Resolution

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.

Posted by Anita Dennis at 2:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I’ve been a bit remiss and haven’t told you about some recent updates I’ve made to Lightroom Community Help. New and improved Help is available for these topics:

Change the photo capture time Sounds like an easy task, but Lightroom photos can have the three types of EXIF date/time metadata: Date Time, Date Time Original, and Date Time Digitized. Read the updated topic to find out which one(s) are affected when you change a photo’s capture time.

Specify image sizing The Resize To Fit options in Export dialog are: Width & Height, Dimensions, Long Edge, and Short Edge. Gee, are those confusing? Hopefully not anymore.

Personalize identity plates and module buttons The file formats and size of graphics that can be used as identity plates were incorrectly documented. Thanks, Glyn Churchman, for letting us know.

Search for photos using the Text filter There are four primary rules available to text searches in Lightroom: Contains, Contains All, Contains Words, and Doesn’t Contain. These rules are also available when you create a smart collection. We’ve now defined these rules, and given some examples, so you can use them more effectively.

Create and apply keyword shortcuts Customer Anders Sorensen recently commented that the instructions on this page weren’t clear, and indeed the benefit of being able to quickly apply multiple keywords to multiple photos at once wasn’t obvious. Hopefully, the instructions—and the reasons for using keyword shortcuts—are now more understandable.

Posted by Anita Dennis at 12:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

As I hope you know by now, anyone can add comments to Photoshop Community Help, Lightroom Community Help, and Bridge Community Help. What you may not know is that you can subscribe to a feed for these comments. Just copy the following URLs into your RSS reader to receive automatic notifications when new comments are posted.

Photoshop: http://community.adobe.com/help/rss/comments.html?label=photoshop_product_adobelr&language=en_US

Lightroom: http://community.adobe.com/help/rss/comments.html?label=lightroom_product_adobelr&language=en_US

Bridge: http://community.adobe.com/help/rss/comments.html?label=bridge_product_adobelr&language=en_US

Posted by Anita Dennis at 10:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

There’s a new page in Lightroom Help: Lightroom video tutorials. You’ll find a list of all the Lightroom 2 video tutorials on Adobe TV, organized by workflow, as well as some community content from Martin Evening, Sean McCormack, and other Lightroom experts. Check it out.

Posted by Anita Dennis at 8:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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

Posted by Mark Wheeler at 4:45 PM | Permalink