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Matt Kloskowski – Photographer, Educator, Author

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At the recent Photoshop World Expo in Las Vegas, I had the opportunity to sit down with Matt Kloskowski from the National Association of Photoshop Professionals (NAPP).

Along with Scott Kelby, Matt produces a weekly online video containing great Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom tips and tricks. Matt is also a highly sought-after educator, and has authored several books on the topic of photography — his latest being “Layers: The Complete Guide to Photoshop’s Most Powerful Feature“.

In this interview, Matt and I sit down to chat about his photography, Lightroom, and more. Matt shares some tips on how to manage photos in Lightroom, features he’d like to see in future versions, and what his favorite new feature in Lightroom 2 is.

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Introducing Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2

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Lightroom 2 UI

Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE) today announced the immediate availability of Adobe® Photoshop® Lightroom® 2 software, the photographer’s essential toolbox for managing, adjusting and presenting large volumes of digital photographs. With new enhancements such as dual-monitor support, radical advances in non-destructive localized image correction, and streamlined search capabilities, Lightroom 2 is a compelling upgrade that simplifies photography from shoot to finish. As Adobe’s first application to support 64-bit for Mac OS X 10.5 Macintosh computers with Intel® processors and Microsoft® Windows® Vista® 64- bit operating systems, Lightroom 2 also provides improved memory performance for dealing with large scale images.

Smarter, Faster and More Accurate

The enhanced Library module in Lightroom 2 helps streamline and accelerate photographers’ workflows. With the ability to visually organize images across multiple hard drives, Lightroom 2 and its powerful Library Filter Bar makes it easy for users to quickly find the images they need. The Suggested Keywords feature helps photographers keyword their images by making intelligent suggestions based on their own previous efforts. New dual-monitor support allows users to expand their workspace, giving them flexibility to edit and organize images in a way that maximizes an additional display.

Lightroom 2In the Develop module, the new Local Adjustment Brush lets photographers fine-tune specific areas of an image to precisely adjust color, exposure and tonal range without affecting other areas of the image. The new Graduated Filter expands the toolbox in Lightroom, allowing for edits to larger areas by applying gradually diminishing or increasing adjustment effects such as exposure, clarity, and saturation, alone, or in any combination. Lightroom 2 also helps photographers print more efficiently by quickly arranging photos of multiple sizes on one or many pages with flexible and customizable templates to maximize paper and ink. Intelligent algorithms automatically determine optimal sharpening for screen or print, producing crisper images faster.

Developers can further extend the Lightroom workflow with Web, Export and Metadata Software Development Kits available at the Adobe Developer Connection, http://www.adobe.com/devnet/.

[Read more...]

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John Nack – Photoshop Principal Product Manager

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Along with managing one of the most popular software products of all time, John Nack, Adobe Photoshop‘s Principal Product Manager, is also a blogging pioneer at Adobe Systems, Inc.

Having paved the way for folks like, well, me to blog and otherwise participate in public forums he has helped lift the curtain on the sometimes “mysterious” Adobe to reveal that the company is actually NOT staffed by droids — but rather human beings. At some “other” companies, blogging is expressly forbidden, so the fact that blogging is encouraged at Adobe is very refreshing.

In this video, John talks about what’s next for Adobe Photoshop, the future of digital imaging, and of course his sometimes controversial (but always informative) blog.

What if instead of giving you yet another way to do the same thing, what if we gave you the right way?

John is one of the most committed bloggers I’ve ever met, sometimes publishing multiple times a day. Remember, he also has a day job (and a family). It’s almost like he serves as a human RSS filter for legions of creatives. To get your “Nack-filtered” look at the creative world, just point your browser to:

http://blogs.adobe.com/jnack/

Adobe Photoshop clearly has a bright future (and I’m not just saying that). Creative people everywhere can rest easy knowing that John Nack is on watch.

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Phil Clevenger – Lightroom Interface Designer

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Phil Clevenger is the man behind the Lightroom user interface. Phil and I sat down to chat about what brought him to Adobe – and what he learned from his time at MetaCreations designing rule-bending interfaces for software like Bryce and Kai’s PhotoSoap. He also gives some hints at some possible directions of the Lightroom UI, and his philosophy around the evolution of user interfaces in general.

