After receiving some feedbacks for my Lightroom preset black & white infrared 01, I decided to test it on other shots and to compare it to three other B&W presets from Inside Lightroom. The samples should give some reference for spotting scenarios of use and the result with the various presets applied.

First of all, thanks to all the people who wrote me. Someone didn’t recognize the look as similar to real infrared. He is probably right since I didn’t plan to realistically simulate infrared photography in my first preset. I just tried to reproduce some aspects that I really liked in some infrared pictures, as those skies and water surfaces pretty black. Here you are a sample on flickr (from Loupiote) of what I mean.

There are some great presets which simulate infrared photography with higher fidelity. I really like them, but for some pictures I wanted a different effect, so instead of using or tweaking them I created my Lightroom preset following another path. I got the look that I was looking for, even if I went a bit beyond the original reference of infrared. (Do you think that I should rename my preset in something else?)

Let’s go to the Lightroom presets comparison. In all the following stripes you’ll find a picture plus four presets applied. The first image is always the original shot. The second and the third show the application of two B&W infrared presets from Inside Lightroom. The fourth shows my black & white infrared 01 preset. The last one shows another preset from Inside Lightroom, which simulates red filters.

To summarize what you’ll see in the following stripes:
1) original shot without any preset
2) preset: BW Infrared 1, by Richard Earney (from Inside Lightroom)
3) preset: BW Infrared 2, by Martin Evening (from Inside Lightroom)
4) preset: GA BW Infrared 01, by GAntico (download it here)
5) preset: BW Red Filter, by Black Bird Blue (from Inside Lightroom)

Find the mentioned presets from Inside Lightroom in its section Black and White Presets. Enjoy the comparison and click on the images to zoom.

1 Original pict - 2 BW IR1, R. Earney - 3 BW IR 2, M. Evening - 4 BW IR 01, GAntico - 5 BW Red Filter, B.B. Blue

1 Original pict - 2 BW IR1, R. Earney - 3 BW IR 2, M. Evening - 4 BW IR 01, GAntico - 5 BW Red Filter, B.B. Blue

1 Original pict - 2 BW IR1, R. Earney - 3 BW IR 2, M. Evening - 4 BW IR 01, GAntico - 5 BW Red Filter, B.B. Blue

1 Original pict - 2 BW IR1, R. Earney - 3 BW IR 2, M. Evening - 4 BW IR 01, GAntico - 5 BW Red Filter, B.B. Blue

1 Original pict - 2 BW IR1, R. Earney - 3 BW IR 2, M. Evening - 4 BW IR 01, GAntico - 5 BW Red Filter, B.B. Blue

1 Original pict - 2 BW IR1, R. Earney - 3 BW IR 2, M. Evening - 4 BW IR 01, GAntico - 5 BW Red Filter, B.B. Blue

1 Original pict - 2 BW IR1, R. Earney - 3 BW IR 2, M. Evening - 4 BW IR 01, GAntico - 5 BW Red Filter, B.B. Blue

1 Original pict - 2 BW IR1, R. Earney - 3 BW IR 2, M. Evening - 4 BW IR 01, GAntico - 5 BW Red Filter, B.B. Blue

1 Original pict - 2 BW IR1, R. Earney - 3 BW IR 2, M. Evening - 4 BW IR 01, GAntico - 5 BW Red Filter, B.B. Blue

1 Original pict - 2 BW IR1, R. Earney - 3 BW IR 2, M. Evening - 4 BW IR 01, GAntico - 5 BW Red Filter, B.B. Blue

About Adobe Photoshop Lightroom ACE Exam

For who has never heard about the Adobe Certified Expert (ACE) certifications, plenty of information can be found in the dedicated section on the Adobe site. For sample questions and a quick overview on the specific exam for Lightroom, there is an handy introductory guide in PDF.

For a discussion about the reasons for getting certified, there’s a quite commented post on Photoshop Lightroom Killer Tips. I only add that I worked with various training centers and schools that gave good attention to the “piece of paper”.

How did I prepare for the Adobe Certified Expert exam?

I went back to Lightroom 1.0, I read the whole help once and I challenged myself a few times with an ExamAid. A couple of days were enough for everything, but I guess that the previous intense and passionate use of Lightroom has helped me a lot. Questions had their difficulties, but I found the Adobe Photoshop Lightroom ACE Exam more reachable then the one in Photoshop CS3.

