NAPP

I've been a follower of Scott Kelby's Photoshop Insider blog for a long time. He has lots of good links and great tips. Of course he's doing a lot of sales and marketing through the blog too, but the thing is, it's all useful and valuable. With Scott as head, I've been debating about joining NAPP recently, but have been but off by the high cost of international print members (let's face it, it's almost double that of US readers and this sucks). There's also no international eduction price. Still in the end, I wanted to join, so I opted for the $99 Digital Edition, which uses Zinio for distribution and reading.
So now you'll also find me over on the NAPP forums now, dispensing wit and wisdom (mostly wit!). I threw up a bunch of very quickly chosen images to create a NAPP Portfolio so be sure to check it out. And yes, I'm just a normal, paid up, member.

See you there.

Quick Navigator Tip

Sometimes you trip up over something that's been there for ages: Today was one of them.
I found if I did something in the Version 2, something cool happened, so of course I tried in in V1.41... It worked!

You all probably know this already, but my normal use in the Navigator is to select zooms (occasionally) or move about the image.

So what's the tip?

In Grid View, click and hold on the image in the Navigator. The selected image will jump to Loupe View for as long as you hold down the mouse. On release it goes back to Grid View.

A modifier to this is to Command Click (Control Click on PC) on the Navigator. The image will then open into Loupe View.

Podcast #52 has been posted, with Martin Evening

Podcast #52 has been posted, with Martin Evening: "

A new video podcast where Martin Evening walks us through the results of a photo shoot for his upcoming Lightroom book.

This podcast was recorded on Wednesday March 12, 2008 at Martin’s home in London. It gives us a rare glimpse into the inner thinking of this talented fashion and beauty photographer, as he gives us a shot-by-shot evaluation of a recent session. This video footage was taken during a photo session to create assets both for an upcoming Lightroom book, as well as for demo purposes for Adobe Systems. In it Martin describes his approach to every element of the shoot, from the model selection, the hair, the makeup, the lighting and camera angles, all the way through to the final edit.

This video podcast can be downloaded from my iDisk. It can also be viewed by downloading it directly into iTunes (if you are accessing it by subscribing via the Music Store), or by copying it into iTunes on either a Mac or a PC (if you’ve downloaded the iPod version from my iDisk). Once copied into iTunes, the small version can be transferred to a Video iPod or iPhone, and viewed that way as well.

Special thanks to Jeff Schewe for the use of his photos in the podcast as well.

Duration: 24:23

The podcast can be downloaded from George's iDiskat:

http://idisk.mac.com/george_jardine-Public?view=web

This podcast is labeled ‘20080310 Video Podcast - Martin Evening Fashion Shoot’ in the Public directory.

Or, it can be found on iTunes by searching under Podcasts for ‘Lightroom’. The RSS feed is:

http://rss.adobe.com/www/special/light_room.rss

"

(Via George Jardine on Lightroom and Digital Photography.)

Mark Hamburg Leaves Adobe

Martin Evening from Lightroom News has announced the departure of Photoshop and Lightroom Architect, Mark Hamburg, from Adobe. Mark is leaving for the rain in Seattle with Microsoft. Mark, if it's any consolation, you'll have the same weather we have here in Galway!

"News has been announced that Mark Hamburg has decided to leave Adobe after having worked at the company for over 17 years. Mark joined Adobe in the Fall of 1990, not long after Photoshop 1.0 was released and was instrumental in devising many of the ‘wow’ features we have all come to love and rely on daily when we work with Photoshop."

Read the whole article at Lightroom News.

Front Burner

While I've posted 2 videos on Lightroom News recently, I've been mildly, and unintentionally, neglectful here.
I've a number of projects on the go taking my time. Along with tech editing a book, I'm also rewriting my own current project for all the changes since Lightroom 2 Beta came out. This stuff takes time, especially the screen captures, which I really want to have nice photos for! I was in Portumna Forest today shooting bluebells, so hopefully they'll feature in something soon! I've also got an upcoming Develop article for the Professional Imagemaker (the SWPP society magazine) to write.

The new Flash based gallery is almost complete, actually it's more than complete enough to release, but I want to add another feature first, which means learning a little more Actionscript first!

Now a few quickies:

One of my favourite photographers is Mark Tucker. For years he provided insight and wisdom on the old Rob Galbraith forums, but left before the changeover. Now those were great forums and I loved them deeply for the wealth of talent, information and community there, but I couldn't see myself paying for them with so many free forums. Anyhow I see Mark has recently added a new gallery to his people portfolio: Mark Tucker / Little House on the Prairie. The expressions/moments he has captured are nothing short of stunning and inspirational, not to mention the sumptuous colour in his post processing (no, I don't know what he's using, but I know PS is involved in his texture based stuff). Enjoy.


Videos: What would you like to see next? Local corrections? Basic Beauty retouch? More short tips and tricks?

Visiting the west of Ireland? Drop me a line, I'll be happy to give you locations to shoot, and if I'm free/out and about, I'm happy to help.

Sneak Preview: Lightroom Blog Flash Gallery

I was inspired by the Flash Gallery Beta gallery that I posted about a few days ago. With the hard work of figuring out how to make Lightroom write the XML done (I'm still thanking Matthew for directions!), I figured that maybe I should actually write my own SWF. I've never done much in Flash and 30 days is a short time to get to know it, but I managed to get my website up and going, along with creating the gallery I'm about to show you.

LRB XML Flash Sample Gallery

Features so far:

Full rather than cropped thumbnails

Slideshow

Click on the left of the photo to go back, click on the right to go forward.

Title and Caption information.

Vertical images are centred, unlike Flash Gallery Beta

Scrolling thumbnails

Toggle the thumbnail bar on and off


Things to look into:

Transitions look better in the Lightroom Preview, even with a fast connection Added a cross fade. Not 100% sure on the code, but it seems to be working.

Option for cropped thumbnails Happy with centered full thumbs.

Full Screen Mode

Drop Shadows on the thumbnail bar and main slide Done

Flyout with Collection Name and Description

Like I said, feedback is appreciated. And yes I'm aware I need to go back and edit the captions for typos!