Back in the day, people didn’t walk around with a camera in their pocket 24 hours a day. That’s not the case anymore. Just about every adult in the civilized world has a cell phone within arms reach at this very moment. Shoot, even my kids have one. It’s pretty much glued to their hands. Those are not just phones either. Those are cameras and to be quite honest, they’re kick ass little cameras.

What does this mean to photographers? It means that everybody is taking pictures and the number of those people who actually consider it a form of photography is outstanding. In the last couple years, more and more people have said to me “Oh yeah I’m a photographer too.” and then they proceeded to show me some of their work … on their phone .. that was taken .. on their phone. Seriously? Yes seriously. It’s iPhone Photography.

iPhone Photography Sample Shot

So how good of a picture can you get from your iPhone Photography adventures? This weekend I was out on a little photography safari with my dad and we stopped at this historic water mill in Missouri. I thought I would send a quick shot to my wife so I pulled out my iPhone and just grabbed one really quick. I didn’t even put any thought into it. I didn’t make any adjustments. It was just Snap and Send. Below is the image straight out of my iPhone 4. I hate to admit this but I think it was possibly my favorite shot of the day.

I had already taken a few shots with my DSLR and was a bit irritated that the lighting was absolutely horrible. We drove a couple hours to get here. Harsh direct sunlight with no clouds in sight. The foreground was completely in shadow and desperately needed some additional light cast on it for balance. I knew I would be busting out the tripod, some filters, external speed lights and even still the trees were casting harsh shadows on the building that would need fixed later. It was not a point n shoot situation by far. However, by some Apple Magic. The iPhone Photography was rocking the scene with no effort whatsoever. My iPhone didn’t need a speed light on the foreground. It didn’t have problems balancing the extreme contrasts of light. Even the shadows on the building were magically blended perfectly. What was going on here?

I looked around and watched some of the other tourists. A 13 year old kid snapping away with his cell phone. A woman photographing the scene with her iPad. Another couple with cell phones shooting away like crazy. Another kid shooting macro shots with his phone. That’s when it really sunk in. iPhone Photography is a reality.

iPhone Photography – 100% Zoom Crops

How good is the quality though? Yeah it looks awesome viewed on a small scale but what about getting up close? I’m a professional photographer and to be honest I’ve never paid attention to the pics shot on my phone. So, I actually transferred the shot to my MacBook Pro and loaded it into Photoshop. Holy Crap. At 100% there’s actually some good quality in there. I’m shooting with an iPhone 4 so that’s 5MP. I’m not even using the new iPhone 4S with it’s 8MP camera. No I’m not going to print any huge wall prints with this but you could print 4×6′s all day long. What print size do most people print at? You guessed it 4×6. Now it’s starting to become clear why so many people are shooting with their phones and thinking .. I’m a photographer.

Does iPhone Photography Hurt Your Photography Business?

Let’s get to the point. What does this teach us? It shows us people can get amazing pictures from iPhone Photography. It doesn’t take any special education. There’s no work involved. They don’t have to spend $2,000 on a lens. It’s so easy a caveman can do it. They are photographers when they’re not playing Angry Birds, texting or talking on the phone. They’re out there experimenting with their “cameras”. They’re downloading the latest camera apps for their iPhones. They’re even doing post-work and editing images with trendy photo apps. They’re having fun and sharing their photography with the world through Facebook, Instagram, Google+, Twitter and so on. What’s going to happen when a new iPhone comes out with even better image quality and sports even larger file sizes .. 12MP, 16MP, 40MP .. native RAW files? I can already go on ebay and buy tele-convertors for my iPhone. The general publics perception of the difference between hobby and professional photography has already become blurred to the point of total confusion. Why are they going to pay you a ton of money to do what they can do for free?

Naturally, there are so many things that we do as professional photographers that the iPhone can’t compete with. However, you better start focusing on what those things really are. If you don’t, you’ll find it harder and harder to get new clients in the door. Are you growing as an artist? Are you pushing your limits and coming up with unique new compositions? Are you offering your clients a complete experience or are you simply offering them pictures? Are you watching for new trends and styles that are becoming popular? Are you offering custom designer products that make people say WOW!? Are you out there scouting for new locations that nobody knows about? What exactly are you doing to make yourself stand out from the crowd?

