Welcome to part 3 of this series on using the Web module in Lightroom 4 to create a serious website.

In Part 1, I showed that the Web module as it’s supplied with Lightroom is simply not capable of doing the job for a professional or serious amateur photographer.

Part 2 I looked at a plugin solution — The Turning Gate’s CE2 system — and I discussed the various parts that make it up and my early experiences of using it.

Here in Part 3, I’m going to depart a bit from my usual style of relating an ‘as it happens’ account, simply because it’s all too complicated and full of backtracking and rethinking to make a coherent story. So this is being written with the benefit of several weeks’ use of the system and is more a collection of good points and not-so-good points, along with a few hints and tips for anyone who’s thinking of going down this route with their own website.

Disclaimer

In the course of this article, I’m going to be saying some things that appear fairly critical of the TTG plugins. I just want to make it clear that most of the perceived ‘problems’ with the system are not Matthew Campagna’s fault, but rather stem from the difficulties that I outlined in Part 1 regarding the suitability of Lightroom’s UI design for this sort of work. Basically, the Lightroom UI does not lend itself well to a good website creation workflow and it’s a huge credit to Matthew that he’s managed to create something that’s as good as it is.

That said, from a purely user point of view, there are — shall we say? — annoyances in the workflow that will crop up and that will cause frustration.

Let’s start by being positive

It works, and it does a great job. Once you’ve got over the learning hump, and things have started to become clear in your mind, it’s (relatively — see below) easy to make the changes you want and get the website of your dreams…ish. I went through several false starts before settling on the final design, but once I’d got that, things progressed really smoothly.

I ought to add that I cheated a bit: after mucking about with various designs, I took a shortcut and used the design that Matthew made for his tutorial articles. I did this partly so that I could get something up and running for the purposes of writing this article. I like the design but I may make something more personal in the future. I’d recommend using the templates in the early stages — maybe practice with a local site — to get used to the system, then go ahead and build your own design in the confidence that you now understand how it works.

So, on to lessons learned, tips, caveats, bugbears and plaudits.

Two, three… or four?

I said in Part 2 that realistically you need two of the plugins (a framework and a gallery) to create a decent website. Well, make that 3, since you’ll almost certainly want the Autoindex plugin to make multi-level galleries (Pages can only handle a single level of folders underneath the home folder).

And then you’ll probably want to embed your blog on the same website, so you’ll need to get the CE2 Theme for WordPress to make it all look nice and consistent.

So: four plugins for a total outlay of $100. Add hosting costs, and that’s about how much your website’s going to cost you, not counting the value of your time in constructing it. If you create more than one website, then the unit cost comes down but really, even for one site, that’s not unreasonable, considering how much a bespoke design could cost.

Read Matthew’s blog

Right, this bit’s important — it’s the most valuable thing you can do when starting out using the TTG plugins. There are about 8 articles at the TTG blog on advanced website creation. Read them. Then read them again. Then bookmark them for future reference — there’s a lot of information in there that will seriously speed up the understanding process.

Get the site framework right

Here we get to one of those bugbears (see ‘Disclaimer’ above). The various plugins share a lot of settings between them (the ‘CE’ part of the name means ‘Common Engine’). This is a good thing, since it makes it a simple matter to keep your look-and-feel consistent across the modules. It’s also a problem: the way Lightroom works means that every bit of your site is a separate Web gallery. These galleries don’t know about each other, they don’t talk to each other — they are independent entities. With a decent-sized site, you could end up with dozens of galleries.

This image shows the Lightroom layout for my site, and I’m already up to 24 Web galleries. I’ve used collections to mimic the basic website structure and numbered names to keep things in the order that I want.

Now imagine that you want to tweak the font, because you’ve decided that you prefer a serif to a sans-serif in the body text. You have to make that change to each gallery separately. Oh, there are a couple of shortcuts to speed it up a bit, but the bottom line is that you have to visit each gallery and make the change — there’s no notion of propagating or auto-updating from a template change. That mean’s that it’s easy to miss one and that leads to annoying inconsistencies.

So I would advise spending a good amount of time with the framework module (CE2 Pages in my case) and getting the look and feel right before moving on to the other modules.

Test on a local server

I’ll say it again: test your site on a local server before uploading to your host. I covered local servers in Part 2, so I won’t go over that, but I will say that the last few weeks have impressed on me even more the need to test locally before going live.

This especially true once you’ve got over the initial learning hump and you wanti to start adding some value to your site using PHP plugins. You really, really don’t want to upload untested PHP code to a live site.

For example, I had a problem when I was trying to add some breadcrumb navigation and my blog disappeared. Still haven’t figured that out. But, since I tested locally, there has been no effect on my real site.

The other advantage to testing locally is that it means that you can ignore the Upload button. This is a seductive mistress, but do not be tempted, it will bite you. For one thing, there appears to be a bug (or a feature) — the destination folder’ is not sticky, and the default isn’t even the standard ‘galleries’ folder. Every time you upload, you’ll have to change that setting, because it doesn’t get preserved with the other settings.

Much better to Export… somewhere local, test, then upload with a decent FTP client. I use Cyberduck, but other clients are available.

Centralize common stuff and use templates

Because of the (enforced) independence of the galleries that make up your site, there are things that will be duplicated unnecessarily — PHP code files, your favicon. I strongly recommend (as does Matthew Campagna) that you pick one location for these files and point to that one place from each web gallery.

This is fairly easily done by making extensive use of templates. Full details are in the tutorial series I referenced above, but what it boils down to is to have a template corresponding to each ‘level’ (i.e. depth in the folder hierarchy) and store the path to the files in that. Then, when you create a new gallery, simply choose the appropriate ‘level’ template.

Two templates differing only in the relative location of common files.

A ‘level 2’ path to PHP plugins

A ‘level 3’ path to PHP plugins.

On the subject of templates; take some time, when first creating one, to fill in as much common information as possible. Ideally, for a gallery template (Highslide, Horizon, etc), you want enough information so that all you have to fill in for each new gallery is the copy text, album title and description.

Having centralised your PHP (and, possibly, JavaScript) files, keep a backup copy of them. The simplest place to put them is in the top-level phplugins folder (it saves editing other files to change the location), but this will get overwritten if you re-export the framework gallery, and all your careful modifications will get lost.

Small things

Those above are my major tips when using this software. There are a few minor things that I noticed as well — not enough, in themselves, to tip the balance, but worth looking out for.

• Some of the social media icons are out of date. It’s a simple matter to get the latest ones from the relevant site and overwrite the existing one (do this in the actual plugin folder, so that you don’t have to remember every time you export).
• There’s what appears to be a bug in the Horizon module such that the space between the photos and the scroll bar expands and contracts with the height of the browser window.

• I said before that there are a lot of settings to keep track of. One down side of this is that, for a while at least, you’ll spend a lot of time trying to find the setting you want to change – until you get used to where they all are.
• Although, in general, you have to request a re-render of the page after making changes, adjusting the order of images in the filmstrip will trigger a re-render every time you move something. This can get irritating, so it’s best to re-order things in the Grid view and then go back to the Web module when you’ve done.

How could things be improved?

Difficult one, this. As I hope has become clear over the last three articles, my opinion is that Lightroom is not a good environment for web site creation. The whole paradigm is wrong, so any attempt to do something along those lines is doomed to compromise. It’s to Matthew Campagna’s credit that he’s done such a good job in producing something that’s usable and mostly effective.

One change that springs to mind immediately would be if the Web Galleries could be made to act like Publish Collections — i.e. if they could be made to update changes only, rather than regenerate entire web site sections. That would cut out a lot of housekeeping work — deleting old images on the server, protecting modified files, remembering which galleries you’ve updated …

I’ve just spotted that there is now a new plugin, called CE2 Publish, which goes some way towards addressing this. At present it only works with the Highslide gallery plugin (so no good for me), but it bodes well for the future.

Some communication would be nice, too — a way of propagating a style modification across all the galleries, so that you don’t get that ‘argh!’ moment when you realise that you really want to change a font, but you’ve got a dozen templates to update.

The bottom line

TTG CE2 is a very good solution for the photographer wanting a professional-looking web site, but it’s not perfect. It rewards research, planning and a methodical approach and it punishes carelessness.

On the whole, I’d thoroughly recommend it if you’re prepared to put in the work required, and you’re methodical enough to remember all the tasks that can’t be easily automated.

Graham Douglas – Grey Dog Photography

In the past few years the use and sale of floordrops, or faux floors, has increased as manufacturers recognized a need and met it. Think of them as a backdrop, but for the floor.

A floordrop is similar to a backdrop, but it goes on the floor instead of behind your subject. The point, of course, is to add a different, more pleasing or complimentary floor to your portrait.

Floordrops can instantly change the appearance of your location

We’re not talking about a cut of fluffy carpeting, although you certainly could use that. Floordrops are simulated floors—hardwood, barn wood, brick, cobblestone, checkered tile—you get the idea.

Floordrops can instantly change the appearance of your location to look like you did your shoot in an old barn and in a modern home with polished oak floors. The point is they’re functional, easy to use, and breathe variety into your portraits.

Plus, they can also be used as backgrounds. You don’t have to feel like you’re buying a one-trick-pony, you just need to do some pre-planning when purchasing your drops to visualize use as a potential backdrop as well as flooring option.

All the Rage
There’s no shortage of floordrop manufacturers out there and making faux floors on all kinds of materials, but in this round-up I’ll look at three: Denny Manufacturing’s Rollup Floors, Floors by WHCC, and Photo Prop Floors and Backdrops vinyl floors.

Denny Manufacturing Rollup Floors
Material: Neoprene, rubber backed
Cost: starting at $163 (price depends on size)
Website: www.dennymfg.com

Denny’s floors are like a giant mousepad. That’s the easiest, most accurate way to describe them. They have a neoprene-like material on top of thick rubber backing so they don’t move when your subjects walk on them. The thicker material helps keep the floors flat when they’re unrolled without curling at the edges.

The wood flooring looks a little on the soft-focus side, but that’s intentional to keep it from appearing too sharp in portraits. And although it might appear a bit shiny in person, these floors photograph beautifully.

The floors are said to clean up easily, but I have yet to test that. However, the material feels as though it would clean easily, almost like a polyester.

When using the Denny floors, I use two 4×8 floors pushed together so I have more distance between my subject and background. They match up seamlessly when butted together. Storage is a snap, just roll it up around the cardboard tube and cinch it with the hook and loop strap. The tube and strap come with the Denny floors. This is a bigger deal than you think.

Floors by WHCC
Material: Neoprene, rubber backed
Cost: starting at $250 (price depends on size)
Website: backdrops.whcc.com/collections/floors

WHCC’s floors are very similar to Denny’s, though not as thick. More like one of the more recent mousepads, not the old-school ones. Does anyone know what mousepads are anymore? Same thing applies here with rubber backing to help keep the floor in one place.

But being a bit thinner is a strength because these floors can also easily be used as backdrops, which would be difficult with Denny’s floors since they’re significantly heavier.

Another advantage to the thinner floor is you can put a chair on it without the feet puckering the floor—a dead giveaway that it’s a fake. With thicker materials you’ll see obvious puckering.

As with the Denny floor, WHCC’s printed wood looks a little soft and shiny in person, but really pops when photographed. I was very happy with the results from WHCC’s floors both as a backdrop and floor option.

The material and quality of the floors are very good and I see no reason why these floors shouldn’t last many, many years. Storing them is simple, just roll them up like the Denny floors, although it’s a little trickier since there’s no tube to roll them around.

Unfortunately, WHCC does not ship their floors wrapped around a thick cardboard tube like Denny does. That means to store them vertically you’ll need to get your own tube or pipe. Or, I suppose you could roll it around the tube it ships in.

Photo Prop Floors and Backdrops
Material: Vinyl Coated Canvas
Price: $106 avg. (price depends on size)
Website: www.backdropsandfloors.com

I was skeptical of vinyl floors at first. They sounded too good to be true: easy to clean, easy to store, good preproduction on camera. But after using them, the hype is validated. The vinyl is thin, similar to a banner material you might get from a printshop, but as such, it’s easy to take on location and to store. Just be sure to take some gaffer’s tape with you to tape down the corners—there’s no mousepad-like backing on these.

