You can buy this course by itself for $29.99 or watch it as part of a KelbyOne Pro Membership, where you can watch all our Lightroom courses (I don’t think there’s anyone out there with nearly as many full-length courses on every aspect of Lightroom and Photoshop)as we do).

Here’s a link to the course.

Have a great Monday, everybody, and here’s to finally getting really organized, backed up, and loving your Lightroom experience.

-Scott

P.S. If you use Lightroom ‘cloud’ edition, I have a separate version of the SLIM system just for you folks. Here’s the link to the cloud version.

The post New Course: My Simplified Lightroom Image Management System (the “SLIM” system) appeared first on Lightroom Killer Tips.

Next Month, I’m Speaking in the UK at “The Photography Show”

It’s the biggest and the best, and I’m super psyched to be speaking there once again. It’s just six weeks away. I have a 20% off discount ticket code you can use (it’s SPKTPS24), but if you’re a working pro, you might be able to get in free (they have some stipulations, but if you meet the requirements, you’re in free). Here’s the link for more details. Hope I see you there!

The iPhone Photography Conference 2024 is Almost Here.

We’re thrilled to bring you a fresh lineup of brand-new sessions for this year, along with cutting-edge iPhone photography techniques and tips that will elevate your iPhone photography experience. It’s a two-day, two-track

Join us for this 2-day extravaganza and capture the extraordinary—same passion, new techniques, and a whole lot of fun! Register early and save $150! More details and tickets (get yours today), at kelbyonelive.com

OK, no football this weekend, but that doesn’t mean there won’t be football food, so…well..there’s that. At least my team is guaranteed not to lose this weekend. Have a great weekend!

-Scott

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STEP ONE: Go to the top of any panel and right-click to the right of the panel’s name to bring up a pop-up menu of options. Choose “Customize Develop Panel” (as shown above).

Above: This brings up the ‘Customize Develop Panel’ seen here, showing the default order of panels. The checkboxes on the right show which panels are visible (if you uncheck any panel it hides that panel from view).

STEP TWO: To change the order, simply click and drag on the name of the panel you want to move and drag it where you want it in the list. Above, I’m dragging the ‘Effects’ panel up higher in the list, and when it’s directly below the “Tone Curve,” you’ll see a thin blue line appear. Once it appears, you can let go of your mouse button, and that panel will now appear in that order. When you’re done dragging the panels in the order you want them, click the ‘Save’ button.

NOTE: Don’t worry – if you change your mind later and want to return to the default order, you can just click the ‘Default Order’ button at the bottom of this panel.

STEP THREE: When you click ‘Save,’ a dialog will appear (seen above), letting you know you need to restart Lightroom to have the changes take effect.

Above: Here’s the new order of the panels after the reordering. Again, you can also return to the default order in that same Customize dialog. That’s all there is to it.

Here’s wishing you a better-than-usual Monday!

-Scott

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ABOVE: here’s what I’m talking about. I lit our subject with just one flash, and her pants are at least as bright (if not brighter) than her face – the light doesn’t fall off – she’s evenly lit, which is not what we’re generally looking for (lighting-wise).

STEP ONE: In Lightroom, click on the Masking button and then click on “Select Subject” (as shown here).

STEP TWO: When you click select Subject, a red tint appears over your subject (as seen above). If you make an adjustment now, it will affect all of here, so we need to subtract the parts we don’t want to effect.

STEP THREE: To remove something from our mask, click the ‘Subtract” button just below your mask in the Masks panel (shown circled above). NOTE: if you don’t see this button, click on “Mask 1” and the Add and Subtract buttons will pop-down. Now go down into that menu and choose “Linear Gradient” (as shown above).

STEP FOUR: What we want to do is create that fall where her face stays the same, but it gets gradually darker as it moves down, so take the Linear Gradient too; click right near her neck and drag down (as shown here) and it removes her upper 1/4 from the mask (as seen above).

