Sean Duggan Blog

Lightroom 2.0 is Here!

Bovine Building  [Canon 5D]
Santa Cruz, California - August 10, 2007
(click in the image for a larger version)

The big news in the digital photosphere yesterday and today is that Adobe has officially announced the shipping version of Photoshop Lightroom 2.0. It first became available as a public beta back in early April and now, four months later, you can purchase and download it from the Adobe web site (click the link above to go to that page). The price is $299 for first time buyers and $99 to upgrade from version 1.

This version offers some really cool new functionality a well as subtle improvements and tweaks that current Lightroom users will really appreciate. Here's a quick rundown of some of the biggest new features:

• Adjustment Brush - This is undoubtedly the flashiest new feature and soon will become something that you just can't live without. It allows you to brush on non-destructive corrections so that only specific areas of the photo are affected. But it goes beyond simple lightening and darkening (i.e., "dodging and burning"); you can brush on localized changes to Brightness, Exposure, Clarity, Saturation and Color Tint. Changes made with this new tool can always be adjusted after the fact in a variety of ways.
• Graduated Filter - This enables you to create a non-destructive effect that is very similar to the effect you could create by using a graduated neutral density filter on the camera lens. Great for darkening just the sky in a landscape photo, for instance.
• Better Integration with Photoshop - Several features have been added that allow Lightroom to "play better" with Photoshop. These include key functionality that Lightroom users have been hoping for such as the ability to open an image in Photoshop as a Smart Object; Merge to Panorama in Photoshop; Merge to HDR in Photoshop; and opening several images as separate layers in a single Photoshop document.
• Smart Collections - these are special collections that will automatically update themselves based on a specified set of search criteria. For example, say you create a Smart Collection called "Best Portraits", and you specify that it will only contain images that are tagged with the keyword "portrait" and have a rating of at least 3 stars. Anytime you add new images to your Lightroom library that have those two attributes, they will automatically be added to the "Best Portraits" Smart Collection. Very nice!
• Multiple Monitor Support - If you have dual monitors, you can finally take advantage of all that extra screen real estate and expand your Lightroom workspace.
• Filter Bar - This is a vastly improved Find feature that helps you locate images based on a wide variety of criteria, including keywords, camera metadata, capture time, ratings, labels, etc.

In addition to these major goodies, the new version also offers a host of other improvements and enhancements such as a volume browser that shows you the external drives connected to your system, where the photos are located and how much space is left on the drives; suggested keywords; picture packages; smart print sharpening; preparing print files for outlab services; title slides in slide shows; and 16-bit printing in Mac OS 10.5 (applicable, of course, only if you have a printer capable of 16-bit printing).

All in all, this is a really solid upgrade and it's great to finally see it out of beta and have the final version to play with.

The good folks over at the National Association of Photoshop Professionals (NAPP) have posted a Lightroom 2 Learning Center, and Colin Smith has also posted a Lightroom 2 section over at the PhotoshopCAFE.

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Did You Recently Purchase Lightroom 1.0?

If you purchased Lightroom 1 within 30 days of the shipping version announcement (July 29th), you should be eligible for a free "post-announce upgrade".

To get the free upgrade, call the Adobe Sales number:  800-585-0774 and once you are connected to a sales rep, tell them you need to get a post-announce upgrade. The "official" timeline for this deal is that you purchased the previous version 30 days prior to the announcement of the shipping version. In double-checking this policy for some students in one of my upcoming workshops, the rep that I spoke to told me that if it was within a week or two of the 30 days they would probably let it through.
But I would act on this soon if you want the free upgrade.

One more thing: if you did not purchase it through Adobe, then you will need to have your receipt handy as there is some information that they will need in order to process the order.

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Upcoming Workshops

I have two digital photography workshops coming up in August at the Maine Media Workshops, and in the Fall I have a total of four workshops taking place in northern and central California. Check out the current Workshop Schedule at my main web site.