A great advantage of vinyl floordrops is cost. A 5×7′ vinyl floordrop is just over $100. And as long as you don’t crease it and terribly abuse it, it should last a long time. If you plan on storing these rolled up, I’d suggest rolling them around a pipe or tube to help prevent creases and flattening which will occur from it’s own weight.

Because these floordrops are printed on vinyl, they are limited to the width of printable vinyl available on a roll. The ones I have are about 5 feet wide (61″). Theoretically you should be able to put two together to make a deeper floor (as I did with the Denny floors), but they come with borders on them, so if you want to put two together, plan on cutting the border off. Hopefully they’ll line up well without an obvious seam. I wasn’t able to test that.

Another drawback is the storage issue. If you roll the vinyl without rolling around a tube, it won’t hold the perfectly round shape. Instead it will fall and begin to flatten leaving you with rolling hills in your floors. The solution, of course, is to either hang them or roll them around a tube as mentioned above.

Final Thoughts

All the floordrops I used looked great in photos and appear very realistic. I don’t think there’s a clear “best” floor out of the bunch—they all have their pros and cons. However, storing the Denny floors around the included tubes makes me feel sure they won’t develop creases or start to flatten out. And I can store them vertically in a corner without having to buy my own tube or pipe.

When it comes down to it, the main things to pay attention to are the pattern, size and price. All these floors should stand up to standard studio abuse, so you just need to determine how much you’re willing to spend and which manufacturer has the patterns you want.

Ryan Klos – Ryan Klos Photography

We have a huge repository or photography and workflow related links … and we realized it’s high time we started sharing them!

The Best Thing I Ever Did Was Quit Professional Photography

The Definitive Guide To Corporate Event Photography

Introduction to the Tools of Long Exposure Photography

Location Photography: How to Comprehensively Capture a City, Village or Street

An In-Depth Guide to Lighting People

Dealing With Foliage: Green and Yellow Saturation

Exotic Places Right at Your Doorstep

How to Create a Sense of Depth to Your Photos

Quick Tip: Using a Simple Portable Reflector

An Olympic Photographer’s Camera Setup

10 Totally Awesome iPhone Camera Accessories

5 Undeniable Reasons To Take Your Camera Everywhere

5 Tips For Great Outdoor Photography

The Essential Guide to Filters for Digital Cameras

The 5 Levels of the Amateur Photographer – Which Group are You in?

iPhone 5 Camera – 6 Full-Res Sample Photos and Review

How to Check and Clean your Camera’s Sensor Dust

Why It’s Wrong for Photographers to Say ‘Get Closer’

How one photographer is using XeL without having to leave Lightroom to save time and money.

How Understanding Metering Modes will make Exposure Easier

Landscape Photography by Frederick Concha

Making Your Poses Work for You

A Comprehensive Introduction to Focus Stacking

Master the Art of Photographic Composition

How to Shoot Perfect Portraits

Knowing Photoshop’s Interface

Top 10 Reasons You Should be Using Adobe Bridge

Realistic Makeup Application in Photoshop

Smart Ways to Use Smart Objects

Create Light Leaks and Lomo Effects Using Actions in Photoshop

Explore Your History Panel

50 Time Saving Photoshop Actions to Boost Your Images

Photographers – Validation is Overrated

5 Ways Yelp Could Help You Build A Better Photography Studio

What Camera Should I Buy? 2012 Edition

Effects Of Amount Of Light & Exposure On The Photograph

Minimalism – The Art of Less

iPhone 5 Camera Sensor Pitted Against the Canon 5D Mark III

Aspiring pro photographers, Be Honest: Is Your Work Really That Good?

National Geographic Photo of the Day: Catamount Mountain, Adirondacks

Shooting in Raw + JPEG Mode: Why Most of Us Shouldn’t, And How to Set Lightroom Preferences If You Do

Nightclub Photography Tips For Exposure, Light & Presentation

24 Beautiful Dawn images

How To Become a Food Photographer

Some Impressive Examples of Photos with Snow

5 Essential Keys of Amazing Photographs.

|Brandon Oelling – Editor in Chief
X-Equals – image, workflow, technology, business

5 Years Ago.

I wasn’t happy with the online resources out there for Lightroom, so I started my own site. I focused on in-depth posts to help readers really understand how to use Lightroom in their workflow – and I did it for free.

We continue to deliver kick ass content today and we’ll continue to do that into the future – for free.

Then things really took off.

Content was great, but soon after I partnered with Michael Gray, we embarked on a journey.

We decided to not only educate, but also build a post-processing platform that could be leveraged completely within Lightroom, to do things that often photographers (mistakenly) felt they needed additional software for. We felt that Lightroom had all the horsepower required, and could be the main solution in a photographers toolkit, not a litany of outside applications or Photoshop Plugins. It was out of this that X-Equals XeL was born, and we’ve been delivering on this premise ever since.

Don’t take our word for it … look at what people like Ben Felton are doing to prove this model works. We continue to improve the product, and we’ll continue to take input from customers like you to continuously innovate within Lightroom.

It’s been an awesome 5 years!

So we want to say … simply … THANK YOU!

This November 12th is the 5 year anniversary of X-Equals, and we’re so proud to have made it this long. Without your support we couldn’t have done it – and we want to sincerely thank you for that. It’s been an awesome run … and we’re looking forward to 5 more years of delivering great content and Lightroom Products!

We also want to continue to keep our products within reach.

As part of our upcoming 5 year anniversary, we wanted to offer a 60% off Discount Code to you, your friends, or other photographers you’d like to refer. We stand behind our products so strongly, that if you, your friends, or their friends aren’t satisfied we’ll simply refund their money. Plain and simple.

A couple things to keep in mind …

We’ve never had a discount code of this size run for this long, and we won’t be doing this again this year. When you consider that with the XeL Bundle alone you get  200+ presets with 50+ film emulations - the largest compilation of color film emulations available for Lightroom 4 for only $20 bucks – locking into the XeL Platform isn’t very hard to justify!

We practically guarantee you’ll love Xel.

If you learn the platform – which we make very easy for you through our XeL education center, and integrate XeL into your Lightroom workflow, you’ll never go back.

Here you go …

1. Pick any product from XeL (the XeL:Bundle is the best deal out there)
2. Enter discount code: HAPPYBDAY (discount code good until 11/16/12)
3. … and you (or your referrals) will get 60% off.

Now is the time to lock in on XeL. Like we said, we don’t offer discount of this size but a few times a year!

And of course if you have questions check out the XeL Education Center, or hit us up on Twitter or Facebook.

Thank You!

All of us at X-Equals welcome your feedback and comments as we continue to focus on delivering no-nonsense content and innovative products to keep you inspired!

My personal thanks goes out to you for taking the journey with us.

|Brandon Oelling – Editor in Chief
X-Equals – image, workflow, technology, business

In Part 1 of this series, I looked at the native Lightroom Web module to see if it was usable as a way of constructing a professional web site. To say that it failed to meet my needs would be something of an understatement – it is, frankly, unworthy of the rest of the application.

This time, I’m going to look into a Web module plugin from The Turning Gate (TTG), which should go much further towards creating a good-looking web site. This part is about my early experiences: choosing, installing and getting to know it. Part 3 is a reflection on my experiences after several weeks of working with the system and trying to set up a real website.

The usual caveat

As before, this is not a how-to guide; it’s a document of my experiences using this software and an account of its usability and fitness for purpose. Some instructional material may accidentally creep in, for which I apologize in advance.

Preparation

TTG plugins cost actual money, so it’s worth checking out what’s on offer and its suitability before forging ahead.

To start with, there’s a lot of choice and it can be a bit bewildering when you first look over the offerings and try to sort out what’s what. Fortunately, there’s a wiki available that, whilst a little bit out of date, is a big help in getting your head around the choices.

Although they’re not presented that way on the main page of the store, the plugins fall into a number of categories, of which the two that interest me are ‘Website Development plugins’ and ‘HTML Image Gallery plugins’.

From the wiki:

Website development plug-ins are used not to create image galleries, but to create the overarching framework in which your galleries will reside. This includes site pages, indexes for organizing your individual image galleries, and even your blog. If you’re building a new site from scratch, these plug-ins should form your foundation, and this is where you should begin.

There’s a hint there: when you first look at the plugin list, you’re tempted to think ‘Hmm, $25. Not a bad price’. Realistically, though, you’re going to need to purchase at least two plugins to construct a viable site.

So, $50-ish. Still not a bad price, but it makes you look more carefully at the individual plugins to ensure you’re getting the right ones. Reading the wiki helps, too, although I would have liked to see a page that really spells out the options and maybe gives some hints on the best combinations for common needs.

The good thing about the TTG plugins is that they all work to a common framework (Common Engine version 2, hence the ‘CE2’ in the names), so they play nicely together and you do get a real sense of being able to mix and match to your specification (and extend later with e-commerce options, should you so wish).

Decisions, decisions

So, I’ve read the documentation and I’ve for a while and then finally settled on two plugins that seem to be the ones I need. The first is TTG CE2 Pages (which I’ll just call Pages from now on) and TTG CE2 Horizon (Horizon).

TTG CE2 Pages

Pages is a framework plugin that provides the starting point for your website. It sets up those slightly-boring-but-necessary peripheral bits like the About and Contact pages. You also get a gallery index page. Note: an index page – it doesn’t create galleries. What it does do is to examine the galleries that you do publish and automatically construct the index page – a neat feature but I just wonder if it’ll have its annoyances, as so many ‘automatic’ things do when they fail to give you that bit of control that you want.

TTG CE2 Horizon

There are several image gallery plugins available. I chose Horizon partly because I quite liked the look of it and partly because the other contender, TTG CE2 Highslide, would have required yet another licence (and associated cost), this time for Torstein Hønsi’s Highslide JS. Yeah, I’m a cheapskate – sue me.

The Horizon gallery is a horizontal-scrolling type gallery that I think looks quite neat (a lot nicer than the standard galleries in Lightroom, anyway).

Commitment

Purchasing and installing the plugins was a completely painless process (if you ignore the actual ‘paying’ part of the process). Put the items in the cart, head off to the checkout, authorize with PayPal and, one email and a download later, they’re on my computer. Installation was simply a matter of unzipping and copying a couple of files (where to is dependent on your OS, but it’s all in the instructions). Restart Lightroom and, bingo!, we’re away.

Oh, f-f-fiddlesticks!

For some years now, I’ve been using a particular naming scheme (I think I got it from this very site) that has served me well. It can be summarized as ‘Date-Custom-Original File Number’.

It turns out, though, that this scheme is not very web-friendly (or, at least, it’s not TTG-friendly), since it uses leading numeric characters. TTG uses the file name to generate certain tags in the code, and these tags can’t start with a numeric character. I could adjust the names on export, but that loses the connection with the original image in Lightroom, so it’s better to have the file names consistent from the outset.

The article in question also contains some other good advice on file naming, so I decided to go ahead and rename all my image files. A daunting task, and one which I doubt I’ll complete any time soon. Lightroom’s renaming facility makes it fairly easy, but you do have to watch out for TIFF (or JPG) files scattered amongst the RAWs. If these have come from the ‘Edit in Photoshop’ command, then they possibly won’t rename correctly, since the trailing ‘-Edit’ on the filename defeats Lightroom’s ability to get the file number. It’s at this point that I wish Lightroom would allow in-place filename editing – for those occasional times when you want to manually adjust a single file name.

Building the framework

There are some pretty clear instructions on initially setting up Pages, so I won’t repeat them here.

Once Pages has done its work, what you get can look pretty daunting:

Small aside: I liked the way it automagically picked up my logo graphic. Presumably because it was there in a LR web gallery when I first created the Pages pages. However it did it, I was quietly impressed. (Later: I think I found out what it does – it notices if you’ve changed the Lightroom identity plate and assumes that is your logo.)

The real ‘arrgh’ moment is when you glance over to the right-hand edge and see how small that scroll bar thumb is – there’s a lot of information to fill in and think about. Fortunately, a substantial proportion of that right-hand column is taken up with good, clear instructions on use. Even so, you really want to read the documentation before diving in.

