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Photo Editing

How to create a Frame in Photoshop using the (somewhat hidden) Picture Frame Filter

Roger · October 27, 2020 · Leave a Comment

In today’s video, we look at how to add a frame to an image using the Picture Frame feature in Photoshop. Transcript is below.

Transcript

Today, we’re talking about a fun little feature that might not be on a lot of people’s radar and that’s the Picture Frame Filter. So stick around to learn more about it!

Well, hello friends! Roger here. So quite awhile ago, I was browsing through the filters in Photoshop and noticed one that I really hadn’t really noticed before and that is the Picture Frame filter. So what this does, is allows you to quickly frame an image in Photoshop so that it looks like a framed picture. And there are all sorts of different frame types available. So to access it, you choose Filter > Render, and the Picture Frame filter is the second option on the menu here.

So we’ll click it. And if you click the Frame drop-down list, we can see all the different frame types available. We see there’s 47 total. So we have some pretty far out frames here: Party, Big Curls, Romance, Tilde, Curly Dance. So the more traditional frames are located more toward the bottom of the list. So we have Rounded Corners, Art Frame, Dual Rounded Art Frame, etc.

And here we can set the margins, the size, the arrangement, as well as choose the color for the frame. So if I wanted this to be blue, …and now we’ve changed our frame color to blue. So this is one of those features that Adobe just kind of snuck in one day so not a lot of people know that it’s there because it’s kind of hidden under the Render category of the Filters area.

So let’s create a frame for this photo. But before I start from here, what I want to do, is create a new layer first. Creating a new layer before adding the frame feature allows you to easily resize the frame after it renders, using the Free Transform tool. So let’s create a new layer so we’ll choose Layer > New > Layer from the menu. And notice we could also use the Command + Shift + N or Control + Shift + N keystroke combination.

So we have a new blank layer. I’m just going to name this “Frame” and then click OK. So now we’ll choose Filter, point to Render, and then choose Picture Frame from the menu. So again, we can choose what type of frame that we want. I think I just want a standard, basic, boring Art frame. So I’m going to choose that. And what would be a good color to go with this image? Let’s go out there — let’s go with Magenta. Then I’ll click the Close button on the Colors window.

So we get an idea of what our frame color would look like before we render it. And again, we can choose the margin, so how far out. And again, you can always transform the frame later on. You can use the size so this gives us the thickness of our frame. So if we wanted to go super thick, we could go like this. But I think I’m going to leave it….maybe….let’s go about 16 or so. And this looks good, so then we’ll click OK.

So now we see we have our frame and our frame’s a little bit too small for our image so let’s transform it. So I’ll hold down the Command + T keystroke combination if using a Mac or Ctrl + T if using Windows to activate the Free Transform feature. Now I’m just going to click and drag on the edges until the frame is the size that I want. And we’ll drag down a little bit. . And there we go.

And you can also add some effects as well by double-clicking on the layer. Um… what do we want…let’s try adding little Drop
shadow to this….gives it a little bit of depth here. Let’s add a little Bevel & Emboss too. So there we go. That looks good. And I’ll click OK.

So there is our framed duck with its purple frame. So if you liked this video, please click the Like button below as that really helps our channel out. And again, I thank you so much for watching. I really appreciate all of your support. And I’ll talk to you all in the next video. Roger and Out!

How to create a Web Gallery using Lightroom Cloud

Roger · October 15, 2020 · Leave a Comment

In today’s Lightroom Thursday video, we look at how to create a public Web Gallery using the Cloud version of Lightroom. This has become one of my favorite features of Lightroom Cloud. Transcript is below.

Transcript

So today, we’re going to create a public web gallery using Lightroom Cloud and you might be surprised just how easy it is. So stick around!

Well, hello friends! My name is Roger and today, we’re going to work with a Web Gallery. So in the Cloud version of Lightroom, you can create a public Web Gallery of your favorite albums and images that you can share with others.

It’s easiest to first create one or more albums in Lightroom that contains the images that you want to use for your gallery. And you can have a gallery of more than one album of images. So galleries are a great way to share photos from a specific family event, for instance. Or images from a vacation.

So I have several albums of images here. So once we’ve added the images that we want to use, in the appropriate albums, we then need to navigate to lightroom.adobe.com. So let me switch to Safari and I will navigate to that website. So that was lightroom.adobe.com.

