as gritty as Fort Collins can get, which isn’t much.  But the image came out nice using a 35mm 1.4, one of my favorite environmental portrait lenses.  In post I wanted to work on the surrounding Read More

One question I get a lot on workshops is how to backup your images.  A simple question, but it gets confusing when there are so many suggestions on what is the right method.  I’ll tell you how we back up over a half million digital images and all our office files…and I promise to keep Read More