If you have some images in the filmstrip, Pages will use these to populate the image parts of the generated pages. All the pages are based around image + chunk of text (and an image grid, but more on that later). The instructions (and the wiki) say that you should put the images that you want to use for each page in a specific order, because each page picks its ordinal numbered image. That’s the default, but it looks as if there have been some improvements made, because there is an option in the settings panes for specifying which image to use for each page. You can even re-use the same image on multiple pages.

Anyway, the upshot is that, with a few clicks you’ve got the basics of a pretty good-looking website. And that’s not something to be sniffed at.

Moving on…

The advice given on the TTG wiki is to start at the top of the settings panes and work your way down; and who am I to gainsay the author?

Mind you, I’m a bit of an impatient old goat, and I want to see what this new site looks like in a real web browser so, before getting down to it and tweaking things, I Export… my newly-created web site. This should dump a load of HTML somewhere on my hard disk, which I can then browse in Firefox (other browsers are available).

Except…

Pages dumps PHP files, not HTML, and the browser can’t render PHP without a running PHP server. So, is testing the site locally out of the question? If so, that’s a big downer on the whole process. I’m reluctant to hand my public face over to a piece of software that I’ve hardly been introduced to, and trust it to make me look perfect right out of the gate. I wanna see what it does before I make the site live.

To the web!

I spent a bit of time on Google looking for a way to preview PHP sites locally, and came across a product called MAMP. I later discovered that the TTG wiki does note that Pages generates PHP only, and that it mentions that there are ways to preview your site locally, including WAMP and XAMPP in addition to the previously discovered MAMP. (Note to TTG: make it more prominent, guys!)

I tried out MAMP: it’s simple enough to install (I think MAMP is Mac-only; WAMP is for Windows and XAMPP has multiple OS versions), and it pretty much does what it says on the tin. It would be nice if it didn’t bug you about the Pro version, though. For checking out the website-in-progress, the free version is quite sufficient. (If you don’t want to be bugged, go to your Applications/MAMP Pro folder and run the uninstaller. If you’re like me, you’ll get a ‘privileged action failed’ message and still get bugged.)

Update: I got fed up with MAMP’s nagging and tried XAMPP. One glitch – TTG/Lightroom won’t write to XAMPP’s default site root (and it’s probably not a good idea to bung your stuff there, anyway), so it’s best to configure a virtual host. It sounds scary, but this site (Mac only) contains a step-by-step guide that works (well, it did for me). You can then export to a convenient location and even maintain multiple sites. Windows users should Google ‘xampp virtual host windows’ (or you can click that link and follow the instructions – the locations of the files differ, but the details ought to be the same).

Update updated: then I got tired of XAMPP (can’t remember why, now) and went back to MAMP.

And so here’s a brand-new, untouched-by-human-hand, Pages website exported locally and viewed in a web browser:

So far, so good – this looks much more promising as a viable solution than the plain Web module. There’s still lots to do though – that color scheme has got to go, for a start.

But I see that I’m getting close to my word quota for this episode, so tune to Part 3 for further adventures in the murky world of web site creation.

Graham Douglas – Grey Dog Photography

Just how useful is the Lightroom Web module?

This is the first of a 3 part series on using Lightroom as part of a website creation workflow.

Here in Part 1 I’ll cover how well (or not) the vanilla module fits into creating a real-life website based on my own personal experience.

Part 2 will cover extensions to the Web module (specifically a Turning Gate plugin).

A bit of background

I’m just starting out on the long road to being a professional photographer – at this stage, I’d be happy to rise to the dizzy heights of being merely poorly-paid.

One thing I need to sort out early on is a decent website to showcase my work and give people a reason for hiring me – in other words, one of the goals of the website is to generate clients. To do this, it needs to fulfill certain criteria (in no particular order):

•    Separate categories of work. Someone who’s looking for a wedding photographer doesn’t want to wade through a load of street images to see examples of what I can provide. So, having a number of galleries is a must and keyword searching would be nice (maybe an image can show up under ‘wedding’ and ‘portrait’, for example).
•    Easy navigation. Having decided you want to see my wedding portfolio, it should be obvious how to get there, preferably with a single click.
•    Somewhere to put an artist’s statement on project galleries, so that I can describe the work.
•    A contact page that details all the ways I can be contacted, not just email.
•    Other stuff, including SEO considerations.

Hang on a minute.

Yes, yes, I know that there’s no way the basic Web module is going to handle all that. I have no expectations that it will be in any way sufficient for producing a professional website. What I’m interested in is how far it can go, what are the ways it fails to deliver, and are there improvements that could be made to it to get it to go even further?

The usual caveat, blah, blah, blah

As with my other articles here on X-Equals, this is not a user guide. It’s an account of my experiences, thoughts and ramblings. For a starter course on the Web module, have a look at this article by Matthew Campagna.

Preparation

The hardest part of putting a photographic portfolio together is deciding what goes in and what gets left out. Collections, as ever, come to the rescue: they provide a convenient way of gathering the images I want to present and to sort through them, adding, rejecting, ordering as I want.

To the Web!

So, with some nice collections set up, it’s off to create some galleries. And hit the first problem: I want to create galleries, plural, but the Web module is only really geared to creating a gallery, singular, from any given set of images.

Still, let’s press on: maybe something will crop up.

Over to the left, we see a set of templates for creating our gallery

and up on the top right is a panel called Layout Style.

These panels are obviously the starting point for the gallery, so it’s worth spending a little while browsing the templates to find one that floats your boat.

I don’t really understand the interaction between these two panels, though. I’ll ignore the ‘Airtight’ options in the Layout Style panel – at the risk of sounding dismissive, they’re quite obviously not what I want. If you click on ‘Lightroom Flash Gallery’ it selects ‘Flash Gallery (default)’ in the Template Browser, and if you click on ‘Lightroom HTML Gallery’, it selects ‘HTML Gallery (default)’.

On the other hand, click on a template in the Template Browser, and it shows the relevant style in the Layout Style panel – something which is indicated in the browser itself (the name ends in ‘HTML’ if it’s an HTML template, otherwise it’s Flash) and in the preview pane.

I would expect the Layout Style panel to filter the templates, otherwise there doesn’t really seem a lot of point to it, apart from selecting styles that don’t have templates – but, then, are they really styles?

Moving on, I want my site to be mobile-compatible, so Flash isn’t really an option. That leaves me looking through the HTML templates for something that suits my needs.

There’s one called ‘Pure White – HTML’ that looks good: simple, uncluttered and lets the photos take centre stage. Just a bit of tweaking to get the details right, and we should be good to go.

There are several panels over on the right that I’m not going to go into: they’re covered in full detail elsewhere, and I’m mostly happy with the defaults, anyway.

So let’s just look at the first panel:

Straight away, this tells you something about the limitations of this module – it says ‘Site Info’, ‘Site Title’. It suggests to me that this is it; this is the site, not a part of it, but the whole thing. Oh, I know it says ‘Unsaved Web Gallery’ and ‘Create Saved Web Gallery’ up top there, but everything else belies that.

And then there’s ‘Contact Info’: an email address (or ‘Web link’… ermm, to where?). Seriously? That’s it? What about Twitter and Facebook? How can I point people at my blog’s RSS feed? And then there’s the issue of an ‘About’ page for my artist’s biography, and so on.

This is not looking good. Still, I can create/save different galleries, and I can Export… them to the hard drive, rather than Upload… them to a live site. Maybe I can construct the galleries that I want, export them and then use an HTML editing program to construct a wrapper that pulls them all together…

Whoa just a doggone minute, there. That’s not my job. <McCoy> Dammit, Jim, I’m a photographer, not a web designer. </McCoy>

Yes, I’m sure it could be done, if one had the skill and the inclination, but it all smacks very much of a huge fudge to overcome a serious failing.

Let’s face it.

It is a serious failing. Lightroom is a premier product aimed at professionals and I have to be frank here: the Web module is not up to snuff.

So where does it go wrong? Why is the Web module so inadequate in the context of the most useful program I possess?

In a word: The Filmstrip.

To be fair to Lightroom, it’s not easy to know how to map the filmstrip concept to a hierarchical website design. The rest of Lightroom is based around the idea of flattening out a set of images, wherever they physically sit on your hard drive. The analogy with old-s film is obvious (it’s called the ‘filmstrip’, duh!), but does it have to be extended to every module?

(Slight digression, bear with me.) Several years ago, there was a trend for presenting the UI of some software as a representation of a physical object – TV remotes, telephone handsets, and so on. All very cutesy, but… it’s a computer. Why hamstring its power by limiting it to the capabilities of a simpler device? I once saw a dialler application that allowed you to assign speed dial numbers to the buttons, but had no easy way to get at the other numbers. You could also dial by pressing the buttons, but not by using the keyboard. What gives? That’s pure form over substance.

(Back again.) I’m not suggesting that the filmstrip is in that league of silliness – quite the opposite; I love the filmstrip and use it a lot, but I can’t help but think that there’s some of that UI-by-analogy-with-something-else going on and it’s stifling the abilities of the program by extending into areas that it’s not appropriate to. There’s no equivalent of making a web site in darkroom-and-chemicals photography, so don’t push it. Consistency of UI is one thing, but you also need to know when to change things for the better. As Emerson put it: ‘a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds’.

So what’s the solution?

The filmstrip works great for Library, Develop, Map and so on, but for Web (and also for exporting images) it’s a bit limiting. I want another option. I already have the hierarchy I want in a collection set (or in my physical folder structure) – why can’t I use that information to guide the creation of the image galleries?

It shouldn’t be too difficult to extend the current templates to get extra information from collection or folder names and to construct a hierarchical site from the images contained in them. Yes, it means that there’s a disconnect between the Web module UI and, say, the Develop module UI, but there’s a disconnect between their purposes and workflows as well. It shouldn’t be too hard for the average user to shift paradigms (argh! I used that word – I feel violated) when the end purpose is so different.

The filmstrip works brilliantly when there’s a clear connection with a style of working (Grid view = contact sheets, for example) and I couldn’t live without it in the Develop module, but there is no natural analogy with any aspect of creating a website, so it shouldn’t be a part of that process.

The problem with this solution is, of course, that it still wouldn’t be good enough for constructing a professional website. It would, however, provide much more flexibility for those who just want a basic image gallery that’s divided into sections.

Conclusion

As far as using Lightroom as part of a professional web-creation strategy goes, it’s a non-starter. I’m sorry to say this about a program that I love dearly, but it doesn’t so much fall at the first hurdle as trip up out of the starting blocks.

In part 2, we’ll be looking at a plugin for Lightroom that purports to do the job. Looking at the Turning Gate website, everything seems to be there, so stay tuned to see how I get on.

Graham Douglas – Grey Dog Photography

Ohhhhhhhhhhh SNAP!

Yep, we did it. Time to go ALL IN on the XeL Platform … which is the best way to get the only COMPLETE digital darkroom and non-destructive toolkit for Lightroom.

If you bought the entire XeL Suite separately you’d drop over $65+ … don’t do that – get it here for $20 off.

So … what’s included in the bundle?

Easy …

• XeL:Color
• XeL:Black and White
• XeL:Local Adjustments

Want more details on each product?

Here you go … starting with XeL:Color which  features 200+ presets with 50+ film emulations, and represents the largest compilation of color film emulations available for Lightroom 4.

XeL:Color

Michael Gray walks you through the XeL:Color Product along with some sample workflows to get you started!

XeL utilizes Lightroom’s native preset capability to rapidly process your images in the style of classic film stocks.

For the full HD experience, be sure to play the video at full screen!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_fF4LPHyk8

Learn more …

XeL:Black and White

XeL:Black and White is the culmination of a year’s worth or research, analysis, development and testing – representing a major milestone release in support of the innovative X-Equals XeL platform.

XeL:Black and White breaks free from the traditional approach to Lightroom presets – utilizing a modular approach that allows users to quickly and efficiently create stunning black and white images in a completely non-destructive RAW-based workflow.

“XeL was envisioned to shift the preset paradigm from disparate one click effects, to a set of well defined – targeted presets that can be combined strategically to make specific adjustments.”