STEP FIVE: Now scroll down to the Tone controls and darken the exposure by dragging the Exposure a little to the left, and pull back the highlights a bit, too (dragging to the left), and that creates the falloff. You can see her pants are no longer the brightest thing – you’ve got that nice fall-off we’re looking for. Her face is the same brightness it was before, and by selecting subject first, it doesn’t affect the background (which it shouldn’t).

Above: Here’s a side-by-side view where you can see the difference. When you do this, the whole thing takes less than a minute, but it makes a world of difference lighting-wise.

Have a great Monday, everybody! (try not to think about what happened in the playoffs).

-Scott

P.S. I’m speaking at the FotoClave photography conference Feb 17-19, 2024 in San Ramon, California. I have a keynote presentation and a regular track session and aboth about travel photography, and I have a lot to share, so I hope you can check out the conference. There are loads of great instructors, including the incredible Frans Lanting. Hope you can make it Here’s the link with more details.

The post How to Easily Create Lighting “Fall Off” in Lightroom Using The New Masking Tools appeared first on Lightroom Killer Tips.

STEP ONE: The nameplate I’m going to create uses your signature, and there are a couple of ways to get your signature into Photoshop:

(1) Take a nice blank ink pen and sign your name on a fairly large piece of paper, then take a photo of your signature with your phone. Open that photo in Photoshop; take the Magic Wand tool, click it anywhere on the background (to select everything but your signature), then

(2) if you’re lucky enough to have a graphics tablet, then go to Photoshop, open a new document, 6”x3” with a resolution of 240, and then set your foreground color to black, choose a small hard-edged brush from the Brush Picker, and sign your name and save the file. Easy enough.

STEP TWO: Open a new document that is 6”x3” at a resolution of 240, then open up your signature file and drag it onto this document. In the Layers palette, lower the Opacity of this layer to 20% (as shown here), so your signature looks light gray.

STEP THREE: Go ahead and hide that signature layer by clicking on the eye icon next to Layer 1. Now, get the Type tool and type in your studio’s name. In my case, I typed in “Scott Kelby Photography” (I know — how original). The font I chose is Trajan Pro, which, if you don’t already have it installed, you can download it from Adobe’s Creative Cloud app. Add lots of space between the letters. In my example in class, I set the Tracking (space between letters) in the Character palette to 600.

STEP FOUR: Make your signature layer visible once your text is in place. Now, select all three layers (the Background, Layer 1, and your Type layer), go up to the Options Bar, and click on the Center Alignment icon (as shown above) to perfectly center your elements within your image area. Flatten your image layers, and now save your file as a JPEG.

STEP FIVE: Now go to the Lightroom, to the Print Module, and in the Page panel, turn on the Identity Plate checkbox. Then, in the Identity Plate preview, click on the little down-facing arrow in the bottom right corner to bring up a pop-up menu. From that menu, choose Edit to bring up the “Identity Plate Editor” dialog shown above. Click on the “Use a graphical identity plate” button (as shown above), then navigate to your newly saved signature file and choose it. Now, it will appear on your printed page, and you can drag to position it where you want it. That’s all there is to it.

Above: here’s how the nameplate looks at the bottom of a print. As I mentioned at the top, you can also import this nameplate into the slideshow module as well.

There you have it.

UNRELATED NOTE: It’s a BIG divisional playoff weekend for my Bucs. We’re playing the Detroit Lions up in Detriot at Ford Field (a very nice dome stadium – I shot a Bears/Lions there a few years back). However, although of course I want the Bucs to win, I do like the Lions. They are a super tough team this year, and I’ve been rooting for them all season, so if the Bucs lose to them (which is likely – the Lions are favored to win), at least it’s to the Lions, which haven’t been this far in the playoffs in 30+ years, so they definitely earned it. However, if the Bucs do win…OMG!!!! Hey, like I said last Friday…it could happen.

Have a great divisional playoff weekend!

-Scott

The post How To Use Lightroom’s Identity Plate to Add a Fine Art Signature Nameplate appeared first on Lightroom Killer Tips.

