September 17, 2008

7

actions, Free Effects & Goodies, free lightroom presets, lightroom, presets, tips

Free Lightroom Brush Presets

install-lr-brush-presets5.jpg

~ Download Gavin’s Brush Presets ~

UPDATE: These brushes no longer work properly in LR4. If you use LR2-3 download the brushes above. If you use LR4 get my new brushes.

Did you know that in Lightroom2 You can use a brush to make precise corrections, and even have brush presets ready to go to make those corrections easy.

Well I knew about LR  brushes, but I had not given enough attention to them until Matt Kloskowski posted up some darken brushes, and got my mind churning on this great workflow asset.

Here’s a collection of brush presets I made for… Burn, Dodge, Color Boost, Color Drain, Skin Soft, and Detail Boost.

Remember that these don’t work the same as my Develop presets. These are for “Brush” settings. If you need to learn how to install them take a look at my Installing Lightroom Brush Presets article.

Once you get them installed you can just select the brush effect that you want, from the drop-down. Brush size and intensity are still fully controllable with the sliders, but these preset will get you going fast.

Gavin Seim

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August 31, 2008

3

actions, Free Effects & Goodies, photoshop, photoshop freebies, tips

Actions for making easy Watermarks (UPDATED)

Hey gang. Here’s a small set of actions I made to help watermark photo’s. If your in SE fan club on Facebook you got these a few weeks ago. but I wanted to post them up here for the blog readers. Nothing huge here. These just take a logo, or type and make it have that transparent bevel look of a watermark.

You can also modify them to speed things up. For example you could record a command at the beginning of the action to place your logo at the start, and then save and close at the end so that you could automate the watermarking. You can add commands to an action like this by simply selecting the action and pressing record. Then re-save the action when your done modding it.

Also if you use LR check out Mogrify. It’s a great plugin. Make you overlay in PS, then use the LR Mogrify plugin to overlay it on export. It’s how I do my batches.

UPDATE: 09.09 to V1.1. Added a new glassy effect action (see sample below).

watermarl-action

~ Free V1.1 download link ~

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July 24, 2008

0

news, ProPhotoShow, special effects, tips

Being PURPLE. 5 Ideas For Business:

Gosh, I sure made this cool fire look UGLY!

I really enjoyed the book Purple Cow. It’s a book about making your business stand out in an world where paid advertising is failing. It got me thinking about what we do here at Seim Effects. Aside from saving time editing, I use the effects to help me stand out more. I made the above photo bad to get your attention. It probably worked, but I wouldn’t suggest using that effect to get new clients and it’s not included with my collections.

I think  as photographers we sometimes feel that automating parts of our business takes away from our creative edge. That does not need to be so. If we did all our editing manually, we would use far fewer effects, and because they would take so much longer. In the end the results might not be as good because we would be in a hurry. Also by being fast in my editing my client gets their pictures fast. This is a Purple Cow in itself because clients often have to wait toomlong for their pictures to be ready.

So I for one am looking for more ways to stand out. Here’s a few things on my mind for Seim Photography as well as Seim Effects

  • 1. Am I being extraordinary in the products and services I sell?
  • 2. How can I make it even better?
  • 3. What does my target market really want?
  • 4. What can I do to give simple added bonuses? ( the prize inside)
  • 5. What can I do that’s daring and amazing?

I have various answers to these questions rolling in my head like marbles. We’ll talk about those later. The bottom line is this. If I can answer the questions above, and then take action, I can be a purple cow that everyone is amazed by and telling their friends about. That’s FREE MARKETING.

Do you do anything in your business to be the Purple Cow?

By the way. Here’s a good version of that photo.

Gavin Seim

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April 18, 2008

2

lightroom, photoshop, presets, tips

Balancing Shooting, Editing & Workflow

Personally as a photographer I get pretty into creative post processing. I make lightroom presets, actions etc to super speed that workflow a lot, and I still find myself in front of the computer even though I don’t really need to be. Do you deal with this?

What’s on my mind today is how much playing with post can take away from our creative photography if we allow it to. I literally have so many images that I could spend months behind the computer trying to make art out of them.

I can get to a point where I’m in the studio just playing with the web, emails, photo’s etc. I can browse endlessly thru tech and photo blogs, and get all the great tips in the world but if I don’t go out and shoot I become only an observer.

This sounds crazy since I love photography, but sometimes I get in a mode where I tend not to pick up the camera unless it’s a paid job! I have to force myself to go out shooting somewhere. It can be a country drive, or just a walk down the street. Great images are everywhere , so if I am not finding a shot, I figure I need to spend more time learning to see the see the beauty in the things around me.

We don’t have to be on a roadtrip, or a brand new place to find great stuff to shoot. I know I get in this rut at times and maybe you do to. Though all this online content is great, there’s nothing like picking up a camera and getting out hands dirty. Getting a speedy workflow is always something I’m looking for, and it works great. I just need to remember to use that extra time to get creative behind the lens.

NOW STOP READING THIS AND GO SHOOTING!

Gavin Seim

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