It’s time to put your thinking caps on. This is nothing new to the world of photography. iPhone Photography is not the first major advancement we’ve seen in the industry. You either accept change and evolve or you stay in the past and become forgotten. Push your ego aside and don’t foolishly overlook the fact that in todays world we are officially competing with iPhone Photography on a professional level.

Benefits of Editing Batches in Photoshop

In a nutshell, Image Processor converts and processes all the images contained within a folder you tell it to look in. You can benefit from this is several ways. You might want to create thumbnails of a photo shoot for Facebook that are all equal in size. Maybe you’re trying to upload images to a service like Animoto and you’ve found that some files are too large. You might be converting to sRGB or saving as another file type. You can even use this technique to apply Photoshop Actions or copyright information. Image Processor can solve these issues for you quickly by editing batches in Photoshop.

Editing Batches in Photoshop Using Image Processor

Ok, the first thing you need to do is fire it up. Once you’re in Photoshop click on File > Scripts > Image Processor.

Below you can see exactly what the image processor looks like. It’s extremely basic but it makes editing batches in Photoshop a breeze.

Let’s look at a real world example. I have a bunch of photos I took in St. Louis and I want to make a slideshow from them in Animoto. My problem is that many of my photos probably exceed the Animoto file size limitations. I need to decrease the file size of each photo but I don’t really want to physically resize them. I still want them to look good when viewed on huge monitors and televisions. In this case, what I want to do is save each image with a slightly lower quality setting. You can lower the quality setting of a JPG to 10 without actually seeing any noticeable differences. This will work perfect in my situation.

The first step is to tell Photoshop where the files are located that you want to modify. You have a couple options here. You can tell it to use only the images that you currently have open in Photoshop or you can run it on an entire folder. I already have all my images edited and saved to a folder. So, I’m going to select my folder that contains the images I took in St. Louis.

Next you need to tell Photoshop where to save the images we’re about to process. You don’t need to worry about accidentally overwriting the original images when choosing to Save in Same Location. Photoshop will create a new subfolder and place the processed images inside it. However, you might want to manually select a folder if these images need to be archived. I work exclusively with RAW images so the location is of no concern to me. The images are simply JPG files that were exported from my RAW editor to a temporary location in the first place. As soon as I upload my JPG files to Animoto I will delete them from my computer. So, I’m just going to choose to save in the same location.

Now you need to explain why you are editing batches in Photoshop. As you can see below, there’s several options here. I can save my photos as JPEG, PSD or TIF files. I can change the quality settings. I can also resize all the image to fit within specific dimensions. I simply need smaller file sizes on my images. So, I’m going to select Save as JPEG at a quality of 10. I’m not resizing the actual dimensions of my images.

Finally, you can run any specific Photoshop Actions you might want to apply to the entire batch of images. You can also enter your copyright info. Again, I shoot exclusively in RAW and edit within a RAW processor. Photoshop Actions don’t play a huge part in my workflow so I normally just leave this empty with the default setting of Include ICC Profile. Depending on your editing workflow you might find more benefits from using this section of Image Processor. I rarely use this area but it’s nice having it available just in case.

That’s it. Now you click the Run Button in the top right corner of Image Processor. If you watch it do it’s thing, you will see Photoshop quickly goes through each image one by one. The photo is opened, processed and closed. Then Photoshop moves on to the next image until it reaches the last file in the folder.

You are free to go about your other business while Photoshop does all the grunt work for you.

Editing Batches in Photoshop Tips

Think about how you can use Image Processor in your own workflow to help save time editing images. Create some generic Photoshop Actions that will work on large batches of images. Photoshop Actions for creating Watermarks, border frames, that include your studio logo or text are pretty common things that Image Processor can help you with. Think about any situations you’ve been in where you spent way too much time getting a large batch of images ready. You might be able to save time in the future by editing batches in Photoshop.

