7 Convincing Reasons to Take a Photo Walk

Published Sunday, October 11th, 2015

Photo walks are organized by small groups of photographers all around the world, but you don’t need to be a part of a group or to wait for the next event to go on a photo walk. You can simply take your camera and go on a walk of your own. In fact, there are many reasons why a photo walk can be a great experience. If you’re part of a group photo walk there are a lot of benefits like networking, learning from others, and even getting and giving feedback on different gear. This post is focused on taking a solo photo walk, so all of these benefits can be had even without an organized group in your area.

How to Take a Photo from Lightroom to Photoshop

Published Monday, October 5th, 2015

Lightroom and Photoshop are both excellent tools, but they each have strengths and weaknesses. Even if you typically use Lightroom to organize and process your photos it is likely that there will be times when you want or need to use Photoshop with one of your images. Fortunately, moving between the two is pretty simple once you know how it works.

7 Tips for Amazing Road Trip Photos

Published Monday, September 28th, 2015

A road trip can be a great way to get a break from daily life and capture some memorable photos along the way. In this article we’ll take a look at some tips that can help you to get the most out of your own road trip photos.

17 Ways to Enhance Your Photos in Lightroom

Published Thursday, September 24th, 2015

Lightroom is an extremely powerful tool for both organizing and editing your photos. Ever since I started using Lightroom several years ago I have been using Photoshop less and less because there is just so much that you can do in Lightroom, and the workflow can be quicker. In this article we’ll take a look at 17 specific things you can do in Lightroom to enhance and improve your photos.

How to Create a Dramatic Effect in Photoshop

Published Wednesday, September 23rd, 2015

In this tutorial we’ll go step-by-step through the process of creating an intense, dramatic effect that can be used to really make your images stand out. The steps used for this tutorial are from one of the actions in our set of Intensify Photoshop Actions. You can actually download an action for this particular effect for free here, and if you like this type of effect the full set includes a total of 8 actions.

Understanding And Using Different Apertures As An Artistic Effect

Published Monday, September 21st, 2015

Apertures are somewhat of a multi-purpose tool. Not only does it allow you to help control how much light is let into the camera as you take a photograph, but it can also be used an as artistic tool to use when composing your image.

Give Your Photo an Intense Portrait Effect in Photoshop

Published Wednesday, September 16th, 2015

With many portraits your post processing will create soft effects that tend to be pleasing, but in some situations you may prefer to create a more dramatic and intense effect. This tutorial will show one method of doing just that in Photoshop. The effect created here is very similar to the effects that can be easily applied with our Dragan-Inspired Photoshop Actions, so if you like this look be sure to check out those actions.

Create a Vintage-Film Effect in Lightroom

Published Tuesday, September 15th, 2015

In this tutorial we will quickly walk through the process of easily creating a vintage film-inspired look in Lightroom. This effect is not intended to replicate the look of any particular film, it is just a look inspired by an old film photograph. The settings used in the tutorial are from one of the presets in our collection of Vintage Film Lightroom Presets. That collection includes 30 different presets, so if you like this effect be sure to check out the full collection.

10 Tips for Amazing Maternity Photos

Published Monday, September 14th, 2015

If photographs are used as a way to remember a specific time in life, what better time to remember than the weeks and months surrounding the birth of a child? Maternity and newborn photography account for a large percentage of business for many photographers, because clients want to have memorable photos of this time in their lives.

In this article we’ll look at 10 tips that you can use to get the best maternity photos for your clients.

How to Create a Vintage Monochrome Look in Lightroom

Published Thursday, September 10th, 2015

In this tutorial we’ll go through the steps of creating a vintage feel for a monochromatic image. We’ll first convert the photo to black & white and then use Lightroom’s sliders to get the vintage feel. The settings in this tutorial are taken from one of the presets in our set of Vintage Mono Lightroom […]

How to Easily Fix Skin Tones in Lightroom

Published Wednesday, September 9th, 2015

Any time you are working with portraits or photos that include people it is important to get the skin tones right in order to have a pleasing, natural look. Dealing with skin tones can be frustrating at times if you are not sure how to correct the issue, but Lightroom gives us some options that […]

20 Free Lightroom Presets

Published Monday, September 7th, 2015

Lightroom presets are our best selling products, and we know that photographers (both professionals and hobbyists) can’t get enough Lightroom presets. While we have more than 1,000 LR presets that are included in our Ultimate Photography Bundle, we want to be able to give back through some free presets as well. In this post you’ll find 20 different presets that you can download for free. They work with Lightroom 4 and up (so currently that is LR 4, 5, 6, and CC) and they will allow you to get a wide variety of different types of effects quickly and easily. Try them out and see how they work with your photos.

The Best Lightroom Presets for Portraits

Published Tuesday, September 1st, 2015

With more than 1,000 Lightroom presets to offer we have options for just about any purpose or type of effect that you can imagine. But we often receive questions from customers and visitors about which presets are best suited for use with portraits. On this page you’ll find some basic information and recommendations about the presets that typically get the best results with portraits.

30 Fun Props for Maternity Photos

Published Sunday, August 30th, 2015

Making use of props can be a great way to add some fun to your photos. When it comes to maternity photography there are all kinds of different props that are possibilities.

Easily Add Life to Boring RAW Files in Lightroom

Published Wednesday, August 26th, 2015

Shooting in RAW format offers many benefits, but the downside is that many of your photos can look dull straight out of the camera. If you’re shooting in JPG format some finishing touches will be applied to the photo when it is internally converted to a JPG, so by shooting in RAW format you’re not getting those finishing touches done for you. And that’s actually a good thing because the RAW file gives you far more flexibility and control, it just takes a small amount of extra work.