A feature within Lightroom is the crop tool. It gives you the ability to quickly and with great ease, make an image the perfect crop, if you didn’t get it right straight out of the camera. One ability within the crop tool that many people don’t know about is the “Crop Guide Overview” menu. This unique menu within the “View” menu on the menubar allows the user to select from multiple different looks of the lines on the crop tool. As seen in the image, it has many different and unique looks.

If you are one for shortcuts then simply hit the “O” key to cycle through the different guildlines, and if you want to go back hit “O + Shift” together.Another great little hidden gem when in the crop tool is a nifty short-cut to go into the “Straighten” tool. Simply hit the “Command” key and your cursor will change from the default crop tool to the straighten tool.Well that’s my special list for the crop tool. If you have any other crop tool tips or tricks please drop them in the comments!

It’s been a while, a long while since I last did a Lightroom tutorial so today you are about to experience a new tutorial. This specific tut. (I did that cause it sounds like something else hehe) will deal with a feature that is similar to the export plug-ins in Aperture but are setup in a different way.The first step to creating a post pro export action is to find a program that you want to export to. For this example let us use the Flickr Uploadr program for Mac. You’ll find the program in the Applications folder. Once found, right click on the app. and go to the menu option that says “Make Alias” and click. You’ll notice that you now have a duplicate of the icon named “Flickr Uploadr Alias”. Now is the fun part, finding where to put this alias so it shows up in the export window of Lightroom.

You will find the export actions folder in the Lightroom folder hidden in a special place. That special place is as follows: user > library > application support > adobe > lightroom > export actions. Once you have moved the alias to this specific spot you will now notice that when you go back to Lightroom it shows up in the pop-down menu on the post pro export actions menu.Now you know how to create custom export actions in Lightroom. If you are wondering what programs work with the export actions, almost any program will work that opens an image file (photoshop, mail, camino/safari/firefox, etc.). Creating many export action alias’ will speed up your export workflow to the point of wondering how you ever worked without them!

One thing I notice a lot with people who take pictures is that they stand back and try to capture the excitement, energy and action from people. Now there are a few things that are interesting about this. One, if you were to stand back and watch people play a game would you feel the excitement of the game the same way the players would?

For example, when the Stanely Cup finals come around and there’s a Canadian team playing and they’re actually winning series and going for the cup, the amount of people engaging into the action that the team is creating is intense. People cheer, cry, scream, flail limbs and eat lots of chips to ease nervous tension. They are engaging the moment.

I feel the same is true when you are taking pictures. Engaging into a moment can bring about great success, while at the same time sometimes creating risky situations for yourself. Although the outcome will be simplistically real, authentic and emotional. Not only does it make you engage into the energy of the situation but it encapsulates you. Making the viewer feel like they are looking at an event from a personal viewpoint rather then one of a “on looker”. Again this comes back to creating images that are “alive” and the “process, absorb, distill and create” methodology.

I am very passionate about this type of photography. It requires the photographer to get out of their personal bubble to engage people, but the outcome will show through on the images. Give it a try!

For the past 6 months I have had these things called light disks hanging on my wall. Every time I look at them I keep wonder how I’d use them! Then today I had a moment of inspiration to take one out and run around at Tuck Time (aka. everyone sitting on the field, eating candy together) with a light disk and my 50mm f1.8 lens.As soon as I got out onto the main field with my white disk of glory, I got the looks!“Woah that’s a sweet frisbee!”“What the heck is that for?”“Is that a hat?”Then once I showed people what it could do they suddenly wanted to become fun subjects to shoot. Ryan, in the photos that are shown just had some serious fun with the idea. The interaction between camera and Ryan was obviously a clean and smooth one. But again it was also fun between the two of us, since we work together.Ok so on with the topic of light diffusion. If you ever get a chance to just use the sun and a light disk for a day, take it! Don’t pull out the flash, just leave it at home. The natural, smooth lighting combined with a good interaction between photographer and person being photographed really creates a wonderfully organic image.As a tip, the closer the disk to the subject the brighter the light and smoother as well. It feels natural to hold it far back, keep it close and you’ll like the light a lot more.Give it a try, keep the flash at home…I dare you!

