The Home of the Hybrid Photographer

Before I get into today’s divergence from the norm I would like to take a moment to remind you to sign up for the X-Equals+Digest. Twice a month Brandon along with myself compile a collection of great links, news, tip and tricks for your consumption. If you need more to convince you, each issue comes with a free preset. The first issue has already been sent out, but you can check it out at the X-Equals blog, but sign up for the digest soon, as I don’t think Brandon is going to keep posting this great resource to the general public!

And now back to your regular programming:

As this post goes live I am getting prepared for my weekend ritual. Every Saturday morning when I am not working I go out hunting for more film gear. Not that I really need more cameras or lenses, but I want them. Its an addiction. Since I am not by any means wealthy, I have to feed this impulse on a strict budget… $25 a week.  To successfully acquire more cameras, lenses, flashes and so forth I head out to yard sales, flea markets and even the occasional antique store. During the winter months I almost completely depend on antique stores, thrift shops and so forth. In the past 4 months I have spent less than $100 dollars and have acquired a treasure trove of new-to-me gear. If this sounds like fun to you I have some advice that you may find helpful.

Before you even start peering through the papers and scouring the internet for yard sales, before you get in your car to head off to the flea market, you should get together a few items to help you decide if and gear is worth buying. I have compiled a short list below of items I recommend to carry with you on treasure hunts.

• Small flashlight (the pen sized Mag-Lites work best)
• Unlined index cards
• 4 fresh AA alkaline batteries
• Microfiber cloth
• Small spray bottle of optical lens cleaner
• Magnifying glass or jewelers eye loupe
• Oddball camera batteries, if you wish to bring them along.

As far as finding the sales, flea markets and stores…that is all on you.  I can’t really give any advice on that topic, as my area of the US is plentiful with yard sales and antique stores.  But one you find a few to hit, you are ready to go hunting. Not every yard sale will have what you are looking for, I find about one sale with items of photographic interest out of every ten. Persistence is key, and enjoy the trip, yard sailing is a laid back way of wasting away an idle morning. Once you do find a good sale, it is time for action.

SLR Cameras

This is the big item you are out for. Working SLRs. Usually when you come upon a SLR, it will have a lens of some sort attached, usually a 50mm prime. The big things you need to check with a camera body are fairly obvious. Open the back of the camera and make sure everything inside looks good. Work the frame advance and make sure the mirror moves and the shutter operates.  Dry fire the camera a few times and eyeball the shutter speed; set the dial to it’s slowest shutter speed and estimate if the shutter seems to be accurate.  The good old “1 Mississippi” count works pretty good to estimate shutter speeds.  If the shutter is too far off the mark, pass on it… no sense wasting money if you are going to have to spend a lot more for a CLA (Clean, Lube  and Adjust).

Make sure the lens appears to focus properly, it you can not seem to aquire good focus then there may be an issue with either the lens or mirror, you might want to take the chance. I would most likely pass.

Another biggie is to check the lightseals on the film door. If your eyesight is not all that great, check it with a magnifying glass or jewelers loupe. Check the seals at the sides of the body sealing against the door and the thin seals found in the grooves at the top and bottom of the film compartment. If the foam has turned into a sticky mess, you are going to need to redo the light seals.  An easy job that anyone can do. Pre-made kits with cut pieces of foam are easily available on eBay for most any camera.

Also check the mirror pad, same material as lightseals, and if it gets sticky it can ruin your focusing screen. The mirror pad comes with most lightseal kits. In a pinch some thick sticky felt can replace worn mirror pad, but make sure the mirror slap is not too vicious.

Make sure the frame counter operates when you operate the frame advance and shutter with the film door closed.  If the camera has a light meter built in and it functions, great.  If not it may need a new batter or may be completely non-functional. Either way is fine, the camera will still work fine without the meter, you will just have to go Sunny 16 or get a light-meter.

If you are looking at an auto-focus body, hopefully the seller has the correct battery installed an it has enough juice left to test.  If not, weigh your options, is it worth the risk to drop the cash on a possibly non functional camera? If it is a good body and the shutter curtain looks to be in good condition, I would probably take the risk, but I would definitely haggle with the seller on the point you can test the camera, you may be able to get them to come down some on price. If you happen to have the correct odd-ball camera battery with you, you can always test yourself.  But it could be costly to keep a fully stocked selection of camera batteries.

