Neil September 27th, 2008
Free Lightroom Brush Presets by Seim; Brush Preset collection
Did you know that in Lightroom2 You can use a brush to make precise corrections, and even have brush presets ready to go to make those corrections easy.
Well I knew about LR brushes, but I had not given enough attention to them until Matt Kloskowski posted up some darken brushes, and got my mind in gear on a great workflow asset.
Here’s a collection of brush presets I made for… Burn, Dodge, Color Boost, Color Drain, Skin Soft, and Detail Boost. Remember that these don’t work the same as my Develop presets. These are for “Brush” settings. If you need to learn how to install them take a look at my Installing Lightroom Brush Presets article. The download is above. Just download unzip and follow the directions.
Neil September 24th, 2008
Lightroom 300 Presets (Download) « mikelao photography
Here’s a fun freebie, with Photoshop Lightroom preset to help you style your images like the “300″ movie
Neil September 3rd, 2008
Photoshop Insider » Getting That Cool Gritty Look Right in Camera Raw and Photoshop or Lightroom
Read the above full explanation, and start with these settings:
- Fill Light = 100%
- Blacks = Test this one to taste: 10-100%
- Contrast = 50-100%
- Clarity = 100%
- Vibrance = 50-100%
- Recovery = 0-100%
- Saturation = -81% rely on your vibrance to color the image and desaturate to get the metallic look.
Download the Photoshop Lightroom Grunge Preset download
Before image on the left. Below, Dark Descent lighting overlays applied to the effect.
Have fun with the preset!
Neil April 3rd, 2008
I’d like to dedicate this site to one of my mentors, Don Chocran
I first met Don, on the Moose River in upstate NY. When a guy old enough to be your dad can rip you up in a kayak, it gets instant respect. Buy my friend who introduced him as a great photographer, and so I was curious. A few campfire stories later and we were friends and he was giving me tips to nail some killer kayaking photos the next day. So on various occasions for a few years, I would assist Don with some of his big projects…
Above is a shoot in which I ‘realized’ what the inverse square law could do for me and it helped us get done on time. Below on the floor are a whole spool of fuse burning lights, two large Fresnel spots to push the light up above the proscenium into the corners. On Polaroid we had made it too hot - and we were running out of time for this view, so without a dimmer on the lights it would take me 5-10 min to move them to the exact position. But as a trade off, I switched the angles on the lights to cross their beams and double the distance to the corners. Exposure was good after that, and it was a visceral understanding in the aplication of the inverse square law.
Well this is just a shot for inspiration, but on a shoot inside this building was the first time I gelled the lights for a shoot. It just happened that I taped Roscoe gels to all the florescent lights on the ceiling in a boardroom to color correct them and dim them to match the tungsten spots. From then on I knew what lengths one must be willing to go to in order to get good pictures. Planning and a little bit of technique mixed with some good old fashioned elbow grease helps things progress to the point of good.
So I’d like to dedicate this site to Don, for all that he taught me by just watching him do his job. Thanks.
And point out to those reading, that getting outside your photographic specialty can really teach you some things and inspire you to bring them back into your own practice - so contact an architectural shooter and see if they’re willing to take you along to a shoot.