If you are like me the lure of the immediate interaction with a picture that you just took is overwhelming in digital photography. This is really what drew me into this art form. Then once I got that satisfaction addiction I immediately began to love expressing myself through photography.

This post is not for a veteran of the photography world, this is for someone who is new to the space. In the preceding post I will lay out some places to visit, audio programs to listen to and great photographers to be inspired by. First lets start with good camera manufacturers. To research which model you feel would be best for you I would suggest going to http://www.dpreview.com and look up the recommended manufacturers cameras from below.

Recommended Camera Manufacturers for Beginners:

Canon (http://www.canon.com): Of course I will start with my favorite of them all Canon Inc. They have a very large line of Point and Shoot cameras that are easy to use, very well built and good price points.

Olympus (http://www.olympus.com): While I’m not a huge fan of their dSLR line of cameras, their consumer line of cameras are very well built. All their cameras are “weather sealed”, meaning that they have gaskets around all the nooks and crevasses to keep out pesky water and dust. This isn’t waterproof, just slightly water resistant! I have also been impressed with their optical quality, although their ISO noise levels are much more prominent then most other manufacturers.

Panasonic (http://www.panasonic.com): This is one brand that is over looked in the digital camera market. This brand has a secret weapon in their arsenal, Leica branded lenses. This is one spot that most manufacturers hope their consumers don’t notice, without good glass what’s the point of a high megapixel sensor? If long zooms in a compact body are what you’re looking for this is the brand to follow closely.

Leica (http://www.leica.com): While this brand is marketed in the higher price ranges, they make cameras that are extremely well built. From sensor to lens to body. Not to mention they have some very great retro looks to their cameras.

While you’re list top cameras may be different from mine, take it or leave it. These are manufacturers that I have seen consistently generate a good product for a good price.

Next up - Knowledge. I get a lot of people asking me what I went to school for and when I respond with “BA in Youth Work” they look at me with a perplexed expression. “You mean you never went to photography school?” While I’m sure photography schools are great things and you can learn a lot from them, there’s nothing like being in the world of photography and gaining knowledge in the field and from others who are in the field toughing it out. All my knowledge on photography (and I would not call it extensive) comes from books, the internet and personal experiences (trail and fail and sometimes succeed). Here is a list of great websites on the internet that will help you gain the basic knowledge you need to become a better photographer.

Recommended Photography Internet Sites for Beginners: Tips from the Top Floor (http://www.tipsfromthetopfloor.com): This is an amazing set of over 200 audio instructions and interviews for becoming a better photographer. Chris Marquart the host of the show takes a very simplistic and easy to listen to approach at photography. A must listen to podcast!

Lexar’s Pro Photographer Corner (http://lexar.com/dp/pro_photo/index.html): This site is filled with amazing insight from the brains of some of the most influential photographers around right now. Read, re-read, re-read again. Every time I go back after a couple of months I always gain new insight into a philosophy on photography I had forgotten about before.

National Geographic (http://www.nationalgeographic.com): One of the best inspirational photography websites. I often go here just to spend a couple hours looking at images, understanding how they did it, ask why they took it, and what the story was behind each image. You’ll do yourself a favor to admire professional photographers work.

Cambridge in Color (http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials.htm): Not only does this site have some mind blowing photography on it. The author, Sean McGugh, has some amazingly insightful posts on how take and edit amazing pictures. Studying these will help you understand not only the technology of a digital camera but as well the way in which you use the more advanced options available on most digital cameras.

Next - displaying your work. Often the best way to get better is to display your work to others and get feedback. There are many websites to do this through. I will post ones with a great environment and great services.

Recommended Photography Presentation Websites for Beginners:

Flickr (http://www.flickr.com): This site is extremely popular in the photography world. It’s free (to an extent) and it is very easy to use. I have used their service for 3 years and have never had a complaint against them. The community is great, joining content specific groups will help you display your work against others of the same content. One thing with this community is that you will have to give back as well. If someone critiques your image, give back to the community and give uplifting critiques as well. No one likes a pointless critique of “sucks!” or “needs a crop”. Be specific in your critiques and please don’t end with a negative comment. Be happy, be helpful!