SEO for Beginners

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. When you think about SEO, your goal is to optimize your website so that it ranks as high as possible for specific keywords or phrases in popular search engines, such as Google. There are basically 3 primary engines used worldwide and those are Google, Yahoo and Bing. Google holds the championship title on usage. The number of people that search Yahoo and Bing combined doesn’t even hold a match to those who use Google. We don’t want to exclude the other engines. However, you should realize that Google is your primary target. It doesn’t matter if you’re planning SEO for photographers or any other type of business.

Statistically, people tend to limit themselves to the first 3 pages of search results. There’s 10 results per page so that means your goal is to rank in the top 30 listings for your keywords. I know that sounds like a pretty tough task. However, don’t let that hold you back. Yes, you’re competing with a bazillion websites for that spot in the top 30 but as luck will have it … most people know absolutely nothing when it comes to SEO. It’s really not that hard to do.

I’m not going to dive into insane technical issues. I want to stay focused on basic SEO for photographers in general. This is a website focused on photography tips after all.

Basic SEO for Photographers

SEO Keywords & Phrases

This is your starting point. You need to know what your keywords and phrases should be before you go any further. Make yourself a list of simple questions and start tweaking it out. What do you do? Photography. What kind of Photography? Wedding Photography. Ok, where do you do most of your wedding photography? Dallas, Texas. In this case a good keyword phrase for you might be Dallas Texas Wedding Photography.

Now let’s tweak it out a bit. If you’re looking for a wedding photographer, what are you going to type into Google? People are not looking for Photography. They’re looking to hire a Photographer. So, let’s streamline our keyword phrase to Dallas Texas Wedding Photographer. Now, let’s take one more step into our consumers subconscious. Do they want to choose a Photographer or choose the best photographer from a wide selection of Photographers? Yes, Google will display different results based on singular and plural words. So, finally we have come to the conclusion to use Dallas Texas Wedding Photographers as our keyword phrase for a relevant page. You can see that all I have done is taken what I do and then created a logical search phrase for it. Make a list of keyword phrases for each specialty you have. They will come in handy as you develop new pages for your website.

P.S. I’m not really a wedding photographer in Dallas. Ok, moving on.

SEO MetaTags

1. Title – The Title Tag contains the information that the visitor will see in their web browsers title bar and browser tabs. This is also the string of text that will link to your website in a search engines search results. Other websites and social networks, such as Facebook, will use this information to create anchor text for links. It is very important that your keywords and phrases are within the Title Tag. This is one of the most important SEO elements on your page. Keep in mind that Google only displays the first 70 characters of text. Make sure your title gets to the point within that limit. You also want to place important keywords as close to the beginning as possible, followed by your secondary keyword phrases.
2. Description – This is the text description that is displayed in search results beneath the Title link and explains what the page is all about. You need to keep this description short and to the point .. 160 characters or less. Is this important to your SEO ranking and should you strategically place keywords in the description? The common misconception is that it effects your SEO and, in fact, it does not. This is to assist user readability and nothing more. A brief description, with no keywords, but one that sparks a persons interest is best. This will increase the number of people who actually click through to your website once the page is listed in the search results. Think catchy slogan. This is why you NEED to see this page.
3. Keywords – These are invisible to your visitors. Search engines do not display this information in their results. The Keyword Tag is another major SEO misconception. It’s not actually that important. Don’t feel like you need to kill yourself working on Keyword Tags. Google does not even bother looking at the Keyword Tag. They really never have. This tag was, more or less, a failed experiment during the dawn of modern internet search and pre-dates Google. Yahoo does look at the tag but they don’t really give it much weight. It’s a leftover that was never taken out of the fridge and thrown away. You can use the Keyword Tag if you want. It won’t hurt you to use it but don’t waste too much time on it.

