X-Equals – image, workflow, technology, business

Improving Digital Photography with Film

Once upon a time if you wanted to take a photo, if had to be shot on film.  You would buy a roll, load you camera and take you pictures.  Afterwards you would take the roll to the photo lab to get developed and you would finally see your photos. The rise of digital photography has [...]

continue reading ... }

X-Equals Image Kit – Vol. 1

Throughout the last year or so we’ve had the pleasure of creating and sharing a series of extremely popular Lightroom Presets via the X-Equals Blog. As this category has grown, it’s become a bit of a challenge to find and download all the presets in an easy manner … until today. We’ve now taken all our [...]

continue reading ... }

Lightroom Preset – Holga

If you’ve never heard of a Holga, trust me when I tell you it’s one of my guilty pleasures. Being a digital photographer at heart, I still love to shoot a roll of 120 in my Holga. It’s not cheap shooting, developing, and printing images from this baby – but the unique look that comes from this [...]

continue reading ... }

Lightroom Preset – Warm Storm

We had initially released this preset on Presetsheaven.com – but as promised we’re releasing it here on our site … as always … for … FREE. But we’ve added even more to this download! In partnership with Mike Gray of LifeInDigitalFilm, and riding on the heels of his fantastic piece on migrating your presets to Adobe Camera [...]

continue reading ... }

Lightroom Preset – Polaroid 669

Wayyyyyy back in February 2008, Polaroid announced it would cease production of all instant film. The New York Times recently published a piece on the legacy of the Polaroid – and it was with this that the reality of the situation took hold. And … unfortunately, our favorite Polaroid instant film of ALLLLL TIME – Polaroid [...]

continue reading ... }

Lightroom Preset – City Scapes

This month’s preset is inspired by the Chicago “L” Trains and the city-scape environments I like to shoot near the Halsted and West Lake Street line. I am always blown away by the edgy and oftentimes neglected parts of the line where many of these structures have stood for over 100 years. I’m constantly inspired by the [...]

continue reading ... }

Lightroom Preset – Morning Blue

This little gem comes from a recent trip to I took to New York and the beautiful mornings I spent there shooting around the Madison Square Garden area in mid-town. I love the blue hue that casts over the shadows in the morning light. So I’m bringing this mood to you for use in your own [...]

continue reading ... }

Lightroom Preset – Summer Holiday

This newest edition to our contextual presets takes all the things we love about summer holidays, wraps them up into a nice green package, and delivers that mid-day summertime holiday feel to your images. We have this old-school sprinkler that, to me, is the one true symbol of summer that has so many great memories attached [...]

continue reading ... }

X-Equals Contextual Presets – Setting the Mood

I’ve received countless emails from photographers and workflow jedi’s asking me to describe in more detail the process of development behind our surprisingly popular film presets. That being said … by popular request, the success of our Lightroom presets, and over 30,000 downloads in less than 6 months … here it goes! Before we begin, let [...]

continue reading ... }

Lightroom Preset – Ekta Chromeo

Slides, slides, and more slides. I have boxes full of them. They’re something very cool about pulling the out some slides and cruising them with my loupe. My favorite outdoor portrait film was Kodak Ektachrome 100GX. The 100GX was important because it would nail the skin tones and primaries in my shots. Deep greens, warm reds, [...]

continue reading ... }