Tips from the Top Floor Forums (http://www.tipsfromthetopfloor.com/forum): To accompany a great website and podcast, Chris Marquart has given the TFTTF community an amazing amount of usability in the forums. The community is great, the images are good and the over all atmosphere is cheerful. Post images there for critique or just to show off. Have a discussion about equipment, techniques, etc.

Travel Photographers Network (http://www.travelphotographersnetwork.net): This is a website that I was directed to back in summer of 2006 by a fellow photographer, David duChemin. If you’re into travel photography then this is the place to be for you! There is an amazing wealth of knowledge that the staff and contributors have here. Not to mention some great photos from all around the world to see.

These are among a few great websites to check out and be inspired by. Remember to give back to these communities as well. If you see a technique and aren’t sure how to do it, ask them, most photographers now days are very open to sharing their ideas and techniques with others.

Next - Software. So you shoot and shoot but how do you display and organize all this stuff. Just as a quick note, this is were we’ll be going into the Apple realm and out of the PC realm. Sorry PC users, get a Mac

Recommended Photography Software for Beginners: iPhoto (http://www.apple.com/ilife/iphoto/): This is a program that I used for thousands of photos until my needs exceeded it. For the beginner this has everything you’ll need in a clean package. You can post to the web with it, make fun books, cards, calendars, etc. with it. If all you want is easy organization and fun tools, iPhoto is it.

Photoshop Elements (Win - http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshopelwin/) (Mac - http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshopelmac/): If you have the itch to edit your images, this is a great beginner program for that. Not only does it come with a decent photo organizer program but the ability to do local adjustments to images.

Some people would say GIMP is a great program, but from my use of it, I would say stay away from this program. It’s overly complicated for what you get.

Well that is it for now for my “getting your toes wet” post for beginning photographers. Make sure to check out all the websites and feel free to toss me a comment or an email. And remember that great images aren’t always in-front of you! Unique eyes create unique images!

If there is one thing that is becoming more and more annoying it’s the fact that we now have to decide how we will back-up and archive our pictures on digital media. The ways in which you can go about doing this are nearly endless. Here are a few ways in which I have streamlined my process.

Import: Using a program like Lightroom ($299.99 US) I have the ability to back-up my photos upon import to a default location of my choice. As well the photos will be placed into my Lightroom catalogue. With the photos from my Lightroom catalogue I will quickly and efficiently weed out the bad and so-so images to just display the best of the best.

Backing Up:  To back-up my Lightroom catalogue I use a program called Superduper($27.95 US). It is a very to use drive clone utility that willbasically clone one hard-drive exactly to another. So using this on asetup schedule once or twice a day is great. Plus doing redundantback-ups to multiple drives on-site and off-site. I use one 500GBexternal as my Image Vault. Then I have two others as back-ups of thatdrive. One on-site and one off-site. The on-site will back-up once aday while my off-site is backed-up twice a week.

Archiving: So we have our good images backed up along with the Lightroom Catalogue, but what about those originals that were backed up on import within Lightroom? Well this is where the fun comes in. I have decided to archive all my originals to DVDs, so this brings up another issue. How to fit roughly 20-30GB of pictures on DVD’s easily (for myself, this represents a weeks worth of images). Within the Mac OS there is no simple solution to do this, you will have to manually sort out the pictures into 4.5GB sizes then burn each folder. UGH! This is where the simplicity of Disco ($29.95 US) comes in! This is another very simplistic program to use. Simply drop the files you need burned into the program window, insert your media (DVD, CD, etc) and hit “burn”. The program will then sort out how many of the media type you need and start burning all the files. Easy, simple, and has a very cool smoke effect when burning!

Now you may be thinking, “Wow thats a lot of money just to back-up and archive your images!” Here’s my reasoning. If you got the time to sit around the do this manually, how much is your time worth? For myself, I’d rather spend the time out shooting and editing images rather then worrying if my images are backed-up. So it is definitely worth it for the amount of time is saves. Like I stated before, this is the way in which I have streamlined the process, your way may be different, which is great, I just find the simplest line from A to B to C is the best.