The soul of the XeL platform, and XeL:Black and White, comes from our passion for traditional film and dark room techniques to bring you a collection of presets that you to quickly create stunning black and white images directly from within Lightroom.

Learn more …

XeL:Local Adjustments

XeL: Local Adjustments provides an assortment of specialized Local Adjustments, allowing you to quickly apply a variety of effects with the Local Adjustment Brush.

Unlike most presets you encounter in your daily processing, XeL presets are compact presets, affecting only a few adjustments in a controlled manner.

From whitening teeth and altering eye color to dodging and burning, XeL: Local Adjustments will help you rapidly make corrective and creative local adjustments to your images, without the hassle of configuring your settings for the desired effect. The basic work is done; all you need to do is tweak it to your needs.

Learn more …

Thank You!

All of us at X-Equals welcome your feedback and comments as we continue to focus on delivering no-nonsense advice and innovative products to keep you inspired!

My personal thanks goes out to you for taking the journey with us.

|Brandon Oelling – Editor in Chief
X-Equals – image, workflow, technology, business

This fine shopping experience is brought to you by E-Junkie. They rock, and are the only group we trust to deliver you quality X-Equals goods!

Welcome to XeL: Color!

XeL: Color features 200+ presets with 50+ film emulations, and represents the largest compilation of color film emulations available for Lightroom 4 – including numerous auxiliary presets that allow you to further develop your images in the style of traditional film techniques.

We take great pride in our emulations, they’re the best out there, and we want you to love these as much as we do! XeL attempts to provide the most accurate emulations possible, utilizing only the tools made available in Lightroom.

No need for round trip editing in a plug-in or Photoshop. XeL utilizes Lightroom’s native preset capability to rapidly process your images in the style of classic film stocks. All edits are lossless and XeL never requires you to render your image into TIFF -  this is a completely RAW friendly workflow.

XeL: Color represents to largest compilation of color film emulations available for Lightroom 4

Each of our emulations are handmade by Michael Gray. Utilizing his film analysis and emulation methods, he converts countless test rolls of film to the most accurate emulations possible within Lightroom.

Keep in mind, each batch of film is unique, and there is no true appearance for any film stock. Results can vary between batches and even between rolls. Exposure technique, processing and age also have an impact on final results from any roll of film, from color shifts to grain size and intensity. What we are trying to say is that XeL emulations are based upon his choice of film, exposure and processing thereof. Each emulation is emulating his end results from a given film stock.

Some emulations in XeL:Color also recreate the look of numerous film stocks that are no longer available. In these situations, Michael gathered physical samples of these stocks, and performed a intensive blind emulation to match the feel of those long lost films.

Ok, onto the reason you’re here.

Here you go …

We have installation details, a breakdown of the whole Preset Collection, and Sample Images below.

Product Overview Video

Michael Gray walks you through the XeL:Color Product along with some sample workflows to get you started!

For the full HD experience, be sure to play the video at full screen!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_fF4LPHyk8

Everything you need is right here.

Previously, we released our toolkit with a PDF manual. However we are eschewing the PDF in preference for a live web page. We have done this for two reasons.

First, the manual is not a product own its own, and is put together more as a guide to the toolkit than a full blown reference. An HTML document allows us to correct any errors we may inadvertently create quickly.

Secondly, we may find it necessary to add to or alter XeL: Color as Lightroom evolves. While not as detailed as our prior PDF manuals, an HTML document allows use to rapidly make changes to the guide and ensure users have both the most current documentation available and be made aware if we are required to alter or add to the XeL: Color download in the future.

XeL utilizes Lightroom’s native preset capability to rapidly process your images in the style of classic film stocks.

Anyways, enough babbling, let’s get into use of XeL: Color.

Installation

Installation of X-Equals Presets is a snap! … we even have a video that shows you how!

After you have received your downloadable Zip file containing XeL: Color, you must manually install the package into Lightroom before you can use the presets. Start by extracting the Zip file to your computer. We highly recommend keeping the XeL presets in their folders. This will sort them properly by family and effect, and we will be adding to these folders as time goes on with booster packs and free presets.

Now open Lightroom to start the installation process. Lightroom can point you to the folder you need to install your presets to for you. We will use the Preferences dialog to locate our presets folder.

Lightroom’s Preferences dialog can be found in the Edit menu (Windows) or Lightroom menus (Mac) of the menu bar. Simply look towards the bottom of the drop down and choose Preferences… Alternately, you can also use the keyboard shortcut (Ctrl/Cmd + ,) to launch the Preferences dialog.

Once the dialog opens, click on the Presets tab. Look toward the middle portion of the dialog in the Location section. First, notice if the Store presets with catalog option is enabled. If it is, you will need to install the presets into each catalog you wish to use. If not, presets will be installed into the Lightroom settings folders and will be available in any catalog.

Now, click the Show Lightroom Presets Folder… button. This will open up a Mac Finder or Windows Explorer window, navigate to the destination folder for Lightroom settings.

Open the Lightroom folder.

Once this window has opened, you will need to navigate to the Develop Presets folder.

Open your extracted folder to prepare to copy. Copy all of the sub-folders from the XeL: Color folder to the Develop Presets folder, keeping all presets in their proper folders. Do not simply copy over the root folder.

Now close all your OS Explorer/Finder windows and exit Lightroom. Upon opening Lightroom anew, XeL: Color will now be made available.

XeL: Color Contents

XeL: Color is made of a series of preset families, contained within their own folders. Each family of presets has a specific focus, which we will briefly cover. These families will appear in your Presets panel as such.

Each family is contained in a preset folder with a title that starts with XeL-CL. Each family focuses on one particular type of preset.

XeL-Cl Archaic Processes – Contains presets that enable a processing style reminiscent of old fashioned photographic methods or products.

XeL-CL Cold Storage Instant Films – Contains sets of presets that emulate specific instant film emulsions.

XeL-CL Cold Storage Print Films – Contains sets of presets that emulate traditional negative (print) film stock.

XeL-CL Cold Storage Slide Films – Contains sets of presets that emulate traditional reversal (slide) film stock.

XeL-CL Cross Processing – Contains presets that utilize the new RGB curves to give a cross processed effect.

XeL-CL Curve Kick – Contains a selection of tone curves to help you think outside the box.

XeL-CL Special Effects – Contains presets that facilitate you in recreating traditional darkroom tricks, amongst other effects.

Some of these families feature individual presets that perform a specific task. Others utilize a series of presets designed to be used in unison to garner a certain emulation or effect. Either way, each preset wil only adjust a small amount of sliders within Lightroom. This allows for modular presets that can be mixed and matched as desired, or entire steps left out of the process if needed.

As you can see in the image above, single click presets simply have an ID and name (XCP05 – E6 in C41 E). Whereas presets designed to be used in unison feature an ID ending with a letter (XFS252A – Agfa RSX II 200 Mix). Presets with letters ending the ID are designed to be used together, or mixed with other like presets in the same family with the same letter designation.

The ID is drawn from a code denoting the preset family (XCP, XFFS) and a number designation (05, 252A). This can be used to quickly take note of preset combinations if so desired. In actuality, it assists the designers in maintaining a semblance of organization.

Now let us take a closer look at each family of presets and see a few samples from each.

XeL-CL Archaic Processes (ACA###X)

This family of presets attempt to capture the unique look of photography past. XeL: Color includes the following Archaic Processes.

• Handpainted

• Autochrome

• Olde Postcard

Both Autochrome and Olde Postcard are designed to use the Mix preset from a Cold Storage Film Emulation. Handpainted has a custom Mix preset, but can also use film emulation mixes.

XeL-CL Cold Storage Instant Films (XFI###X)

This family features a selection of some of the best known instant films and a few different versions of the same stock.

• Fuji FP-100C

• Polaroid 600
• Polaroid 669 Warm

• Polaroid 669 Cool
• Polaroid 600 V.2

• Polaroid 669 Expired

XeL-CL Cold Storage Print Films

This family of presets feature preset groups emulating many color print films from the past to modern day.

• Kodak High Definition 400
• Kodak Gold 100

• Kodak Gold 200
• Kodak Gold 200 Crossprocessed
• Kodak High Definition 400 shot at 1600
• Kodak Ultra Color 400
• Kodak Portra 160 NC

• Kodak Portra 400 NC
• Kodak Portra 160 VC
• Kodak Portra 400 VC

• Kodak Portra 160 VC Bleach Bypass
• Kodak Ektar 100

• Fuji 160C
• Fuji 160S
• Fuji 400H

• Fuji 800z
• Fuji Press 800 Expired
• Fuji 160C Crossprocessed
• Konica Super XG 100

• Konica Super XG 200
• Polaroid High Definition 200

XeL-CL Cold Storage Slide Films (XFS###X)

This family features some of the most important chromes (slides) from days past.

• Kodak Kodachrome 10
• Kodak Kodachrome 10 V.2
• Kodak Kodachrome 10 V.3
• Kodak Kodachrome 25

• Kodak Kodachrome 64
• Kodak Kodachrome 200
• Kodak Kodachrome ASA 10 (4×5)
• Kodak Ektachrome 100VS

• Kodak Elite Chrome 100
• Kodak Elite Chrome 200
• Kodak Ektachrome 100 VS Crossprocessed
• Kodachrome Bleach Bypass (Theoretical, not really possible)
• Fuji Velvia 50
• Fuji Velvia 50 V.2

• Velvia Classic
• Fuji Velvia 100
• Fuji Velvia 100F
• Fuji Velvia 100 shot at 80
• Fuji Velvia Crossprocessed
• Fuji Sensia

• Fuji Provia 100F Crossprocessed
• Agfa RSX II 50
• Agfa RSX II 100

• Agfa RSX II 200
• Kodachrome Memorial Special Preset

XeL-CL Cross Processing (XCP##)

Although some of the emulations feature a crossprocessing effect, primarily through split toning, not all emulations feature that option. However, using these presets, you can give any image a crossprocessed effect, utilizing Lightroom 4′s new RGB curves.

• 6 presets based on Slide Film (E6) processed in Print Chemistry (C41)

• 6 presets based on Print Film (c41) processed in Slide Chemistry (E6)

XeL-CL Curve Kick (XCC##)

This family of presets is a collection of replacement Tone Curves designed to provide a variety of results, from random, to controlling contrast. Nothing to show sample wise, as each curve is unique, and only look correct on the right image.

Xel-CL Special Effects (XCX##X)

This family of presets uses Lightroom in uncommon ways to generate unique effects.

• Bleach Bypass

• Redscale

• Center Focus
• Holga Lens
• Light Leaks
• Mute Primary Colors

• Negative
• Tonal Cutoff

• Solarize

This is XeL

XeL: Color and XeL: Black and White together represent the most flexible and expansive collection of film emulation and supplementary tools available anywhere, for any platform. This is just the beginning of XeL, and we fulling plan on expanding both XeL Collections in the future through additional smaller releases. This is the master set that all future releases will integrate into.

XeL is the preset platform that will evolve with you and you needs, and adjust with Lightroom as changes come our way. Let us know what you would like to see in future releases. We are doing all this for you and your art.

So let’s get you setup!

Grab the whole XeL:Color toolkit right here for only $29.99

Thank You!

All of us at X-Equals welcome your feedback and comments as we continue to focus on delivering no-nonsense advice and innovative products to keep you inspired!

My personal thanks goes out to you for taking the journey with us.

|Brandon Oelling – Editor in Chief
X-Equals – image, workflow, technology, business

This fine shopping experience is brought to you by E-Junkie. They rock, and are the only group we trust to deliver you quality X-Equals goods!

We’re psyched to launch the XeL Education Center!

If you’re a new XeL Customer, or a prospective customer trying to get a feel for what XeL is, and how it differs from the abundance of free non-professional Presets out there, this is the place!

Simply put, here’s the knowledge bomb on how to take your workflow to the next level with all the power, simplicity, and flexibility that comes with X-Equals XeL – the Professional Standard in Film Emulation and post-processing in Lightroom 4.

Product Overview Video

Michael Gray walks you through the XeL:Color Product along with some sample workflows to get you started!

