Related Posts

• 
  How to Find Lost Lightroom Panel

  Every few weeks we get a frantic email scrambling for help, because Lightroom has eaten a critical editing panel and a Pure friend is needing our help to restore their Lightroom to it's more usable state and help them find their lost panel.  Often (I am not sure why) the main panel that goes missing is the vital Basic panel with the main sliders for Exposure, Contrast, etc.  You can imagine how concerned people are when this happens.

  I created a video to walk our users through how to restore lost Lightroom panels, in case this ever happens to you.  There are a lot of tips in the short video, but if you need to get going quickly and don't have time for a video, the basics of restoring panels is to right click on any of your panel names (Basic, Tone Curve, etc.) and you'll bring up a list of all possible panels available and check marks for which ones are currently visible.  You can hide panels by unchecking unwanted or unused panels, and checking important panels that have accidentally gotten hidden or lost somehow.  

  If there are panels you don't use often, hiding those panels can help speed your workflow by decreasing the amount of time you spend scrolling through the panels, so even if you decide to do the opposite of this blog post, you can customize your workspace and save time.  

  

  Check out the video for more tips and tricks to customize your Lightroom interface and find those lost panels!

  
  

• 
  Newborn Editing in Lightroom made easy

  Newborn photography is one of those branches of photography that looks so deceptively simple. There are so many details to attend to, and editing is no small part of the tricky, but essential finesse. These beautiful workflows are so simple to use and get wonderful color correction for your newborn (and other!) images. Please read the instructions for tips and tricks to make these presets and brushes work to their very best. But many are ONE-CLICK workflows. We feel this beautiful workflow, inspired by the Meshelle Newborn Photoshop and Elements actions, will revolutionize editing newborn images!

  You can get your Lightroom or ACR presets HERE.  

  here are just a few of the MANY before and afters from the set of presets!  You can view more by going to the product page for the Meshelle Newborn Lightroom Presets product page.

  

  

• 
  Lightroom Batch Rename Will Save You Headaches

  As we are moving content over from Facebook that we have shared over the last few years, we came across this gem that we talked about back in 2011!  Can't believe it has already been 3 years since we shared this!  We do this a little differently then we did 3 years ago, so here it is, updated and current! 

  We've probably all had it happen.  You have an amazing session.  You deliver a disk full of amazing images.  You eagerly await the client's enthusiastic email response and you get, "Wow!  We love ALL the images you gave us.  But we save IMG_0255 and IMG_0259.  Where are the ones in between?  We'd love to see them all!"  Ugh.  Maybe the ones in between were duplicates.  Or blinks.  Or REALLY wonky expressions.  Or out-of-focus.  But for whatever reason, you don't want to have those images out there associated with your brand.  But once the door is opened and the client thinks there are adorable images of their child that you're withholding, it can be a tricky situation to tactfully avoid (without sounding like you made 4 duds of images either.)

  So, we avoid this by renaming our images in Bridge.  (We also do from Lightroom, and we will be creating a post outlining the Lightroom steps for Lightroom too!)  This means your images will simply go from 1-whatever your last image is.  It doesn't suggest to the client that there are images floating around that could be AMAZING that they do not have and will never see.  Instead it looks like you delivered a great set and they are excited.  

  Afterall, drama avoided is the very best way to deal with drama.

  1)  After editing your images in Lightroom, go to your filmstrip at the bottom.  Click on your first image that you'd like to export and rename.  

  

  2)  After selecting the first image, scroll to your LAST image that you want to export.  If they are all in a row, then hold down shift and click the last image.  If they are out of order, you will have to hold down control as you select your chosen image.

  

  3)  Navigate to the File drop down menu, and select Export.

  

  4) Now, the Export dialog will pop up.  Export to your Hard Drive.  You can choose where to put your files.  I make a JPG folder within my original download folder.  Then I go down to the File Naming portion of the dialog.  I click Custom Name Sequence.  Then you can give Custom Text.  I usually put my clients' names or just the generic JPG.  And then I choose a start number of 1.  From there (assuming you know what other export options you want), you can Export all your files and they will have a contiguous sequence!  No more discussions of "WHAT IS MISSING???"

  

• 
  How to Import into Lightroom and more

  Ever wonder how you can keep yourself more organized in Lightroom? 
  

