Adobe Lightroom Tips and Tricks 007. From Photoshop to Premiere Pro, iMovie or Final Cut.

I kinda lied. This is not really a Lightroom tip, but we’ve received so many requests for this post that we are including it in our Tips and Tricks series.

Let’s say you want to create a title for your next movie project, and would love to use Photoshop for that. The process is fairly quick and simple:

1. Launch Photoshop
2. Go to Window > Workspace > Motion

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Streamlining Adobe Lightroom • NEW Weekly “Tips and Tricks” Series.

 
The more photos we take, the more photos we need to edit, and the more we need to retouch, back up, search and find. Digital imaging has been great in many ways, like instant review and approval, but it is not making our lives any easier when it comes to time spent in front of the computer.

Photographers need constant access to our photos; we need them to put portfolios and proposals together. After every assignment we need to retouch and deliver the files. Clients will invariably request changes, other versions or different resolutions. When a job is completed, we often need to update our website and blog and start putting new proposals and presentations together.

To make things event more interesting, with recent developments in telecommunications, our clients are expecting that we deliver files right away, and from any location. That is a challenge that we did not have before. All this put together is what I like to call the “constant image cycle”.

Challenge 1
• The more photos we take the more tools we need to manage, organize, and find them.

Challenge 2
• Need to constantly access images to get assignments (proposals, portfolios, presentations, etc.), edit shoots (select best images, retouch, etc.) and deliver final assets.

Challenge 3
• Photographers are expected to deliver images almost instantly and from any location.

All these “challenges” rely on the same non-renewable resource: Time.

I have been a Lightroom user, beta tester, instructor and evangelist since version 1. Actually, I remember beta testing the very first version under the secret code name “Shadowland.” I now use the software almost every day.

After all these years and playing with the app almost every day, I have discovered many great ways to streamline my workflow, mostly by using Lightroom as a database. Starting next week, I’ll be sharing a weekly tip on this blog. Some tips might be familiar to veteran Lightroom users; some approaches might be entirely new. Some will help you to get things done quicker, while others will entirely replace outdated steps. I hope you join me on this project, and as always feel free to ask questions, comment on the tip of the week, and suggest improvements.If you are interested in other topics, please let us know here (and get a chance to win a $100 Amazon Gift Card!).

UPDATE 20130115 Tip & Trick #1, and Tip & Trick #2.

UPDATE 20130214 Tip & Trick #3, and Tip & Trick #4

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Adobe Premiere Elements 11. Worth it?

 
Back in May, Adobe announced Photoshop CS6 and Premiere Pro CS6 with a new user interface.  Now, the company has added that new look to Photoshop Elements 11 and Premiere Elements 11. Both applications are less intimidating for newcomers, allowing quick and easy organization, editing and sharing of media, and targeted for new photographers or video editors.

Both apps include an image organizer that closely resembles Adobe Bridge, making the most commonly used functions easily accessible, while other tools are hidden away in the menus. The new organizer is laid out as a 3 column panel in Photoshop Elements 11 and integrates with  Google Maps, just like the Map Module in Adobe Lightroom 4. Additionally, tagging photos and videos with people or events (mimicking Facebook) is now possible.

Since Premiere Elements includes “Expert” workspaces with interesting transitions and effects, this might be a good product for photographers transitioning into video. The goal is not to become an expert video editor, but understand NLE apps and more importantly, the required assets to put together a video project.

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Adobe Creative Suite 6: is your current system supported?

 
As part of Adobe’s Photoshop CS6 Public Beta announcement, the company said that it will continue to provide official support for Windows XP, and Windows 7, but will be dropping official support for Windows Vista. As you might know, Lightroom 4 is no longer officially supported on Windows XP. For Mac OX OS, Adobe is officially ending support for Macintosh systems that are not 64-bit capable. Premiere Pro CS6  requires Mac OS X v10.6.8 or v10.7, and Windows 7 with Service Pack 1, but it is not clear if Windows Vista and/or XP will be supported. We have been beta testing Premiere Pro CS6 for several months and I can tell you this: it is sweeeeet!!! Actually, most of our “Conversations with Friends” have been edited on CS6.

If you are just getting started with video and want to explore a video editing application, you could also consider Premiere Elements 10.  Elements is a slightly less powerful, but still very capable version of Premiere Pro with an easier-to-use interface. It is important to know that Premiere Pro is a 64-bit only software and requires a computer with a 64-bit processor and 64-bit operating system. Premiere Elements 10 includes both 32-bit and 64-bit versions to run on both systems, but the 32-bit version won’t be able to access more than 4 GB of RAM. The same is true for the old Final Cut Pro 7 and older.

If you are curious about which NVIDIA graphics cards are better for Adobe’s CS6 Suite, go here.

Tomorrow we will show the quick and easy way to tell if your Mac has a 32-bit or a 64-bit processor.
Questions? Comments? Please post them below.