If everything checks out and it looks to be a keeper, you are on to the purchasing process. Most likely the camera has a price already on it. If the price seems fair to you, by all means go for it, budget permitting. If you think it is a bit high, come in with a low-ball offer. Sometimes, the seller will bite, other times they will offer it to you at a price higher than your offering, but lower than their original price. If they won’t come down, and the price does not seem fair, simply walk away. Sometimes, when they realize that you won’t buy at their price, they will offer a lower price as you walk off. If you got it, enjoy your new toy.

Rangefinder Cameras

It is rare that you will come across a rangefinder at these venues and if you do, it is almost always a fixed lens model. That is not to say that you should pass though. Minolta’s Minoltinas are solid performers and other manufacturer’s fixed lens range finders can be great fun too.

To check these out, hit all the same issues as we covered in the SLR section. Of most importance to a rangefinder is that the actual rangefinder works. Check focus with the camera and be sure that the image aligns appropriately. If there is a skew in the focusing part of the rangefinder, it won’t perform right. Repair usually is not an option, as a CLA would cost to much and rangefinder mirror adjustment can be a bit too difficult to bother with. Remember that the shutter will be an integral leaf shutter in the lens on almost all these type of cameras, so open the back and look through the lens to check shutter accuracy.

If by some chance you come across a Voigtlander or Leica interchangeable lens body, I would buy it regardless of issue… but that is just me. The price of a quality CLA will be much lower than the cost of buying one of these bodies in good, used condition from a dealer. Check it out still, but if the lens has a sticky shutter or if there is some minor defect, get it. Even a misaligned rangefinder is worth fixing on one of these silent beauties.

Medium Format Cameras

An even more rare encounter is medium format gear. If you come across these, you are in luck, and if you can get them for a song, disregard damage and fix them up. Most TLRs are so simple in design, as long as the lens is working right you are most likely good to go. Remember the lower lens contains the shutter. Check focusing, make sure the ground glass or prism finder is in good shape. If it is a Mamiya model, check out the bellows for light leaks. Odds are if it doesn’t look to rough and the film crank, film door and shutter are all working, you probably have a good investment.

If you find a medium format SLR, you are lucky. If it appears to be in good condition, jump on it. Especially at a low price. I have never seen a MF SLR at a sale or store, but if I would, I would check basic function, light seals and overall physical condition.

Lenses

Every once in a while you may come across some lenses without a camera. These can often be bargains, as without a camera, their value to most buyers is drastically reduced. First you need to know what lens mounts are of use to you or what lens mounts you are looking to buy in to.  If you find a lens that may suit your needs, I have a few tests you can do to check it out.

First and foremost, grab your microfiber cloth and give the front and rear elements a good cleaning. Use your spray lens cleaner if needed. This will make it easier to carry out you other tests.

Obviously, if you have the appropriate camera with you, you can check out the lens much easier. Usually you will not, but all is not lost. First, take off any caps on the lens and check for mold, fungus and bad scratches. It will help to look through the lens with you flashlight. Shine and observe through both ends, and shine the light at an angle across the front element to look for scratches.

Check to make sure the focusing ring and aperture ring are functioning properly. Most lenses will allow you to observe the aperture whilst the lens is unmounted. Those lenses that do not often have a lever on the back of the unit to allow you to test the aperture. If it is a Canon EOS lens, you will gust have to deal with not checking the aperture.

Without a camera it is hard to check focus, but you can give it a good test run. Get your unlined index card out and hold it by the back element of the camera, you should see a ring of light from on the card.  Now you can move the card back and forth and turn the focusing ring until you get an image in focus.  If you can get a visible image projected on the card from 1 to 1-1/2 inches the focusing is most likely good.

Also check the filter threads anf the mount itself for damage. The thread may not be of any consequence to you, but if the lens mount is damaged it is a definite pass.  Check the lens body over for sings of any severe damage. If everything looks good, go for it. The rules of negotiation from the camera section still appy here, and you are more likely to get a good deal if they do not have a complimentary camera for the lens also for sale.

Flash Units

Frequently you will encounter on camera flash units. If you are interested in one, usually all you need to do is drop in some batteries, let it charge and see if the pilot or test button fires off the flash. If so, you are in business. If it is a modern auto-focus flash, you can’t check the functionality of that without a camera. However if it fires, it will still likely work fine as a manual flash.

