Watermark and copyright notices are something that everyone should use, especially if you are on Flickr. Naturally you want to put copyright information in the files themselves too. I haven’t been putting this information on my images in the form of a watermark until now because I didn’t know of an easy way to incorporate this into my workflow.

Lucky for me I recently came across Timothy Armes’ LR/2 Mogrify plugin for Lightroom 2 (it works on Windows and Mac). In order to use this on a Windows machine, you also need to download ImageMagick, a useful program I have used in the past in a LAMP environment for web applications. Lastly, you need a transparent PNG image to use as your watermark. The image I used for the photo above is at 30% opacity in Photoshop. If you don’t know how to create a transparent PNG image in Photoshop for watermarking purposes, I highly recommend Heather’s Watermark Tutorial.

My images typically start out between 7-9MB in size. Typical dimensions are 3648×2736 in size. Because of this, and wanting to ensure the watermark was visible, I made my watermark 200px tall. YMMV, but this works for me. If you are exporting to Facebook with the Friedl Plugin, you will likely need to adjust your settings substantially from what you use for Flickr. Just make sure you use Presets to save your settings for each type.

Once you have the file completed, it is a simple matter of using the plugin via Lightroom (after you have added it of course). The plugin gives you 9 base reference points you can anchor the plugin to, and then you can offset the placement in both the vertical and horizontal planes. You will have to experiment for a bit to see what works for you. One option you will see is whether or not you want to put the watermark on the image before you create any borders, or after. If you aren’t using borders, you can ignore this. I have seen some examples of incorporating the watermark/ logo into the border. Take a look and see if you like it.

Adding borders can be a bit confusing the first time you do it. At least it was for me. I thought that as you add numbers, you were working from the inside out. This means that the highest number would be the innermost frame, at least in my mind. It didn’t turn out to be the case though. Border 1 is always the innermost border. For my standard template, Border 1 is 15px all the way around and black. Border 2 is also 15px all the way around, and is white. Border 3 is the big one, at 30px all the way around and black in color. To me it gives images a nice framed and matted look. I only do this for the photos that get uploaded to Flickr and Facebook. Anything going to photos.chesterbullock.com (Zenfolio) gets no treatment, as I want the prints to be printed in original form without the borders and watermarks.

One thing to be careful of with the LR2/Mogrify tools - if you export later for a different purpose, make sure you disable the LR2/ Mogrify plugin. It stays on by default all the time in the Export window, and you could export something with edits you don’t mean to.

I truly wish I had come across this useful utility sooner. I am just very thankful I came across it at all.

Bridge, originally uploaded by bourgeoisbee.

Since my laptop died a horrible death on Monday and I was forced to reformat I have been thinking about the work flow I use for editing when I am out and about.

I try to NOT edit images on my laptop, reserving that solely for the desktop, but when I travel I need to be able to easily edit any images I take during the trips.

Lightroom is a great tool, but it’s a pretty “heavy” tool. I am trying to keep the laptop in a basic form with only the must have/needed tools installed.

Well last week during my Photoshop class we were introduced to Adobe Bridge and Camera RAW. I started calling the combo Lightroom Lite.

For the most part Bridge and RAW do what Lightroom does, they just happen to be included with Photoshop. So if you have PS CS2, 3 or 4 installed you have these tools already to go.

Camera RAW allows you to do the same adjustments of the things you can in Lightroom and even allows you to run Photoshop actions on your files without opening Photoshop.

Bridge does one thing that Lightroom doesn’t that I feel in love with…it helps you manage your complete workflow/file system with the click of a button.

You can take a set of RAW images and have Bridge save them out to your file system as a RAW, PSD and JPG with one click of a button.

May seem simple, but it helped me immediately establish a new filing system for my images that is super easy to follow when I am on the road.

Bridge will let you name the folders you save to, so I can have a folder for each days images with folders for the RAW, PSD and JPG files inside automatically.

For now I am going to stick with this combo on my laptop and leave Lightroom for my desktop duty. It should make copying the files over to Lightroom when I get back home from trips a snap.

As previously mentioned, I took some time while in Durango recently and worked on my HDR images, specifically where real estate is concerned. I even followed the directions from the Photomatix people. While I actually took several HDR images on my trip, I was particularly pleased with the real estate ones.

