Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Tutorial - Part XVI - Saving And Migrating Your Adobe Lightroom Presets

Part I - Index and Introduction
Part XVII - Tone Curve

As we've seen in previous posts of this tutorial, many aspects of Lightroom can be customized by users and saved into a preset. There are many kind of presets and the most commonly used are:

• Develop presets.
• Export presets.
• External editor presets.
• Import presets.
• Metadata preset.
• Watermarks.

Instead of repetitively applying the same configurations over and over again, you can permanently store them in a preset and load them when necessary. You can, for example, save a commonly used develop configuration (such as a color temperature setting) in a preset and apply it with just a click to a bunch of photos at a time. Or you can save metadata configuration into presets and automatically apply them during an import operation.

There are many reasons why you should know how and where Adobe Lightroom stores your presets. Some of the common scenarios where you would want to save and migrate them are:

• Safeguarding your data against loss.
• Sharing them across different Lightroom instances, probably because you're using more than one computer.

Imagine, for example, you create some custom adjustment brushes and save them as presets. You then migrate your catalog to resume working on another computer only to discover that your brushes are gone.

Maybe you thought that a Lightroom catalog was self contained: it is, but only to a certain degree.

Where Are Presets Stored?

Lightroom version 3 can store and use presets in two places:

• In the preset folder, a unique folder per user account.
• In the catalog directory (only if explicitly enabled).

By default, Lightroom only uses the user presets folder, unless you select the Store presets with catalog checkbox in the Lightroom preferences window, as shown in the following picture:

Lightroom Preferences Dialog

The user-wide presets folder is called Lightroom and its location is platform dependent. Fortunately, there's a quick way to determine which folder it is: open the Preferences dialog, navigate to the Presets tab and push the Show Lightroom Presets Folder… button (shown in the previous picture). In the case of the OS X operating system, this folder is located in ~/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Lightroom:

Lightroom Presets Folder in Mac OS X

If you decided to store the presets in your catalogs, you will find a copy of this directory into your catalog root directory.

How Can I Backup And Migrate My Presets?

This is really easy: copy them to a folder that Lightroom recognizes as a preset folder and they're will be ready to use. Just pay attention to your Lightroom configuration, as detailed in the previous section, to copy presets from and to a correct location:

• If you're storing the presets with the catalog, just synchronize the catalog across computer and no more action is needed.
• If you're storing the presets in the user wide presets folder, you need to back it up manually and synchronize it across computers.

An effective way to synchronize files across computer is using rsync. Using rsync you can efficiently keep in sync a folder across different machines with almost no effort and transmitting the minimum amount of data to keep in sync the target with the source. This is a specially important factor to take into account since catalogs can get in the gigabytes range very soon.

Which Approach Should I Use?

If you're using only one or few catalogs, maybe its convenient for you to change the default Lightroom behaviour and store them with your catalogs. Every time you back up your catalog, you're presets will be backed up as well. And if you synchronize a catalog to another computer, all of your presets will be available on the other machine without further effort.

However, if you're using many catalogs, you may want to store commonly used presets outside the catalogs: otherwise, you would have to create them again to any new catalog you create.

You can also use a third and completely manual approach: you can manually manage which presets you want to store and at which level. Just look for the corresponding files (the presets folder structure is pretty self-explanatory) and copy them to where you need it.


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JIRA Development Cookbook - A Book By Jobin Kuruvilla

Some days ago I obtained a copy of JIRA Development Cookbook, published by Packt Publishing and available online in multiple formats, including ePUB, Kindle and PDF. I started reading it with some curiosity because it seems a serious attempt to produce a comprehensive book about JIRA development.

Here are my first impressions. I haven't finished reading it yet and I'm possibly reviewing it more deeply in the future.

Book Contents

So far, I've got a very good impression of this book. The book begins with a couple of introductory chapters about the JIRA development process and the plugin frameworks: they give you an overview of the overall development process, of the basic APIs provided to the developer and of the tools you're going to use and are required readings if you're new to JIRA development.