Check the flash hot shoe foot to make sure that all the required terminals are there and not corroded badly. Make sure to check the side of the foot for the ground spring. If it is not there, it won’t fire. If it has adjustable power, step through its settings and see if there is a noticeable difference.

Usually you can walk away with a flash for a few bucks, so if it looks good and lights up, go for it. You are out $3 max.

Film

I buy film regularly at yard sales, but be prepared for unexpected results. You never quite know how it has been stored. If still in box, check the expiration date and make sure you are comfortable with its level of expiration. If so buy it, buy it all. Don’t pay more than 50 cents a roll though, why throw away money on unknown quality?

Miscellaneous Items

You will often encounter lens caps, filters, film cases, lens holders, camera bags, and a veritable litany of accessories. Again, without a camera as part of the set, this stuff is hard to sell. you should be able to get this gear cheap. Just use common sense here. Check filter threads and glass closely.

Hopefully this gives you an idea of how I check out camera gear when I encounter it for sale in the wild. I have added 20 bodies and 27 lenses to my collection since I started this horrible habit. I have spent a grand total of $175 in the past two years since I got into doing this. That’s a lot of gear for less than$200, and that is not even counting my countless accessories I have acquired in the process of making these purchases. In the past year alone I have acquired a Yashica FX-3, Minolta Minoltina ALs, Minolta X-700, Pentax K100, Pentax Spotmatic SE, Mamiya C330, Canon AE-1, and a Canon EOS 5. That’s just a sampling from my regularly used cameras. If you love film photography and its gear, you can really grow you photographic tool box on the cheap with some patience, luck and dedication. Have fun!

Alright, sorry for the delay, but making money takes precedence over the blog, and I am sure my clients see it the same way. But anyways, let’s continue our exploration of Lightroom and ACR presets.

Today we will discuss the methods by which you can create presets for Lightroom 2 and ACR. I am sure many of you already know how to do so, but I am sure some of you don’t. We will cover a basic creation process in both Lightroom and ACR, but first I would like to take a detour and discuss preset “stacking” for a few minutes. Once we understand the stacking of presets, we can make presets that play well together allowing for multiple effects to be combined.

One common complaint about presets is that you can only use one at a time. This is not entirely true, but in general seems to be the norm. Presets (in both LR and ACR) adjust the different sliders in the develop module to create the desired effect for the image created on export. If you apply one preset, then another, most usually you will end up with just the second preset applied. This is due to the fact that you only get one slider for each tool, this isn’t Photoshop and there are no layers. You only have one set of tools, and the last preset applied will always override and previous presets or manual settings. This is the reasoning behind the belief you can only use one preset at a time.

That is not to say that you cannot use well designed presets in unison with one another. When you create a preset in Lightroom, the default dialog setting will save every setting applied to the preset. This creates a preset that will over-ride every single slider in the develop module. Your brand new preset will not work with other presets, it will replace them. This is fine for an import preset you will apply to every photo you import, but is not good for general creative presetting.

When creating you image, make note of what tools you use to generate your effect. I have a text file I print out to make hard copy notes about what I alter in the process of making my presets, when filled out it shows me what sliders I adjusted and those I did not. This allows me to save my presets with only the tools needed for the desired effect. If you do not touch the Basic Tone settings, make a note of that. When it comes time to make the preset, we will exclude the Basic Tone settings from the preset. If your preset only adjusts the Tone Curve, when saving the preset, make sure that only the Tone Curve is selected to be saved in the preset. By creating presets that only adjust what is needed for the effect; you will be able to combine multiple presets to achieve your desired effects. If your preset does not require any given slider to be manipulated, you should not allow your preset to alter those tools when applied.

I will recreate my preset design form as a prettied up PDF file, and release it here on LIDF for anyone else interested in being as anal as I am about my preset design. I wasn’t always this way, as many of my early presets alter every single slider; even if they are not needed…it was bad design and it embarrasses me. I am slowly updating the older preset to fix this oversight, eventually it will be done. IF you are just starting, don’t make my mistakes.

Now that I have that covered/off-my-chest, let us move on with creating a preset. Choose yourself a photo, and go ahead and make a few adjustments. As you make adjustments, make not of what setting you are altering, as these notes will be used to ensure the stacking-compatibility discussed above. I chose a random image from a wedding I shot recently.

