Saturday, October 12th, 2013

Reinstate a RAW or DNG image in Camera Raw

 

Remove all the edits you’ve made to a raw or dng image in Adobe Camera Raw

No doubt you’ve encountered the situation where you have a raw file or a dng that you’ve worked on in Adobe Camera Raw or Lightroom and you one day look at it and think – “what was I thinking?”

You decide you want immediately to remove all the changes you’ve made to the image. Easy? Not really!

If you’re working with a raw image then you can locate the image on disk and alongside it will be its sidecar xmp. Shall I say that again, because to the uninitiated ‘sidecar xmp’ just sounds so cool doesn’t it. What it is is an .xmp file with the same name as the raw file and it contains the edits you made to your image. The sidecar xmp file is used because you cannot write data to a camera raw file so the edits have to go somewhere. They go in this little xmp file as a set of text entries – delete the file and you remove the edits, permanently – in fact just remove the xmp file to another folder where ACR can’t find it and you’re done.

In Lightroom you can wind back edits to an image from the Develop module in the History panel on the left of the screen. Open the panel and select the bottom-most entry to wind back the changes you made to the image.

Unfortunately this won’t work if you made changes in a program that wrote an .xmp file and it won’t work if the changes were made to a dng file, written to that file and then the file was imported into Lightroom.

In that case, go to the Library panel and open Quick Develop and click Reset All – that removes all the edits.

In ACR, go to the small menu in the top right of the edit pane and choose Reset Camera Raw Defaults. This removes the edits and returns the image to its out of camera state (see image at the top of this post)

This is also very handy for teachers who teach using a set of images – if you need to start over editing an image with a new class, this option will help you start over with a clean image.

 

 

Helen Bradley

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Categories:Lightroom, photoshop

posted by Helen Bradley @ 3:57 pmNo Comments links to this post

Wednesday, April 3rd, 2013

Lightroom Tip – Flick a Switch

Flick a Switch – Using Switches in Lightroom

Switches in Lightroom appear in areas such as the Develop module where they can be used to enable or disable a setting such as the Tone Curve. You can use this switch to compare your image with or without the effect in place.

Set the switch to the up position to turn it on and to the down position to turn it off.

The benefit of doing this is you can turn the effect on and off in isolation to any other changes made to the rest of the image and you don’t have to wind back your history to see the change.

Helen Bradley

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Categories:Lightroom, photoshop

posted by Helen Bradley @ 10:31 amNo Comments links to this post

Tuesday, February 12th, 2013

Get Your Tweets now – how to download your tweets

 

Download a history of your Twitter Tweets today!

I could really do with a file of my tweets. It will help me to schedule future tweets by being able to recycle some of the best of our old ones. Luckily, recently, Twitter began offering this as an option. If you want to, you can download an entire file of your tweets from the first of them that you made.

To do this, log in to Twitter and go to your Settings, click Edit Profile and then click Account. Scroll to the bottom. There you will find a button Request Your Archive that you can press to get your tweets.

Wait and in a few hours and you’ll be emailed a link to download your entire archive.

This comes as a zip file which you must first unzip. There is an index.html file in the zip that you can run to view all your tweets in a browser interface. There are also other files containing them – such as a series of .csv files one for each month that you can open in Excel.

 

It’s a great way to get a permanent record of your tweets it you need it.

Helen Bradley

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posted by Helen Bradley @ 9:56 amNo Comments links to this post

Tuesday, January 15th, 2013

Five Photoshop setup tips

When you install a new version of Photoshop the first thing you’ll need to do is to set things up so that they work properly for you. Here are settings I make in the Preferences panel every time I upgrade.

1. Set your History States

Choose Edit > Preferences > Performance or Photoshop Preferences > Performance on a Mac and set the number of History States. Having a high setting for History States ensures that you can undo changes that you make to your image. By default it’s set to a paltry 20 so this is the first change to make.

I set my History States to the maximum value 1,000 – but even a quarter of this would be a good setting.

Here too I ensure that Photoshop can use plenty of the available RAM so I’ll crank that up to a large value – what you use will be dependent on the amount of memory you have installed.

2. Set Cursor Shape and Size

Still in the Preferences panel I like to use a Normal Brush Tip for my Painting Cursor and Precise for my Other Cursors. This can be set in the Cursors area.

You may want to use something different but it pays to look at these options and decide how you want your cursors to look as you work with them.

3. Opening Files My Way!

I dislike that Photoshop opens documents as tabs and that they are docked to the toolbar. This behavior really grates on me. If you’re like me and you prefer your documents to float you can set this in the Preferences Panel.

Choose Interface and disable Enable Floating Document Window Docking and disable Open Documents as Tabs.

