Often when you’re working in Lightroom you will want the images to be sorted in the order that you want to see them, not in as order such as capture date which is one of the Lightroom sort options.

You may want to do this when assembling images for a slide show or for printing, for example as the order of the images in the filmstrip will affect how the images appear in a print template and in the slideshow.

You can control the order of images in a Lightroom folder by dragging and dropping an image from one place to the other in the filmstrip view. To do this, grab the image in the middle and drag on it until you see a black bar appear between two images. If you let go the image it will drop into the indicated position.

This drag and drop process works in most instances but there are some exceptions to be aware of.

The first is that this will not work if you are in a folder where there are images in a subfolder below it which are also visible. You can see if this is likely if you open the fly-out for the folder in the Folders panel in the library. If there is another folder the one you are working on, chances are that the images in the subfolder are included in the filmstrip and so you cannot arrange the images by dragging them into position if this is the case.

To workaround this limitation you can remove the photos in the subfolder from view – this just removes them from the grid and filmstrip and not from Lightroom or your disk. To do this, click Library in the menu and disable the Include Photos from Subfolders option.

With this disabled, you can now move images by dragging and dropping them into position.

Another exception is when you are working with a Smart Collection. While images can be located in a regular collection and rearranged in order to suit, they cannot be rearranged if they are in a Smart Collection. If you have images in a Smart Collection that you want to be in a specific order, you will need to create a regular collection for them and add them to it to do so.

Another situation where you cannot reorder images to your own preference is when you are working on the images in the Catalog such as Previous Import. You must, instead, locate the folder or collection in which the images are stored and rearrange them there.

Once you have arranged the images as you want them to appear, Lightroom stores your ordering so it is as accessible as, for example, any other sort order options for that folder or collection. So, you can return to your preferred sort order at any time by selecting User Order from the Sort dropdown list.

We ran this question/discussion just on two years ago now but a lot of new camera bags are now on the market so it’s time to do it again.

What camera bag do you use and recommend – and why?

• Do you use a brand like Crumpler, Tamrac or Lowpro OR do you prefer a more anonymous brand that looks less like a camera bag (and makes it less attractive to thieves)?
• Do you use a bag that is not really a camera bag at all?
• What features do you look for in a camera bag?
• Do you have more than one bag for different situations?

Last time the most popular bag was the Lowepro Slingshot 200 All Weather Backpack (pictured). It’ll be interesting to see if it still ranks highest among our readers or whether another bag takes the cake now!

The Canon PIXMA iP2702 is an inexpensive, compact photo printer. Photo quality is acceptable but not on par with printers that use more colors.

A Guest Post by SusanG from Camelot Photography Forum.

We talk about things like Workflow and Task Management. Yet, how much time do we dedicate to looking, really looking, into our own work? The end product itself!

I spent eight months last year photographing one linear mile. It wasn’t a planned series, but evolved into a long-term project. I recently reviewed the whole collection to select forty images as representative. In re-assessing the series, I took a long hard look to determine if the photography was an evolution of a signature approach, or a rut. That was not easy. It almost teetered into a self-involved downward spiral of “Why is everything rubbish?”

I kicked my ass out of that one ASAP as the end result of whinge-influenced decisions often is not a forward motion but a knee jerk response. Which can result in decisions that don’t further the goal. What does further the goal is to analyse objectively why an image (or images) failed or didn’t succeed as well as expected. Define the problem then look for solutions.

Also take the time to see what has been accomplished. If you know in your heart and mind that you have achieved a goodly portion of your photographic goals, take a moment to bask in that. There is more to be gained from honest congratulations then beating your self up. But keep that “Why Is Everything Rubbish” on hand for brief self-indulgences, and then use it in a positive manner.

My appraisal identified what lens and camera purchases I will be making next. I see that I still have issues resolving what I think I’m seeing to what I’m actually seeing in terms of composition. Which tells me I need to evaluate more completely the scene before I think I’m ready to click the shutter.

Perhaps that isn’t earth shattering, or a Road-To-Damascus moment. It is an important process and it has helped me to plan the next steps to where I want photography to take me.

Practical Things – Recap!

1. Look at what makes the bulk of your subject and composition. Think about making a specific purchase (lens, filters, even camera upgrade) to take those types of images.
2. Look for what’s missing! Could you have repositioned the camera to take a better or more complete perspective? Do you need to spend more time looking for different views to photograph a scene or subject?Be brutally honest with yourself when considering the above. You’ll stand a better chance of purchasing the equipment you need, and have a better idea on how to use it.
3. Look for what’s right in your photography! No matter how small you may think it, everything you feel you got right is one more step towards becoming the photographer you want to be!

