X-Equals – image, workflow, technology, business

Cleaning up the mess – culling images in Lightroom

So, this weekend I came to the conclusion it was time to reinstall my operating system. I have been running the Windows 7 Release Candidate for quite sometime, and its expiration was drawing nearer, and I did not want to deal with the inconveniences it creates towards expiration. Reinstalling a system is never fun, and [...]

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Build ‘n Ship – Lightroom Export Presets

One of the biggest selling points for Lightroom has to be its ability to use presets. However, most people simply think of develop presets when they hear the word “preset”. This misconception is understandable; especially considering everything a good selection of develop presets can do for you. But presets can do more for you than make [...]

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“… everything in the Right Hand menu …”

We’ve received a lot of emails as a result of our  X-Equals Survival Kit post because of a sweet offer we made to all of you: ” … if you have questions regarding any of the items below, or just want some advice on how to get started with a particular component (setup, strategy, ideas, etc.) [...]

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Quickie Fix – Exposure

Everyone has encountered shots that have been over or under exposed before. Be it accidental or the result of bracketing, there are always a few less than ideal exposures in any project. Fixing each of the images can be time consuming, but if you leverage some tricks in Lightroom, you can speed up your workflow [...]

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Bestest of Friends – Histogram and Tone Curve

It sits in the upper right hand corner of the Library and Develop Modules of Lightroom. Outside of a quick glance now and again, how often do you even consider the Histogram in Lightroom? For that matter, outside of helping detect highlight and shadow clipping, what is the Histogram even good for? Simply put, the [...]

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Lightroom Preset – Straight Muggin’

As a special treat to all you preset hounds, we’re dropping a new Lightroom Preset for the first full week of 2010 which we’re calling Straight Muggin’. This preset takes some pieces and parts from all our previous black and white presets, and blends them into a fresh batch of photo crunching goodness. As always, this preset [...]

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Making the Split – Split Toning for the rest of us

Split Toning in Lightroom is quite simply a real-life lesson in simple complexity. The tools is five, simple sliders that together create an effect over an entire image. Split Toning is amazingly simple to use, but using the Split Toning tools effectively can be surprisingly complex. Split Toning can be easily used to quickly and [...]

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Adobe DNG – the future is NOW

To the modern digital photographer, the Raw data from the camera is the modern day equivalent of the traditional photographer’s negatives or slides. Everything we need to create stunning final images is provided by the single simple file, regardless of its format – be it .NEF, .CRW, .CR2, .PEF; the list goes on and on. [...]

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Mad Stacks Yo! – Stacking images in Lightroom

One of the biggest debates in using Lightroom revolves around the best way to organize your library. I used to have images scattered all over different drives with no format whatsoever and had tons of duplicates from shoots with different flags, colors and stars. I started to browse the internet for some guidance and found [...]

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Slamma’ Jamma’ – Lightroom Panorama

Not one to be left with just 1 time consuming project, I’m also working on another blog to be added to the X-Equals + Media network focused around skateboarding. As part of this new endeavor, I have been working with Lightroom and Photoshop to create some very nice panorama’s. Even though some of you may loathe [...]

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