For the full HD experience, be sure to play the video at full screen!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_fF4LPHyk8

Need help with installation or support in general? We have you covered:

Installation of X-Equals Presets is a snap! … we even have a video that shows you how!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNUfA1Vatug

What you should know.

X-Equals XeL breaks free from the traditional approach to Lightroom presets – utilizing a modular approach that allows users to quickly and efficiently create white images in a completely non-destructive RAW-based workflow.

How does that differ? … well here you go!

Understand XeL, and how it’s uniquely focused on bringing razor sharp precision to your workflow along with your favorite films:

• XeL – Reimagine Lightroom Presets
• XeL: Black & White – Getting the Best Results
• X-Equals XeL – Real World, Kick A** Results
• Using XeL: Local Adjustment Presets – Tips and Techniques

How do we prepare for film emulation, and what you should consider when shooting for post-processing in Lightroom:

• Emulating Film in Lightroom
• Shoot for Success – Expose for Lightroom

Don’t have XeL yet?

Well, come on now! Let’s get you dialed in!

Comments, feedback, etc.

What should we be providing in the XeL Education Center to make sure you’re successful? Drop us a line!

|Brandon Oelling
X-Equals – Click. Download. Smile.

Are you still having trouble?

No problem, If you have any questions or need product support you can email us below.

[contact-form-7]

Dodging and burning (or local exposure adjustment) is one of the fastest ways to improve your images, so it’s no wonder we use it a lot around here. It’s one of the oldest tricks in the books, and can do things like:

• Focus attention on the subject
• Shape and flatter the subject
• Increase dynamic range

We’ve covered the basics of Dodging and Burning before, so let’s jump right into some Lightroom 4 special sauce …

Custom Burning Brush

One of the problems with burning (or selectively darkening) the image is it can look unnatural.  The first step to avoiding this is to shoot for the dodge & burn.  Do this by composing your photograph with high contrast between the subject and the background.

85mm, f2.0

Next, make a custom adjustment brush that lowers exposure, increases contrast and darkens shadows.  These extra adjustments will help create a natural looking gradient in the image.

Use this brush to darken the image where appropriate (in this case the background).  Use the Tool Overlay command O to see the pattern your laying down.

Watch out for “hallowing” or unnatural gradients at the edges of the affected area. Zoom in, and using the erase brush, fine-tune your results until it looks good.

• Left – visible hallowing around dress
• Right – hallowing gone

Custom Dodge Brush

At this point you could be done with the image, but I like to dodge (or brighten) up my subjects so they really pop. Create a custom dodging brush that brings up the exposure, decreases contrast, and sharpens. This brush works especially well on people & skin. Dodge the subject up using the same method as for burning (above).

Check out the final image below and get the goods with a free download of our custom dodge and burn brushes.

Try it for yourself …

• Now download the sample brushes for free.
• Remember we have a kick ass set of XeL:Local Adjustments you can put to work in your workflow immediately!
• Want to learn more about Adjustments brushes and how to install them? Check out this blog post.

Eli Powell – Boulder Wedding Photographer

Installing XeL Presets is a snap, and we’ll show you how.

For the full HD experience, be sure to play the video at full screen!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNUfA1Vatug

|Brandon Oelling – X-Equals – Click. Download. Smile.

Oh SNAP! – The X-Equals – 4th of July Sale

While those of us in the states celebrate the 4th of July … you sit right back and enjoy 70% off everything in the shop until 7/4 at 11pm CST (GMT -6)

It’s simple …

• Click Like on our Facebook Page
• Get your 70% off Discount Code
• Discount Code is good until 7/4 at 11pm CST (GMT -6)
• Shop

NOW is the time to get the goods!

XeL:Black and White is $24.99 … err … $7.50

XeL:Black and White breaks free from the traditional approach to Lightroom presets – utilizing a modular approach that allows users to quickly and efficiently create stunning black and white images in a completely non-destructive RAW-based workflow.

Learn more about XeL:

• XeL – Reimagine Lightroom Presets
• XeL: Black & White – Getting the Best Results
• X-Equals XeL – Real World, Kick A** Results

XeL:Color goes live next week … for those of you that don’t have the Big Box or XeL:Black and White*, now is the time time to get either package … which will also get you a FREE copy of XeL:Color!

*Hint: XeL:Color will not be $24.99 like XeL:Black and White … it will be more.

The X-Equals Big Box is $49.99 … err … $14.99

This is the best deal we offer. A complete platform for rocking your workflow and getting creative.

Save 70% now and get the whole toolkit for only $14.99

Again, XeL:Color goes live next week … for those of you that don’t have the Big Box or XeL:Black and White*, now is the time time to get either package … which will also get you a FREE copy of XeL:Color!

*Hint: XeL:Color will not be $24.99 like XeL:Black and White … it will be more.

All discounts will be applied at checkout.

Thank You!

All of us at X-Equals welcome your feedback and comments as we continue to focus on delivering no-nonsense advice and innovative products to keep you inspired!

My personal thanks goes out to you for taking the journey with us.

|Brandon Oelling
X-Equals – Click. Download. Smile.

This fine shopping experience is brought to you by E-Junkie. They rock, and are the only group we trust to deliver you quality X-Equals goods!

Book Review – Posing and Moore

Posing & Moore – The First Official Non Posing, Posing-guide for Teen Portrait Photography

Michelle Moore has been making a name for herself in the senior portrait and fashion photography industries for several years now. Her portraits have an unmistakeable flavor to them—a mix of high fashion, glamour and natural beauty. Whether she’s shooting senior portraits or the cover of the latest issue of Zooey, her posing and model directing skills are at the core of her professional look.

In her new ebook, Posing & Moore, The First Official Non Posing, Posing-guide for Teen Portrait Photography, Moore shares her thoughts and processes for making models and clients comfortable in front of the camera, and secrets for achieving killer poses sure to turn your mediocre shoots to awesome shoots. The ebook focuses on teens, but you could easily adapt any of the poses and ideas for other portrait clients as well.

The ebook covers a little bit about gear, getting comfortable with it and then forgetting it. That means get so familiar with it that you don’t need to think about it—you need to focus on your subjects, Moore reminds readers. Photos throughout the book reveal shooting data including aperture, ISO and lens used. You’ll find plenty of useful information about posing, but also a lot about making clients comfortable, exuding your own confidence (which will ultimately make clients comfortable) and scouting locations. Michelle also offers several tips on what to look for and try in different locations.

Posing & Moore is an excellent resource for photographers who want to refine their posing and model directing skills for their own shoots. Despite the obvious need of a professional editor, Moore’s writing makes the points that need to be made and offers useful tips with “here’s how I do it” formulas. Some parts may feel repeated, and hopefully that was intentional. As one photographer to another, I mean no ill will to Moore (she has an interview section in my upcoming book from Amherst Media), but her ebook may have been rushed to “press.” A thorough edit would have caught mistakes and repetition and given the ebook a more professional feel. However, the content is solid. Besides, Michelle doesn’t claim to be a professional writer. She is a professional photographer, and a very talented one as evidenced by her work.

The $149 price tag for 69 pages is going to be tough for many photographers to justify, but Michelle reveals real-life, real-shooting techniques that work and have given her the visual voice so easily recognized as hers. The ebook is a PDF, so if you’re expecting an ebook with clickable chapters in the table of contents (which would be nice), or even page numbers, it’s not that kind of ebook. You’ll find some links to gear and books in the end, but that’s about it for interactivity.

As the owner of Moore’s ebook, you are granted exclusive access to a special forum that is “a place for you to interact directly with Michelle herself, as well as the community of Photographers who have also purchased [the] guide.” At the writing of this review the forum is not yet live but purchasers of the ebook will be notified as soon as it is. Perhaps that value to the cost, but in a time when free photography forums are all over the internet, it’s up to you to decide if joining another one is worthy of your time and money.

Ryan Klos – Ryan Klos Photography

In the past we’ve covered making the eyes pop in Lightroom 3 using adjustment brushes, but the introduction of Lightroom 4 has made the entire process much faster and less complicated. Now, using the adjustment brush too and new preset, we can achieve the same—maybe better—results than in version 3.

Lightroom 4 introduced adjustment brush presets to fine-tune things like contrast, temperature and exposure, but it also includes presets like Dodging, Burning, Teeth Whitening and Iris Enhance. This article is going to focus on the Iris Enhance and Dodge (lighten) brush presets.

First we’ll take care of boosting the color in the irises, then we’ll clean up the whites.

Pop the Color in the Iris

To start, zoom in on the eyes of your portrait. Then select the adjustment brush tool, and choose Iris Enhance.

With the Iris Enhance preset selected, paint the irises of your subject. Make sure the inner circle of the brush tool stays inside the colored portion (iris) of the eye to keep the adjustments only where you want them. You should see an immediate and noticeable difference—sharpness, saturation and overall pop!

Photo Caption: In this photo, the eye on the right has been hit with the adjustment brush using the Iris Enhance preset.

The default settings on the Iris Enhance preset are pretty strong for my taste, so I pull back the saturation and exposure sliders just a bit so the eyes remain realistic looking. Too much saturation and exposure can make them appear fake.

Play with the default settings to find what you like best. Don’t be afraid to slide everything down the whole list just to see how each slider affects the iris. You can always bring sliders back to zero by double-clicking the name (for instance, double-click the word Exposure to return the exposure slider to the zero setting).

The Whites of the Eyes

Once you’re happy with the look of the irises, it’s time to clean up the whites of the eyes. Choose a new adjustment brush state by clicking New in the toolbar.

Then, hit the Effect dropdown and choose the Dodge (lighten) preset.

The defaults on the Dodge (lighten) preset may appear a little muted at first, so you might want to push the exposure up a bit to start. You can always go back and adjust it when you’re done painting. Paint the whites of the eyes and make sure the center ring of the tool stays in the white areas.

If the whites of the eyes are too bright and too perfect, they’ll look fake, so increase exposure little by little if you need to. The default setting of 23 might be all you need. Subtlety is key here.

If you feel the whites need a little more pop, leave the exposure at 23 and try adjusting the other sliders. Sometimes I’ll drop the saturation (to remove some of the redness or other tints), then boost the shadows, highlights and contrast. Here’s a look at what my eye whitening recipe might look like. It all depends on the eyes, each person is different and you’ll have to adjust for each.

Here’s the before and after. Nothing too overpowering, but that’s by choice. You can go crazy and make the eyes look perfectly white and saturated, or you can go the realistic route like I did here. The point of enhancing the eyes is to give them a little pop to draw viewers in, not make them look unrealistically perfect.

That’s it, you’re done and the eyes are poppin’! Don’t be afraid to play around with all the settings to see how each slider changes things. You’re working in Lightroom so you can always go back and change your adjustment states because it’s all non-destructive editing. Now start poppin’ those eyes!

Ryan Klos – Ryan Klos Photography

There are numerous reasons why you might want to geotag your photographs, and if you give me a couple of minutes, I may be able to think of one.

Actually, ‘because you can’ is probably sufficient reason and, anyway, it’s nice to be able to see exactly where a picture that you like was taken – I dare say geotagging has been quite a boon to the tourist industry.

Nowadays, there are plenty of cameras and camera phones that automatically geotag pictures as they’re taken, but it would make for a pretty short article if I concentrated on those so I’m going to look at using the Map module to do the geotagging on locationless pictures.

Lightroom’s Map module gives you two methods for putting your photos on the map: there’s the fully manual way, which can be tedious and encourages selectivity in what you tag, or there’s the semi-automatic way, which can do a whole batch of pictures in one go, but is heavily dependent for accuracy on external equipment.

Before diving into actually geotagging pictures, let’s take a quick look at the module as you’d see it in Lightroom:

Here we see the ubiquitous filmstrip at the bottom of the screen, containing all the candidate images for geotagging. Down the left side we have the Navigator pane, which is to the map what the other navigators are to your images, the now-standard Collections pane and, between them, a pane labelled Saved Locations – this is beyond the scope of this article, but you can use it to remember locations that you visit often.

On the right, we have the location metadata of the selected image(s), and in the middle the actual map on which you will drop images to locate them, here including (as all the best TV chefs say) one I prepared earlier.

