Single-Serving Photo

If you’ve been using Adobe Lightroom since Beta 1, as I have, and if you’re using a Mac, there is a very good chance that you’ve run into the awful “change modules” error. This error usually strikes when your catalog is being updated during a version upgrade, when other Adobe software on your computer changes, or for any number of other unrelated reasons (as I discovered).

What happens is roughly this: you open the program and the splash screen remains indefinitely. If you click it, it disappears, but Lightroom’s main window does not open. You receive a very minimal menu bar including “Lightroom,” “File,” “Edit,” and perhaps “Window.” The File menu is shortened and only allows you to open a catalog. I presume that this is what Lightroom would look like if you could put it into a state where it has no catalog open. During normal operation, you basically always have a catalog open.

Once there, you can try to open your catalog, but as soon as you do, you will receive the error: “An error occurred when attempting to change modules.” Feel free to click OK on that message, it will simply drop you into a weird, incomplete Lightroom interface that has no side panels and no film strip.

Having battled this error two different times now, I am confident I can offer some advice. Read the rest of this entry »

Having spent most of my developing years surrounded by it, I have always taken for granted many of the fundamental guidelines of art. Perhaps due to the complexity of its technical aspects, formal photography courses tend to focus (no pun intended) on the equipment and techniques of creating images and not as much on their content.

Learning the traditional “rules” of art (or what I would call the rules of design) is important for two specific reasons. First and foremost, to make your work better. Following the rules—as well as judiciously breaking them—will strengthen your compositions, but you need to know what they are before you can do either. Second, to enhance your critiquing ability. By learning the basic terminology of art you will be able to take full advantage of critique from your peers as well as articulate your own.

So let’s get started! Today I’ll be discussing texture. Read the rest of this entry »

Adobe has finally released the first upgrade package for Photoshop Lightroom, which brings us to version 1.1. I say “finally” because this upgrade introduces at least one feature that we hoped against hope would be in the first release, the ability to merge libraries, among other enhancements.

First, if you have Lightroom and it hasn’t already popped up and told you to download the upgrade, you should seriously click over there and do that. Read the rest of this entry »

Do you find yourself performing the same mundane tasks over and over? Exporting photos, sorting them, watermarking them, renaming the files, applying metadata, uploading them, etc., etc. These kinds of tasks are simply ripe for automation. Make the computer do all the work, that’s my mantra.

In this series of articles, I will discuss the down and dirty mechanics of how I’ve automated a good deal of my workflow. I’ll probably continue to add chapters to this series as I figure out new methods, but hopefully you can start saving time right off the bat with some of these tips!

Today’s topic is exporting and watermarking. Read the rest of this entry »