DFWAUG

Dallas / Fort Worth Adobe User Group

Archive for category Adobe

Lightroom Resources from the Source

Jul 21

Posted by in Adobe, Lightroom, Tips | Comments off

There are many resources on the web for learning about Lightroom. Sometimes it's good to go back to the source. Adobe has a few great resources for Lightroom users that you should add to your list of favorites. Here are a few.There are many resources on the web for learning about Lightroom. Sometimes it's good to go back to the source. Adobe has a few great resources for Lightroom users that you should add to your list of favorites. Here are a few.

Adobe User Forums
Users, Community Experts, Adobe Employees and others hang out over at the Adobe Lightroom Forum and help each other. This is an excellent resource for interactive exchanges of ideas and questions.

Phosphors
If you've spent any time at the Adobe Lightroom Forum then you've probably met up with Anita Dennis. Anita does some excellent work helping the community with Lightroom (and other applications). She presently runs an Adobe blog called Phosphors dealing with Lightroom, Photoshop, and Bridge. Check it out for some great insights.

Lightroom Journal
The Lightroom Team over at Adobe also runs a blog called Lightroom Journal. Here is a great place to check to see what's going on with Lightroom and Lightroom development.

Community Help
This site brings together the best tips, tricks, and support from around the web and from inside Adobe. Go over and visit the Photoshop Lightroom Help and Support site. There is a link from there to the online Lightroom Help System (which is also available from the help menu inside Lightroom). Instead of a static manual, this is living document with comments and questions from users. Anita Dennis and a team of Moderators keep things up to date and on point.

So next time you have some Lightroom issue you need help with, check out the source over at Adobe!

Lightroom 2.3 Release Candidate is Available

Jan 24

Posted by in Adobe, Lightroom, News, software | Comments off

Lightroom 2.3 Release Candidate is now available at Adobe Labs! Go to http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/Lightroom_2.3 for more information and to download the files. Support has been added for the Nikon D3X and the Olympus E-30.

Also added is language support for Chinese, Dutch, Italian, Korean, Spanish, and Swedish. Adobe reports that the RC fixes the following bugs:

  • In the Windows 64-bit version of Lightroom an sFTP upload process could cause Lightroom to crash.
  • Slideshows could return to the first image randomly during playback.
  • A memory leak could cause Lightroom to crash while attempting to process files with local adjustments.
  • Canon EOS 5D Mk II sRAW files could process with artifacts in Lightroom 2.2.
  • Lightroom 2.2 could cause disc burning to fail for Windows customers.

In parallel, Adobe has released new betas for Camera Raw 5.3 and the DNG Converter 5.3. These are available at http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/Camera_Raw_5.3.

Adobe’s Release Candidates tend to be extremely stable so go ahead and try them out. LR 2.3 can co-exist with LR 2.2 on a Mac. PC users, however, need to be warned that 2.3 will replace 2.2 on their systems.

Where Did Those Photoshop Features Go?

Dec 9

Posted by in Adobe, Photoshop, Tips | 1 Comment

So you’re enjoying your new copy of Photoshop CS4 and you suddenly discover that some of the features you have come to rely on are no longer there! Did you regularly use the Extract filter? How about Picture Packages or Web Gallery?

These features, and others, are not included in the default installation. But don’t despair! Look on your disk for a Goodies folder and there you’ll find them waiting to be installed. Can’t find your installation disk? No problem! Mac users can download the Goodies folder here. Windows users can get them here.

So what are you waiting for? Go get those old friends installed!

Creating Keyword Hierarchies

Nov 30

Posted by in Adobe, Lightroom, tutorial | Comments off

From Lightroom Secrets

One of the most powerful features in Lightroom is its keywording capabilities. You could argue that this feature alone is a great reason to buy the application! Some digital asset management aficionados have argued that Lightroom just isn’t powerful enough to qualify as your main DAM application. That’s just not so!

Contained within Lightroom’s keyword feature is the ability to create hierarchical keyword structures. Included in this is capability to add non-exporting categories and keyword synonyms. Let’s examine the keyword hierarchy feature.

Say you have an image of a dog. One logical keyword for this image would be dog. But you could also tag it with mammal and/or animal. If you did use all three keywords on the image then you would see three separate keywords in your list. The next image of a dog you came across would require you to tag the image with three keywords. But if you had arranged your keywords into a hierarchy you could apply only one and get three!

There are two ways to do this quickly in Lightroom without using the Create Keyword Tag menu. In the Keywording panel click in the field that reads Click here to add keywords. Now, depending on how you think, enter the hierarchy all at once.

The first method is dog>mammal>animal. This reads dog within mammal within animal. Press enter and only dog will appear in the keyword box above. If, however, you change the view to either Keywords & Containing Keywords or Will Export you will see all three keywords animal, dog, mammal. (Lightroom alphabetizes all keywords.) Now all you have to do with the next dog image you come across is tag it with the keyword dog and all three keywords will be attached!

If you look down in your Keyword List panel you will see the hierarchy you just created.

keywords.png

If your brain works in the other direction you can enter animal|mammal|dog. This reads animal containing mammal containing dog. So whichever direction works for you I’d encourage you to start creating keyword hierarchies.

Day 4 at Adobe MAX

Nov 20

Posted by in Adobe | 1 Comment

Well, day 4 has come and gone and while I'm sad to see MAX over, it sure is nice to be back home. Today I had some good sessions, including: Mobile Web Development workflow, Advanced
Exporting in Fireworks (.pdf and flex files), Deep Dive in Photoshop CS4, and Video Production for the web using OnLocation, Premiere Pro and After Effects.

Today was one of the strongest days I had in terms of material I knew I could really use when I came back home – especially with the Video Production piece. I was always kind of intimidated by the interface of Premiere and now that I was finally able to get a "hands-on", it was actually an enjoyable class and I look forward to getting some video that I can play with and upload to the Web.

It was an enjoyable 4 days in San Francisco and I thought they did a heck of a job in its organization. The ability to change your itinerary "on the fly" was very liberating. Basically there were dozens of PCs in the Mascone center where a majority of the classes were being held. If you wanted to take a Flash course instead of a Flex course that you originally signed up for, for example, you would simply go online, log in, sign and update your schedule. Then you would take your badge and hold it up to a scanner for a few seconds, where it would finalize your schedule. When you arrived at your session, an attendant would scan your badge to make sure you were schedule to be in that class. It was a breeze to use, even a monkey could understand it. Hell – I did.

I'm unsure however whether or not I'll go to MAX next year (Oct 4-7 in Los Angeles) as I may forgo that to instead go to Adobe DevLearn as the latter is more applicable to my role in the training world. Heck, if I can swing it – I may try and do both. :]

See you all in January and Happy Holidays!


Kevin