Images that have location data appear on the map as little flags (yellow if the image is selected, orange if it isn’t). Hover your mouse over a filmstrip image that’s on the map and its flag will do a ‘Me! Me!’ dance to tell you where it is. Hover the mouse over a flag and it’ll pop up a little thumbnail of the associated image(s).

If there are multiple images at a particular location, then the flag sports a number telling you how many there are (and won’t do the dance, possibly because they’re too grown up for that sort of thing). Markers for multiple images can’t be repositioned on the map, unlike single image markers, which you can drag around (see later for a work-around).

At the bottom of the map are a few basic controls:

Map style gives you a few choices on how to view the map (which should be familiar to anyone who’s used Google maps): road, satellite, hybrid, terrain and a couple of odd ones: light and dark. I’m not sure what the last two are for – they seem to be light or dark greyscale versions of the ‘road’ setting.

Next along is a zoom slider. This is probably mostly useful as reference, since the map responds to all the zooming techniques you’d expect: + and – keys, scroll wheel, etc.

The lock icon freezes all the location markers, so you can’t accidentally move Aunt Mabel out into the middle of the ocean, say.

And then there’s the tracklog icon, which we’ll get to later.

The top of the map gives you some filtering options, which I won’t mention further, and a search box, which I will.

Manual Geotagging

So, you’ve been on vacation and got loads of really cool pictures of exotic places. Before actually uploading these pictures to your social networking site of choice, you want to make sure that all your friends can see exactly where they were taken and be suitably envious.

I was in Spain recently…

In order to geotag images, we first have to find the correct place on the map: up on the top right is a search box. Type in the location, hit enter and you’ll be presented with a fairly large scale overview in the main map area.

And there will be a special flag at the point that Lightroom (or Google maps) thinks you mean:

So, I’ve sorted out a few images from a set I took wandering around the village on the first day, and I want to put these on the map so that I get a view of where I went.

The first couple are quite easy: they’re images of the local church, and that shows up readily on the map, because the surrounding area is quite distinctive:

Tagging the pictures is simply a matter of selecting them in the filmstrip and dragging them to the correct location on the map. Once that’s done, their flags show up, and Lightroom fills in the location metadata:

Top tip: dragging and dropping images from the filmstrip can be a pain (especially on big monitors or when using a trackpad). It’s probably easier to select the images, then right-click on the map at the appropriate point. You’ll be presented with a single menu item: ‘Add GPS Coordinates to Selected Photos’. Click that and it’s job done.

Slightly quicker top tip: On the Mac (I don’t know if the equivalent works on Windows – I expect it does), Cmd+click writes the GPS co-ordinates under the pointer directly to the selected image(s) without asking for any sort of confirmation.

As a bonus, this makes a good work-around for not being able to reposition multi-image markers. Just click on the marker to select all the images that it represents, then Cmd+click where they should be, and they’ll all move.

Rinse and repeat, placing more images:

Now I’ve hit a snag. My walk took me down a fairly long road, and I’m not sure exactly where along it the images go. Take this one:

I can’t remember where I stood to take that, and I don’t like the idea of just lumping a load of images together and basically saying “somewhere around here”. (Smart-Alec readers will notice that this image is the one that was already located in the first illustration above. Award yourselves a star.)

Fortunately, Google Earth (or Google maps) can come to the rescue here – at least, as long as your pictures were taken somewhere that’s been visited by the Google van. Just drop into Street View and repeat the walk until you find the place you’re looking for.

Actually, for this purpose, I prefer Google Maps to Google Earth because you can split the window between street and bird’s eye view. In Google Earth, you have to exit Street View to see where on the map you are, and that’s a pain if you’re doing lots of pictures this way.

I’ve found the letterbox, and I can transfer the location as seen in the overview to the Lightroom map. Then it’s a case of ‘walking’ down the road, finding the places where I took the pictures.

Obviously, this doesn’t work if you were out in the countryside, where there are no Street View images. In that case, you’re just going have to resort to Plan C: guess.

This does show up a quirk of Google maps, though: the satellite and road maps don’t always line up properly (I’ve highlighted the road map part in green for ease of viewing):

If the accuracy of placement really matters to you, then you need to decide which of the two views to use and use it consistently. I’ve used the road map view purely because that’s where the marker on Google maps appeared, so I reckoned that that one gives the slightly more accurate position.

So, that’s manual placement. A bit long-winded and you’re definitely not going to want to use it on all 500 pictures that you took on that long walk.

If you do want to tag all 500, though, then there’s no getting away from the need for something that’s GPS-capable and that can write tracklogs. And so we come to:

Semi-automatic Geotagging

I’m not going to go into all the devices and apps that can create tracklogs. I use an iPhone app called MotionX GPS. It does the job. I’m certain there are other apps (and specialised equipment) that can do a better job, and lots that will be worse.

Nor am I going to go into how to get the tracklog onto your computer where Lightroom can read it. Go check the manual – it’ll be different to anything I say here, anyway…

The only thing I will note is that, if your device gives you a choice of file formats, you want to choose GPX for importing into Lightroom.

It should be obvious that it’s a good idea to ensure that your camera’s clock is correct and synchronised with your GPS recorder. Differences between the camera and the GPS unit of whole hours are pretty easy to cope with, but if the camera clock is 13’ 27” slow, then things are going to get a whole lot trickier.

So, you’ve synchronised your camera and GPS recorder, been out for a walk, taken some pictures, come home, put the tracklog somewhere convenient on your computer and imported the pictures into Lightroom. What next?

Remember that symbol next to the lock icon from earlier? Let’s click on it.

Select Load Tracklog… and find the GPX file that you retrieved from your GPS tracker earlier. Lightroom will load the tracklog and adjust the map to display it:

At this point, it’s possible to tidy up any whole-hour differences between your picture times and the GPS times. Click on the tracklog icon again (or go up to the Map menu and follow the Tracklog side-menu) and you’ll find Set Time Zone Offset…

Clicking on that will bring up a dialog that you can use to adjust the hours part of the tracklog timestamps to match the hours part of the image timestamps. Actually, you can also adjust the minutes, if you’re good at converting sexagesimal to decimal (note the input box; the slider has a granularity of 1 hour).

Having done that, select all the photos in the film strip (Cmd/Ctrl+A or Edit->Select All), click the tracklog icon (or Map->Tracklog) and choose Auto-Tag <n> Selected Photos.

And presto … there they are!

Much easier than the fully manual method.

Well, sort of…

The technology’s not perfect, let’s face it. If you’re going to tidy up, I recommend turning off the tracklog (the command is under the Tracklog menu – see pictures above), otherwise Lightroom will try to snap the markers to the track.

Conclusion

If you’re like me and only occasionally geotag pictures ‘because you can’ or as a reminder of exactly where specific shots were taken, then the Map module does a perfectly adequate job. As an alternative, there’s also Jeffrey Friedl’s Geoencoding plugin, which does just as good a job and has a couple of extra tricks up its sleeve, but it’s a plugin and works in a dialog box, rather than as a neat module.

On the other hand, if you need to have accurate location info for all of your pictures, then you’ve probably got a GPS module for the camera and you don’t really need the Map module.

How are you geo-tagging your images? Let us know in the comments!

Graham Douglas – Grey Dog Photography

XeL:Color - a Free Sampler Pack for Lightroom 4

As usual, we’re amped up.

We want to share our newest creation: XeL:Color, and ask for your feedback to help us make these amazing and relevant for use in your creative process.

Michael Gray, XeL Technical Director, gives us a breakdown of XeL:Color:

XeL: Color* is our newest product that brings a touch of the old darkroom into Lightroom. Focusing on color film stocks, XeL strives to bring the unique color renditions of film to your Lightroom workflow, letting you season your images with a little traditional spice.

While we offer many current film emulations, we also provide a litany of emulations of film stock that is no longer available, archiving their unique presence as much as possible while allowing them to live a new digital life. XeL emulations are designed to be quick, intuitive and simple while remaining true to the film.

These emulations are a labor of love, each developed from rolls I shot or from the best samples of long dead film stock I could find. WE truly hope you enjoy these presets and they find a home in your workflow.

What do they look like?

Here’s a sample image processed exclusively with the XeL:Color Sampler Pack

(click image to view larger)

Sample XeL:Color Presets (from left to right):

1. Original Image
2. Handpainted
3. Kodak High Definition 400
4. Fuji Velvia 50
5. Agfa RSX II 50

Just a Reminder

If you buy XeL:Black and White, XeL:Local Adjustments, or the X-Equals Big Box you’ll automatically get a free copy of XeL:Color when it goes live.

Download the goods.

• Here’s the link to download the Free Sampler Pack.
• Download the files and follow the installation instructions

If you need help

• What’s XeL? Funny you should ask.
• Installation of X-Equals Presets is a snap! … we even have a video that shows you how!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNUfA1Vatug

What we ask of you

• Please give us your feedback!
• You can find us here, on Twitter, and Facebook!
• Read about getting the most out of XeL Presets.
• Share your images with us!

*XeL:Color is designed and developed for Adobe Lightroom 4.

Note from the Editor

A week or so ago Jeff Tamagini posted this photo on Twitter – mentioning he leveraged XeL:Black and White in his workflow. Naturally, we took notice of such a sweet image and asked him to describe in more detail how he processed this shot. Lucky for all of us he accepted! Now … on to the goodness!

X-Equals XeL – Real World, Kick A** Results

First things first, thanks to the X-Equals team for giving me the opportunity to do a guest post to go through the process I used for my photo Dreaming. I have been a fan of the presets these guys have made for a long time, but once Lightroom 4 came around the old presets didn’t function quite the same.

My main reason for wanting to upgrade to the XeL Black and White presets was speed.  I will fully disclose, when I am editing one off photos I am going to open Nik Silver Efex Pro 2 or Color Efex Pro 4. But when I shoot events where I have hundreds of photos to process these programs, as great they are, will just not do, they can not batch process and time becomes an issue.

… my main goal in creating this photo was to test how the XeL Black and White stacked up against Nik Silver Efex Pro 2 (SEP2) with minimal tweaking after applying the presets.

The technical aspects of this photo are the following. It was shot with a Canon 5D mark II with a Canon EF 70-200 f/2.8IS. I was zoomed to 200mm, an ISO of 800, aperture of f/5.6, and a shutter speed of 1/125th. The reason for the high ISO is that this particular photoshoot was done in conjunction with the lighting company FJ Westcott and I used their Spiderlite TD6’s which are continuous lights that are daylight balanced. Since there is no flash of light, a higher ISO is needed to get a faster shutter speed to freeze the movement of the model.

Again my main goal in creating this photo was to test how the XeL Black and White stacked up against Nik Silver Efex Pro 2 (SEP2) with minimal tweaking after applying the presets. But my very first step in this process was to open this photo up in Photoshop to retouch it.

My retouching included blemish removal, skin softening, sharpening, some minor dodging and burning. All in all I would say it was a 10 minute retouch. When it was finish I headed back into Lightroom with the photo below.

In Lightroom, I went into the Develop Module and with the retouched photo selected I created a virtual copy by pressing CMD+’ on the mac or CNTL+’ on windows. On that virtual copy I right clicked and selected Edit in then Silver Efex Pro 2. It brings up a dialog box of some choices and I always choose Edit a Copy with Lightroom Adjustments. This creates another copy and launches SEP2.

After SEP2 launched I left everything set to its defaults which is neutral and on the right under Film Type I chose Illford Delta 100 Pro and I clicked save. The edited Tiff file is now back in Lightroom.

Now, back on that virtual copy I first created from the retouched photo I went and applied the XeL presets. Still in the Develop Module, I expanded the XeL – BW Cold Storage Films folder in the Presets panel on the left and scrolled through the tons of options till I reached the Illford section. I applied the 3 presets, Illford Delta 100 Pro Mix, Tone and Grain.

… the XeL edited shot appears to have been automatically dodged and burned in the correct places. That is very cool.

Wow, I believe was the word that came out of my mouth. I compared the two photos side by side. The only other thing I did to both photos to was to drop the Highlights to -30 and I also opened up the Shadows to +14. Both of those adjustments are available under the Basic rollout within the Develop Module.