These are only a part of an ongoing process. Once you know where your photography is, you have taken an intelligent and objective look at your work. There’s bound to be items I missed or are unique to your own photography. That is what makes your work unique. That is what defines part of your signature style.

SusanG is the Creator of Camelot Photography Forum, a MySpace™ Photography Site where anyone can find their new level.

I’m Benjamin and am a hitchhiking photographer. In my travels I quickly realized a need to make my own postcards for my friends and family.

I wanted unique and personal postcards at a cheap price. Here is the result of that quest. This is a post for those whom aren’t familiar with Photoshop and editing their photographs. You should be able to make postcards that are one-of-a-kind and appealing at less than the cost of buying a postcard.

Read on and when you are finished, please share this post with others, whom would benefit from it. Also, check out my journey hitchhiking around the USA, sharing stories of the Goodness of People at my blog, Create Our World.

Here we Go!!!

What You Need:

1. A digital camera.
2. Access to a Computer and the Internet.
3. About 15 to 30 minutes.
4. A Free Picnik Account.
5. About 30 cents for the card and 44 cents for the stamp.
6. A Zip Drive.

Make Your Own Postcard (here is a photograph I took of my friend, Nai, in Austin, Texas)

1. Take a Photograph and Upload it to a computer

I love to photograph people. I love to remember places by the people I am with, so my postcards are of friends, either new or old. What do you want to remember about the place or what do you want to share? Be personal and be yourself. And take that shot and upload it to your own laptop or upload it at a computer lab.

After Editing

2. Edit your Photograph. (Optional.)

If you are a Photoshop expert, you can skip this page and just do what you do. Or if you don’t care about jazzing your photograph up a bit, then skip it as well. But with a few clicks, you can really improve how your image looks and trick your granny into thinking you are a professional photographer.

Open up your photo editor. I use iPhoto for my Mac. I have also used Picasa by Google, which is a free download and is easy to use. You can also do this in Picnik, which I am going to explain in the next step.

Here are two easy steps you can take to making the photograph look more vibrant. One increase the contrast of the photograph. Usually there is a little pointer that you can just drag. Contrast makes the darks darker and the lights lighter. The second step is to increase or decrease the color saturation. You can make the colors a little richer to improve the photograph or sometimes by lessening the colors, it will catch the eye more. Fool around with these two settings until you have a photograph that you are happy with.

3. Upload your photograph to Picnik

Picnik is an online photograph editor. Picnik is free for the basic edits and it has a lot of options to use. Sign up for a free account and follow the instructions to upload your photograph.

After the LOMO filter, adding a Border, and the 1960’s filter

4. Create Your Postcard

Here we are going to jazz our photograph up a bit more, add borders, and add our message. (Picnik has lots of options, so feel free to add any options that you want)

A. Open up the CREATE tab along the top of the border.

B. Click on the LOMO Filter under EFFECTS. (This simulates how a LOMO camera would take a photograph, which is toy camera.)

This increases the saturation of the photograph, adds a vignette (a dark shadow around the border), and blurs the outside of the photograph. Mess around with the settings until your photograph looks as you want.

C. Add the Border in Frames.

Every good postcard has a border. Choose a color for the border that goes well with the photograph. Go with black, if you can’t decide. Then, make it look like a postcard, by increasing thickness of the OUTER COLOR and leave the INNER COLOR alone. In my photograph of Nai, I decide on a Dark Orange and Black (University of Texas colors). Finally, increase the CORNER RADIUS too to give it an interesting look.

D. Go back to EFFECTS and chose the 1960’s effect.

I love the look of old film photographs. This adds a slight reddish tint to the photograph and also curves the outside edges. Tweak these settings again, till you like the look of your postcard.

E. Add Your Personalized Message in the TEXT tab.

Here is where you add your message. Anything you like works. “I love Mom!” or “Wish you were here!” are good. I am a huge fan of the “Greetings from…” postcard series that was popular a long time ago. There is a host of different fonts to chose from, so chose one or more that fit your style. For my photograph, I chose PANHEAD for “Austin, TX”, which is a western-looking font and then a bold font, IMPACT for the “Greetings from…” I keep my color theme similar as with the border colors.

F. SAVE your photograph & SHARE it.

Now you can save it to your computer or Zip Drive, share it on Facebook or email it.

5. Print Your Postcard

Save your postcard on something that is portable. I bought a Zip Drive for 15$ and I upload my postcards to this and head to a local store with a photograph kiosk. Walmart, CVS, Rite-Aid are very common options. However, more and more stores have a place that you can print your digital photographs on location.