The real news is that we gained the Point Color panel that allows for much finer control over a customizable range of color. The HSL panel remains unchanged and is still quite useful. So, what does Point Color do that the HSL panel cannot? There are two key functions of Point Color that differentiate it from HSL, first being that Point Color allows us to fine tune the range of affected colors with a high degree of control, whereas each specified color in the HSL panel affects an unchangeable range of similar colors.

We’ll look at some example photos to show why that is important. The second key difference is that Point Color is available as a global adjustment (affecting all selected colors in the entire photo at once) and as a local adjustment in the Masking panel. Taken together it means that while HSL can be quite useful when you are happy with adjusting the predetermined range of colors affected by each slider, we now have a tool that gives us far more control to narrow in on a very specific range of colors and make desired adjustments both globally and locally. Let’s look at some examples to see how this works.

Getting Oriented

When you first view the Point Color panel there is not much to see, but as soon as you grab the Sample Spot Color (Eyedropper) tool and click on the color you want to sample it comes to life. Note, I have expanded all the disclosure triangles in the panel to reveal all the options.

Next to the eyedropper you’ll see a color swatch representing the selected color (note, as you adjust the color this swatch will change to show both the original selected color and the adjusted color). Below that is a large color field displaying the selected color (indicated with a black pin) within the range of hues that will be affected. Below the color field is a color bar displaying a larger view of the selected color (this also changes to show the original and adjusted color). To the right of the color field is a color rectangle that shows the selected color within a range of luminance values.

With the color selected you can now adjust that color’s hue, saturation, and luminance as desired by dragging within the color field or color rectangle or by moving the Hue Shift, Saturation Shift, or Luminance Shift sliders. Dragging left or right within the color field adjusts the Hue Shift. Dragging up or down in the color field adjusts the Sat. Shift. Dragging up or down in the color rectangle adjusts the Lum. Shift. As you make adjustments by dragging in the color field, you’ll see how the corresponding sliders move in concert. Likewise, moving any of the sliders results in seeing a white circle move in the corresponding color field to represent the resulting change.

Putting in Practice

Let’s say I wanted to shift the color of this young woman’s dress from a very saturated red to a less saturated pink. If I were to use the Targeted Adjustment tool in the Mixer tab I could try to shift the hue, saturation, and luminance towards a more pink color, but because the original color was so similar in hue to her skin tone, the end result is less than desirable. There’s no way to constrain the range of affected hues with this tool or use it with Masking.

Let’s reset those adjustments and switch to the Point Color tool. I’ve used the eyedropper to sample the color of the dress. Looking at the colors in the color field I can tell I’m going to run into the same issue I had before, so let’s use the Range controls to see if I can limit the range of affected color to avoid affecting her skin and lips. The Range slider can be shifted right to expand the range of affected color or shifted left to decrease the range. With the Range disclosure triangle expanded we can access more granular controls for fine tuning the hue, saturation, and luminance range I want to adjust. In a case like this it can be helpful to check the Visualize Range box, which changes the unaffected colors to grayscale and leaves only the affected range in color.

Now we can clearly see areas of her arms and face that will be affected if I don’t constrain the range of affected colors.

With the range dialed in to just affect the dress I can now make the desired shifts in hue, saturation, and luminance to change the color of the dress without affecting her skin.

That type of adjustment was just not possible before using HSL alone since we had no way to customize the range of hues being affected by the adjustment. As close as the color in the dress was to some of the color in her skin tone, I was able to limit the affected range of hues narrowly enough to effectively isolate the dress from her skin, but there’s even more power in Point Color than in just limiting the range.

Point Color in Masking

In that example I was just (barely) able to isolate the color I wanted to adjust from the subject’s skin tones, but what if limiting the range of colors wasn’t possible, or the same color existed in more than one place within the photo, and you only wanted to adjust one location? That’s where Point Color’s other difference over the Mixer (HSL/Color) can be found, which is in Masking. I’m going to reset/remove the global Point Color adjustment by double-clicking the Point Color label at the top of the panel. Alternatively, you can right-click a color swatch and choose to delete the swatch (or all swatches) from the contextual menu, which does the same thing.