URL Structure for SEO

http://www.your-website.com/category/subcategory/page-title.html

Above you see the typical URL Structure. Some important things to look at here. First, notice the “dash” in www.your-website.com. Some people will say use underscores. Don’t do that .. anywhere. Google will see those words as one word. In my example, Google will index both words “your” and “website”. You also see the dash used in the page-title. We’re focusing on SEO for photographers so let’s say your page contains wedding photography price lists. It should look something like .. wedding-photography-price-list.html

Now let’s look at the category and subcategory. These are just like folders on your computer and they need to make sense. It’s a path that leads to the final page. Placing relevant keywords and phrases in these is very important. A couple examples of something photographs might use would be ..

/wedding-photography/wedding-services/wedding-photography-price-list.html
/wedding-photography/wedding-galleries/dallas-texas-wedding-photographers.html

Body Text

Now for the actual body text. When you’re writing the text for a page, post, article, etc., you need to be using relevant keywords and phrases for that page. There are a few tricks that will boost the SEO for those keywords on the page.

1. Try to use your keyword or phrase in a Header 1, 2 & 3 Tags. (i.e. <H1>Photography Tips</H1>). Those are normally the 3 largest fonts seen on the page. In this article you can see a perfect example of how I have used the phrase, SEO for Photographers, in all three header types.
2. Use the keyword phrase in both the first and last sentence of your body text. Again, you can find SEO for Photographers at both the beginning and end of the body text on this page.
3. Use Bold, Italic & Underline text on the keywords. I don’t use underline because it potentially confuses visitors with a link. I also only do this once per page. You should be getting the idea now. Pay close attention and you’ll find the phrase SEO for photographers in bold and italic print toward the top of this article.
4. Use your keyword phrase a few times throughout the body text. There is no real magic number of times to do this. Think more about making a connection with your audience and less about the search engines. You will often hear people talking about “Keyword Density” and even popular SEO Software will help you calculate this. I’ll briefly explain it simply because it’s another web myth. The Density rule states that your keyword should account for an average of 4% of your body text. Not true. If you’re spending a lot of time trying to streamline your text for a perfect 4% .. Stop. I’ve had posts hit #1 on Google that had a 0.5 percent.

Image File SEO for Photographers

This is something that practically every photographer I’ve talked to never does. When you’re getting a photo ready for your website do you give it a special name or leave it as something like DSC_9873.JPG? Google will see this as DSC9873, which makes no sense at all. What if you named it something like dallas-texas-wedding-photographers-9873.JPG … ahhhh now you get it. Use those keywords everywhere you can.

ALT Tag SEO

While we’re on the subject of photos, what do your ALT tags look like? Make sure you are using your keywords and phrases in your images ALT tags. However, we don’t need to worry about dashes in these cases.

<img src=”http://www.your-website.com/sample.jpg” alt=”Your Keyword Phrase”>

SEO for Photographers – Quick Tips

Don’t use your photography business name at the beginning of your page titles. You’ll be wasting valuable SEO real estate. If people are searching for you by business name then odds are they’re going to find you anyway. Get those keywords in your Header 1, 2 & 3 Tags. Don’t forget to use a bold and italic font on keywords. Think about naming your files before uploading them to your page and don’t forget about the ALT Tags. One last thing. Don’t forget to throw your keywords in the first and last sentence. For example, I hope you all learned some good stuff in this article about SEO for Photographers.

Hipster is one of our vintage Lightroom presets for creating those trendy retro images everybody seems to love so much. Like all XposurePro presets, Hipster can save you a ton of time in Lightroom when trying to get just the right effect. This preset is awesome on a huge range of images, including portraiture, architecture, macro photography and landscapes, both natural and urban. With the Hipster Lightroom preset, you get a pleasant vintage look with a dash of cross processing but not enough to destroy your skin tones in most portraits. It also creates a beautiful feathered vignette to pull your viewer into your images without totally burning the edges. The vignette looks best on images with a lot of busy textures and patterns. As you can see in the example images below, the vignette can become more pronounced when there’s a lot of sky in the image. If you’re looking for vintage Lightroom presets that give your images that cool retro look, Hipster is a must have for your preset collection.