For this tutorial, I am going to make a preset that adjusts the Vibrance, Saturation, Clarity, Tone Curve, Split Toning and applies a strong vignette. Honestly, this preset sucks, it gives the picture a really bad look. However it is suitable for what we are going to do here. Here is a view of my develop module sidebar, showing only what is changed.

I make it a habit to start out my development process with all the tools closed. Only opening the tools I need as needed. As you can see, I did not even mess with HSL or Detail tools, so they are still closed. Once done with the image adjustments, I make my notes on which Items were adjusted in the Develop Module. We are ready to save this preset.

Now head over to the Left Sidebar and go to the Presets Tab. Click on the plus (+) icon on the Presets tab.

Once you click the plus icon, it will open the New Develop Preset dialog.

This image shows the dialog box with the normal default settings. You dialog will show the same options used in the last preset saved on your machine. If you click save now, your preset will be saved adjusting every slider in the develop module, not what we want. So, start un-checking the boxes of the tools you do not require. Here is my dialog, adjusted for my preset.

This dialog shows only the tools needed for the presetted effect selected. The Color and Vignette checks became boxes, as I only saved some of the sub-options there in (Vibrance and Saturation in Color; Lens Correction in Vignette). The Color check box’s Color Adjustment selection is used when you make changes to the HSL settings; I felt I should mention that, as it is not overtly clear.

Also, at the top of the preset dialog is a box of options, called Auto Settings:

Color images will show only Auto Tone, monochrome images will show Auto Tone and Auto Grayscale Mix. Auto Tone, when selected, caused the preset to automatically adjust the Basic Tone sliders to what Lightroom deem to be the most appropriate settings. Auto Grayscale Mix will allow Lightroom to automatically adjust the Grayscale mixer, to what it deems to be a proper grayscale mix. These tools can be handy, but can create unpredictable results in application. I never use the Auto Grayscale, but I frequently use the Auto Tone option, especially in my film emulation Auto Presets.

Now click the Create button, and your preset will appear in the Preset Folder defined at the top of the dialog.

You have made your preset, we will discuss exporting your presets for others to use later in Part 4 of this series.

So, that covers Lightroom. So we will just jump to ACR, and just cover the process to save your preset. We will assume that you already have the image adjusted.
I again have the same image adjustments made to the same image.

Click on the option icon, depicted by the arrow in the above image to open the File Settings Menu

Click on Save Settings… This will open the save setting dialog.

This dialog looks a lot like the New Preset dialog in Lightroom. Again, it selects every adjust made available to you. Follow the preset design rules, and only select the options that you need for the preset. Here is mine again.

Once everything is properly configured, click Save… This saves your preset, bringing up the save dialog.

Give it a name, and click Save. You preset is now in ACR’s preset menu, as noted in the following image:

You are done.

I should have a few good posts in a row over the next few days, so check in again soon.
Part 3 will be coming soon. Covering updating and combining presets.

Until then,

Michael

Right off the bat, I would like to apologize for the following posts. Many of you will already know everything I am going to get into with this article (and the next part in the series). I have always assumed that if someone found my blog and presets that they already knew quite a bit about presets; what they actually are, how to make them, change them and use them to their fullest extent. However, I have received many questions from people who have just gotten into Lightroom who are not entirely clear on what presets are. Even though many people, more talented than I, have covered this topic, I felt maybe I should devote some time to the subject. Please bear with me if you know all this already (anyways it more content and more practice writing).

So, for everyone still with me, let us dig on in. Lightroom and Adobe Camera Raw are both amazing, powerful tools that allow you to manipulate, interpret and create images. When using RAW files, the tools provided to you in the Develop Module allow a level of control over your images that is almost insane. The Develop Module offers you over 60 sliders to enhance your image, each affecting the image in different ways. That is not even counting the local adjustment tools or the tone curve! The sheer amount of tools provided and the power of each one allow you to interpret the RAW data provided by your camera in amazing ways, and can be a bit overwhelming.

The manners in which all of these tools are configured make your “recipe” for your image. When working with the sliders, it can take quite some time to achieve the effects you desire. However if you have to adjust every image in your shoot, making them look similar, it can become quite tedious. You have the option to copy and paste these settings from image to image, which may work fine for a single project. However you may find yourself referring back to that same “recipe” time and time again. Having to go to that original image each time and copy its settings would become quite the burden.