The best one, the exterior shot above, is a combination of 4 exposures. I imported all of my images form the weekend into Lightroom, then selected them and corrected the white balance. I had shot them without resetting my settings from earlier experiments - thank god for RAW and Lightroom. I then took the 4 images and exported them using the HDRSoft Photomatix Lightroom export plugin. I then combined the images in Photomatix, adjusted the tone map until I had an image I liked, then saved it and went back to Lightroom.

I had some really bad converging verticals though, so from Lightroom I chose to edit the image in Photoshop CS3. Once in PSCS3 (say that 5 times fast), I used the Distort feature to straighten the verticals and make everything look proper. All in all, I am quite pleased with the outcome. I know there are free tools out there to generate HDR images, but none of the ones I tried came anywhere close to Photomatix in terms of resultant quality or ease of use. If you are seriously considering HDR photography, you really should invest in Photomatix.

A friend of mine recently had an impromptu family reunion photo shoot come up. Her background, like mine, is traditionally more of an artistic type of photography. She indicated that she had trouble switching to photographer from artist and wanted to know how I managed it.

I was a bit taken aback by this, as I don’t really see myself as being good at the portrait thing (although people are loving Megan’s senior pics - the photo above is one of them). But that isn’t very helpful to anyone, so I thought about it and gave her my gut reaction. I have since thought about it more, and my gut reaction is the same, so here it is.

The focus of a portrait should be the person/ people/ animal that the portrait is supposed to be of. This might sound obvious, but it isn’t always that way, especially in post processing. It is easy for creative people to start saying “what if I cropped here, what if I applied sepia there?” and pretty much forget about what it is they are there to do. When I was doing the processing of the Senior Pictures for my daughter Megan, I had to look at it from my view as a parent. I want a tasteful image that reflects who she is, and where she is the focus.

Another reality with portraits is that people are going to be less likely to have any custom framing done. As such, any cropping you do should have a resultant image in a standard “frameable” size. Not to say some people won’t do the custom thing, but since portraits get sent to a larger audience (parents, grandparents, etc.), it is more helpful if you can keep it standard.

One of the cool things I love about Adobe Lightroom is the easy ability to create and work with virtual copies of an image. This is great for portraits. If I see a shot that might look better with a certain crop, displayed in black and white or sepia, or any other artistic variation, I can apply it to the copy, and upload that with the original and let the buyer choose which they like better. These people are the art directors, not you, and you need to give them all the options. Some might sell, some might not, but at least they will know the options. And if they like it, they will buy it from you instead of trying to do it themselves with whatever photo site they like.

I do still think there is room for being artistic in a portrait situation. I think the example above highlights one such opportunity. As Megan was climbing out into the stream, I saw this shot in my mind. So I stayed put on the banks of the stream and took this shot from further out. Then I clambered into the stream and did the up-close shots before we called it a day.

So in a nutshell, I guess the answer to my friend’s question is “don’t forget that it is about the people and what they want, not necessarily your vision.” But if you offer options, you are that much more ahead of the game.

POTW: Graffiti, originally uploaded by Sheba Wheeler.

I got an email today from Richard Peterson, one of my photography instructors, about Adobe’s “Photoshop Express,” its new online photo editor with free storage and sharing. The application has been released as a beta, which means Adobe needs you to help them finish creating it.

Try it out, then sound off about it. What worked? What didn’t? What desperately needs improvement? Select the “Feeback” tab and give Adobe a piece of your mind.

Edit photos, create albums and share them online. The 2GB worth of photos you get to upload should be more than enough to get you started. Once your in, view and share your albums publicly or be nosy and browse community galleries and albums others have uploaded. Create your personal URL to share with friends and family.

I uploaded my submission to the Photo of the Week contest head on the Colorado 4X4 Shutterbug forum (image above) to try it out. The uploading process was fast and painless. I like being able to crop, rotate and tweak images. Plus it’s very convenient to be able to ship them directly into my blog or Facebook page. You can also upload any images you have online in PhotoBucket or Picasa. Users also get to take advantage of some easy retouching tools to give your friends that coveted glamour look minus the pimples and wrinkles. Get it now here.
Don’t leave us hanging. Let us know what you think!