Upload your postcards to the kiosk and chose the quantity, before hitting PRINT!

NOTE: Make sure your postcard fits and the border will not be cut off. Sometimes, I will lose my border by how the machine cuts the photograph, so you may have to make little edits at the machine.
Print off your new postcards!

6. Write on the back and Send it!

Write on the back like any postcard and send it off with a stamp in the top right corner. Your Mom and Granny will love you and tell all their friends!

Finished! Enjoy making your postcards and share this post with your friends. I will be blogging from all over the USA on my hitchhiking journey. I usually write about the people I meet and about the goodness of people, but I also share budget travel advice on my website, Create Our World.

If you’ve ever taken a photo with a TV in it, you might notice just how hard it can be. The picture can seem squiggly or, as in this photo, not even visible. You don’t have to be a Photoshop pro to replace the screen in post production. The answer is in shutter speed.

The screen on a TV is rolled down one pixel at a time at lightening speed. Use a speed of 1/30 or slower to catch the fully ‘rolled out’ screen of pixels.

If your camera doesn’t allow you to set a shutter speed, take a look at the automatic modes. For example, ’sports’ mode wouldn’t be any good because the shutter is too fast.

Today’s new television technologies don’t present this problem because they no longer work with a scanning electron beam like older televisions. But as you can see from my photo, some us still have the old types

Other factors that present themselves when setting such a low shutter in an indoor environment are camera shake and motion blur from your subjects. A tripod or resting your camera on an object can help with camera shake as can IS (image stabilisation) lenses. As for your subjects – well – tell them to freeze! And if they’re kids and there’s a TV in the room you probably won’t have to tell them

A Guest Post by Scott Bideau from capturedbyscott.com

Image by Roberto Carlos Pecino

A common question asked by an amateur photographer looking to turn professional is, “what equipment do I need?” I’ll skip the discussion around skill and experience being more important than equipment, but before you rush out and buy any equipment or start offering your services to others, you should consider the various liability issues and the options for operating as a legal entity that are available for your business and obtain the proper insurance for both your equipment and liability. I’ll cover specific options available in the United States in this article, although similar concepts are available in other countries.

Legal Entities

The most common mistake for beginners is to operate a business as a sole proprietorship, meaning there is no legal distinction between the owner and the business. This may sound easy and convenient, but it also means that you have unlimited personal liability for the actions of your business, and this includes the actions of your employees or even volunteer assistants. Operating as a general partnership is even riskier because all the partners are personally liable, even if it is for something done by the other partner that you didn’t know about. Even if you have liability insurance coverage for yourself, an accident caused by one of your partners or assistants (paid or not) could significantly expose you to liability.

Imagine you invite a friend to be a voice activated light stand at a wedding and he accidentally drops the boom on the bride. Worse yet, imagine he misplaces an electrical cord and someone is electrocuted. Even if your friend drives their personal car on an errand or trip for your business, such as on the way to the church for the wedding, and causes a bad accident or injury, they are liable for their negligence, but so are you since they were acting as an agent or employee of your business. If you are doing business as a sole proprietor then you are in essence personally guaranteeing everything that the business and any agents or employees do. Your spouse likely won’t appreciate you etting sued for something an assistant did which results in a judgment lien against your house because you didn’t have proper liability coverage.

A much better idea is to separate your personal matters from the business by forming a Limited Liability Company (LLC) or a corporation. In most instances, the LLC (not you) bears the responsibility for the liability of its other workers (paid or unpaid). You cannot escape liability for your own acts or negligence through an LLC, including possible claims for negligent supervision or training of employees or helpers, but you can significantly limit exposure for the acts or omissions of employees, agents or other members of the LLC. Filing as an LLC is a fairly simple process in most states and after the initial setup requires only a small fee and annual report to be sent to your state each year. Under current IRS rules, you can even include your single member LLC income and loss on your “Schedule C” form on your personal tax return.

Some photographers choose to form their business as a corporation, including making an election to become a “Sub S” Corporation (which eliminates the double taxation issue found with the C Corporation). While organizing as a corporation does provide certain benefits under unique circumstances, including the ability to carry forward a net loss from one year to the next (such as using the high startup costs for equipment this year to offset your profits next year) and has a longer track record of liability protection going back hundreds of years, often times the additional complexities outweigh the benefits. A corporation will require a separate tax return for the corporation even if there is only one stockholder. Either way, you should seek the initial advice of an attorney and an accountant to ensure your business entity is setup to your greatest benefit and protection.

