Christmas 2009: Shot on the D90

Today I’m sharing a short video that I put together for our family, since most of them live far away from San Diego. I shot the video and stills on my D90 and put it all together in Adobe Premiere Pro CS4 (which I am really loving by the way).

The convergence of still photography and video is growing more and more everyday. I didn’t buy the D90 for the video, but I have come to really enjoy it and I’m glad to see that Nikon included it on the D300s and D3s. Will we see a D700s? I hope so! I doubt that Nikon will release any new DSLRs that don’t have D-Movie mode from here on out. And the great part is that the video quality will only get better!

Adobe Premiere Pro CS4 has been great to work in thus far, having come from Final Cut Express 4. The look and feel is much the same, but I REALLY like the auto rendering and I don’t have to wait around nearly as much as I did with FCE. I’ll talk more about Premiere Pro in the future and for now I’m certainly a big fan!

That’s it for today, I hope you’re having a great week! The last few days of 2009 are upon us! What’s your creative resolutions for 2010? Share in the comments!

A Few Words About NAPP & Kelby Training Live

As most of you probably already know, I’m a NAPP (National Association of Photoshop Professionals) member, and have been for 2 years now. I can’t tell you in this blog post (because it would be too long) how valuable membership is, but I’ll do my best to keep it short and sweet. In a nutshell, I almost feel bad that I only pay $99.00 per year for my membership because what I get out of it is worth WAY more than that.

First of all, a NAPP membership automatically gets you a subscription to Photoshop User magazine, which is $9.99 at the cover price. You get 8 issues per year, so with just that your membership almost pays for itself. All I have to do is add in the fact that I don’t pay for shipping on my camera gear when I buy it from my favorite store in New York, and my membership has already paid for itself and does so each year.

Second, the resources available to NAPP members are incredible and the amount of training that comes with your membership via the member’s website and forums is incredible. I’ve got a one-stop resource for anything that I want to know about Photoshop and Lightroom.

Third (and last I’ll mention today), is the discounts available for NAPP members to any of the Kelby Training Live events. For most seminars, you can save $20.00 off of the already low price. And conveniently, this brings me to my next point.

Yesterday I attended my first Kelby Training Live seminar, the Adobe CS4 Unleashed Seminar and it was incredible. It was a full 5 hours worth of extremely helpful and valuable information on the entire Creative Suite. Dave Cross and Rafael “RC” Concepcion covered InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator, Acrobat, and Flash. The price of the seminar was $39.00 (because I’m a NAPP member, $49.00 for everyone else) and again I felt like I wasn’t paying enough for what I was getting. Everyone who walked through the door received a copy of Layers or Photoshop User magazine as well as the CS4 Suite Integration DVD by Dave Cross, valued at $70.00. So right when you walk through the door you’re $30.00 ahead.

One of the other great things I liked about the event was that even though there were books and DVDs available for purchase, it was all soft-sell. By this I mean that every time you walked past their table at lunch or on a break someone was there to help answer your questions and you could make purchases, but there was no pressure at all to buy. At several seminars I have been to, companies want to sell as much product as they can and they push their people hard to do so. Definitely not the case at Kelby Training Live events.

The day before, I brought Dave and RC out to the ship to give them a tour and we did a little shooting. More on that on Monday! Dave and RC are a couple of really great guys and I enjoyed dinner with them and a few of the NAPP folks after the seminar last night.

If you’re not already a member of NAPP and you’re use Photoshop, Lightroom, or any of Adobe’s products I highly recommend that you join. You’ll certainly be glad that you did! See you guys on Monday for some rockin’ photos and some details behind ‘em!

Lightroom 3 Beta – It Just Keeps Gettin’ Better!

If you’ve been using Lightroom for as long as I have, then I’m sure you’re just as in love with this program as I am. Lightroom 2 brought about several changes, including the Adjustment Brush, which kept many photographers from going from Lightroom to Photoshop so often. Lightroom 3 Beta is no different, and boasts an impressive feature-set and some very cool improvements.

Today I’m going to highlight some of the things that I really like and find the most useful about LR3 Beta. What I’m NOT going to do is a full-on, in-depth review. There are plenty of good reviews out there. I just want to bring to light some of the things that I have decided will be worth the money to upgrade to Lightroom 3 for.

Import Dialog Box
First of all, the new Import Dialog box just plain rocks! I really love the options that it gives you, and it even simplifies the interface to those who are new to Lightroom.

Basic Import Dialog Box

Full Import Dialog Box

I love being able to name imported files as Photo Sessions, Custom Name Sequences, and pretty much anything I want to. You can still add Metadata in much the same ways as you can in LR2. You can also apply Develop settings during import as well, which can save you TONS of time if you have some common “go-to” processing techniques. Overall, I love the new Import Dialog Box!

Publish Services
Lightroom 3 Beta has brought about easier ways to publish photos to services like Facebook, Zenfolio, Flickr, and more. I really dig that I can take care of that right from a panel in the Library Module. What a convenient feature!

Film Grain
This is HUGE! You’re starting to see more “effects” show up in Lightroom 3 Beta, and Adobe kicked it off with the Film Grain effect to simulate film grain in your digital photos. If Adobe keeps adding features like this, more and more photographers will be using Photoshop less and less. Film Grain is found under the Effects panel in the Develop Module.

Slideshows
Another huge improvement here! In Lightroom 2, you weren’t able to export Slideshows that included music that you could add to the slideshow in Lightroom. That is now a thing of the past. Now you can export slideshows as videos, which includes the music that you add in the Slideshow module. Now you can put them on discs, upload them to the web, and your client doesn’t have to be sitting in front of your computer with Lightroom open to see the slideshow you put together for them.

What I’m Still Wishing For
I really wish that I had more flexibility with plug-ins: I would really like to feel like I’m still in Lightroom while using my Nik Software plug-ins. One thing that really drives me nuts is that if I want to use any of Nik’s plug-ins, I can’t do so using the original file. I have to use a copy of the file in PSD (my choice) format, which takes up more space on my hard drive and creates a duplicate file. This is because of the nature of Lightroom’s non-destructive workflow, but I still think that I should have a choice here, Adobe.

The Bottom Line
Will I shell out the cash for the upgrade to Lightroom 3 when it’s released? You betcha! There are enough improvements that really make it work the upgrade and I’ll gladly do so. If you spend as much time in Lightroom as I do, I think you will find it just as useful. If you haven’t already downloaded the Beta version to take it for a spin, check it out here!

For more great information about Lightroom 3 Beta, check out the Lightroom 3 Beta Learning Center from NAPP!

 

Video: Using Nik Software in Lightroom

One of my readers, Chris, had asked about a more in depth review of how Nik Software’s plugins work within Lightroom. I put together the video above and keep in mind that it’s pretty basic. I didn’t go into the deep inner workings of the plugins because that would take a long time and I’m limited on video file size on blip.tv.

I basically provided a quick, down and dirty review of how the work with Lightroom as opposed to all the features and benefits of the software. You can explore those more by going to Nik Software’s website and downloading a trial version to use for 15 days.

Enjoy the video, let me know what you think, and I’d love to know if you like these kinds of videos/tutorials. If so, I’d be willing to do more of them to show Lightroom and Photoshop tips and tricks.

Have a great weekend, go out and shoot, and I’ll see you next week!

Stephen