I wasn’t sure about the exact 1.x minor release to concentrate on. I had a fresher memory of Lightroom 1.4, so I just prepared myself with Lightroom 1.0. Probably it wasn’t necessary: I’m sure that a couple of questions were about features introduced in LR 1.1 or 1.2. This is the case of “the painter”, that replaced the “keyword stamper” in LR 1.1.

I confirm that reading the software help is an absolute must for any ACE exam: questions are pretty coherent and aligned with it. It’s advisable to pay attention on features that you don’t usually use in your daily workflow. In my case it was the whole slideshow module.

I took advantage of the Adobe Photoshop Lightroom ACE Exam Aid, which was effectively propaedeutic. Basically it gives a you a good idea of the exam structure/topics and previews possible tricks in questions, like “which of the following options is NOT…” I would have probably passed the exam even without the aid, but I felt more secure with an earlier test. My notebook was not in love with its Java requirement: some restarts solved the issue. Recommended even if a bit pricey.

Few curious things learned while preparing the ACE exam

In my daily work in Photoshop I’ve been preferring TIFF files over PSD since several years ago and I kept this habit even with Lightroom integration. I realized only through Lightroom help that it’s recommended also by Adobe itself: “The TIFF format provides greater compression and industry compatibility than Photoshop format (PSD), and is the recommended format for exchanging files between Lightroom and Photoshop.”

I thought that differences between PC and Mac versions were inexistent, actually there are a couple of “sweeties” more on Mac. One is the spell checker (Edit > Spelling > Check Spelling). Another is a shortcut for special characters (In the Library module, Edit > Special Characters). Well, for Windows users not in love with the “Character map”, there is a web alternative. Last one for slideshow: you can choose music from iTunes playlists only on Mac.

I remember the first time that I played with Lightroom: I felt like a pioneer while experimenting with split toning for recreating a cross processed look. Besides the fact that probably many others has done it before me, I just faced with the help of Lightroom 1.0 talking about split toning sliders: “You can also apply special effects, such as a cross-processed look, to a color photo.“

Here you are my first Lightroom preset for simulating black and white infrared photography. Basically, it converts a coloured picture in Gray tones, with vivid brightness for tints coming from reds, yellows and greens, while tones coming from blues are strongly darkened. It pushes grain, contrast and shadows.

This is the shot from which I started the development of the preset: I wanted to make the tree bright against the black of the sky. I worked on the tone curve, Grey scale and Detail. I also tweeked the Camera Calibration for a more interesting and appreciable infrared look: you might enjoy playing with the tint slider under Shadows for quick variations.

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In order to see if the preset could have worked even for other pictures, I tried with a portrait. I like the look of the skin: the conversion has lightened and softened its tones. The darkening in the shadows is deep (shadows: -52) and the consequent rise in contrast is strong, but not as much as in the preset “Creative - B&W High Contrast” (it’s one of those given with Lightroom by default).

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In this still-life the highlights had an azure dominant: they got converted into black. I don’t dislike this “collateral effect”: it gives a kind of an allusion to a negative film. Here the grain it’s clearly visible: I pushed on purpose detail to +53. In this case the result seems good, but if you try to apply the preset on a picture with nasty noise (like one taken at 1600 ISO) it might be better to reduce detail.

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Here another example suitable for applying my black and white infrared 01 preset. The landscape has yellow, orange and green, the sky is cloudy and blue. The conversion rise the contrast between the land and the sky, giving some drama. Ok I confess, here I added also a bit of extra vignette (amount: -30, midpoint: 38), which is not included in the preset.

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Download the preset for Lightroom

Download the preset Black & white infrared 01: GA-B&W-infrared-01.zip

How to install the preset in Lightroom: open Lightroom’s preferences, go to Presets (it’s the second tab) and click on “Show Lightroom presets folder“. Open the folder “Lightroom“, open the sub-folder “Develop Presets“: copy here the file extracted from the zip file downloadable in this page. Restart Lightroom and your presets’ list will be updated. Note: it has been tested in Lightroom 1.4 and Lightroom 2.0

During the Photoshow we have taken hundreds of shots, thanks to the GX20 that we had in the stand of Samsung. I chose a picture from the ones post-produced at the event in Rome, in order to talk a bit about what was done in Adobe Lightroom 1.3 and Photoshop CS3.