  Here are a few tips to keep you organized, starting at Import!

   Also don't forget about our massive Sale!  55% off ending on Friday June 17th, 2016!!!!  CLICK HERE!! 

   

   Also don't forget about our massive Sale!  55% off ending on Friday June 17th, 2016!!!!  CLICK HERE!! 

  
• 
  How To Use The Develop Module in Lightroom

  Develop is the heart of the Lightroom program. It can quickly transform an image almost imperceptibly, but you need to know how to tweak it. Which sliders should you use? How far should you go? But most importantly, what do you do once you've reached that golden edit? How can you quickly apply it to all of your images in the same lighting situation? Here are a few ideas to help you do just that. We'll get you from uploaded session to finished export in no time!

  It covers
  Culling while editing
  Syncing edits for speed
  Adjustment brushes
  Editing
  Presets
  Exporting and renaming files
  and more!

  and please.... pin and share this if you can!!! We would love your help on getting this tutorial out there for people to see!

  DON'T FORGET OUR WEEKLY SPECIALS!!!  You can find those HERE!
  

  
  

• 
  Good, Better, Best--The Most Effective Workflow

  To be a successful photographer you need to create great images.

  ...

  Ok, duh.  Right?

  But really.  You DO need to create stunning, timeless images that resonate with your audience.

  However, you also need to have an effective workflow.  You need to be able to handle enough clients to pay the bills and you need to be able to deliver your product quickly enough that people will be happy with the speed of delivery.

  Well, that is one reason we sell our actions and presets.  We believe that we can help photographers with getting clean, classic, stylish, timeless edits more quickly.  Which we feel pretty good about.

  But there is a nagging question that lots of people ask us.  Heck, WE asked ourselves this question for months.  WHAT is the place of Lightroom in an effective workflow?  What is the place of Photoshop?  What about Adobe Camera RAW (ACR)?

  Here's what we've come up with as we continue to tweak and refine our own personal workflows.  See, we're not just action vendors.  We're wedding and portrait photographers with a full plate.  We have lots of kids and a home life too, so getting a workflow that was fast was important to us.  We'll go over the minutiae of our workflows in a later post, but we wanted people to start thinking about how different programs can work together.

  We feel like Lightroom and Adobe Camera RAW/Bridge serve a very similar function for the end user.  We don't advocate one over the other, because we understand that their use is really personal preference.  In fact, to highlight this, Rachel prefers to use Lightroom and Crystal swears by using Adobe Camera RAW/Bridge.  So, even amongst Pure, there is no consensus as to which holds the crown.

  What we DO agree on is that getting as MUCH of your editing done in your RAW editor (ACR or Lightroom) is critical to speed.  This is where we come in and apply our workflow presets and white balance, etc.  We get a very good, clean image.  In Lightroom or ACR you can easily apply full edits from one image to the next.  It cuts down your time from days or hours on a session to often under an hour.  (I can usually get a full portrait session out of Lightroom in under 30 minutes.)

  I will actually deliver a wedding/reception straight out of Lightroom.  That is how nice the edit is...but for the album??

  Lightroom/ACR are incredibly fast, and I want them to be the full answer to editing, but I am going to admit something.  I don't think Lightroom can give that final OOMPH that adding just that last polish in Photoshop can.  So, after I get all of my RAW tweaks, I will upload the images to Photoshop to give that last polish.  I feel that Lightroom/ACR can get an image to about 90%, but there is a reason Photoshop costs more.  It is more targeted.  I can clean up an image better.  Healing and cloning are much better in Photoshop.  Targeting specific colors and styles is better and more effective in Photoshop.  I feel that last 10% of style and nuance can come in Photoshop.  So for any items going to print or for display on the web or in ads, I will make sure it gets the once-over in Photoshop.

  Again, using our actions, I can give my images that final Pure polish, but do so efficiently.  Because with out both style and efficiency, I feel that our business would not succeed.

  

  Above is a clean SOOC.  Middle image is a color corrected edit from Lightroom using Basic Warm Workflow 2 from Pure Presets 1. (Not bad, and done in one click.)  Bottom is polished with Defined Matte in PS and fixed with the Healing Brush tool.