Lloyd Spitalnik Photography

This one came up today. I’m currently organizing a program that has to be done by Wednesday the 27th. On that date I’m giving a slide show presentation to the Sierra Club’s Photo Club.  It will be held at the St. Paul the Apostle • 405 West 59th St. • 2nd floor • New York, NY (1½ blocks west of Columbus Circle, between 9th and 10th Avenues) Suggested donation $5.00. Doors open at 6pm, the show begins at 6:30. Now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, let’s proceed with the tip.

I had 75 large format tif files in a folder that needed to be converted to 1000 x 667 jpegs. Of course it could have been done one by one, but talk about tedious. If you ever run into this situation or one like it, here’s what to do. Create a new folder on your desktop or a location of your choice and move all the photos into it. Now, create another folder on your desktop and name it something like “photos small” or whatever you want. Open Photoshop and go to File > Scripts > Image Processor. In the first box choose the folder where the images are. In the second box choose the folder you created (photos small) and in the third box choose the file type you want, in my case JPEG, the quality 5 -8 is good for email or the web. Check “size to fit” and put your largest dimensions into the boxes.  For the web or email check “convert to sRGB. Click on the RUN button and watch the magic begin. This is an extremely useful feature of Photoshop and really saves a lot of time.

This tip is easy to do but somewhat difficult to explain. For you seasoned veterans, nothing earth shattering here, but a good tip nevertheless. Let’s talk about the “Fade” command. It is used when there is no layer involved and you want to reduce the opacity or use a blend mode. Let’s say you do a “Shadows/Highlights” adjustment found under Image > Adjustments. A sometimes very useful adjustment but once it’s done, it’s done. Well not so fast. Immediately after doing it press on a PC Control/Shift/F or on a Mac Command/Shift/F and the fade control will appear. Adjust the opacity and or blend mode here. Remember, this is a one shot deal. If you make any other adjustment prior to the fade it will be unavailable. I hope this makes sense because I know I use it all the time and it really improves the image. If you have any questions, I’ll try to answer them. These are the types of things I can teach you in my private lesson sessions. Top image has a shadow/highlight adjustment. Bottom photo is exactly the same but with a fade of 65%. The effect is subtle but makes the subject look more natural. Click on each image for a better view.

Hi everyone. As promised I’m starting a new feature of my blog. There will be one simple Lightroom, Photoshop or photography tip given every week or so. So without further ado, here’s the first one.

If you’re like me you want your workflow to move along as quickly as possible. When I’m culling  images in Lightroom, because I shoot so much, I tend to go through the photos very fast and place a mark on the obvious clunkers with the “X” key which is “mark for deletion”. The default for Lightroom is to use the arrow key to move to the next shot. There’s a better and quicker way to get through your photos. Go into the Library module and then on the drop-down menu under “Photo”, put a check next to Auto Advance. Now when you “X” an image it will automatically go to the next photo. After you check Auto Advance it will work in the Develop module as well.

Let me know what you think. There will be tips for Lightroom, Photoshop and general photography in future weeks.