Summary:

Everyone's talking about Lightroom 4 beta at the moment. But what is new in Lightroom 4 beta? Kate Breuer sums up the most important new features.

When you open LR4beta for the first time you will soon realize that there are new modules in the module bar. Kate Breuer explains the Map and the new Photobook modules and shows their possibilites.

In addition she explains the functionality of the new sliders in the Develop module. There are new ones and others have been replaced. This can be a bit confusing but you will like the new sliders soon.

Summary:

Master still-life photographer Eberhard Schuy is here with a new series addressing photographic elements. Elements of form, lines of composition, bright and dark, sharp and un-sharp. Here, the first in the series is a look at the Golden Mean. We get to examine the historic significance as the earliest mathematicians addressed this aesthetic principle as a geometric proof.

Eberhard Schuy then encourages us to trust our innate sense of composition. This "good feeling" will almost always result in the practical application of this compositional guideline used in both art as well as architecture. Not to be satisfied with one demonstration, Mr Schuy takes it one step further and also explains how the Golden Mean is the basis for another compositional guideline: the Golden Triangle.

Finally, a hands-on tip for Lightroom users. The user is directed to an on-board function that lets you overlay
adjustable masks that apply both, the Golden Mean and the Golden Triangle to your photos for evaluation purposes. Be sure to see the other related films in this series. You'll certainly learn a lot.

Summary:

Fog can make every place more mystical. Learn how to create fog using simple photoshop techniques from photographer Kate Breuer.

Kate Breuer first adds some loose fog with a pencil. Afterwards she adds some denser fog using one of the render filters from Photoshop.

By combining this techniques she creates realistic fog that adds to the atmosphere of the image.

Summary:

In this FotoTV workshop, photographer Martin Krolop explains to viewers how to get the best results when using a shoe mount flash as an indirect lighting source.

Krolop shows viewers how to avoid the most common mistake a photographer can make when using an indirect lighting source by bouncing the light source off the ceiling. First Krolop sets the camera setting so that the only light source to reach his model is the light from the shoe mount flash unit. He starts off by directing his flash to illuminate his subject full frontal, and then he shoots another example with indirect bounce light from the ceiling. Most photographers do not realize they are still shooting with direct flash to subject light. If the model still has a line of sight to the flash, then it is not indirect lighting. This will result in off cast shadows and unpleasing tones when shooting portraits.

Since the flash is near to the camera’s axis when shooting the flash directly, the shadows fall toward the rear of the subject. When changing that to whereas the flash is first bounced off of a surface, the subject is illuminated predominately from above, which is distinguished by the top half of the photo being brighter as the bottom half.

Krolop further goes through several calculation scenarios to help photographers more easily understand the distance light travels from the bounce surface to the subject, changing the lighting distribution but not lighting characteristic.

Summary:

A picture says more than a thousand words, and that is just what Mike Larson wants to adhere to.

Telling a proper story with a series of photographs requires to determine a theme as well as the right handling with the models on location. To plan and implement a shooting in a more unusual manner will result in images that stand out from the ordinary. Larson prefers a tilt-shift lens for this purpose, which lets him experiment with depth of field to deliberately stress certain areas of a picture.

Summary:

Film grain makes a picture look like it was captured on film. This analogue effect is something, many try to achieve.

In this video, Kate Breuer shows different possibilities, to achieve this effect.

At first, Kate Breuer explains the usage of Lightroom (or another RAW converter tool) to create film grain using the effect panel.

Then, Kate shows, how to achieve the effect, once you are in Photoshop using grey layers and different Photoshop filters.

In addition, Kate uses two filters of the Niksoftware filter plugin ColorEfex Pro. Each of those solutions creates an analogue film grain effect, but each of them with different possibilities and advantages.

Summary:

With the advent of digital photography and the Web came one of the major benefits, sharing photographs online, to be viewed instantly by people around the world.

This has, however led to people's photography being used without their permission, thereby depriving them of potential financial reward and credit for their work. One way to help prevent this, is to watermark your photos. We've all seen photographs with either some text, or a logo, superimposed on a photograph to identify the photographer. Using an image manipulation program, such as Adobe's Photoshop or Photoshop Elements, it is possible to add a watermark, but without some considerable technical know-how, it's difficult to add one to multiple images.

This is where Adobe Photoshop Lightroom comes to the rescue. In this tutorial, Mike Le Gray will guide you through setting up Lightroom so that you can batch-process your completed images, not only adding a watermark, but also converting color-space, file type, adding sharpening, etc.

Summary:

Learn how to create the porcelain like skin you see in the magazines with some easy techniques from photographer Kate Breuer.

Kate Breuer will show you two possible ways to achieve the wanted look. At first, she will show you how to do it in Lightroom using only the possibilities a Raw conversion offers.

In addition, she will switch to Adobe Photoshop and show you how to get nice results in photoshop, where you can't use the same way as in Lightroom or another Raw-Converter.

She uses a little trick to acomplish the goal of a white skin.

Watch this video and learn the technique to create a skin like this yourself!

Summary:

In this workshop with Martin Krolop, Krolop will discuss and demonstrate how to make the best photos using a pop-up flash pre-installed on a camera.

The pop-up flash has the reputation of ruing photos because of the position in which one shoots with it. Mainly people are photographed vertically because they look better lengthwise and the face comes out better. But when shooting with a pop-up flash ugly asymmetrical shadows appear and it makes the photos look amateurish and unprofessional and as if the photo is lit from below.

Krolop show viewers several tips how to remedy the ugly side lighting that comes from using a pop-up flash. He simply shoots horizontally and crops off the image from both left and right sides. He also adds contrast by changing the settings on the camera to monochrome and adjusting the flash to overexpose the areas he would like to be burnt out. All this trickery makes a professional looking photo. Just by changing a few settings and shooting horizontally the photos come out looking like high-end photography.

Summary:

Martin Timm is back with part two in his series on digital pinhole photography. Here he has gathered all the necessary ingredients to cook up a pinhole adapter that can fit any digital SLR.

The techniques used to construct it is right out of your grade school handicraft's hour. This amazingly simple approach using toilet paper rolls, tin foil, rubber bands glue etc is carefully explained. The result: a ready to use handy-dandy pinhole attachment for your digital camera that's ready to use.

So now it's time to get your feet wet..literally. Martin takes it outside and gives a hands-on demonstration using the pinhole adapter to compose a great picture, demonstrating it works too. So check it out!