Nerd Alert! – Lightroom 11 Masking Baby Steps
Do the new Lightroom 11 masking tools have you confused and frustrated? Learn how to work the old way by watching our free Lightroom 11 Masking Baby Steps...
24 January, 2022
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Seven Deadly Booby Traps in Lightroom Classic
I love Lightroom, but it’s not without a few pitfalls. After years of real-world studio and classroom experience, I’ve identified a bunch of booby traps that consistently derail...
23 April, 2020
Don’t Wreck Your Image
Do’s and Don’ts of Editing Wreck Photos Whether moody or magnificent, wreck shots can be a real challenge to edit. Typically taken in less-than-optimal conditions, most wreck photos need...
16 April, 2020
Spot Check
Two Dirty Tricks that Remove Backscatter in Photoshop Ugh. Backscatter. It’s the nemesis of every underwater photographer. Many have tried, but no one’s been able to conjure the sorcery...
13 April, 2020
Adding an Edge
Using Photoshop’s Crop Tool in tandem with Content Aware Fill, you can tack on canvas area and add a little breathing room to an otherwise cramped composition. In some...
13 April, 2020
More Shooting, Less Troubleshooting – How to Prepare your Digital Tools for Travel
There’s nothing worse than discovering you’re missing a critical piece of gear on a long-awaited dive adventure. Most underwater photographers stress out before a trip, checking and re-checking...
02 October, 2019
The Secret Life of Collections in Lightroom
Many people get off on the wrong foot with Lightroom. They jump straight into the Develop Module, hoping to attain instant editing wizardry. They suffer through the drudgery...
06 September, 2019
Texture vs. Clarity vs. Dehaze
Finding the Perfect Punch for Your Pictures I simultaneously love and fear the addition of any significant new feature in Lightroom or Photoshop. Love, because it potentially enriches my...
06 September, 2019
Spin Doctoring – Creative Blur Effects in Photoshop
Panning or rotating the camera at slow shutter speeds creates motion blur. It’s a technique that can yield exciting, evocative images, but the learning curve for producing predictable...
04 March, 2019
Mastering a Develop Module Workflow
There’s a yin-yang involved with post-production in Lightroom. In the Library Module, building an asset management strategy often seems more like a chore than a creative endeavor, while...
12 November, 2018
How to Relink Missing or Offline Files in Lightroom
I don’t know a single Lightroom user (me included) who hasn’t noticed alarming exclamation point or question mark icons sullying their Lightroom Library. It can be downright scary...
12 November, 2018
Content Awareness – Removing Unwanted Objects From Your Images
Content Aware Fill is a quasi-magical Photoshop process that removes bubbles, backscatter and bozos from your pictures. When it works as intended, Content Aware Fill is a beginner-level...
12 November, 2018
Here Comes the Judge – 10 Tips for Winning Photo Contests
As a frequent judge of underwater photo competitions, I’m tasked to evaluate thousands of competing images. It’s rare that the technical merits of an image, though critically important,...
12 November, 2018
Lightroom Classic CC vs. Lightroom CC – Which one is right for you?
Lightroom is Adobe’s professional level one-stop-shop for organizing, editing, and sharing images. It’s the perfect companion to Photoshop, and has been the photo editing industry standard for more...
12 November, 2018
Fixed Focus – How to Sharpen Out-of-Focus Eyes Using Photoshop
Of all the miracles Photoshop can perform, fixing soft focus isn’t one of them. There’s simply no existing post-production voodoo that can restore acceptable photographic sharpness to large...
12 November, 2018
Jump Start Your Editing with New Easy-To-Use Profiles in Lightroom Classic
In “What’s Wrong with This Image? Mastering a Develop Module Workflow”, I emphasized the importance of selecting a camera profile early in the editing process. Lightroom has long...
12 November, 2018
Five Invaluable (but hidden) Lightroom Features
As Lightroom evolves, new functionality is added to what’s already a stunningly deep piece of software. Showy new features get lots of exposure, but subtler components of an...
12 November, 2018
Home on the Range
Mastering Lightroom Classic’s Color and Luminance Range Masking Tools With the addition of Color and Luminance Range Masking to Lightroom Classic, Adobe bestowed new superpowers to the Adjustment Brush,...
12 November, 2018
Essential Keyboard Shortcuts
Don't wait to get good in Lightroom and Photoshop before learning a few keyboard shortcuts. Learning them is how you get good! Download my Essential Keyboard Shortcuts for...
15 August, 2018
Wreck Tech in Post – 3 tips for editing wreck photos
I love working with wreck photos. They’re rich with all kinds of form, texture and gritty, scratchy detail. They’re dramatic and moody, and hold up surprisingly well in...