Lightroom Presets in Action

Hover your mouse cursor over the images below to see the Hipster Preset in action. Both images are examples of applying Hipster to RAW files straight out of the camera, with no other adjustments. As you can see, Hipster has a very dramatic effect on your photography and it only takes one click.

Hover Over Images To See Hipster in Action

Lightroom Presets

XposurePro RAW presets are created with Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 and have been tested to also work with Lightroom 4. Make sure to browse the rest of the XposurePro Lightroom Presets collection.

This is a commercial product and cannot be distributed or shared by any third party. Purchasing this product grants you the right to install it on a single system.

Installing Lightroom Presets

If you’re new to Adobe Lightroom then make sure to watch our Lightroom Training Video called How to Install Lightroom Presets.

Prevent Camera Condensation

Here’s an example of what your images might look like if you have condensation on your lens. Depending on climate issues it could be better or worse. Regardless, it’s not good and you need to take steps to prevent camera condensation from ruining your photos and your equipment.

Why do you get condensation on your camera lens?

When you take your camera from a cool and dry environment to a hot and humid environment, you will see condensation immediately form on your lens. Basically, the moisture in the air is changing from a vapor to a liquid form because of the climate change. What happens then? It collects all over your lens and potentially in other areas inside the camera. This is obviously not good on your equipment. You need to prevent camera condensation from happening.

Let’s say you’re out scouting for pictures, in the car and it’s crazy hot outside. What is the first thing you do? You crank the air conditioning up because it feels good while you’re driving. Suddenly, you see the perfect picture. You slam on the brakes, grab your camera and jump out of the car. When you look through your camera lens you see a cloudy mucky mess. That’s condensation on your lens.

What about winter? Same scenario. You crank up the heat to stay warm and then jump out into the cold to grab a shot before it’s too late. Too bad you missed it … should have learned how to prevent the problem.

How to prevent camera condensation

So what do we need to do in order to prevent camera condensation from occuring? Control your environment for starters. If it’s nasty hot outside don’t drive around with your air conditioner blasting. Roll down the window instead. No, you’re not going to be as comfortable but too bad. You do what you got to do. The same concept can be applied in the winter. Match the outside environment or stay reasonably close to it. Put on an extra layer of clothing if you need to.

What about when you come home for the day? You’re not going to match the outside temperture in your house. A good idea here is to take your gear and place it in a airtight plastic bag or Ziploc baggie. Ziploc makes some pretty big ones. Throw something in there to draw the moisture if possible, such as a cloth towel or diaper. Let it sit in there for 30 mins or so when you come inside. This will give the camera a chance to adjust to room temperture. The moisture should cling to the towel and not your camera. Silica gel packs are another great thing to use to draw moisture. Ever wonder why you always find a couple in the box with new electronics. Ahhhhhh now you get it.

Prevent camera condensation – Warning !!!

Never, ever .. ever .. take your lens off the camera when you’re experiencing condensation. What’s going to happen? You just opened the door to let the moisture in. Don’t do it. You want to keep in mind that not only does condensation slow you down and ruin your images but it can potentially damage the inner workings of the equipment. I’m not speaking for all companies but chances are there’s something about water damage voiding your warranty somewhere in the fine print. The safest thing to do is simply prevent camera condensation.

Aperture 3 Plugins – 500px Wide

Let’s take a look at what this thing does. After you install the Aperture 3 plugin you can get to it by either Control+Click or Right-Clicking on your image and heading to your Export Menu. You could also go to File > Export > 500px-Wide.

Here it is. The 500px Wide Aperture 3 Plugin. Just look at it. Ok, actually it looks extremely basic but it does what it needs to do. You can enter your title, description and choose a 500px category for your image to go in. Choose your image size settings just like you would in Aperture 3. Login to your account and you’re ready to export.

If you like a little touch of automation, the Title and Description fields are populated with whatever you have in the IPTC Title & IPTC Caption tags.

