X-Equals – Click. Download. Smile.

If you’re like me, you have a pretty similar workflow no matter what type of project you are working on. It makes sense, we’re creatures of habit.

And … admit it, we’re pretty lazy when it comes to truly mastering new features or workflow concepts that are new to us. “I just want to know enough to get the job done.” is a line I hear a few times a week from photographers.

While I can empathize with this notion, sometimes it makes a lot of sense to dig deeper into a particular feature or workflow as it oftentimes has a big effect on the quality and efficiency of your work in front of the computer and/or camera.

This was precisely why we created the X=Series – to go much deeper than most blogs will to uncover the nuances and power that often gets overlooked. These posts are without question the most challenging to write, but they consistently sit among the top 10 posts viewed month-over-month.

As I started to review all our content from this year, it struck me that these Series Posts have helped move many photographers from newbie to advanced and beyond, so I wanted to showcase some great posts that work well as a single read from start to finish, or tucked away in your bookmarks for future reference.

Keeping it Raw in Photoshop

In this series Mike Gray outlines his RAW workflow within Photoshop, leveraging Smart Objects and Adobe Camera Raw to maintain RAW images while performing tasks upon the images that cannot be done in Lightroom or ACR.

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Film to Digital – Scanning Essentials 101

Got film? No doubt many of you do! In this series we explore a scanning workflow that is tuned for post-production in Lightroom. We take a lot of the guesswork out of preparing your physical scanner for scanning as well as how to create a repeatable process that produces consistent results.

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Playing with Color – Camera Profiles

I can’t remember how many times I hear and/or read: “I imported my images from my camera and the color doesn’t look right. It looked better in {insert your favorite editor here}“. While I won’t get into the argument over which tool to use, if you’re using Lightroom stop whining and just create a custom camera profile. Done.

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Sharpening in Lighroom

Hmm … what else can be said here? Oh yeah … if you want to stay entirely in Photoshop to sharpen your images, and thought it wasn’t possible – think again.

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Digital Asset Management – The X-Equals Way

In 10 Things I Would Tell New Lightroom Users, Scott Kelby and Rob Sylvan make 2 points that are so important to digital asset management – especially as it relates to Lightroom:

• “Store all your photos inside one main folder.” – we couldn’t agree more!
• “It’s OK to have multiple Catalogs.” – eyeeeeaaahhhhh!

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So get out there and master some of these topics. I guarantee you will learn something new.

|Brandon Oelling
x=photography+consulting – image+workflow+technology+business