Software How To

Creating a web page for your images these days is fairly easy, and there are numerous web apps available that offer a wide variety of colors and backgrounds. But organizing your images before you even consider the template (or “skin” as it is called in the trade) is perhaps the biggest challenge, given the proliferation of images we all have made with various cameras and mobile devices stored on flash drives, hard drives, and even memory cards.

Photographers, especially those dealing with large numbers of images, are always looking for ways to speed up the workflow and spend less time in front of a computer and more time behind a camera. Applications like Lightroom have improved the process tremendously, making cataloging and image adjustments easier and faster than before. If you have adjustments that you apply frequently, you can use presets to make it a single-click process, applying a number of adjustments in one operation.

Kevin Kubota has been providing presets and tools for both Photoshop and Lightroom users for quite a while now, and one of his products is a combination of a package of presets for Lightroom and a mini keyboard from RPG Keys that looks much like a numeric keypad on your keyboard. Available as a bundle for $349, or as a rental for $19.95 per month after a $49 setup fee, you get over 100 presets that do everything from black-and-white conversions to skin tone enhancements (and a number of interesting edge effects).

Landscape photography is full of challenges, one of the biggest being arriving at a proper exposure. That’s because many scenes have a wide range of tones, with a density range that’s beyond the capability of your camera.

There’s a lot more to making great landscape photos than being in the right place at the right time and snapping the shutter. In the video below, top pro Matt Granger reveals his complete workflow from planning a trip and gear selection to location scouting, capturing an image, and making the final edit.

Many photographers shoot in Raw rather than Jpeg for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that this unprocessed format captures the maximum of detail. Another advantage is the greater flexibility Raw files provide during post-processing.

Improperly exposed photos are the bane of all kinds of photographers, especially those who shoot outdoors where a wide range of tones may exceed the density range of your camera. We posted a tutorial earlier today explaining a simple method to remedy this problem by using Photoshop’s Dodge and Burn tools to make dark areas lighter and light areas dark to arrive at a balanced result.

Adobe has updated Lightroom to version 14.3 and there's lot to unpack as you'll see in our upcoming tutorials. Today's episode is devoted his one "huge" new feature landscape photographers have been awaiting that's been available in other post-processing software for some time.