Then we want to click the Shared icon — and that’s over here in the left panel bar — and then we want to click Gallery.

So here, you can modify your gallery settings by adding your name, a description of your gallery, choosing whether to allow downloads, comments and likes, as well as choosing which metadata to display. So right now, we see that I have two albums added: the summer-vacation album and an album named animals. And to remove an album from your gallery, just click the little minus icon and that removes that album from this particular gallery. So now our gallery is empty.

So let’s add a folder of images. So to add an album to gallery, we click the Add Albums button. And here’s a list of all the albums that we have in Lightroom. I want to add the Animals album so we’ll select animals and then click “Add Album.” We see that that album has now been added to our Lightroom gallery.

Let’s add another one. So we’ll click Add Albums again and this time, I think I’m going to click that “!For Instagram” album. So now that one is selected in addition to the animals album. Then we’ll click Add Album. Now both of those have been added to our gallery.

Now you can also choose a custom cover image for your gallery. Right now, I have an image of a little dog, here. So to choose a different image, we click the Browse button. Then, we navigate to the location where the image is located. I have an image on my Desktop here named Duck so I’m going to select that and then click Choose. It takes a moment for it to update — and now the cover image for our album has now been updated.

So once you’ve added your albums to your gallery and updated any information, you’re ready to preview your gallery. And to do so, we click the little link on the upper-right corner of the window. And this is the link that you’ll share with others; and the easiest way to do that is to click the little clipboard icon and that copies the link to the clipboard. And then you can paste it in an email or a text message or even on a website. So let’s click the link to have a little look-see at our gallery.

So in the left pane here, we have all of the albums that make up this gallery. So if I only wanted to see images — let’s say in the animals album — I would click animals. Now we’re only viewing images from that album. I could also click the !For Instagram album and again, now I’m viewing images from that particular album.

To view a specific image, I could click directly on the image and we get a bigger version of it — it fills up our screen. And here we have a couple of options. We can click the little three-dot menu in the upper-right corner of our screen and that allows us to download the image to our computer. And that will only be allowable if downloads are enabled for this gallery, which I do believe we did enable them.

You can also view information about an image. This tells us what camera this was taken with and that’s because we had the metadata option displayed so we see some various metadata about this image — such as the camera, our camera settings, etc.

This icon underneath the Info icon displays all comments that were left about this image. And right now, we don’t have any comments. And we can actually leave one. “Great cats!” and now we have a comment added to the activity area of this image.

So let’s close this.

You can also display the images in an album in a slideshow by clicking the little slideshow button. And notice that after so many seconds, it switches from one image to the next and we can just tap Esc to exit the slideshow. Again, you can click “Show All” to display all of the albums that make up your gallery.

I think I’m finished with this gallery so I’m going to click the little “x” on the tab here to close the tab and that brings us back to our main Lightroom window.

Again, you can share this gallery by just copying this link to the clipboard and then sharing it any way you like.

So did you like this video? If so, please click the “Like” button below as that really helps our channel out. And that about does it for this video. I thank you so much for watching. I really appreciate all of your support. And I’ll talk to you all in the next video. Roger and out!

Creating a Panorama in Lightroom is Now Super Easy!

Roger · May 28, 2020 · Leave a Comment

In today’s Lightroom Thursday video, we look at how to create and edit a panorama using Lightroom’s powerful Panorama tool. Transcript is below.

Hey friends, my name is Roger and welcome to Lightroom Thursday, where I offer a tip or technique on using Lightroom every Thursday.

So if you have several images that you want to combine into one larger image, you can use Lightroom’s Panorama feature. This feature now comes standard in Lightroom. No more needing to jump into Photoshop to accomplish this.

The first step involves selecting the images that you want to stitch together. Now when shooting images, you want to try to overlap the content between them…maybe about 20%
or so. And this makes is easier for Lightroom to analyze the contents and then blend the image into once continuous image.

So once you’ve selected the images from which you want to create a panorama, you choose “Photo” on the menu, point to “Photomerge,” and then choose “Panorama.” And you can create Panoramas from either the Library module or the Develop Module as well.

So as we can see Photo > Photo Merge > Panorama . That option’s available here.

