A few weeks ago, Adobe launched the Community Publishing System. The CPS consists of an AIR-based application anyone can use to edit and publish content, as well as an Adobe-hosted website for showcasing these customer contributions.
Recently in Camera Raw Category
I'm very excited to have added some new websites to the Lightroom Community Help custom search engine (CSE).
First is Laura Shoe's Digital Daily Dose blog. Laura is an instructor and photographer based in Seattle, WA. Some of her tutorials include Are you clear on Clarity?, which explains the Clarity slider in both Camera Raw and Lightroom, including how to use negative values to improve certain types of shots. Another is An easier way to get your color in Lightroom, which explains how to use the color palette in Lightroom 2. Laura also wrote About your images and the Lightroom catalog, which explains the catalog concept by making an analogy to a public library.
Next is The Lightroom Lab. The writers at The Lightroom Lab, including Scott Rouse and David Marx, aren't afraid to tackle both technical and creative topics. For example, Converting Camera Raw files to DNG in Lightroom is not exactly a glamorous subject, but it confuses many people and the tutorial explains it well. Using Photoshop actions as droplets in Lightroom, meanwhile, is a clever tutorial about expediting tasks by saving Photoshop actions as droplets so that they're available from the Lightroom Export dialog box.
Finally, I've added Lightroom tutorials from the Digital Photography School. The site offers great photography tutorials, such as How to shoot in direct sunlight and Where is your subject looking and why does it matter?, as well as tutorials about working in Photoshop, Lightroom, and Elements. Some of the articles now in our CSE are Working with virtual copies in Lightroom and Warning, don't make these 5 mistakes in Lightroom, both by contributor Helen Bradley.
Check out the sites, or just read their tutorials when they come up in Lightroom Community Help search results.
Heralding the onset of spring, Adobe's online forums have emerged from their chrysalis shell refreshed, revitalized. Join the conversation here.
Highlights include:
• Single sign on to all forums
• Updated look and feel
• E-mail participation: subscribe or post to threads
• RSS support
• Rich text options: inline images and videos, file attachments, code samples
• Improved search
One topic that often comes up in discussion forums is how to synchronize metadata across Lightroom, Bridge, and Camera Raw. It’s easy enough, but our documentation hasn’t addressed it very well: Lightroom Help touched lightly on the topic; Bridge and Camera Raw Help didn’t mention it at all. Until now.
I’ve updated the Lightroom topic Synchronize Lightroom metadata with Adobe Bridge and Camera Raw to more thoroughly explain how to save metadata automatically, to turn on unsaved metadata warning icons so you know when there’s a conflict, and to resolve those conflicts. And now there’s a link to Save metadata changes to a file manually, too.
I’ve also added two new pages: View Camera Raw and Lightroom metadata in Adobe Bridge to Bridge Help and Work with Camera Raw and Lightroom 2 to Camera Raw Help. The former tells you what to do if Bridge previews don’t update to display metadata changes made in Lightroom and Camera Raw. The latter tells you what to do to ensure that Camera Raw recognizes adjustments made Lightroom, and that Lightroom and Bridge recognize adjustments made in Camera Raw.
On a separate note, thanks to customer Lloyd Sarginson, who alerted me that my explanation of how to modify Graduated Filter adjustments in Camera Raw was incorrect. (That’s what happens when you’re writing on a deadline with beta software.) I’ve updated the page, Apply local adjustments with the Graduated Filter tool in Camera Raw, to fix it.
Smart Objects are Photoshop layers that preserve original image or vector data, giving you the flexibility to experiment with different transformations and filtering. Smart Objects are particularly well suited to raw files. If edits in Photoshop would benefit from different raw processing, simply double-click the Smart Object layer to adjust the original data in the Camera Raw dialog box.
NAPP instructor Matt Kloskowski walks you through the process in this helpful video.
For more details about Smart Objects and other flexible, layer-based editing techniques, check out these topics in Photoshop Help:
• Layer basics
• Layer effects and styles
• Adjustment and fill layers
• Nondestructive editing (with Smart Objects and Smart Filters)
• Layer comps