As you can see in the image above, I have a bright red Register button on my 500px Wide plugin. That’s because I just downloaded it a few minutes ago and was like .. this is awesome, I have to share this. Which brings me to the price tag on this little guy. It’s going to sit you back a whopping $3.99. Yeah I know, big deal right. Pretty cheap in the world of Aperture 3 Plugins. I’m getting it.

After you export the image, the URL link to your uploaded photo is automatically put on the clipboard. You can then paste it into your web browser and go directly to it on 500px.

If you’re not on 500px yet check out the articles Introducing 500px Plus and 500px Gets A Makeover. It’s an awesome community filled with a lot of talented photographers.

Aperture 3 Plugins from Blue Crowbar Software

Follow the link to download a free trial of 500px-Wide and to check out more Aperture 3 Plugins from Blue Crowbar Software.

How To Photograph Star Trails – Checklist

• Camera (duh)
• Sturdy Tripod
• Shutter Release
• Viewfinder Cover
• Lots of Time

How To Photograph Star Trails – Basics

Two Methods for Star Trail Photography

There’s two ways you can go with how to photograph star trails. You can either go with a long exposure or you can create a series of shorter exposures and then combine them later using an image stacker. The most common method in star trail photography is using long exposures and that’s what I’m going to focus on in this article.

Long Exposures

The first thing you need to learn about how to photograph star trails is how to be patient. You can count on your exposures lasting anywhere from 30 minutes to several hours. Yes that’s for one picture. That means your camera needs to have a bulb setting. Your DSLR should have one. Even a lot of point n shoot digital cameras these days have a bulb setting. Another thing to keep in mind is that you are shooting in the dark. That means you want to suck in all the light you possibly can. A lens that can open up to f/2 will be your new best friend in the middle of the night. Do you have to use a fast lens? No but the stars will be naturally brighter in your image.

Best Time to Photograph Star Trails

When is the best time? Traditionally, we are told that you will have better luck shooting during a New Moon. That means there is no moon visible in the night sky. The reason for this is because during a new moon there is less ambient light in the sky. The more ambient light you have, the shorter your exposures are going to be. So, where you could leave the shutter open for hours in pitch black, you will be limited to maybe a matter of minutes with a great deal of ambient light. If you’re just learning how to photograph star trails, I recommend experimenting during a new moon. Once you get the hang of it you can take the next step by including ambient light in your compositions.

Using High ISO Settings

This is a good trick to get an idea of how long your exposure needs to be. Start out with a ridiculously high ISO. Naturally the noise will ruin the image but this step is just to save you from wasting a couple hours on a bad exposure. Your shutter speed is going to be much faster with a high ISO, probably under a minute. This allows you to evaluate the foreground and determine how long of an exposure you will need. For example, Say you decide that the foreground looks good at f/5.6 shot at 1 minute at ISO3200. That’s going to be 2 mins at 1600, 4 mins at 800, 8 mins at 400 and so on. In this example, if you are shooting the final image at f/5.6 & ISO50, then your exposure is going to be roughly 1 hour to get the exposure you want on the foreground. During this hour the stars will move quite a lot, giving you a very nice star trail effect.

Circular Star Trails

Star Trail Photos are either captured as streaks falling across the sky or circling around a central star. This is done by shooting towards either the north or south poles. The north pole is the easiest. This means you’re shooting at the Polaris (North Star). Just find the Big Dipper and aim at the last star in its handle. Finding a star to represent the south pole is more difficult because there is no well known star to look for. I’m sure there’s an iPhone or iPad app though that can help you figure it out.

How To Photograph Star Trails Like A Pro

Now you know how to photograph star trails but can you shoot them like a pro? To help give you a little inspiration here is just a taste of the best star trail photography that I’ve found on 500px. If you’d like a fine art canvas of any of these images, contact the artists through the links below. If you’ve never heard of 500px make sure to check out Introducing 500px Plus.