Original shot in DNG

Usually my first step is to convert all the shots in DNG, but with the GX20 this wasn’t necessary, because the camera directly generates DNG files. Before exporting the above image, I clicked on Reset, in order to have a picture clearly comparable to the final one.

Development in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 1.3

This is the image after the development in Lightroom. The main operations were on white balance, exposure, luminance, saturation and contrast. Some standard noise reduction and sharpening. To finish, a bit of Remove spots, in heal mode, to remove the little imperfections on the skin.

Postproduction in Adobe Photoshop CS3

Someone from the public asked me to see how to change the color in some part of the image. So I used some Solid color layers with different blending mode: red with multiply for lips, blue with Hue for the eyes and the suit. During the retouch, I removed some annoying shadow from the neck: I sampled the color from the cheek and painted over a layer with color as blending mode.

For making the eyes perfectly symmetric, I cloned the left one keeping the pupil of the right one. Finally, a bit of a masked clone was used to get some space around the left elbow.

Image with the final post-production

This is the final image as it was postproduced during the event.

After spending a couple of months in launching the Italian version of this blog, I’m finally coming back to update the English version. Let’s start with some pictures from the Photoshow (the main fair in Italy for photography), in order to show some creative possibilities with Adobe Lightroom 1.4. In particular: black and white conversion, split-toning, selective control on colour and cross processing. For the last one I’m experimenting a preset that you can download in this post.

Black and white conversion

Lightroom allows you to carefully control the way each colour get converted in variations of luminosity, but in this case was enough to start with the preset “Creative Black & White High contrast”. I just tweaked it a bit for exalting the contrast between the face and the hairs. The number involved were: Exposure: +2.5, Blacks: 10, Tone Curve: linear, Saturation: 0, Lens Vignetting: -100, Detail 50 (I wanted to stress the grain).

Split Toning

Split toning allows you to control a colour correction in highlights separately from the one in the shadows. I increased the yellow in highlights (which is not too much intrusive for skin tones) and I gave a Magenta punch in the shadows. Translating it in Lightroom settings: in split toning, Highlights Hue: 50, Highlights Saturation: 50, Balance +67, Shadows Hue 240, Shadows Saturation: 54. Lens Vignetting, Amount: -100, Midpoint: 12. (Ok I’m a vignette addicted…)

Xpro - Cross Processing

In this shot I replicated a cross-processing (or Xpro) effect. I tweaked a lot of settings, probably the most evident were in Camera Calibration. In order to let you replicate the same thing on your shots, I created a preset for Lightroom, that you can download here: gAntico-Xpro-Green.zip.

In the following shot I mixed my preset with the “Creative - Cold Tone”, given by default in Lightroom.

Variations starting from my Xpro-Green preset

{ Updated on April 16 } I experimented some variations on other shots. Dragging the slider Temp towards right (yellow) helped to reduce the green in the eyes, but at the end I prefered to fine tune the eyes in Photoshop instead of going crazy with my Lightroom preset. I also played with slightly different Split toning values. Here you are the results:

So, as any preset even this one should be considered as a possible starting point to be adapted to the peculiarity of the post-produced shot.

Selective color correction

Here I wanted to change the purple of the suit into a blue, without affecting other tones, like the skin ones. To do it, I just moved the Purple slider to -74 (in HSL, from Hue panel). I finished the editing in Photoshop.

Video Report in animoto

In order to summarize the shooting and post-production made at the Samsung’s stand, I finish this post with a video created by animoto.com (in case you wanted an All access pass on animoto, this is my referral code for giving you a little discount: ilvezoxc).

Other video formats: YouTube | Flickr | iPod.

It was meant to be used for corporate presentations of Mariella Burani Fashion Group. They design, manufacture and distribute a wide range of fashion products, leather and jewelery. Some of their brands are Mariella Burani, René Lezard, Valente, Braccialini and Baldinini. The agency is Twirl, the Art Director is Lara Seregni and the Motion Designer is Giovanni Antico (that’s me). Music is Yellow bird, from Soundbooth library, (added for portfolio purpose). Here you are the video:

Find the same video on Vimeo or YouTube.