That is it everything else was left to the defaults. When you look at the photos side by side, you can see that the SEP edited photo (on the left) seems flatter and slightly over exposed compared to the XeL processed file (on the right). In fact, the XeL edited shot appears to have been automatically dodged and burned in the correct places. That is very cool.

If you are someone that is just getting started with Lightroom and love black and white photos the XeL presets are an amazing set of presets for very little cost. If you are someone that shoots lots of event work and needs a streamlined and fast workflow these are also for you.

Thanks to X-Equals for creating an awesome set of develop and adjustment brush presets they really are amazing. Also thanks to Dawn for being a fantastic model and to FJ Westcott for providing the lighting for the shoot.

Jeff Tamagini – Tamagini Design

Today, I’m going to walk through some topics that have been inquired about by different users. It is quite likely that if one person is asking a question, many others are as well, so it seems in everyone’s best interests to shed some light on a few points.

I want to leverage XeL to create quality simulations of film and paper processes. To this extent there are a couple tips to get the best accuracy and appearance out of these presets.

When using XeL, we have noticed that there are two distinct users: those who are looking to accelerate their workflow, and create a replicable look. These users that the presets as they are and appreciate what they offer and use them to enhance their workflow.

On the other hand, there are many users who are truly looking to simulate the look of film. I am like these users; I want to leverage XeL to create quality simulations of film and paper processes. To this extent there are a couple tips to get the best accuracy and appearance out of these presets.

First, I want to make clear that these emulations are based off of rolls of film that I personally shot and processed. There is no tool for any image manipulation package that can offer 100% accuracy of any film emulation. Each batch of film is unique and personal shooting and development habits alter the results garnered from any particular film.

I tried to control the exposure process as much as possible to ensure response consistency from roll to roll. And I documented in the manual what developer I used for each emulation. All emulations were developed in a completely color corrected work flow, ensuring the best possible reproduction.

However, every camera is different and not all workflows are color calibrated, so we need to set everything up in Lightroom correctly to reproduce results similar to that which I garnered on the physical rolls. So let’s jump in with the big one.

Camera Profiles

The foremost tool to get the most accurate reproduction of film stock is camera profiles. All of the XeL film emulations were generated using a neutral calibrated custom profile, which is also the best tool to reproduce the emulation. However, suitable results can be garnered utilizing other profiles.

Camera profiles are found in the Camera Calibration tab of the Develop Module. Simply click on the Profile drop down menu to find and apply the desired profile.

The most accurate profile to use would be a custom made profile, utilizing your camera, a color checker chart, and Adobe DNG Profile Editor. Using these tools, and shooting the test shot in diffuse lighting will allow you to create a profile with neutral color, providing the best possible data to Lightroom for further manipulation.

In the absence of a custom profile, the Camera Neutral profile offers the most accurate results.

The second best profile to use would be the Camera Neutral profile provided by Adobe for your particular camera. If your camera model is supported, you should find a series of profiles in the Profile drop down named Camera Landscape, Camera Neutral, camera portrait, and so forth. These profiles are created by adobe and are averaged responses for your particular model of camera.

Simply choose the Camera Neutral profile. This will allow for gentle, neutral colors which will aid in accurate emulation. These are close to a custom profile, but by no means completely accurate. They are based on Adobe’s testing of cameras of the same model, but there are differences in sensors between cameras in each model. Custom profiles correct for this, but the Camera Neutral profile does not.

In the absence of a custom profile, the Camera Neutral profile offers the most accurate results.

A final fallback to consider is the ACR 4.6 profile. While not as neutral as I would desire, it produces good images, but not as accurate as I would desire. However it produces results much more accurate than the Adobe Standard profile. If for some reason you cannot create a custom profile and your camera does not offer a Camera Neutral profile, Adobe 4.6 would be the best profile to choose.

Now, I need to qualify these recommendations. Just because a profile offers the most accurate emulation, it does not mean it is the “best” option for any given image. Your personal taste matters much more than emulation accuracy. When dealing with important images, take some time to look at what the other profiles have to offer. Do not shoehorn yourself into always using Camera Neutral for accuracy, especially when Camera Vivid may produce a much more appealing image.

XeL is designed to accelerate your workflow and allow you to think in terms more along traditional film photography. It is designed to allow you to quickly and easily create beautiful black and white images. It is not designed to constrain your art.

Creating a Custom Profile

I highly recommend checking out our series Playing With Color –Camera Profiles, which covers the use of Camera Profiles in depth. But of importance here, we want to be sure you know how to create a custom DNG Profile. So I recommend starting with Part 2 of that series to jump into using Adobe DNG Profile Editor to make that custom profile for your emulation needs.

I attempted to make a DNG Profile Editor recipe to use exclusively with XeL presets, but I could not find a recipe that would be easily applied to all camera makes and produce reliable results. I found making custom profiles for each camera body was much more accurate than trying to reuse a recipe over and over. Each camera sensor is so different, and there is no one size fits all solution. So for best results, I recommend making the custom profile, and aside from that, shooting with the Adobe provided Camera Neutral profile.

My only big tip for creating custom profiles, which diverges from that in the article link above, is that when shooting the color checker for creating the profile, use good diffuse light and shoot the target with every camera you have available. This will ensure that the profiles created will be consistent from body to body. If you add another camera later, you will have to try to recreate the exact setup, or create new profiles for each camera.

Fixing Banded and Broken Images

Many of the XeL presets really push the Grayscale Mixer to reproduce the look of classic films. The results of really pushing images, especially high contrast images, can lead to images “breaking”. Breaking is when there becomes noticeable banding and borders around content in the image. It could appear as halos, color bands, hard lines or solid blotchy areas of white.

The first step is to try different camera profiles. The more flat and neutral the starting image is, the less likely contrast artifacts will occur. Also, limit use of Sharpening whenever possible. Edge sharpening will also increase the acutance of artifacts as well as edges.

There are a few ways to alleviate these artifacts aside from using profiles, the first being to reduce the overall image contrast. By reducing the contrast, we can hopefully reduce the local high contrast around content. Try slowly lowering the global Contrast sliders lowly and see if the artifacts start to reduce. If the reduction is not evident, or it alters the overall image in a distracting way hit Ctrl/Cmd + Z to undo.

Next try lowering Clarity. Clarity itself is a form of local contrast, and by reducing it you can often eliminate many of the artifacts. Again, slowly lower the slider to see if the artifacts are reduced. If not, then undo the edit.

If the preceding options did not help, and you are not using White Balance as an artistic tool, try setting the white balance at varying levels around the image. White balance actually compresses the range of your image, by setting the white point higher or lower. By setting the White Balance by using the eye dropper on the whitest portions of the image, you can often expand the range and eliminate some of the artifacts apparent between white and black high contrast areas.

Be sure to adjust the Blacks slider as well when using the White Balance adjustment. By setting a higher White Balance and lowering the Blacks slider, you can often eliminate contrast artifacts without changing too much of the overall image.

To be sure you are setting the White Balance to the brightest white point, turn on the highlight clipping alert (press j on your keyboard to toggle clipping alerts on/ff) and use the eyedropper to select areas that are red, denoting clipping. Apply the white balance and then click again on an area that is still red. Do this until there is little to no red visible from the clipping warning.

The final method, which is also the most destructive to your image and the emulations, is to use the eyedropper tool and the Grayscale mixer to shift the color response to colors present in the artifact infected area of the image. Click on an artifact with the eyedropper and move the mouse back and forth and see if there is any improvement. If so, keep it and repeat in a different area. If not, simply undo the adjustments with Ctrl/Cmd + Z.

Be careful using the Mixer Eyedropper, as you can easily create as many issues as you fix. Always take time to zoom and or pan around you image to see if you are creating problems elsewhere. Use a little of all the methods in unison to garner the best results.

Finally, when all else fails, If you are not adverse to grain enhanced images, a medium grain application can often alleviate the artifacts by obscuring them. However, this is often not something that is aesthetically or commercially viable, depending on the need or your client or your desires.

Shoot for Success

Keep in mind, that some images just will never look right when being pushed hard in Lightroom. Black and White conversions are especially hard on images simply due to the reduction of range, converting to color to monochrome. Sometimes you will have to balance your artistic desires with what the image and Lightroom will allow you to do. But you can alleviate the problems by shooting specifically for a Lightroom workflow.

The best way to ensure that you are able to fully manipulate your images is to be sure you are creating the most data possible at the time of capture. We featured an article a while back that covered some tips for making sure you take the best possible images you use in Lightroom, these tips apply as much to XeL as they do to Lightroom in general. I highly recommend reviewing Shoot for Success – Expose for Lightroom, and put some of these practices into place.

When you shoot your images for Lightroom, allowing for range flexibility for the Lightroom engine, you will find you run into these issues less frequently. Yes, following these tips will often lend to a bland image on import or on your preview image. But think of that preview or image upon import as an old roll of film. The image is there, just not developed. Complete the envisioned image in Lightroom. The lower contrast and added range garnered by following the tips from Shoot for Success – Expose for Lightroom will allow for a much larger range of adjustments before effecting image quality.

Final Thoughts

As I explained before, there is not 100% accurate emulation of any film stock or any darkroom process. We can only approximate in our emulation endeavors. No one, not X-Equals, Nik Software, nor Alien Skin will ever be able to say “This emulation is perfect” and that is because there is no perfect. Every batch of film, for every emulsion ever made, has been unique. Every developer, every development process, and all labs will produce a unique product when developing or printing out film.

Each of these emulations was based on sample rolls that I shot, developed and analyzed myself. While I used as much of my science and engineering knowledge as I could in the process, it all really came down to my color calibrated workflow and my eyes. I used as much objective technique as I could, but the final emulations were the result of subjective observation and application.

In other words, these presets emulate the response of a series of frames taken from a single roll of film. They emulate that specific result only, results I created. Every time an XeL film emulation preset is used, it is echoing results I garnered from shooting a test roll in my front yard in mid-Missouri. It does not recreate results you may have achieved in 1988 on a roll of Tri-X ran through HC-110. The paper emulations do not emulate a sheet of Fotokemika Varycon paper developed in Dektol 6 years ago. XeL is a result of result of my personal work, photographically and chemically.

XeL aims to breathe a bit of traditional photography into the digital world. It is a direct application of science to reproducing effects of art, and as such is imperfect. If you truly want results identical to Kodak Panatomic X shot at box speed and ran through D-76, you would have to actually shoot that film, develop it and print it out. This is hard now days, as Pan-X has been discontinued for over a decade and the remaining rolls aren’t getting any younger.

Each emulation sample I have taken has been stored with notes, so that I can always go back and revisit the emulations as technology, both in analysis and image software, improves. I hope everyone understands the scope of the project, beyond making emulations of classic films available, is to document and archive the results I personally garnered with each of these wonder film stocks.

Hopefully you find XeL useful to your personal workflow. Those who have purchased this collection of presets hves directly contributed to me hunting down films I have not had the pleasure of shooting and documenting them similarly – and I will continue my efforts to emulate said films. I feel it is important, and many of you find them useful for your needs. I hope today’s article will help you get better results from these tools.

Thanks for your support.

Michael W. Gray – X-Equals – Click. Download. Smile.

Working with the Lightroom 4 Book Module

Note from the Editor

Graham Douglas is one of my favorite new Guest Writers. I totally love his new piece on using the Lightroom Book Module – hopefully you will feel the same. As always, please share your thoughts in the comments below.

Now … on to the knowledge bomb!

Working with the the Lightroom Book Module

I love picture books. For me, it’s just not a photograph unless it’s been printed and either hung on a wall or bound into a book. I’ve made a few books of photographs using Blurb’s BookSmart software, so I was rather excited to see the new Book module make an appearance in Lightroom 4.

The problem with using BookSmart was always one of keeping the images synchronised with the Lightroom originals. This was ameliorated somewhat when Blurb brought out their Publish plugin – finally I didn’t have to keep manual track of which images I’d recently changed. There was still the issue of having to swap between apps, and being confident that BookSmart had picked up the latest version, but, well, life needs its little hardships.

The Lightroom Book module is capable of producing perfectly adequate books and, for many purposes, it’s all you’ll need.