To remedy this situation, Adobe endowed both Lightroom and Adobe Camera Raw with a system to save these image “recipes” and to apply them to any image in just one click. This system is called Presets and the act of making them has been coined “presetting”. Countless individuals have made it a personal hobby to create these presets and share them with the world; others have set out to make finely-tuned presets that they offer for sale. These Presets allow others to apply the same processing that the creator made to their own images, greatly improving their workflow.

Presets can be used many ways. Some people simply choose an image; choose a preset, click and BAM! They have their image. While this works for a great many, and is great to discover what a preset does, it is usually not the best method to produce you final image. Presets should be used as a starting point. You choose the preset you wish to apply to your image, apply it and then proceed to further process your image. You may tweak the colors, white balance, tone curve and so forth. You should always sharpen and reduce noise yourself, when needed. That is not to say that your image won’t look great without further work; I have seen many 1-click images I found stunning, but you should always give your images the benefit of deeper study. You may decide that the image is perfect as soon as you click that preset, but more often than not, you will see where a little attention can make a good image great.

So over the coming days, not necessarily every day, I will continue this series. Now that you know what a Preset is, in general, we can move forward in discovering how you can use, modify and create your own presets. Once you get all this information, you will see what the true power of presets is, the ability to save you time and repetition. Hopefully this may lift some of the stigma presets carry, that they are lazy and counter-productive to creativity. Yes, you can do what any preset does without using a preset; it will just cost you time. When you have 100 photos to adjust, time tends to works against you.

So, a quick syllabus to let you see what will be forthcoming in this series:

Part 1: Installing and Reading Presets – I will run you through the installation process for both Lightroom and Adobe Camera Raw and then show you how to open you presets in a text editor, so you can see exactly what is adjusted when you use a preset.

Part 2: Creating Presets – A short instructional on the steps involved in creating a preset from a developed image. Covering the process of creating the preset and configuring it to adjust only what needs to be adjusted in an effort to produce presets that can be used together, also known as “stacking”.

Part 3: Customizing Presets – Sometimes, you have a preset you use frequently, but you often have to make some adjustments to the images afterwards. If you find yourself making the same alterations time and again, then you need to modify that preset to fit your needs. I will run through the steps required to alter an existing preset, tailoring it to your needs.

Part 4: Preset Tips – In the final chapter, I will delve further into some tips and techniques you can use to enhance your workflow with presets, be they your own creation or those of others. I will also discuss how to make “Preset Sets” that you can install and uninstall as needed, to keep your preset panel clean.

So stay tuned, I will release a few presets during the run of the series, so it won’t all be dry reading. I will be back tomorrow, don’t know if I will be bringing presets of words, but I will have something for you.

Until then,
Michael

PS: I have a new tutorial up over at X-Equals delving deeper into the sharpening tools in Lightroom. Part 1 is up today focusing on sharpening in the Develop Module. Hop over to X-Equals to check it out. Part 2 on export sharpening is forthcoming.

Small Stroll 2, originally uploaded by GrayImaging.

Okay, so as you can tell, I enjoy my black and white photography. The majority of my presets were B&W at first. To that extent I have spent quite some time making monochrome images in Lightroom. So now I will share what I have learned. This is not a step-by-step tutorial and I will be assuming you are familiar with all you develop tools in Lightroom (or ACR…the tools are pretty much the same).

1] Color Mixer

To me, the most important tool in a monochrome conversion is the Grayscale Mixer. In this panel you adjust the intensity of each color channel represented in the black and white image. A slider to the far left renders the color channel very dark, all the way to the right, very bright. You want to manipulate these sliders to get the right look for your image.

Of particular interest for photos with people in them are the Red, Orange and Yellow channels. These three color channels control the skin tone of people, regardless of skin color. The orange channel wields the most control over skin tone, adjusting the overall tone. Red comes in second most influential, effecting blushing and blemishes. Yellow really only effects highlights. Balance these three to get the desired skin tone.

As far as the other colors are concerned, simply adjust them as needed to complete the look. Always adjust slowly and incrementally, allowing yourself time to view the changes. Avoid over adjusting, as it will lead to unbalanced image tone and possible artifacts in the image.

If you are using my film presets, try to avoid adjusting any color slider more than absolutely needed, as any alterations to the color mixer change the tone and therefore change the effect. I recommend only altering the orange channel to save skin tone whenever possible. You shouldn’t have to adjust much as I spend extra time making sure skin tones look good.