Lately I have been into my catalogue of photography reading material and a couple of things have stuck out to me. If there is one subject that most people talk about and struggle with, it’s the art of seeing. Being able to view and compose a shot around a subject of interest and make it “come alive”.A couple nights ago I was reading in my Outdoor Photography magazine on an article about shooting landscapes. Within this article there was a couple distinct lines that caught me. It was about the seeing process and what we need to do to involve ourselves into a situation to create a moving image. The process was: process, absorb, distill and create.While this was talked about in the context of landscape photography I feel this is almost like a universal truth for photography. In any situation you will always come out with a better photograph if you go through these steps in your mind and through the work with the camera. I find myself all to often distilling and creating before actually processing and absorbing a situation/environment. It can be a tempting trap to get into. Things are happening, things you see as being significant so you move to take a shot. While the shot in turn shows a great deal of action or emotion, it has very little to do with actually went on. Taking a second or two to actually process and absorb brings the meaning into a great photograph.I find this as well goes along with a comment a fellow photographer, David deChemin stated on his blog. He quoted a question that an old photographer had been asked, “is it alive?” I think that this has a direct connection with the previous steps of creating a great image.As I am finishing up writing this, I decided that I would walk to the top of the steps here at the Q, to try and gain a bit of insight into what I just wrote about. A step to which I find I am going into more is absorb. Absorbing the atmosphere, the sounds, the smells, the way people interact with the environment. It’s an interesting process to actually sit down and practice. I challenge any reader to do this, dare I say, without your camera in hand.There are the thoughts of an overly worked photographer.

If you’re a user of Lightroom then you will probably understand me when I say, one of the coolest features is the ability to customize the look of the GUI a bit using the Custom Identity Plates feature. You can do this one of two ways.

1. You can input text into the custom text field. This way you can easily customize your identity plate with different fonts, colours, etc.

2. You can create a PSD file in photoshop at 72 dpi (I bold that because for it to work you really need a 72 dpi .psd file) with a height of 60 pixels. And make sure to use a transparent background as well, I find it looks best when your text looks melded into the Lightroom GUI :)And if you work in a multiple job environment you can save your identity plates as presets so you can have one for each person you work for if you wanted to.And there you have it, a fun easy way to make Lightroom look and feel more personal to you, the creative professional.

With the vast variety of ways of organizing in the new generation of digital image organization programs sometimes it can be overwhelming figuring out what the most effective way is. One of my biggest issues with Lightroom is that they seem to just throw you into the mix and give you creative license to figure it out on your own. Or the opposite, they figure you and the designers are on the same page when it comes to organization. Which honestly, the former and latter rarely ever happen.One form of organization I have had a hard time trying to understand is the differences between “collections” and “folders”. I have been trying to find a distinct thinking pattern in which the designers where aiming for. And I can honestly say that I am having a hard time finding one.For myself, the differences between the two are; folders are where I stick a wide variety of photos into (ie. 2006, 2007 photos) where as a collection is where I stick photos that are labeled the best from a specific shoot.For example:When I import photos I will import them all to my 2007 Folder. Then I will go to the most recent imported photos in the Library section and select my picks from that shoot. Select the picked photos and make a new collection from those picked photos. Is this the most efficient use of the two? Probably not, but it seems to work the best for me. I would love to hear how others import and organize using the tools that Lightroom gives you, or even if you are using Aperture, I would also love to hear how you organize in there.Cheers!- Jordan

The flagging feature is a great new feature in Lightroom v1.0. It’s allows for quick rating without using a staring system. On the surface, flagging is fairly uneventful, but it’s all about digging deeper into this system when you really start to find the potential of flagging.First of all, to flag an image either as a “pick” or as a “reject” simple hit the P key for pick and X key for reject. If you wish to keep the image unflagged his the U key.Now to get into the nitty gritty of the flagging system. Once you have flagged images as picks or as rejects, you can get Lightroom to do many things for you.One of them is to select all the picks. This is good when creating a collection of all the best images from a shoot. To select all the pick flagged images hit OPTION+COMMAND+A.If you wish to delete all of the images that are flagged as rejects (remember to be careful about deletion, I generally keep all images until I absolutely know I never want to keep them) hit the COMMAND+DELETE keys. Lightroom will then prompt you for the way in which you want to delete the rejects.So if you feel that a staring system just isn’t tickling your fancy and need a cleaner, more simplified way of organizing your images use the flagging system along with these shortcuts to gain the most out of them.