In this panel you will also find the new Photoshop Color Themes in Photoshop CS6 so if

the dark gray look is not to your liking you can return to a more “CS5” look by selecting the lighter gray color.

4. Control Where Files are Saved to

Photoshop can be set either to save images back into the original folder when you choose File, Save As or to the folder that was last used for saving files. You can choose which of these behaviors you prefer Photoshop to default to in the File Handling area of the Preferences panel.

To save back to the original folder, enable the Save As to Original Folder option. To default to the last folder you saved to disable this checkbox.

5. Write your own History

So I can go back and retrace my steps in a large project I like to store a History of all that I do in Photoshop. To do this, click the General tab and enable the History Log checkbox. I save to a Text file (rather than inside the file itself) and I save a Detailed history as that stores the richest data. Choose a filename and place to save it and Photoshop will keep a log file of everything you do to every file.

So, now it is over to you. What preferences do you set up when you first install a new version of Photoshop?

Helen Bradley

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Categories:photography

posted by Helen Bradley @ 8:00 am1 Comment links to this post

Monday, December 3rd, 2012

Lightroom – harness the power of your scroll wheel

In Lightroom, using the scroll wheel on your mouse has some distinct advantages over using other methods for adjusting sliders. It might take a little getting used to but when you see just what it can do you might be surprised.

Develop module and the Wheel

In the Lightroom Develop module you might have used the + and – keys to adjust sliders to fix your images. If you do this, whenever you pause to see how the change looks when applied to the image, Lightroom writes the change value in the history even if you’re not done. If you readjust the same slider a few times, each time you adjust it a new history entry is made.

By contrast, you can use the scroll wheel to adjust the slider. Begin by clicking on the pin on the slider and then rolling the scroll wheel up to drag it to the right or down to drag it to the left. Not until you let go and go to the next tool will the change be written to the History. This means that you can experiment with different values rolling your mouse wheel left and right as you please – and until you move away from that control nothing is recorded. Your history list will be a whole lot neater and you have a much easier way to adjust the sliders.

Spot removal and the wheel

When you have the Spot Removal Tool, Red Eye Tool or the Adjustment Brush Tool selected you can size the brush to the desired size using the mouse scroll wheel.

To see this at work click any of these three tools to target it and then hold your mouse over the image. Roll with the scroll wheel to adjust the brush size. If you have the Adjustment Brush targeted then hold the Shift key as you roll with the scroll wheel to adjust the feathering on the brush.

Move with the Wheel

If you’re have used the Zoom feature to zoom into the image then rolling the mouse scroll wheel will move the zoomed image up or down in the work area. To scroll to the left or right use the Shift key with the mouse wheel.

A caveat…

It seems that some Mac users have experienced difficulty with the scroll wheel on various machines so your mileage with this technique may vary. On a Windows 7 machine, with Lightroom 4 and a standard two button mouse with a scroll wheel, everything worked as explained and it’s a whole lot easier than dragging sliders around to make your changes.

Thanks to Frank Schophuizen for his gracious contribution to this post.

Helen Bradley

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Categories:photoshop

posted by Helen Bradley @ 8:00 am1 Comment links to this post

Tuesday, January 10th, 2012

Photoshop – 6 “must save” settings

One feature of Photoshop is its ability to store things like custom shapes, brushes and workspaces so you can use them again and again. Saving settings you use a lot in Photoshop will save you time in future when you need to repeat the process.

Here are six handy ways to speed up your work in Photoshop by saving custom settings:

 

Curves (and other) Dialog presets

One of my favorite fixes is one involving a curves adjustment in the LAB color space which I introduced in my blog post “Turn Ho-Hum Color into WOW! with Photoshop” http://www.digital-photography-school.com/turn-ho-hum-color-into-wow-with-photoshop. The fix involves taking an image to LAB color mode and then, on a duplicate of the background layer, applying a particular Curves adjustment. Once you’ve done this once, you can speed up the process next time by saving the Curves settings as a preset. To do this, click the down-pointing arrow icon to the right of the Presets list, choose Save Preset and type a name for the preset. Next time you need to apply the same adjustment all you need to do is to select the preset from the list in the Curves dialog to save yourself the effort of creating the curves manually.

As you work in Photoshop, look out for dialogs that offer the ability for you to save your settings as presets you can use anytime in future.

Image Vignette Layer Style

Another type of preset you can save to reuse is a layer style such as one that applies a vignette to an image. To configure this, convert the background layer of an image to a regular layer and choose Layer > Layer Style > Inner Glow. Configure an Inner Glow with settings such as Blend Mode: Multiply, Opacity: 50%, Noise: 0%, Color: Black or Dark Brown/Grey. Set the Technique to Softer, Source: Edge, Choke: 10%, Size: 250px (or to suit the image).