2] Tone Curve and Contrast

Contrast is of the utmost importance in monochrome images. Too much and the picture gets muddied up, too little and the image gets too thin. You are looking for a happy medium with both dark blacks, bright whites in the image and smooth transitions between them. You have two tools at your disposal for this, the Contrast slider and the Tone Curve.

The Contrast slider adjusts the contrast in the image globally, and is the easiest method by which to adjust contrast. However it is a bit simplistic, not allowing for fine control over the image.

Where you really tweak the contrast is the Tone Curve. Before making alterations to the curve itself, look below it for the Point Curve. It will be set to one of the following; Linear, Medium Contrast or Strong Contrast. Select between the three setting looking for the one tht gets you closest to what you are looking for. It won’t be dead on normally, but one of the three will give you a good starting point.

After adjusting the Point Curve, start manipulating the curve itself. You have two options here, to adjust the region sliders or to drag the curve to where you like it. The region sliders refer to different areas of the tone curve graph. Across the bottom of the graph you see a bar with three adjustment points with four sections varying in shade. The far left is the shadow ( darkest parts of the image), middle-left is the darks, middle right is the lights and far right is the highlights (brightest parts of the image). If the highlights are too bright or blown out, you can drag the highlight slider to the left or click & hold on the tone curve line on the right side of the graph and drag it slowly down. If you move the line you will notice the slider automatically moving; I much prefer dragging the curve myself as opposed to manipulating the sliders, but move it the way you like.

Tweak the tone curve until it fits. You will notice when dragging the line Lightroom imposes some limits on how far you can move it. Try to avoid laying right on Lightroom imposed boundaries, it crates bad images in my opinion. You can lay the shadow and brightness to that edge to get absolute black and absolute whites when needed.

When using my film presets, I do not recommend adjusting the Tone Curve any further that altering the Point Curve setting. Doing so changes the desired response for the film being emulated. Changing the Point Curve is fine as it changes the size of the curve, not the basic shape. Feel free to use the Contrast slider with my presets as it will allow contrast changes whilst staying inside the confines of the simulated film’ tone curve.

3] Local Adjustments (Brushes and Gradients)

Bring back some of the old darkroom magic with local adjustments in Lightroom. Dodging and Burning are time honored techniques in the darkroom and are easily simulated in Lightroom. Say the image is too dark in parts leading to loss of focus on the subject. This was the case in the photo at the top of the post. My son’s shadow merged with his pants after I applied my Neopan Acros preset. So I simply clicked on the adjustment brush, selected the shadow and increased its exposure, lightening the shadow to differentiate it from his pants.

You can bright and darken by this method. You can locally adjust contrast and brightness. Most importantly to me you can locally adjust clarity. Most of my film presets crank up clarity to get the sharp look of film, however this may not be desirable in photos of people. If this is the case, locally select the face and drag the clarity down. This will reduce the detail level in the face, allowing you to soften their look to make it more appealing. You can even bring clarity down into the negative range to create a soft focus effect, blurring out fine detail whilst retaining normal detail. In other words, fade away wrinkles, freckles and so forth…plus negative clarity makes skin glow, and you can make it look almost surreal.

Local adjustments with the adjustment brush allow you to really fine tune your monochrome image, but do not forget to use graduated filters when you need them. Drop a grad filter across a bright sky and bring the exposure down a bit to bring out detail and balance your image. Play around with you local tools, as they let you bring back the old darkroom techniques that were used to create prints. As any old school B&W photog will tell you, making the picture on film is only part of the process, putting it on paper is the rest. Dodging and burning to bring added depth to a print, sometime even from a flat negative.

4] Image Details (Sharpness, NR and Vignettes)

Don’t forget about sharpening and noise reduction either. It is often easy to forget to do so when working in monochrome. Sharpen you image for you desired output, be it screen or print. Sharpening ca also be used to accentuate noise in the image, which is desirable if you are emulating a high-speed film such as Neopan 1600. Work the noise reduction sliders to either smooth out the image or allow more grain to shine through. These tools allow you to give your image that classic film look about as good as you can in Lightroom. Hopefully one day they add a grain control also.

Although I am not big into vignettes, the look great in monochrome. Play around with getting those corners darker, sometimes it unlocks a feeling in an image that you do not get otherwise.