Next, click the Masking icon to enter that tool. Since I have a person in this photo I can leverage the AI-based masking ability to select just her dress with a single click on the Clothes checkbox under Person Mask Options, then click Create Mask.

With her dress masked, I can expand the Point Color panel and use the eyedropper to sample the color of her dress as I did before. With Masking, you’ll likely see the overlay by default at first, but as soon as you select the eyedropper the mask is hidden so you can see what you are sampling. Thanks to the mask I don’t need to worry about constraining the color range as this adjustment (and any other adjustment I decide to apply to this mask) will only affect her dress. That means I can just focus on adjusting the color of the dress right away.

There’s often more than one way to achieve an adjustment, and the right way will depend on the photo and what you are trying to achieve. With Point Color you have such a fine level of control that just wasn’t possible in Lightroom before, and we still can utilize the HSL/Color controls too. This opens wonderful possibilities for fine tuning skin tones, removing color casts from shadows, adjusting product photography to better match the desired color, and so much more.

The post Get to Know Point Color in Lightroom Classic appeared first on Lightroom Killer Tips.

On Thursday, I’m creating a brand new course just on Importing for Lightroom Classic users. It should be out in just a few weeks, but again – this is a topic I get asked about a lot, and I had recorded a course previously on this, but it’s time for an update using the latest version, so that’s what’s up next.

My Budapest Workshop is Sold Out!

It sold out in just one day, and it’s going to be awesome! (everybody going is a photographer who has been to one of my previous workshops, which is so fun – it’s like a family reunion). Iceland with Erik Kuna and me, the Lofoten Islands with Dave Williams, and one more with Mimo this fall are all still coming up. More on those as we get closer (though Iceland will be open for tickets soon).

I hope y’all have a kick-butt Monday. The Bucs have a Playoff game tonight, so….well…we’ll see how it goes. hey, ya never know, right?

-Scott

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Do you know where your catalog is tonight? A lot of us don’t – we know it’s “somewhere,” but if you want the best performance from Lightroom, you hear us talking again and again about how your catalog should be on your fastest internal hard drive, but if you don’t know where your catalog is in the first place, it makes things kinda hard.

Well, it’s easier to find it than you’d think, thanks to a simple “find it for me” button in Lightroom.

STEP ONE: Go to your Catalog preferences (they’re under the “Lightroom Classic” menu on a Mac, and I believe they are found under the File menu on a Windows PC (you’ll let me know if this is not the case).

STEP TWO: When the Catalog Settings window appears (shown above) to the right of “Location,” click the “Show” button (I circled it here in red above). That’s all there is to it.

Above: Hitting that ‘Show’ button opens the folder on your computer (or on your external hard drive) where your catalog is stored (as shown above). Now you know where it is, and hopefully, it’s in the right place (on your fastest internal hard drive). If it’s not, then read this article on how to move safely and easily from your external hard drive back to your computer.

I finally posted some photos from my London Travel Photography Workshop

Yes, it’s taken me this long to make an Adobe Express page with the images and Behind-The-Scenes shots (here’s the link to check it out). Well, only because I basically forgot to do it. Well, I actually did make a page from my project on the London Tube, which had to do with a course I recorded while in London on what to do when you’ve been to a place before as a photographer and you need something new to shoot – a personal project based on your location. It’s really about taking something your enjoy or you’re passionate about and marrying it with your trip, and that all makes a lot more sense when you watch the course, so here’s a link if you’d like to check it out.

I’m doing the Keynote at FotoClave next month

Super psyched about this one – it’s my first time at the FotoClave photography conference, and my first time back in California since right before COVID hit, and I can’t wait. It’s Feb 17-19, 2024 in San Ramon.

My keynote presentation and my regular session on the conference track are both about travel photography, and I have a lot to share, so I hope you can check out the conference. There are loads of great instructors, including the incredible Frans Lanting. It’s a can’t-miss West Coast event. Here’s the link with more details.