Software backstage: a tip for After Effects

The following screenshot shows the composition used for the final montage in After Effects. Well, yes in this case I did it all in After Effects, but I used Premiere for selecting some clips used at the end of the video. I found extremely handy to share at the beginning the footage with Adobe Clip notes, in order to identify quickly the right scenes.

Expression used to animate Text in After Effects

I used a lot of shape layers, but I want to mention a tip for the animation of the numbers at the end of the video. I used a few lines of code in order to have the numbers raising automatically during the play, but limiting them to a certain value and starting at a certain frame. The following code was attached as an expression to the property “Source Text” of the text layer with the number to be animated. This was handy because the same code was used in the various animated texts: I just had to change the variable “targetValue” for adapting it to each case.

var targetValue = 32;     // final desired value
var startShift = 25;      // frames to skip before starting
var display = 0;          // starting value to display
 
var internalTime = timeToFrames(t = time + thisComp.displayStartTime, fps = 1.0 / thisComp.frameDuration, isDuration = false);
if (internalTime - startShift > targetValue) {
     display = targetValue;
} else if (internalTime - startShift < 0)  {
     display = 0;
} else {
     display = internalTime - startShift;
}
display;

PicLens is a small and free plug-in for Firefox, available for Windows XP, Vista and Mac OSX (currently no Linux version). It runs full-screen taking advantage of hardware acceleration from the graphic card: I stress tested it at 1920×1200 pixel and its performances were impressive (I lowered my screen resolution only for the screen recording).

If you are a passionate flickr user, you might feel some emotions while facing to your whole photostream like if it was an infinite exhibition. You will also appreciate the bidirectional links: you can jump from any page to PicLens and vice versa. The following video shows PicLens view for flickr, pointing out the connections between the enhanced navigation and the feeds of photo-stream, comments, stats, search and map. Enjoy it:

Watch the video in HD (1280×720) on Vimeo or on YouTube.

PicLens uses a smart preloading in background, so you have to wait less time for previous and following photos. I really like the fast responsiveness, made possible also by downloading pictures at low res at first and at high resolution only if you zoom. I love the support of mouse wheel to zoom and keyboard shortcuts for browsing. The “drag to navigate” is quite intuitive, the minimal bars don’t distract from the pictures and the recently added search feature is surely welcome.

I definitely recommend to download PicLens for Firefox. There are versions for Safari and Internet Explorer as well, but they currently haven’t the 3D interface. There is also a PicLens WordPress Plugin, which creates feeds compatible with PicLens for the pictures on your blog. Last but not least, there is PicLens Lite, a Flash application that can be embedded in html pages (it takes feeds, but no 3d yet). You can follow the future developments for all the versions on Danny Thorpe’s blog.

About the video
Software: PicLens 1.6.1.936 for Firefox on Windows Vista
Photos: from www.flickr.com/alt123 (its’ my old account, I moved to www.flickr.com/gantico)
Music: “The Flux”, from Adobe Soundbooth CS3 library.

Before jumping to launch the easter egg, I recommend to save and close any open project (you will be asked to do it anyway). I also take advantage of this post to remind you that After Effects 8.0.2 is now available but it might be savvy if you wait for updating to QuickTime 7.4. [Edit 2008-02-07] It was just released a patch from Apple that solves the rendering issue with After Effects (and other sw like Final Cut): QuickTime 7.4.1 Fixes Rendering Bug.

Here you are the sequence for the easter egg hidden in the 8th release of After Effects. While pressing the Alt key (Option key on Mac) open the menu “Help” (”After Effects” on Mac) and click on the voice “About After Effects” before releasing your finger from the keyboard. When you release the mouse, a new project will appear: “metal.oaf” (note that the codename for After Effects 8 is just “metaloaf” and not “meatloaf” as it wrongly appears in several sites…).

Two comps will come into sight. The first will contain a text layer with the full credits of the people that worked on Adobe After Effects CS3 Professional, with a simple animated background. The second will add some goodies like a 3D Camera, several lights, shape layers, 3D per character animation, layer styles…

If you render it, you will complete your celebration for the fifteenth anniversary of After Effects, honoring its authors and getting the animation shown here. A hundred more of great years to After Effects!

Watch the video in HD on Vimeo, or in low res on YouTube.

