X-Equals – image, workflow, technology, business

Hack No More! – The Lightroom 3 Tone Curve

When you launch Lightroom 3 and head over to the Develop Module, you may notice some minor differences from Lightroom 2. The point of interest today is located in the Tone Curve palette. At first glance you see the old, friendly Parametric Tone Curve tool Lightroom has had since day one. But look closer. At the bottom, [...]

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High Pass Sharpening in Photoshop

In Lightroom, sharpening is a rather simple endeavor. While Lightroom’s built-in sharpening tool is excellent, it is a bit lacking when it comes to fine control of sharpening. Photoshop is a much better tool for doing fine sharpening, as it offers a myriad of sharpening option and the ability to use layers [...]

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Bending Lightroom Presets to Your Will

If you use Lightroom, then you’re most likely familiar with and frequently use presets. Some of you have even gotten your feet wet with designing you own presets. It’s easy activity to learn, but it is hard one to master! A lot of people work really hard to design great presets for you to use. Rarely will any given [...]

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Correcting Color Cast with Lightroom

Color casting is, quite possibly, one of the most frustrating issues you can have with an image. Regardless of how the image was captured, digitally or on film, you can easily run into issues with your lighting, leading to some major color issues. Even when utilizing RAW, you will occasionally run into color casts that are [...]

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Mastering HSL in Lightroom – Part 3 of 3

Now that we have learned the basics of the HSL in Part One and the general method of working with the HSL in Part Two, it is time to expand our horizons a bit. So far we have focused on using HSL to improve an image by attempting to get realistic colors that have been [...]

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Mastering HSL in Lightroom – Part 2 of 3

In the first part of Mastering HSL in Lightroom, we covered exactly what the HSL is and how it is used. If you spent some time experimenting with the Color Checker DNG we provided you should have some sense of how Hue, Saturation and Luminance interact with the different colors. If not, jump back to [...]

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Mastering HSL in Lightroom – Part 1 of 3

Color – it’s the first aspect of a photograph most viewers ever notice. Colors bring an image to life, and mastering the color rendition of your image is of the utmost importance. Usually the color right from a RAW file is rather unimpressive, and needs some adjustment to make the image pop. To help manage color [...]

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Pinky Promises – 10 Resolutions for the Digital Photographer

We had originally published this piece in our Email Digest but after an overwhelming response and prodding from you folks to post this on the blog … here it is! We have always enjoyed receiving your emails and comments regarding the challenges you deal with on a continual basis. Many of these challenges revolve around topics [...]

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X-Equals Survival Kit

Ok listen up, this is what it takes to keep our studio, and our workflow, running smoothly and without problems. We’ve always made it clear we are an open source shop when it comes to disclosing how we do what we do, the gear we use, and the tools we can’t live without. So, we figured [...]

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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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