Upstairs

 
Stairs  [Canon 5D]
June 9 2008  Pescadero, California
(click in the image for a larger view)

If the Black & White image is your favorite means of photographic expression, or if you want to improve your black and white imagery, I'll be teaching a workshop November 3 – 7 at the Lepp Institute of Digital Imaging in Los Osos, California called Creative Digital Black & White:

This five day workshop is a celebration of the black and white photograph. It is a combination of creative seeing, camera technique and leveraging the power and control of the digital darkroom. We will practice our photographic technique during the week on location shoots with the aim of visualizing and creating images in black and white. Back in the digital lab, we will explore a wide range of essential Photoshop and Lightroom techniques as we work at perfecting our color digital captures into finely honed black and white prints.

NAPP and NANPA members receive a 15% discount on this workshop.
For a more detailed description of this class, as well as registration info, click here.

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Upcoming Maine Workshops

There's still a few spots left in my two August digital photography classes at the Maine Media Workshops. Click the class titles for more information:

Leaping into Digital
August 10 – 16  • Maine Media Workshops

Real World Digital Photography I
August 17 – 23  • Maine Media Workshops

Real World Digital Photography II
October 5 – 11 • Maine Media Workshops

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Upcoming California Workshops

In addition to the previously mentioned Creative Digital Black & White workshop in November, I also have two weekend workshops in California coming up in September. Click the class titles for more information:

Creative Camera Raw in Photoshop CS3
September 20 – 21  • Berkeley, California

Secrets of the Mask: Selections & Masking in Photoshop CS3
September 27 – 28  •  Santa Cruz, California

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Newsletter News

The July/August issue of my free newsletter Creative Digital Darkroom News was mailed on July 26th. The next issue will be sent out in late August. Be sure to sign up for Photoshop and digital darkroom tips and tutorials, workshop updates, special discounts on workshops and prints, and musings on photography and the creative process.

Final Port of Call

Beached Boat  [Canon 5D]
Inverness, California -- June 25, 2008 
(click in the image for a larger version)

This old fishing boat, the Point Reyes, is in Inverness, California, beached near the main road that leads into the park. It provides a picturesque accent to the landscape around it and is also pretty cool in its own right. It's one of those things that you know has been photographed millions of times before you, but it's still fun to get out and make your own images of it. This is a pretty straight shot that was adjusted entirely in Lightroom.

New Workshop in Maine:
Leaping Into Digital, August 10 – 16

A new workshop has been added to my upcoming Maine itinerary. I'll be taking over the Leaping Into Digital class which is scheduled the week before my Real World Digital Photography workshop. I love teaching at the Maine Media Workshops. It's a great place the learn and share ideas and experiences with fellow photographers and the people who run the workshops are wonderful. To top it off, midcoast Maine offers so many beautiful and varied locations for photography that it is always a creatively stimulating experience. Here's a short description of this class:

"Learning how to store, edit and caption images in the field, and how to transport, transmit, and share images with clients and editors is mandatory for every working photographer. In this workshop, film photographers learn an essential digital workflow for organizing and managing their images and rejuvenate their passion for the imagemaking process.  Students gain an understanding of how things work technically and practically, theoretically, and photographically. Mornings are spent in the field, exploring Maine with digital cameras, chasing great light and capturing wonderful photographs. Afternoons are spent transferring images from cameras to laptops, organizing them with Photoshop Lightroom and incorporating them into searchable collections, web galleries and slideshows."

This is not a Photoshop workshop, but a working with digital cameras, photography, digital workflow and Lightroom workshop. Participants must provide their own digital camera, a laptop and have a version of Lightroom loaded on it (you can get the 30-day free trial version to use for the class). There's still some space left in this class but it is filling up. Click here to go to the registration page.

And, for information on my Real World Digital Photography workshop, click the class title.

Golden Gate

Golden Gate Bridge, from Fort Baker  [Canon 5D]
July 2, 2008

On my way back into the city after a day of one-on-one training I stopped by Fort Baker to take some shots of the Golden Gate Bridge as the fog rolled in. This is a 5-second exposure that was made using a Singh-Ray 5-stop solid Neutral Density (ND) filter. I like to use this filter when I want to force the camera to use a much slower shutter speed than would normally be possible in daylight conditions. The other factors that allowed me to use such a slow shutter speed during the day were an ISO setting of 100 (the lowest for my camera) and an aperture of f/22. The slow shutter speed is great for times when you want the motion in a scene to be rendered as a blur. In this shot the water becomes smooth and silky and looks much more interesting than if it had been shot with a more typical shutter speed for daylight conditions.