Thanks for stopping by, and here’s wishing you a safe, happy, decent weather weekend, and a big Playoff win for the Bucs (hey, it could happen. Right? Hello? Anybody?).

-Scott

The post How To Find Out Exactly Where Your Lightroom Classic Catalog is Actually Stored appeared first on Lightroom Killer Tips.

If, like me, you like to embed your copyright and contact info directly into your images (handy in case you share images on Instagram, FB, X [formerly Twitter], etc.), then it’s time to update your Lightroom Classic copyright info template for 2023 for the new images you take and import this year. It’s really simple but not super obvious, so here we go:

STEP ONE: Go to the Library Module; go under the Metadata menu up top and choose Edit Metadata Presets as shown above (NOTE: if you don’t already have an existing Copyright template in place, you use this same menu to create one from scratch, so either way you would choose this Edit Metadata Presets to get started).

STEP TWO: When the Edit Metadata Presets window appears (shown above), choose the name of the preset you want to edit, and it will display your copyright template info (as seen). In my case, I’m editing last year’s Copyright preset, but if you don’t already have one, scroll down to the IPTC Copyright section and start typing your info there and the IPTC Creator section below it, as I have above.

STEP THREE: Go to the IPTC Copyright section, click on the field to the right of Copyright (as shown above), then just type in 2024 right over where it previously said 2023. If you’re creating your first Copyright template, just go ahead and type in 2024 and your name in the Copyright field, and then under Copyright Status, choose “Copyrighted” from the pop-up menu.

STEP FOUR: Once you’ve updated the date, it’s time to save your new preset by going to the Preset pop-up menu at the top of the window and choosing “Save Current Settings as New Preset,” as shown above.

STEP FIVE: This brings up a small dialog where you can enter the name for your New Preset (as seen above).

STEP SIX: If you don’t have any old 2022 images you haven’t yet imported into Lightroom, you can choose to delete last year’s preset if you want (you won’t be using it again if you’ve already imported all your images from last year), so if you want to delete it (totally up to you  — you don’t have to – you can keep multiple year’s templates, no sweat), first choose the old 2022 Preset from the pop-up menu; then go to the same pop-up menu again but this time choose Delete Preset “Scott’s Copyright 2022” (or whatever you named it), then click the Done button.

STEP SEVEN: APPLYING YOUR NEW COPYRIGHT PRESET: There are two ways (OK, probably more) to apply these presets. However, my favorite is to embed this copyright data into your images right during the Import process. In Lightroom Classic’s Import window, in the “Apply During Import” panel (seen above right), where it says “Metadata,” choose your Copyright preset from that pop-up menu. As your images are imported, your copyright status and contact info are automatically embedded into each photo. The second method is for images you’ve taken this year and already imported into Lightroom.

STEP EIGHT: If you have images taken in 2024 and they’re already imported into Lightroom, then select all those images, and then, in the Library module of Classic, go to the Metadata panel, and right near the top, you’ll see “Preset.” Click on that pop-up menu (as shown above) and choose your Copyright preset, and it will be applied to all those photos you selected at once.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Embedding this info into your image does not provide you with official copyright protection. I am not an attorney, so this is not legal advice, but what embedding this info does is let people who download your image know that:

a) This is a copyrighted image and is NOT free for you to use.

b) it gives them your contact info if they want to buy or license your image.

But just to be clear, doing all this DOES NOT actually copyright your images — that is done separately (at least here in the US) by the govt. copyright office. If you want to learn how to actually copyright and protect your images (so important if you’re going to be sharing your images online), then check out this fantastic (and actually fun) course from Intellectual Property attorney Ed Greenberg and Photographer’s Rights Advocate Jack Reznicki over at KelbyOne.com (here’s the direct link to their course).

OK, we’re off and running in a new year, and here’s wishing you a safe, happy, healthy New Year – one with lots of lightrooming and Photoshopshopping and photography, and football (#GoBucs!), and lots of other fun stuff. 

-Scott

The post It’s Time To Update Your Copyright Info Inside Lightroom For 2024 appeared first on Lightroom Killer Tips.