The following chapters are pretty self contained and each one covers a different aspect of the JIRA customization process:

• Custom fields.
• Issues.
• Workflows.
• Gadgets and reporting tools.
• User interface.
• Remote access to JIRA.
• Various database management, customization and migration tasks.

Every chapter is a comprehensive tutorial with step by step guides, complete code examples, troubleshooting information and more in depth discussions to understand how JIRA internally works. Because of their self contained structure, you can also freely jump from chapter to chapter, according to your needs.

First Impressions

I've made several JIRA plugins and a couple of years ago, at the very first attempts, I remember digging into Atlassian documentation to find out every single bit of information I could possibly find.

I'm not the tutorial kind of guy, though: the first thing I always look for are specs. However, I recognize that it's very important to have well structured documentation, and possibly some guided tours, to significantly reduce the learning time. That's exactly what I felt it missed: Atlassian documentation is very good and the JIRA Development Hub provides examples and small tutorials for practically every aspect of JIRA you would like to customize. Unfortunately, as it often happens to wiki-style online documentation, it lacks structure to some degree.

That is exactly what this book provides: a comprehensive guide you can use to effectively kick start your JIRA customization project, be it a plugin, a JIRA service or a customized user experience.

Give Your Photos a Dreamy Haze Simulating a Diffusion Filter

You've just finished tweaking a great photo of yours: you think it's great but you feel it's missing something. You think that the image conveys a feeling of peace and relax and that it would really benefit from that dreamy haze you've often seen in somebody else's portraits. But you don't know how to do it.

One of the commonly used tools to achieve to give that look and feel to an image is a diffusion filter. Dreamy wedding pictures or studio portraits (such as newborn babies') are probably done that way.
The problem is:

• You need such a filter.
• You need a lens which you can put that filter on.
• You need to carefully plan such a shot in advance.

Fortunately, it's not difficult to simulate such an effect in post production: you only need a photo editing tool with basic filters and layer support (such as Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Photoshop Elements or The Gimp). In this blog post, we're using a technique that's particularly suitable to portrait photography. If you're trying to tweak some landscape image, however, I suggest you take a look to the blog post about the Orton effect and see which technique best suits your image.

Beware: as usual, this isn't an advice not to try and get things right out of the camera.

The Basics

To simulate the diffusion pattern provided by a diffusion filter, we're going to blur the image with a blurring filter. The blurred image itself isn't sufficient, because you're going to lose too much detail. Instead, we'll blend it with your original image to achieve the diffusion effect.

The original image we'll use in this tutorial is the following:

Original Image

I don't think this image needs an additional dreamy look and feel: in fact, this is the final post processed shot and I'm keeping it as is. However, I chose it because it's a good candidate to show you some problems you may encounter on the way.

The first thing we'll do is duplicating the background layer:

Duplicate Layer

The next thing we'll do is blurring the new layer using the Gaussian Blur filter. The rule of thumb we discussed in the blog post about the Orton effect still holds: you need to use a blur radius sufficiently wide to blur the image while preserving overall detail. In this case (the image size is 4208x3264 pixels), I'll use a 30 pixel radius to achieve the following blurred effect:

Blurred Layer - Radius: 30 px

As you can see, the image is blurred but overall detail is not lost: in the eyes, for example, you can clearly see the iris edges and most of the features of the kid's face.

Now we're ready to blend the two layers. Depending on the image, we're probably going to use one of the following blending modes:

• Screen.
• Overlay.
• Multiply.

If you recall the discussions on the previous blog posts, these three blending modes act differently on the image:

• Screen will produce a brighter image, since it brightens a pixel according to its brightness.
• Multiply will produce a darker image, since it darkens a pixel according to its darkness.
• Overlay will both Screen and Multiply the image, according to a pixel brightness, producing a more contrasted image and preserving highlights and shadows.

As a rule of thumb:

• Assuming the exposure of the image is already correct, we're going to use the Overlay blending mode.
• If your image is a bit underexposed, it may benefit from using Screen instead.
• If your image is a bit overexposed, it may benefit from using Multiply instead.