How To Photograph Star Trails – Quick Tips

Use a sturdy tripod. This is not the time to go cheap. You’re dealing with very long exposures. Use a remote shutter release so that you avoid touching the camera completely. A viewfinder cover is great to prevent any light from leaking in through the viewfinder. Don’t be standing behind the camera texting on your phone. Watch out for light pollution and take it into consideration. This is light polluting the sky from other sources such as, light poles, traffic, cityscapes or the cell phone I told you not to be texting on. Hold out for clear nights. If the sky is covered by clouds you’re not going to capture many star trails. Be on the lookout for interesting foregrounds that will compliment your night skies. That’s it. Get out there and start shooting now that you know how to photograph star trails.

How to Create a Copyright Preset in Lightroom

The first thing you need to do is go to your Metadata Menu and click on the “Edit Metadata Presets” option.

Working in the Metadata Presets dialog is pretty straight forward. You will notice that it’s filled with tons of options. You can ignore almost everything here. The only sections we are concerned with right now are the IPTC Copyright & IPTC Creator sections.

As you can see in the image below, this is pretty basic stuff. All you need to do is enter the information that you want to provide. If you don’t want to use a specific piece of information, simply leave the field blank and uncheck the box.

Once you have all the information filled out that you want to include for the copyright preset in Lightroom, go up and click on “Custom” and switch to “Save Current Settings as New Preset.”

Now you can name your copyright preset in Lightroom so that it can be quickly accessed at any time.

Apply Copyright Preset in Lightroom During Import

One of the primary benefits you have when you create a copyright preset in Lightroom is the ability to apply it automatically when you import new images. This is extremely easy to do. If you’re new to Lightroom read the Lightroom Tutorial How To Import Photos into Lightroom 4.

Once you have created your copyright preset go to the Import Screen. You’ll notice in the right panel under “Apply During Import” you have the option to select a Metadata preset. Select the copyright preset you created here.

What this does is tell Lightroom to apply the copyright preset to every single image as they import into the Lightroom Library. This will save you a great deal of time because there’s no need to enter the information later. It’s automatically included before you even start editing your images.

If we open an image in the Library Module and look at the Metadata Panel, we can see that all of the copyright information has been included in the image.

Copyright Preset in Lightroom Quick Tips

You are not limited to one copyright preset in Lightroom. You might want to create multiple copyright presets with different usage terms or for multiple photographers. Feel free to create as many copyright presets as you’d like to streamline your Lightroom Workflow to it’s full potential. Don’t feel limited to only using this for copyright information. There’s tons of options in the Metadata Presets dialog that will allow you to create all kinds of custom presets. Take a little time to explore it. That’s it. I hope you enjoyed the How to Create a Copyright Preset in Lightroom.

Sylights – Free iPhone Apps for Photographers

Ok, I have Sylights loaded up on my iPad so let’s take a closer look at it. The interface is extremely simple yet elegant. When you run it for the first time you’ll see the screen below. Tap the little green plus button and we can start designing a new lighting diagram.

The first thing you will notice is the little Sylights logo at the top of the screen. Tap on it and it opens up a stylish little wheel that contains all the photography equipment you can use in your diagram. As you can see they have put a lot of thought into this tool. You have access to all kinds of cool things like umbrellas, reflectors, soft boxes and tons of other stuff.

Tapping your finger on an item will bring up even more options for you to choose from. I’m going to tap on Gobos. You can see the wheel changes color to indicate that I’m in a “sub-menu” and now I have access to different types of Gobos. I can choose from black panels, barn doors, grids or snoots. In all there’s something like 60 items you can place in your diagrams. Pretty cool stuff.

Now that you have an idea of how it works, I’m going to start out by placing a background on my diagram. Using the wheel I’m going to scroll around to Backdrops and tap on it.

From the Backdrop sub menu I’m going to hold my finger down on the White Backdrop and drag it down, onto my empty canvas.

It doesn’t get much simpler than that. So, I’m going to drag down more items like a hair light, subject, big soft box with a grid on it and my DSLR camera of course.