So you just uploaded 3000 images from that photo shoot you were just at. After the import you start to realize that organizing 3000 images is a huge task, not to mention the fact that keywording adds to that task. Well, for all you who are feeling this 800 pound gorilla here are a few shortcuts to make that task go a little faster.Somethings to keep in mind when keywording is making sure that you use as much of the screen as you can. So mask sure that you are in fullscreen mode (hit the “F” key to switch between the screen modes).If you want to put the same keyword to a lot of images, just select the images that you want. Once they are selected just hit COMMAND + K and that will take you to the “Keywords Tags” box. Simply input the keywords that are the same to each of those selected images.If you are wanting to stamp images with some keywords simply hit OPTION + COMMAND + K and that will bring up a dialog box which you type in the keywords you want to be stamped to the images you want. Your cursor icon will turn into a stamp like tool and you can then just stamp the images that you want.Quick Note: Erasing Keywords when Stamping - When you are in the stamp tool if you accidently stamped an image with a keyword, you can just put your cursor over that image again and your cursor will turn from a stamp tool to an eraser.Use specific Image keywords. This is not so much a Lightroom tip but rather a tip that will work any time you are keywording an item. When keywording, it is a good practice to use keywords are descriptive words.For example: In this image I didn’t keyword the image with a location that I took it, that is what my folder system is for. Rather I keyworded the image with descriptive words, like; boy, smiling, camper. When using keywords in this way you will find that if you are looking for a specific image with maybe a boy camper, you will find it easily.So next time you import your images, make sure you keyword them! This is one of the most overlooked tools of any photo management software. Metadata is your friend

If you are like me, you are working on a laptop most of the time. One of the biggest limitations of a laptop is the smaller screen real-estate. One great feature of Lightroom is the ability to actually hide the side bars and the top and bottom bar. Now you can do this using your mouse, but there is a much quicker way of doing it.To do this, it doesn’t matter what module you are in it just works.

To hide the side bars merely hit the “Tab” key.To hide all of the side and bottom bars hit “Shift+Tab“Of course to bring them back you can also hit the keys again to bring back the bars. If you also wish to just have the top and bottom bar hidden use the “Shift+Tab” then when all the bars are hidden go and hit “Tab” key to bring back the sidebars.Now you have the ability to quickly regain some screen real-estate to quickly view images larger or see more of your images in grid view.

If you’ve ever used the brush tool in Photoshop you will undoubtedly know the shortcut to resize the brush. Well the folks at Adobe took that and implemented it into the Clone / Heal tool in Lightroom.

When you want to do some basic Clone/Healing in Lightroom all you have to do is go into the Develop module and hit the “N” key to go into the Clone/Heal tool. On the screen there will be a round brush appear. To resize this brush you merely have to remember back to Photoshop and the brush tool. To make the brush larger you hit the “]” key and to make the brush smaller you hit the “[” key.Using these shortcuts will help you to quickly clone out that pesky dust spot, zit, or whatever the object and get you back to doing your workflow with ease.PS. To go back to Develop mode hit the “D” key.

If you’ve ever noticed that in the developer settings there is a very nifty feature called the “before and after” preview. It is a great feature that can allow a person to view where the picture was and how it looks after some editing. Here is a quick shortcut that will really help and it’s a key that you use all the time…

Y - to bring up and take down the “before and after” preview.Use, abuse it…that’s what it’s there for. Not only will you notice how great your image is looking but you will also notice how addictive this view is.

So you now know the stacking shortcut key, so how about creating a stack pick?

Creating a stack in Lightroom is just the first step of optimizing how to use a stack. The second is picking your image that you want to be on the top of the stack. This is pick is also generally known as the best image in the stack. Here are a few shortcuts to organize your stacks:

Shift + S - Moves an image in a stack to the top of the stack.

Shitt + [ - Promotes an image up in the stack

Shift + ] - Demotes an image down in the stack

So now you know how to create a stack and organize it. Using these shortcuts will really help!