5] Toning

Finally if you want to tone your monochrome image, play with split toning. You can choose either the highlight or shadow split tone and give it an orangish-red to create a sepia image. You can even set the highlight and shadow to different hues and saturation levels and adjust the balance slider to get a nicely balance duo-tone image. Play around, try sepia, blue and green tints. Toning is another way to really kick up an image.

Obviously these are just a few of the tools at you disposal to create beautiful monochrome images, however these are the area I work the most with and I figure I would share it with everyone. Sorry there were no screen shots, but this is a fairly long post and I wanted to get it up before I went to sleep. If you are familiar with Lightroom you get what I was saying. In the same right these tools are also in Adobe Camera Raw, so those of you with just Photoshop are not left out either.

These steps work if you are making a monochrome from scratch or utilizing my presets or those of others. Just take some time and explore each of these areas in Lightroom deeper and you will be making great black and white images in no time.

Oh, a new preset up tomorrow!

Until then,

Michael

[This article has been rewritten and published at x=blog 01192009]

I recently stumbled upon a method by which you can import Lightroom develop presets into Adobe Camera RAW for use with Photoshop and Photoshop Elements. I’m sure someone has written this up before, but I have never seen it, as I discovered this by chance. In retrospect this seems overly obvious and many of you may know how to do this already, but if not read on.

As a die-hard Lightroom addict I personally never had the need to deal with Adobe Camera RAW. All my trips into Photoshop were initiated from the context menu inside Lightroom. However, I recently finished touching up a RAW file for a colleague and I wanted to have my edits saved with the file. Knowing she does not use Lightroom, as she is an Apple fan running Aperture, I needed to save the Lightroom edits to be rendered in Photoshop. I exported my edited file as a DNG she could open in ACR, then I hopped into Photoshop and opened said file. As I suspected all my edits were intact, they should be as ACR and Lightroom use the same RAW engine. Life was good.

However, looking at my fully edited file in ACR I realized that I could save these develop settings as a preset in ACR, opening the presets I design to a whole new audience. If you follow the steps below, you too will be able to convert any preset you use into an ACR preset.

1. Open Lightroom, and edit any RAW file in your catalog by applying the preset that you wish to convert over to ACR.

2. Once image is satisfactory, right-click (Windows) to bring up the context menu. Choose “Export” in the menu and then the “Export…” option. This brings up the export menu. Setup the export for “Files on Disk”. Choose your export location, set naming for custom name and give the file the name of the preset you are exporting. Most importantly, in the File Setting section, change the format to DNG. This will rewrap your RAW file into DNG and include any modifications currently done to the image (the applied preset).

3. You can now close Lightroom. Open up Photoshop (or Elements), and open the DNG file you just made. ACR will pop up showing your exported file with all edits intact. Take this time to run through ACR’s options and make sure everything looks right. If so, move on to the next step.

4. Now look at the ACR window. To the right, just under the histogram is the buttons controlling ACR adjustment features. Look for the one on the far right with the three sliders depicted on it. Clicking this leads to the Presets menu. Now simply click the small icon in the right corner of that window, it has 3 lines and a small arrow. It opens a menu, in which you will choose “Save Settings”.

5. This will open a dialog with all the controllable options for the preset, and is much like what you see in Lightroom when making or editing presets. Place a check by every option you want the preset to adjust. Uncheck any boxes you want the preset to leave alone. If you check “Apply auto tone adjustments” or “Apply auto grayscale mix” then the preset will override any of your Lightroom edits in those areas. I would not use it unless you know what you are doing.

6. Once done, click on “Save”. Then you are offered a Save dialog box with the filename of the DNG in the window. If you named your DNG for your preset, just click “Save”, if not change the filename and click save. Your preset is saved to the presets dialog in ACR. Open another RAW file and test it.
Now you can use your favorite Lightroom presets inside of Photoshop, or make a preset for a friend with Photoshop but no Lightroom. Let them see what they are missing.

Another benefit I have found to exporting my Lightroom preset to ACR is that I can store them on a USB drive and use them on anyone’s machine. You can copy your ACR .xmp files from this path:

C:\Documents and Settings\UserName\Application Data\Adobe\CameraRaw\Settings

Copy the .xmp files to your USB drive. You can them manually apply any preset off the drive. Just click on the menu icon in the presets tab, choose “Load settings…” and point the file browser to your usb drive. Click and go.

I hope this helps anyone who was curious as to how to carry out this process. Hope it helps you and your workflow.

Until next time,
Michael