Click the New Style button and type a name for your style. Select both the Include Layer Effects and Include Layer Blending Options checkboxes and click Ok.

In future, you can apply this effect to an image by selecting Window > Styles to display the Styles Palette. Your new layer style will be the last one in the dialog and you can apply it to any image by clicking on it.

 

Saving the Presets themselves

Certain Brushes, Styles, Gradients, Shapes and Tool presets need to be saved to disk or your run the risk of losing them if, for example, you reinstall Photoshop, delete your preferences file or choose Replace instead of Append when adding presets to a panel.

To save these presets to disk as files, choose Edit > Preset Manager and select the type of feature to save, such as Styles if you have created a custom style. Select the style or styles that you want to save, click Save Set and give the style set a name.

Once they’re saved as file on disk, you can load them into Photoshop at any time in future using the Preset Manager dialog or the feature’s own flyout menu.

 

Save a record of your work

Sometimes what you want to save in Photoshop is not preferences or brushes but, instead, details of the work that you’ve been doing on your images. You can save details of the steps you have performed to individual files or to a log file by choosing Edit > Preferences > General and enable the History Log checkbox.

Select to save the Log Items to Metadata, Text File or Both. If you choose Text File, a dialog will open from which you can select the folder and text file name to save the information to. Select Sessions Only, Concise or Detailed – to learn more about these options check out this blog post: http://www.digital-photography-school.com/how-to-keep-a-log-of-your-work-in-photoshop. Click Ok and in future the work you do on all your files will be recorded and stored for you.

 

Save your Actions

When you create Photoshop Actions to speed up the work that you do in Photoshop, like Brush and Presets, these will be lost if you lose your Photoshop settings. To make sure that these are backed up to external files so that you can recover them if they are lost, view the Actions palette, select the group of actions that you want to back up and click the flyout menu. Select Save Actions and, when the dialog appears, save your actions in a file so you can load then into Photoshop at any time.

 

Save your Workspace

I like my Photoshop workspace to be a certain way so I use the workspace feature to store my preferred layout for the Photoshop window and Palettes. To see how to do this, arrange Photoshop the way you want it to look, including hiding any palettes you don’t want to see and showing those that you do. Choose Window > Workspace > Save Workspace (New Workspace in Photoshop 5) and give your workspace a name. Select whether to include Panel Locations, Keyboard Shortcuts and/or Menus.

In future, you can use your Photoshop workspace by choosing Window > Workspace and select your saved workspace. Unlike other preferences, workspaces are automatically saved as external files.

 

Helen Bradley

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posted by Helen Bradley @ 9:00 amNo Comments links to this post

Wednesday, June 17th, 2009

Photoshop – keep a log of everything you’ve done

How many times have you created a neat effect on an image using Photoshop and then wanted to duplicate the effect on another image? The problem is that unless you’ve taken notes about what you’ve done, it is often difficult if not impossible to remember exactly the steps you took to get the final image.

While Photoshop has a History feature this is of limited use. One problem is that, by default, Photoshop only stores 20 history states so, if you’ve performed a lot of steps they may not all appear in the list. The second problem is that, even if you have configured Photoshop to store a large number of history states, all you see in the History panel is a brief description of what you did to the image such as Gaussian Blur, Apply Image, Blending Change and you don’t see the actual settings used.


The History panel in Photoshop lists the basics of what you’ve done but not the detail.

Here are some ways to improve on the basics and keep a log of your work:


Step 1
Before you start work on an image choose Edit > Preferences > General and select the History Log checkbox. You can select to save log items to the image Metadata, to a separate text file or to both. If you select either Text file or Both you’ll be prompted to enter a file name and a location to save the file to. Do this and click Save.

From the Edit Log Items dropdown list select Detailed. Sessions records only the time you spend working on a file, Concise records the Sessions information and the detail from the History palette and Detailed records the detail about the changes – it’s Detail you need.


Step 2
Now, when you work on an image, the detail is stored in the text file, the Metadata or both, depending on the setting you chose.

If you chose to store the data in a text file you can later open the text file with a word processor or a text editor such as Notepad on the PC.

If you chose to record the history in the image metadata choose File > File Info > History and you can read details of the edits you made to the image in the dialog. Use this information to perform the same steps on another image


Tip
To configure Photoshop to store more than the default 20 history states, choose Edit > Preferences > Performance and set the History States value to a higher number. You should note that this History information is available in the History palette and only while the image is still open – it is lost when the image is closed – unlike the Log data which is stored permanently.

For more Photoshop tutorials and techniques visit www.projectwoman.com

Helen Bradley

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posted by Helen Bradley @ 7:48 pmNo Comments links to this post