Featured Lightroom Tutorials

Lightroom Tutorial: Make This Your First Step Every Time You Edit a Raw Photo

Thumbnail image for Lightroom Tutorial: Make This Your First Step Every Time You Edit a Raw Photo February 15, 2012

You know how you load your photos into Lightroom, and the first time you look at a photo it looks great for just a second, and then it becomes dull and less vibrant? What you are seeing for that split second is a JPG.  The diference between Raw and JPG photos is that cameras add [...]

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Do You Need Photoshop Elements AND Lightroom?

Thumbnail image for Do You Need Photoshop Elements AND Lightroom? February 9, 2012

Lightroom vs. Photoshop Elements.  I am asked a lot which one to buy – this is a tough question! Personally, I couldn’t live without either.  And I would rather have LR+PSE any day over full Photoshop by itself. So here is how I answer that question when I’m asked: If you are professional photographer or [...]

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Lightroom 4: How to Access Color Curves

Thumbnail image for Lightroom 4: How to Access Color Curves January 13, 2012

Lightroom 4 has just been released in beta version and it rocks!  While LR 4 won’t completely replace Elements, it sure will be a time saver if you use it together with PSE. One of new the features that I am particularly excited about is the Color Curves function.  For those of you that use [...]

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Lightroom Tutorial: Using the Histogram to Fix Skin Tones

Thumbnail image for Lightroom Tutorial: Using the Histogram to Fix Skin Tones December 14, 2011

The most un-answerable question of photo editing is “How do you know when it’s right?” Don’t get excited, I’m not going to answer it for you.  Not really.  But I do have a guidepost that I like to use when gauging whether a portrait is properly exposed. I like my skin tones to fall somewhere [...]

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MPC Quick Clicks for Lightroom Introductory Pricing Ends Monday

Thumbnail image for MPC Quick Clicks for Lightroom Introductory Pricing Ends Monday October 28, 2011

MCP’s Quick Clicks is getting rave reviews from Lightroom users.  Would you like to see what I’ve been doing with it? Keep in mind that each of the edits below requires only one click! On this photo, I used Add 1 Stop and Daydream.     Here is the before: For this next photo, I [...]

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Using Lightroom and Photoshop Elements Together

Thumbnail image for Using Lightroom and Photoshop Elements Together October 26, 2011

Lightroom and Photoshop Elements make a great team. People ask me all the time whether they should upgrade to full Photoshop.  My answer?  I’d buy Lightroom and use it with Photoshop Elements any day over using full Photoshop by itself. And because of our recent release over at MCP of the fabulous new Quick Clicks [...]

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Free Lightroom Presets from MCP

Thumbnail image for Free Lightroom Presets from MCP October 11, 2011

Lightroom users (I know a lot of you are), this is for you! Ice Cream Shoppe and Increase Exposure 1 Stop Jodi from MCP and I have been working very hard on developing a comprehensive and user friendly set of Lightroom presets.  I have to tell you, it took some convincing on my part – [...]

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Workflow Order – Don’t Sweat It!

May 18, 2011

Workflow order is the topic that I get asked about most often in my classes, whether it’s the Lightroom or the Elements class.  People worry that there is one and only one order that post processing work should be done in, and that not knowing this order is going to ruin their photos. Put your [...]

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Amazing New Lightroom Tip

Thumbnail image for Amazing New Lightroom Tip March 23, 2011

Ok, so it’s not techncially “undiscovered” material, but it’s new to me and I love it! My Lightroom catalog contains over 30,000 images.  And it’s been a bit sluggish lately. For instance, when I am scrolling through a set of images in the Library, it might take a couple of seconds for the scroll to [...]

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Post Processing: Adjusting Lightroom Presets and Processing a Mom’s Emotions

Thumbnail image for Post Processing: Adjusting Lightroom Presets and Processing a Mom’s Emotions February 16, 2011

How many of you use presets in Lightroom? Like Photoshop actions, Lightroom presets are shortcuts to getting the look you want, especially if you don’t know exactly how to get that look on your own.  And presets, just like actions, can be fine-tuned after you apply them to an image.  There is no way that [...]

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Lightroom Tutorial: Can this image be saved? Reprise.

Thumbnail image for Lightroom Tutorial: Can this image be saved? Reprise. January 18, 2011

Lightroom can work wonders on images.  Can it save an image that starts out terrible?  No. Do you remember my quick edit on a pic that was awful out of camera, but that my girlfriend loved?  The picture absolutely wasn’t worth saving, except that I took it on a fun night out with friends. Stu [...]

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Record Digital Images in Raw for More Adjusting Power

March 17, 2009

Do you shoot your digital photos in Raw? You’d know it it you did.  Working with Raw images gives you much more power to correct photographic mistakes.  Was the exposure way off on an otherwise great picture?  Raw can help you fix it.  Is there a severe color tint due to improper white balance settings?  [...]

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