Tapping on an item selects it and allows you to rotate it, using two fingers to rotate the item on the screen, or using one finger to drag it around. Double-Tapping an item will open a menu like you see in the image below. When you Lock an item that means it’s locked in place so you can’t accidentally change it’s position or settings. I use big soft boxes so I want to make this one a bit larger. I make sure that “Lock Size” is not checked. Now I can use two fingers to pinch and zoom, making the soft box larger or smaller.

That looks like about the size I want. Now I don’t want to accidentally resize it again when I’m try to rotate it or move it around the canvas. So, I double tap on the soft box to bring my menus back up and I throw a checkmark on Lock Size. Now the size is locked in place and can’t be accidentally changed. As you can see below, there is also the options to lock the position and rotation.

Once you’ve finished your lighting diagram tap the arrow at the bottom of the screen. This bring up another menu that allows you to discard or save the diagram. From here you can also tap on Properties which will let you name the diagram and give it a description.

Once your lighting diagram is saved you can still add more to it. You can go back and modify it or even attach images from your camera roll to it. Now people can see the diagram in action. You can even send the diagram from here. One tap and it opens your mail with a fully composed email ready to go that includes the diagram, attached photos and a list of the items used in the lighting diagram.

Best Free iPhone Apps for Photography

Yes. I love it. I use it. I highly recommend it. Sylights is definitely one of the best free iPhone apps I have found for photographers.

Activate Photo Stream in iPhoto

You’ll need to enable Photo Stream on your Mac in iPhoto. It doesn’t matter if you never open iPhoto again. Remember, Lightroom can’t do this on it’s on. We’re creating a work around for it’s lack of iCloud integration. Ok, open iPhoto and head to Preferences under the iPhoto Menu. Throw a checkmark on everything in the Photo Stream panel.

Auto Import iCloud Photo Stream in Lightroom 4

The first thing we need to do is tell Lightroom where to watch for the incoming photos. You need to Enable Auto Import and then we’re going to add a couple settings.

Before we can import iCloud Photo Stream in Lightroom 4 we need to tell Lightroom which folder to watch for photos to auto import. First click the “Enable Auto Import” option. Next assign a folder to watch and a destination folder. You can follow my example or name them whatever you want.

Import Photo Stream Using Apple Automator

Ok, I realize a lot of you have never used Automator. You might have never even noticed it. Look on your Macs Dashboard. See the little robot guy? Fire him up. In order to import iCloud Photo Stream in Lightroom 4 we need to create a Folder Action.

What we are going to do is copy our Photo Stream from its hidden location to our new folder. We need to set the Folder that the Folder Action receives files from. From the Choose Folder drop down, select “Other” so we can browse. Now we are looking for a hidden folder. So, press Shift+Command+Period to be able to browse hidden files on your Mac. Next navigate to the iCloud Photo Stream folder which is located at /user/Library/Application Support/iLifeAssetManagement/assets/sub

Next we want to have automator get the folder contents. So, in the search box type “Get Folder” and from the options drag “Get Folder Contents” over to the empty workspace on the right. (You could also search for “Get Folder Contents” and it will be the only option there is to choose from .. once I saw it I stopped typing because I’m lazy.)

Next you want to enable the option “Repeat for each subfolder found”.

Use the search tool I just showed you and search for “Copy Finder Items”. Drag it below the other one you just added. Where are you going to copy finder items to? It’s the Lightroom Watch Folder you setup at the beginning of this Lightroom Tutorial.

Now just Save your Automator Folder Action. It doesn’t matter what you call it. Your Mac knows what to do from here out and you’ll never need to worry about it again.

Import iCloud Photo Stream in Lightroom 4 Test Run

Ok, so I’m going to grab my iPod Touch and test this out. A second later, it automatically popped up in Lightroom 4.

Import iCloud Photo Stream in Lightroom 4 Success !!!

That’s it. If you’ve never used Automator before, you might have broke a little sweat but not too bad for a Lightroom Tutorial. FYI, Automator can be used to do TONS of cool stuff. If you have any problems just post them in the comments below. If everything ran smooth, enjoy being able to import iCloud Photo Stream in Lightroom 4.