So let’s switch back to the Library module. So I have these three images here and these are the images from which I want to create a Panorama.
And I overlapped each of them by about 20% when I was taking them.

So I’m going to press the Command key on my keyboard and if you’re using Windows you
would hold down the Control key. You want to select all of the images that are going to make up the Panorama. Then we choose “Photo,” “Photomerge,” and “Panorama” from the menu. And this creates a Panorama preview here in the left pane.

So there are three options here to choose from: Spherical, Cylindrical and Perspective. Now most of the time, Spherical will work just fine. I usually leave it on Spherical. But you can experiment with the other two to see the effects that those apply to your image. But I’m going to leave mine at Spherical here. So again, you want to click the one that most appeals to you or works best with your image.

Now as we can see, our panorama isn’t perfect. We have a little white along the edges. Now in the past, you would drag the Boundary Warp tool all the way to the right. We can see that it filled in those edges. This eliminates those white edges of the
images without cropping. But the problem with this is that it does warp the photo, which sometimes can give you unexpected results.

Another option is the Auto Crop feature. So I’m going to drag this Boundary Warp slider back down. I’m going to click the Auto Crop checkbox here. So again, this removes those
excess white areas of the image, but note that to do so, it will crop out parts of the photo, which may not be what you want if essential portions of your image end up
being cropped.

But if you want to remove those areas without cropping the image, then you may wish to give the Fill Edges option here at try. Fill Edges, and this is relative newcomer to
Lightroom, and what this does is uses Content Aware Technology to fill in the edges. So this is a technology that’s been available in Photoshop for quite some time now. So it’s nice to see Adobe’s finally brining it into Lightroom. So yeah, the Fill Edges does a pretty good job of filling those edges using the existing content on the image. So if we look at the left corner, we can see when I click “Fill Edges,” it fills that with similar content.

And the last option here is “Create Stack.” And what this will do, is take the source images and the merged panorama and place them all in a stack after the images have been merged together. The merged panorama image will then display on top of the stack. But I don’t think I want to create any stacks. I think I’m going leave this as is.

So then we’ll click “Merge” to create our merged file. And we can see it’s working over here in the upper-left corner. It takes a few moments for Lightroom to create
the panorama. And it’ll take longer depending on the amount of
photos that you have.

So Lightroom has finished creating our panorama. So if you don’t see your panorama, choose “View,” point to “Sort”, and then choose “Added Order” from the menu. So then if we scroll up all the way to the top, the panorama will be our first image. And we can see it added the name “Pano” to the file name, letting us know that this is a panorama and here’s our …here’s the pano that Lightroom created. So yeah, this is how to create a panorama in Lightroom.

Did you like this video? If so, please click the “Like” button below as that really helps people to discover the channel. And as always, I thank you so much for watching. I really appreciate all of your support. And I’ll talk to you all in the next video.

Roger and out!

Save Tons of Time using Lightroom’s Auto Advance Feature

Roger · May 23, 2020 · Leave a Comment

In this video, I talk about how you can save tons of time using Lightroom’s Auto Advance feature when rating and ranking your images. Transcript is below.

Transcript

If you find yourself needing to work through a large volume of images quickly, then you may wish to turn on the Auto Advance feature. What this does, is once you’ve added a star, label or flag to an image, Lightroom automatically advances to the next image in the folder. This is the case whether you’re adding a new rating or updating an existing rating.

To turn the Auto Advance feature on or off, choose Photo > Auto Advance from the menu to toggle Auto Advance on or off. A checkmark next to it on the menu indicates that it is active.

You can also turn on Auto Advance by pressing the Caps Lock key. Auto Advance will remain activated until you press the Caps Lock key again.

If you want to turn on Auto Advance only temporarily, hold down the Shift key and then press the keyboard shortcut for the flag you want to add. For instance, if you held down the Shift and the 3 key, Lightroom would apply a 3-star rating to the image and automatically advance to the next image. Once you release the Shift key, Auto Advance becomes disabled.

If you tag and rate a lot of photos, using the Auto Advance feature can really be a time-saver.

How to Fix a Sky in Lightroom

Roger · April 29, 2020 · Leave a Comment

In this video, I provide an example of how to change out a dull sky in Lightroom.

My Lightroom Classic: Up to Speed video course is available. You can check it out HERE

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