Since the reflective brightness values were so different between the darker foreground areas and the sky, I also took two shots with different exposure settings and then combined them into a single view in Photoshop CS3. Here's a look at my final Layers palette for my master image:

Speaking of Singh-Ray Filters, they have a pretty cool blog that has some great examples of work done using their filters. I was particularly impressed with some black and white work by Cole Thompson using solid ND filters to photograph the Ghosts of Auschwitz and Birkenau Concentration Camps.

Next Workshop

Come join me on the beautiful coast of Maine for a week of creative digital photography and  digital darkroom explorations:

Real World Digital Photography
Maine Photographic Workshops - August 17 - 21

Drakes Bay Twilight

Drakes Bay  [Canon 5D]
Point Reyes, California
June 26, 2008
(click in the image for a larger version)

This is a 10-second exposure taken on the same day as the previous two images (though chronologically it fits between them). The actual light level at the time I took this was much darker than in this image, and I have even darkened it down a bit from the original raw exposure. As I was taking these exposures a sea lion or elephant seal was swimming slowly through the shallow water near the shore and in the still twilight the sound of its breathing carried easily to my position on the hillside above. Although it was too dark to make a positive identification, it was definitely a large marine mammal and as there was an elephant seal viewing area a short hike from here, I am guessing that it might have been an elephant seal.

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Newsletter News

I've been dividing my time between the coast and the Sierra foothills for the past two weeks due to all the bad, smoky air from the nearby forest fires that have been raging in our area. The next issue of my free newsletter has been delayed by all the back and forth travel but should be out by this coming Sunday.

Real World Digital Photography in Maine - August 17 - 21

Night Road

Night Road  [Canon 5D]
Point Reyes National Seashore
June 26, 2008
(Click in the image for a larger version)

On the drive out of Point Reyes, I stopped to take a few night shots looking back along the two-lane road. The foreground light on the road is from my car's tail lights. I left my car idling with the lights on so I wouldn't be totally invisible on the road and also to provide some needed illumination for the foreground. With night photography, all manner of things can serve as a light source to bring a little lighting to areas of the scene, including tail lights.

Of course, since tail lights are red, the light on the road was red, too. I corrected this in Lightroom by initially processing the image to have a cooler color cast. Then in Photoshop I did some further work to remove the remaining traces of the reddish color cast. Although I felt the reddish color cast on the road combined with a yellowish cast in the clouds in the sky (due to the smoky air and the light that was shining over the far hills) looked interesting, I wanted to create more of a classic night feel and with less color and a cooler color balance.

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Real World Digital Photography Workshops

My next major workshop takes place in mid-August along the New England coast at the world renown Maine Photographic Workshops. Real World Digital Photography I is the perfect class if you want to get a jump start on truly understanding the controls on your digital SLR, learning good exposure technique, shooting in raw, special exposure situations (like the night photography featured in the image above) and making the most of your exposures back in the digital darkroom using Lightroom and Photoshop CS3. It's already filling up so if you're interested in taking this class, don't wait until the last minute to sign up! Click the class title to learn more about this class.

A second level version of this class will be offered at the Maine Photographic Workshops Oct 5-11.

For a complete listing of my upcoming workshops, click here.

Listening...

Coastal Antennas & Smoky Skies
Point Reyes National Seashore
June 26, 2008
(click in the image for a larger version)

This is from a little over a week ago. After finishing up a one-on-one training session with a client, I headed out to the Point Reyes National Seashore to see what I could see. The smoke from the fires (see the previous post) was still pretty bad and as the sun slowly settled towards the horizon, the landscape took on a strange other-worldly appearance. I found these antennas near the coast guard station as I drove out towards the Point Reyes Lighthouse. The setting sun and the orange sky, combined with the stark landscape and the forest of antennas created a surreal effect.

I had a good time out at Point Reyes, even though I started late in the day. In addition to some photography with my Canon 5D, I also took some pinhole shots with my ZeroImage 6x9 camera. In fact, my photography continued even after dark and I didn't get back to San Francisco until just before midnight. A few more images from Point Reyes to follow in the days ahead.

I've been pretty busy in the Bay Area for the past couple of weeks and in the last few days internet access has been an issue. Postings here should be more regular and more frequent in the coming week.