I slightly had to change my original plan when I discovered that there wasn’t any PayPal button in several cases. For the sake of roundness, I kept searching till I completed 10 donations and I added an extra list of 5 other valuable plugins. Before going into the details, I want to thank the whole WordPress community and all the developers that are contributing to improve the quality of bloggers’ life.

My little budget dedicated to WP developers was a way to express appreciation, to support future evolutions and it’s also a message for other WP users: I really mean that these plugins are good! There are for sure many other great alternatives or other plugins that do wonderful things, I’m just sharing my experience and telling you what I use and what I would recommend at present.

I gave my little contribution for these fabulous plugins

1 - Akismet* - Antispam
The definitive solution for spam in comments. It just works immediately and effectively. You can use it also for having forms filtered: Contact Form 7 has native support for it.

2 - Admin Drop Down Menu - Admin tool
A witty shortcut for navigating in WP administration. It enables you to jump directly to sub-sections, without passing from home pages. Smart and handy.

3 - FAlbum - Flickr album
The most complete option for photos from your Flickr account. It keeps albums, titles, descriptions, comments, overlaying notes but not yet collections. See it in action here ».

4 - Feed Locations - (Edit Jan 2008: replaced by FeedSmith) Statistics
For statistics of people reading your blog through a rss reader, you would appreciate if they all were subscribed to the same feedburner url ».

5 - Let It Snow! - Gadget
I was desperately looking for the 10th item when I came across this cute snow generator. You can see it in action on this blog till probably the mid of January. (Edit: just disabled)

6 - Google Analytics for WordPress** - Statistics
Super easy to set-up, witty options for accurate tracking of pages and downloads. It connects seamlessly your Google Analytics account with your blog.

7 - Google (XML) Sitemaps Generator - Search Engine Optimization
With a good degree of customization and control on external pages, it generates a clean sitemap (used by search engine crawlers). See it in action here ».

8 - PB-embedFlash - Flash embedding tool
One single plugin for embedding all the players (like from youtube, slideshare and others) or any flash content with handy parameters (like size and variables).

9 - Subscribe to Comments - Comments tool
I guess that the checkbox (”Notify me of followup comments via e-mail”), that you find under any comment form in my blog, is self explaining…

10 - WordTube - (Edit: I switched to Pb-embedFlash) Flash video tool
Complete management tool for flash video: from the upload of the FLV to the embed in any post with a clean player. See it in action here ».

11 - All in One SEO Pack - Search Engine Optimization
The definitive kit for controlling on a per post basis title, description and keywords embedded as metadata (useful for search engine crawlers). Frequently updated.
Edit 03/04/2008: donation made (paypal button just appeared).

I would have supported them if they had a PayPal button

12 - Contact Form 7 1.7.3 - Form tool
Complete form manager, with customizable fields, check-boxes, pull-down menus, captcha engine and Askimet connection. Very frequently updated. See it in action here ».

13 - I Love Social Bookmarking - Social linking
It adds handy links to social networks, with a lovely look adjustable with css and admin options. See it in action pointing your mouse over “Share this page” at the end of this post.

14 - Shylock Adsense Plugin** - Advertising tool
With rules for governing the presence of advertisement on a per date, template or post base, it’s a highly customizable tool for managing Ads from Google.

15 - WordPress.com Stats* - Statistics
For a daily quick overview of the visits on your blog. Simple and effective, often more meaningful then complex statistics with millions of details.

Notes

* = it requires a free registration on wordpress.com (which is different from the one on wordpress.org).
** = it requires specific code that you will find in the related service from Google.
I have extensively tested all the plugins on WordPress 2.3.1 and I just upgraded to version 2.3.2 without noticing any problem. These pages are happily hosted on MediaTemple and run under PHP 5.
The opening illustration was created by Dan Philibin in his tutorial How to Make the “Flare” Effect.

Another cool showcase of Flash Video is Flash on, a section on adobe.com with an intriguing interaction. It’s still on-line also the first Flash Video Gallery, that was created 4 years ago but that was updated in Action Script 3 some months ago. Its source files were published on Adobe Devnet.

I’m happy to see that I’m still mentioned for a showcased site: Video Talk, created in the far 2003. I remember it with a lot of joy, because it was one of my first commercial project with Flash Video and because of the fascination for working with the European Space Agency.