Insurance

Once you’ve created the correct business entity for your operations, you should always obtain an adequate amount of liability insurance. Otherwise, you may be one accident away from financial ruin…even if you are setup as an LLC or corporation or were not even the one who caused the accident. General Liability policies can often be purchased for a very reasonable premium and if properly written can provide you and any of your employees, assistants, or even volunteers with adequate coverage. Be very sceptical if your insurance agent advises you that protection is already provided under your homeowner’s policy or tries to sell you a personal umbrella policy: personal policies almost always exclude liability or property protection for any commercial or business purposes…even part-time ventures. Always check your policy documents and get confirmation from your agent in writing! If you have filed as an LLC, both the LLC and you as the Member should be listed as “named insured.” Often times your employees, assistants and other non-members or non-officers of the company are not insured.

Finally, consider insuring your equipment. Many insurance companies who offer a commercial liability policy also offer inland marine policies, which is a strange name for a plan that protects your camera equipment from theft and accidental damage. These policies are often more expensive than the options available for personal equipment on your homeowners policy, but again, most personal policies exclude any commercial use. One exception to this rule is the popular “Personal Articles Policy” offered by State Farm, which in most states provides a “professional use” option to waive the commercial use exception specifically for camera equipment, but at a much lower in price than a full inland marine policy.

Scott Bideau is a management consultant with a strong passion for photography. You can view his photographic work at capturedbyscott.com.

Artists create remarkable digital paintings using their iPhone, a $5.00 application called Brushes…and their finger.

We’ve had quite a journey with this whole histogram and curves ordeal:

• How to Read Image Histograms
• Photo Editing With Histograms: 6 Basic Settings
• How Well Do You Know Your Curves?
• Photoshop Curves Video Tutorials
• Linear Curve Adjustments and Histograms
• Nonlinear Curve Adjustments and Histograms

And now I’d like to wrap things up with a few tips, tricks, and things to avoid when using curves. It’s a fairly simple tool once you begin to work with it and understand it, but there are a few non-obvious items worth pointing out.

photo credit: Fifi LePew

TIPS

We’ll start off with a few generic tips for working with curves, then we’ll move on to the some of the more detailed stuff.

• Always work with 16-bit images to avoid posterization.
• In Photoshop, utilize layers and adjustment layers for non destructive editing.
• Use the color channel adjustments to correct color cast.
• Start subtle in ACR/Lightroom (or with an adjustment layer in Photoshop), then bump it up or add another layer if you need more.
• In Photoshop, use a levels adjustment first rather than a linear curves adjustment, then go to curves for a wider range to work with.

TRICKS

photo credit: garethjmsaunders

Here are a few tricks for the ACR/Lightroom interface under the “Point” curve.

• Hold Ctrl and mouse over the image to see where the tones lay on the curve/histogram.
• Ctrl+click over the image to set an adjustment point on the curve.
• Ctrl+select adjustment points on the curve to delete them.
• Ctrl+Tab to move between adjustment points without using the mouse.
• Shift+select multiple existing adjustment points if you want to grab more than one at a time.
• Shift+click over the image to set your neutral point for white balance (this works outside of the curves dialog too).
• Shift+arrow keys to move selected adjustment points by 10 rather than 1.

And then we have a few general tricks:

• Use extreme curves adjustments to separate tones for creating masks. Then remove or turn off the adjustment layer once you have the mask. (tip via Niels Henriksen)
• Use curves in LAB mode on the lightness channel to minimize saturation effects of adjustments.
• Boost your saturation using LAB mode curves adjustments on the A&B channels.

photo credit: AlmazUK

THINGS TO AVOID

• Watch for vertical sections in your curve — that produces an extremely high contrast and you lose all midtone data in that area.
• Watch for horizontal sections in your curve — that produces zero contrast and you lose all midtone data in that area.
• Too many adjustment points will be difficult to manage, just use what you need.
• Avoid inverted slopes, they invert the tones. Can you roll a ball from the upper right point of the curve to the lower left (without relying on momentum)? If not, you’ve inverted a section of your curve.
• Don’t clip your shadows and highlights (unless that’s what you really want to do). Keep an eye on your histogram for this one.

I’m sure there are a few hundred other tips and tricks out there for using curves, but I don’t know them all and I couldn’t cover them in one article even if I did. These tips, combined with the previous articles linked at the top, should keep most of you busy for a while. And if you’re looking for more, here’s my final tip on the subject:

Experiment. Try things out, push buttons, make mistakes, and keep learning.