21 December, 2017
Where the #$&! Are My Images?
Digital Asset Management 101 for Lightroom The single most common question I'm asked about Lightroom is "Where the #$&! are my images?". Understanding how Lightroom manages and displays information...
21 December, 2017
The Right Stuff – Best Tools for Getting Spots Out of Your Shots
I wish I had a magic bullet for backscatter removal, but the truth of the matter is that to get spots out of your shots, you’ve got to...
21 December, 2017
Take Your RAW Adjustments to Eleven
Why take your RAW adjustments to eleven? Because it’s one louder than ten, as Spinal Tap’s Nigel Tufnel so aptly puts it. The expression "taking it to eleven"...
21 December, 2017
Detail Oriented – Getting Tack Sharp Images in Post with the Detail Panel
Don’t get too excited. The techniques in this article won’t rescue your out-of-focus images. Out-of-focus photos can’t be recovered in post, but you can (and should) enhance the...
21 December, 2017
Puppet Warp
Let’s take a look at an advanced technique in Photoshop that purists would consider a cheat, but is a fantastic tool for those not so worried about bending...
21 December, 2017
Pimp Your Grid in Lightroom
It’s easy to customize the Lightroom Library’s Grid and Loupe Views to display useful information. Searching, sorting, and rating are much easier when you can see specific metadata...
21 December, 2017
Out Damn Spot!
Quick and Dirty Backscatter Removal in Photoshop There are as many ways to remove backscatter as there are to shoot it, but the technique I’m about to show you...
21 December, 2017
One Catalog to Rule Them All
Using a single catalog makes the most of Lightroom’s superpowers A Lightroom catalog is much like an old-school card catalog in a brick-and-mortar library. It contains all kinds of...
21 December, 2017
Retouching for Good or Evil with Photoshop’s Liquify Filter
The fashion industry has long laid claim to Photoshop’s Liquify filter as its staple of image manipulation, but like many tools in post, it can be used for...
21 December, 2017
Let There Be Light
Using Lightroom’s filter tools to reposition your strobes in post One of the most difficult skills to master in underwater photography is lighting. While it’s always best to get...
21 December, 2017
Lean and Mean First Pass in Lightroom
Not all photos are contest winners. Cut down on the under-achievers in your image library by flagging keepers and clunkers right off the bat as Lightroom imports them. You...
21 December, 2017
Keep Sharks Looking Sharp in Post
Sharks are a favorite photographic subject of mine. Over the years, I’ve developed a few post-production techniques that help to mitigate common problems and emphasize desirable details in...
21 December, 2017
Optimizing Exposure by ETTR – Exposing to the Right
If you’re not already shooting with the help of your camera’s histogram, it’s time to start. A histogram is a graph that shows the distribution of tonal values...
21 December, 2017
Compositing 101
I know, I know - compositing is cheating. A composited image uses elements from one part of a picture in another part, or combines multiple photos to create...
20 December, 2017
Balancing Act in Lightroom
The right white balance can make or break an underwater photo. Some shots need just a single click with the White Balance eyedropper in Lightroom or Adobe Camera...
20 December, 2017
65,536 Shades of Gray
How to make Sexy B&W Conversions in Lightroom The first step to making a good black and white image is implicit in its name.You’ve got to have clean black...
19 December, 2017
10 Hidden Workflow Secrets in Lightroom
Lightroom is a deep program with amazing functionality. Despite (or maybe because of) the enormous amount of documentation available online and elsewhere, it can be tough to unearth...
19 December, 2017
The Export Module – A Basic Guide to Getting Your Images Out of Lightroom
Lightroom is a near-magical piece of software. It’s both librarian and technician for your digital images, and unlike Photoshop, it leaves your original photo untouched throughout the entire...
27 October, 2017
Avoiding Rookie Mistakes
I just finished judging a photo contest, and although the rules were made very clear to the contestants, a few excellent photos were still disqualified because of willful...
27 October, 2017
Dial-a-Blue – Adjusting the Color of Water using Adobe Lightroom
I attribute the phrase “dial-a-blue” to Berkley White, shooter extraordinaire and owner of Backscatter Photo and Video. I first heard Berk use the phrase to describe a specific...
27 October, 2017
Video Editing for Dabblers
Lightroom is a fantastic jumping off point for video dabblers who don't want to miss out on all the fun of motion capture, but who are primarily still...
06 October, 2017
How to Build Watermarks in Lightroom
A watermark is a faint logo or words superimposed on top of an image. The idea of placing a watermark on your photos is to prevent others from...
05 October, 2017