But now we can create a Blurb book right inside Lightroom: no app switching, no worries about picking up the right version, no need to remember to hit the ‘Publish’ button. But how does it stack up against BookSmart as a way of constructing a book? I already knew that you can’t edit or create custom templates, but how much of a problem would that prove in real life?

To test this out, I decided to try re-creating a book (here) that I’d made about a year ago as part of a project for my college photography course. It’s a fairly simple book, less than 40 pages with only a couple of pages of text and it mostly uses standard BookSmart page templates, so it seemed a good choice for a first dive into the murky realms of the Lightroom Book Module.

Before we start

This is not a tutorial. For that, I can heartily recommend Julianne Kost’s excellent 3-part video series over on Adobe TV (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3). What I will be doing is recounting my experience of trying to put together a book based solely on having watched Julianne Kost’s videos and poked about with the Book module a couple of times. As such, I’ll have made mistakes, gone down blind alleys and not have done things in the most optimal way – but that’s part of the learning experience and also a function of the effectiveness of the user interface.

Let’s dive in

For reference, this is the book in BookSmart, showing the book’s cover.

Since I’ve already made the book, I have a collection inside Lightroom containing all the images that I want:

so, I select the collection and enter the Book module.

(At this point Lightroom will, by default, ask you if you want to autofill the images. Personally, I don’t see the point in doing that right at the start, so I had already turned the preference off):

This preferences dialog can be found under the ‘Book’ menu when you’re in that module.)

What type of book?

The first thing to consider is the size and style of the book you’re creating. I already knew that I wanted a Standard Landscape, soft cover, Premium Lustre paper (I was a poor student – it needed to be cheap, OK?). And here comes the first deal-breaker: no soft cover option. I could have Hardcover Dust Jacket or Hardcover Image Wrap, but no Softcover option was available.

On the plus side, though, it does give you an estimated price right up front: something you don’t get with BookSmart.

Laying out the book

So now it’s time to get the pictures into the book in something approximating the final order. I had a couple of things to consider at this point

1. The collection contains more pictures than would eventually be used in the book
2. There are two ‘sets’ of pictures – a main ‘narrative’ set and a ‘details’ set.

What I would like to do is to use Auto Layout to put the narrative set in place, and then add the detail images manually. Easier requested than done, though – Auto Layout uses all the pictures in the film strip, even though I had selected the ones I wanted to put in. I think Adobe have missed a trick here: Auto Layout is potentially a time-saver, but without a little bit more control you could end up wasting as much time as you’d saved undoing some of the things it’s done.

Still, in this case it’s simple enough to correct, since all the pictures I want to remove are consecutive, so I click on the first page and then shift-click on the last page. That didn’t do what I wanted, though – it only selected the two pages that I clicked on.

It took me a little while to figure out what was going on here: you have to be careful not to click on an image or text cell, because then you’re selecting cells (for which range select doesn’t really make sense). Unfortunately, Auto Layout had used a full-bleed template for every page, so it’s impossible not to click a cell if you click anywhere on the page thumbnail.

The best way I’ve found to ensure that it’s pages you’re selecting is to click on the page number under the thumbnail. That way, range select works just fine.

This still left another issue: I couldn’t find a way to autofill using a specific template: no matter what I tried, it always created new pages using a default, full-bleed template. I assume that I’ll find out how if I dig a bit deeper, but I’d just like it to be more obvious, if there is a way to do it. Anyway, it’s simple enough to select all the pages and apply a new template that’s more like the one I want.

So, the book now looks like this:

Time for a break…

At this point, I felt that I needed a break. Before sloping off for a nice cup of tea, though, I thought I’d better just save the book and get rid of that distressing ‘Unsaved Book’ label at the top of the page. So I clicked ‘Create Book’, gave it a name in the subsequent dialog and clicked ‘Create’. If only I’d spotted that check box lurking, I’d have saved myself another minor annoyance a bit later on…

So, back to the book. To recap, I’ve got the basic narrative pictures in place; now I have to tidy up the layout and insert the detail pictures, add the text pages and fix up the cover. As reminder, this is what the book looks like at this stage:

It’s looking OK, but all the pictures are in the middle of the page – in the original, I had moved them to the right and slightly down to break up that symmetry and give a bit more ‘life’ to the page. In BookSmart, this is quite easy – you just select all the images and apply ‘Align Right-Bottom (don’t crop)’. This will fit the image and align it to either the right or bottom edge of the cell, depending on the relative aspect ratios. But there’s no such option in the Book module.

At this point (given hindsight) I made a possible mistake – I started looking around for a layout template that put the image more to the right of the page and eventually found a two-picture layout that seemed to work. (This image includes the effect of padding as described below.)

It’s worth pointing out here that, just because you want to put only one picture on a page, doesn’t mean you should restrict yourself to looking only in the ‘1 Photo’ layout section.

So, I’ve got the pictures over to the right, but they’re still in the middle vertically. Now I remembered what I should have remembered before: namely, that you can adjust the padding around the picture within the cell.

By deselecting the ‘Link All’ checkbox, you can control the position of the image. Here I’ve added some padding to the top to move the image down in the cell to the position I want. I could have moved the image around in the original layout, by adjusting the left and top padding and saved myself the task of applying another layout. That would work, but it would have made the image smaller and may not have looked quite right. As with so many things, there are multiple ways of achieving an end, and you may need to experiment to find the best one in any given circumstance.

One thing I found that surprised me slightly is that copying and pasting a layout (select a page, right-click and choose ‘Copy Layout’ – or Cmd/Ctrl C, select another page, right-click and choose ‘Paste Layout’ – or Cmd/Ctrl V) inserts a page in front of the second one you selected. My initial feeling was that pasting a layout on a page should change that page. To change a page layout, you have to click on the down arrow at the bottom-right of the thumbnail and choose the layout you want – this works across a multiple selection, by the way.

Finishing the main section

Given what I had learned from the previous attempts, it was a fairly simple matter to add the rest of the pictures in their correct places and move them into the positions that I wanted.

One minor annoyance cropped up here, from the point where I had initially created the book – it only copied over those images from the original collection that I had already added to the book. Remember that the Create Book dialog has check box that I missed first time around:

It meant a quick round trip to the old collection to transfer the remaining pictures to the book collection – a small thing, but something to remember for the future.

Adding text pages

This turned out to be the simplest process so far – it was just a matter of looking for a template that had a text box in approximately the correct position, and then using the justification controls (seen at the bottom of the Type control panel) to position it to my liking.

Headers and footers

This is a feature that I wasn’t able to replicate exactly. The original book had page numbers at the bottom and the book title at the top of the page. The Book module allows you to add a page caption at the top or the bottom but not both, so I could have either the title or the page numbers.

Add to that that there doesn’t seem to be a way of automatically inserting the page number, and we have another potential deal-breaker.

The book cover

This was the trickiest part of the book to reproduce, and the least satisfactory, since there was no template that was at all close to the original layout. The best I could come up with was this layout:

To get the long, thin image, I made a virtual copy of the ‘real’ image, cropped it to the appropriate aspect ratio, and positioned it within the (full-bleed) cell using the padding controls as before. The image for the back cover was near enough, so I didn’t change it. Front cover text was easy enough to add, but I could not replicate the positioning of the original.

I should add that I could have used the ‘whole page picture’ trick that Julianne Kost describes in one of her videos (basically, construct the page as an image using something like Photoshop, and just add it to the book on a full-bleed template). Yes, that would have worked here, but as a general solution, it’s not really practical if you have more than a few pages to mock up this way.

Conclusion

The truth is that I like the Book module, but I’m not going to be ditching BookSmart in the foreseeable future.

The Lightroom Book module is capable of producing perfectly adequate books and, for many purposes, it’s all you’ll need. If you want more control over your layout, though, you’re going to find yourself going back to BookSmart or InDesign.

I should also point out that this review is based on a little bit of poking about after viewing Julianne Kost’s tutorials, in addition to the project described here. If any of this article sounds negative, that’s probably more to do with my unfamiliarity than any real failings of the module. I’m sure that, if I tried to do this with another book, it would all go much more smoothly, and with possibly better results.

That said, there are things missing that could make it into much more serious contender for being the go-to tool for creating serious books.

My suggestions for things I’d like to see in the Book module in future releases:

1. Editable templates, please!
2. More automation for things like page numbering, book title, author.
3. The ability to export the book so that it could then be imported into BookSmart or InDesign. That way, you can get the bulk of the book done in Lightroom and tweak it in a more powerful editor (not unlike tweaking photos in Photoshop after developing them in Lightroom).

Of these, the ability to export the book would probably be the simplest addition that would cause me to use the Book module by choice every time: it shouldn’t be under-emphasised that staying within Lightroom whilst creating the book is a great boon. To be able to quickly switch to the Develop module to tweak a picture or to be able to quickly add a photo from anywhere in your library really is a time-saver.

I want this module to be great. It’s not there, yet, but it’s early days and it’s certainly well on the way.

Graham Douglas – Grey Dog Photography

$24.99 – XeL:Black and White + XeL:Local Adjustments

All XeL Presets are 100% Lightroom 4 Compatible!

We’re so amped to bring you another chance to get the complete XeL Toolkit for Lightroom at a sweet price.

Purchase XeL:Black and White for Lightroom now and get XeL: Local Adjustments for FREE.

What’s included in the download?

First off, we’ll start with Xel:Black and White

XeL: Black and White is a massive collection of over 300 presets, consisting of:

• Antiquated process emulations
• Over 50 classic film emulations
• A selection of digital color filters, emulating the use of filters in film photography.
• A full range of presets simulating variable contrast paper effects
• A selection of toning presets, to add that special touch.
• Solarization, custom tone curves, basic B&W color mixes, and ND filters
• Special graphic arts effects, including 2-Tone and Reduced Tone images.

Unlike other black and white toolkits, XeL:Black and White is not a stand alone application or a plug-in, but rather a collection of finely tuned presets that support a completely nondestructive workflow, while retaining all the benefits and flexibility of working in RAW.

Sample image from XeL: Black and White Curve Kick

Grab the XeL:Black and White User Guide and take a peek.

Here’s a full copy of the XeL:Black and White User Guide, which includes installation details, some sample workflows, samples of the Presets included in the download, and tips on their usage!

Second, you’ll also get XeL:Local Adjustments for free.

XeL: Local Adjustments represents a new paradigm in the use of Lightroom presets in a photographer’s workflow. XeL takes the X-Equals Preset Platform concept to the next logical evolutionary step, reimagining presets as tools to be used in symphony to quickly perfect a photo.

Dig in and use some of our XeL: Local Adjustments Tips and Techniques. They’re fun, easy, and EFFECTIVE.

Want to learn more about the XeL Platform? … we’ve got a complete overview for you right here.

Here’s a full copy of the XeL:Local Adjustments User Guide, which includes installation details, some sample workflows, samples of the Presets included in the download, and tips on their usage!

Here is a taste of the XeL: Local Adjustments Presets included in the free download.

XeL Dodge

This preset locally lightens an area of your image by increasing Exposure. The ideal brush for single stroke application seems to be a Feather of 33, Flow of 75 and Denisty of 75. Flow and Density can be decreased if you are planning a layered approach. Feathering is important to using XeL Dodge, as if it is used without Feathering it will create a definitive line around the area of adjustment.

XeL Focus Softly

The lightest of the Softening presets, Focus Softly applies a subtle softening to your image. Like the other Focus presets the brush is designed to be applied with at Flow and Density of 100. Also, you can layer applications of Focus presets to further control the level of image softening.

XeL Blushing

XeL Blushing’s purpose is to apply a reasonably natural blush to your subject. For best effect I recommend starting out with a Brush using a Feather of 30, Flow of 50 and Density of 50. For more controlled blush response, lower the brush settings even more and layer the effect with 2-3 stacked local adjustment brush masks.

Of course … everything is Lightroom 4 compatible – so get into the XeL platform now and drop us a line if we can assist you!

Thank You!

All of us at X-Equals welcome your feedback and comments as we continue to focus on delivering no-nonsense advice and innovative products to keep you inspired!

My personal thanks goes out to you for taking the journey with us.

|Brandon Oelling – Editor in Chief
X-Equals – Click. Download. Smile.

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