Members’ Quick Tips

Lightroom Gallery Quick Tip!

Joann Long

I always wanted to make an online gallery of my work for a certain group of people but didn’t want to go through the hassle of getting a domain and making a website. Imagine my surprise to learn that I can make an online gallery through Lightroom! . I didn’t know it was possible until I listened to Matt K’s online tutorial. The benefits of the LR Gallery include prohibiting right click saving so people can’t take/download your photos, you can make a gallery for each group of people you want to share with, the layout is customizable, and it’s easy!

I have numerous pictures of my 99-year-old Mom that I wanted to share with my family. So, this process to create an online gallery was perfect to share all the photos I had and doesn’t have to be static. I can add more photos easily as time goes on.

Rather than reinvent the wheel to describe how it’s done; Matt K’s video thoroughly describes how to create your own galleries. https://mattk.com/how-to-get-the-most-adobe-episode-1/

I highly recommend you check out this little-known function! Feel free to check out a couple of galleries that I put together. My mom’s gallery is here: https://adobe.ly/2KcBDgd, and I also made one for the East Bloomfield Firehouse Training, here: https:// adobe.ly/30H142q .

Create Stunning Product Images with Studio-like Sweeps

Jim Hooper

If you want to try your hand at product photography, get yourself a sheet of poster board, some tape and something you can use as a backstop.

Lay the poster board on the table near the window, let one side stay flat to the table, and the other end should be raised in a gentle arc, and then affixed to the backdrop. Get out your camera and macro lens and start to play around!

“Step Up” Your Filter Game

Jim Hooper

Back in the day, photographers tended to carry a full array of different filters including UV/Haze, CPL, Warming, Cooling, FLW (Fluorescent) filters. Today, that arsenal has largely been replaced with post processing, but I am still a big advocate of UV filters, and of course Circular Polarizers can’t be replicated in post. If you’re like me, you carry a bunch of lenses with you in your bag. Even if you’re only carrying two lenses, there’s a good chance that each of those lenses has a different filter thread, meaning you can’t use the same filters on each of those lenses. Buying an entire set of quality filters for every single lens can be quite expensive.

This is where “Step Up rings” come into play! A SUR is simply a metal ring that is threaded on each end, and has a different diameter on each end. When you buy a SUR, will see that it is marked with the two different filter thread sizes, on the ring. For example, you might see it marked as a 58-62mm or a 52-77mm ring.

Rather than buying a whole collection of filters for each lens, look at the filter size of your largest diameter lens. Let’s say you carry lenses with filter sizes of 52mm, 58mm, 62mm and 77mm. Simply purchase filters at the largest (77mm) and then buy a 52-77mm SUR, a 58-77mm SUR, and a 62-77mm SUR. Personally, I like to use a UV filter on all of my lenses at all times, so I would likely still purchase four UV Filters, but just one Circular Polarizer, one 2x ND, and one 4x ND filter.

One final note, if you do go this route, remember that your original lens caps will no longer fit. My suggestion is to purchase three new 77mm lens caps (if you carry the lenses in the scenario above, the 77mm lens would already have a cap, so you wouldn’t need a new one).

Left: The “Behind the Scenes” setup showing the simple posterboard being used as a studio sweep for photographing the figurine.

Right: The resultant image of the figurine.