Read more on the Lightroom Development Story

Note: Phil also designed the user interfaces for Poser 3 and 4, as well as KPT Vector Effects

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Shooting with Thomas Hawk

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Last Friday I had the opportunity to hang out with Thomas Hawk. One of the most popular photographers on Flickr, and one of the founders of Zooomr. It was a fascinating conversation, and I can honestly say that I’ve never met any photographer who shoots as much as Thomas. He shoots every single day, between 100 and 500 shots on average! If you add to that the fact that he maintains a very popular and active blog, runs a company, has a day job, and is also a Dad and it becomes a mystery how he finds the time to do all of this stuff. Thomas tells me part of the secret is that he’s “always online”. The easiest way to keep up with Thomas online is probably through his FriendFeed page.

Check out the video for some great tips on how to increase your Flickr popularity. And you’ll learn how Thomas manages to keep all of those images backed up (hint Drobo), and more. To get more tips from Thomas on being successful on Flickr, check out his blog post on the topic. This was a great chat.

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Lightroom 2 and Photoshop CS3: Stitching a Panorama

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The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2 beta is out in the wild, and some of the more powerful features in this application lie within the tight integration with its 300-pound older sibling, Photoshop CS3.

And the brilliance of this integration lie within the fact that Lightroom is able to leverage the power of Photoshop CS3 to do some of the more complex and niche “heavy-lifting” imaging tasks, while still providing seamless access to the powerful organizational features in Lightroom 2.

To demonstrate this, on my way back to San Jose from Sausalito, CA today I pulled over to snap a few photos of the Golden Gate Bridge. I only had my G9 “point-n-shoot” with me, and the lens wasn’t wide enough to capture the scene like I wanted … so I captured it in several chunks.

This tutorial demonstrates how to use Lightroom 2 and Photoshop CS3 to merge those chunks into one seamless image. Check out a higher resolution of the image here.

UPDATE: You’ll need to be running Photoshop 10.0.1 (or later) for the Lightroom 2 integration to work.

Golden Gate Bridge Panorama

Filed Under: Featured, Photography Tagged With: , , , ,

Photoshop Tutorial: Removing Crowds

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I think it was one of the very first episodes of the TWiP podcast (This Week in Photography) that I sort of bragged to my co-hosts about some of my secret Photoshop kung-fu skills. Basically I was saying that I knew of a technique for easily removing crowds from, say, a busy street scene.

So, after much taunting (practically every show), here’s the promised screencast! In it I reveal the secret and mysterious technique to all. Seriously though, It’s actually pretty cool that you can have Photoshop do the heavy lifting in a retouch job that previously might have taken hours.

I’ve also created a video page that will host all of the videos I post (gotta love WordPress). Oh, and by the way, all of the photos and video for this screencast were taken with my Canon G9!

I originally found out about this technique from Martin Evening. Be sure to check out his blog on Photoshop Lightroom. He’s also written a “bible-sized” book called “Photoshop CS3 for Professional Photographers“. It’s a must read, and an excellent reference guide. And finally, be sure to check out his work.

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Does this make me a geek?

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Lightroom Splash Screen

I’ve pretty much grown up with Adobe products, as both a graphic designer and a photographer. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen splash screens appear, and never really gave much thought to the names on the graphic.

Now having worked very closely with the people on the Photoshop Lightroom team, it’s clear how much blood, sweat, and tears go into each release of the software. And now that some my own skin is in the game, I am extreemly honored to have been included (and immortalized) in the splash screen of the next generation of digital image management software … Photoshop Lightroom 2 beta.

For a “pixel-geek” like me, this is almost the equivalent to getting your hand-prints in the cement outside of Mann’s Chinese Theater in Hollyweird.

Filed Under: Adobe, Featured, Lightroom Tagged With: , , ,

Lightroom 2: Hello World!

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I’m very happy to be apart of this evolution of Lightroom and digital photography. Version 2 represents the latest in digital image mangement, non-destructive editing, and superior (and unmatched) integration with the Adobe Photoshop, the gold standard in image editing.

You can snag your free copy of the Lightroom 2 beta from Adobe Labs. Everyone is free to download and try the applicaiton for 30 days (even our competitors), and if you have a Lightroom 1.0 serial number you’ll be able to use the app for the duration of the beta period.

And of course, in the spirit of the first Lightroom beta we’ll be listening to, and incorporating user feedback into the final finished product. And you can bet, it’ll be stellar. [Read more...]

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