Lightroom Plug-Ins for Flickr and Facebook

For those of you using Adobe Lightroom, I am going to keeping you up to date on the inside workings of Lightroom and showing you how to use some of the more powerful features of the coolest photo editing software out there.

First of all if you are a wedding photographer and you don't have Lightroom. You can buy it here from Amazon:



Once you already have Lightroom, try these great plug-ins created by Jeffrey Friedl. These are available as a free download from his blog:

• Jeffrey’s “Export to Flickr” Lightroom Plugin -This is the only Flickr upload plug-in to get for Lightroom. It makes everything super simple and gives you tons of options as to your meta data and size and resolution. You can also select which album you want to upload to.
• Jeffrey’s “Export to Facebook” Lightroom Plugin - same great features as the Flickr plug-in but compresses and resizes just for Facebook and also gives you the option to select which album you want to upload to.

Both of these are free to download and use but after a few weeks, if you don't "donate" the batch usablity is shortend to 10 photos or less at a time. Still good enough for most of us out there who aren't uploading massive shooting projects to Facebook. But I would definitely suggest donating to Jeff's cause. He spent alot of time working on these plug-ins and they are a huge resource to all Lightroom users.

On to the installation...

1. download the plug-in
2. unzip the plug-in
3. move the plug-in folder to your Lightroom Plug-In directory
4. Open Lightroom and go to File -> Plug-In Manager
5. Click on the Add button
6. Find the Plug-in directory where you saved the unzipped Plug-in and select it.
7. The plug-in should install itself
8. The first time you install it it will ask you to verify and authenticate with the service you are using. So, you will have to put in your password.
9. after that, you will be able to use the plug-in in your Export feature. Be sure to click on the top menu bar to select which plug in you want to use or edit.

Next, Cool Develop Presets for Lightroom...

Essential Adobe Software Updates Today!

I just heard that today Adobe has released updates for Lightroom, CS4 and their Camera RAW plug-in. If you are using any of these amazing editing programs for your photography, go right now and update these at the Adobe Website!

WHAT?!? You're not using Adobe software?
Adobe has been making the premier photo editing software for over 10 years now. Professionals across the industry use Adobe's suite of software for the media and design industry:

• Photoshop CS4 and Illustrator CS4 for graphic design
• Dreamweaver, Flash and Acrobat for web design and online media
• Premier Pro and Aftereffects for video and special effects
• Lightroom for specialty photography effects and fine tuning as well as editing and archiving.

Yes, most of these are a bit pricey (up to $2499 for most recent Creative Suite 4 Master Collection) but a few of these are definitely worth saving up for, especially Lightroom 2 if you are a wedding photographer. Your clients will thank you! Lightroom 2 is retailing for just under $300 for the full version right now and I would suggest buying this before you buy another single piece of gear. Good photo editing will make or break your business!

Budget conscious photo editing alternatives:
For those of you who can't afford to make the investment right now, you should at least look into Adobe's value versions of their most popular software usually retailing for under $100. The two titles worth looking into are Adobe Photoshop Elements 7 (graphic design and photo editing) and Premier Elements (for video editing). Both provide all of the essential Photoshop or Premier tools without all the complicated steep learning curve and obscure features that some say you need but will never use.

A few non Adobe alternatives that I would recommend are:

• Gimp - Gimp is one of the most popular and powerful open source (free!) graphics and photo editing software out there for a few years now. Some even argue that it rivals many of Photoshop (full version) features.
• Paint.net - innovative user interface with support for layers, unlimited undo, special effects, and a wide variety of useful and powerful tools. An active and growing online community provides friendly help, tutorials, and plug ins.
• Corel Paint Shop Pro X - retouch, Camera RAW support, color changer, noise removal

Most of these are less than $80 or FREE! So there's no excuse anymore. Get one of these programs and learn it. Having good photo editing software and knowing how to use it puts your photography well above "uncle Jim's" who's pictures are not well framed, red eyed and over exposed. You have the power to fix all of these little problems if you have a good photo editor.

Next time: Free online photo editors for working on you photos "in the cloud".