As usual, you've got to try and decide yourself. In this case, since I'm happy with the image exposure, we'll use the Overlay blending mode. The result is:

Final Result - Layers Overlaid

You can clearly perceive the diffusion pattern and the dreamy haze it shed over the image.

Fine Tuning

This is just the beginning. In this case, I find the image is much too dark now. The quickest way to fix it is modifying the overlaid layer opacity. This is the result setting its opacity to 80%:

Overlaid Layer - Opacity: 80%

Beware that setting the opacity too low will also remove the dreamy haze: in this case, I usually won't go below 80% and would try to fix the image exposure by fixing the original layer instead.

Using the same technique, you can control the quantity of "blur" that you're going to add to the image.

Obviously, you could also add an additional layer below the blurred one and fix exposure on it. You could use an adjustment layer, if available, or just use the Screen blending mode to raise the image exposure. The following picture is the result of 3 blended layers (from bottom to top):

• The original.
• A copy of the original, using the Screen blending mode and 50% opacity.
• A copy of the original, gaussian blurred, using the Overlay blending mode.

Three Layers

But The Image Is Over-Saturated

The biggest problem of the images we're producing, however, is not exposure: it's color saturation. This is a common problem when using some blending modes such as Overlay. Raising the contrast of an image, in general, will boost color saturation as a side effect. This may be good in some kinds of photography, such as landscape, but it may be bad in others, such as portrait photography. A more saturated flower may look good but... do you notice the orange hue of the kid's hue in the final images we got so far? That's something you should always try to avoid. Ultimately, this is the reason why I chose this image for this tutorial.

Fortunately, this is again very easy to fix. Assuming once more that we're happy with the initial image color saturation, I usually reduce the saturation in the blurred layer until I'm happy with it. If the photo editing tool that you're using supports adjustment layers, this is really easy: just add a saturation adjustment layer and play with it until you like the result. If your editing tool does not supports it, you're going to use the Saturation tool back and forth until you're happy with it.

However, especially in portrait photography, I usually convert the upper layer to black and white, thus removing all of the color saturation from the overlaid layer. Once more, depending on the tool you're using, you may also be able to achieve better results fine tuning the black and white conversion. Adobe Photoshop, for example, lets you adjust the RGB channels intensity during the conversion:

Abode Photoshop Elements - Black and White Conversion Window

If you're not happy with the result, you can tweak the channel intensities. Depending on the image, I'm usually pushing up or down the red channel intensity until I like the end result.

This is the final image, using a black and white blurred layer:

Final Image - Black and White Blurred Layer Overlaid

It's far more natural, even if still very contrasted.

Conclusion

We've seen how you can use very simple layer manipulations to achieve a variety of effects. So far, we've only used the Screen and Overlay blending modes, and there's a world of possibilities for you to discover.

As a rule of thumb, you've also seen as the Overlay blending mode affects your image contrast and color saturation. Although I recognize that "punchy" images may look appealing at first, I don't really like excessive color saturation in portraits and I always end up with cooler images. That's just a matter of taste, however.

Also, I find that the dreamy haze best suits less contrasted and brighter images.

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Smoothing the Skin Reducing Local Contrast Using Layers

In a previous post in my Lightroom series I took advantage of the Clarity tool to smooth the skin of the model. Nevertheless, the Clarity tool is not available either in Photoshop or The Gimp and many people ask how the same effect can be reproduced in these programs.

I answered this question in a previous post (Clarity Adjustment in Photoshop). The answer, however, was pretty theoretical so that in this post we will use the technique we learnt to smooth the skin in an image.

The original image, once more, is the following:

Original Image (Cropped)

The first thing we're going to do is creating a new layer duplicating the original one. Once we've done it, we use the High Pass filter to detect the transitions. The radius you need to use depends on the image (and corresponds to the amount of local contrast we're going to detect). In this image of 16 megapixels I'll use a radius of 3 pixels:

High Pass Filter - Radius: 3 pixels

We end up with a neutral grey layer where transitions are marked by lighter and darker pixels whose intensity will depend on the corresponding (underlying) pixel:

High Pass Layer

We know from our previous post that the information contained therein can be used both to raise or reduce the local contrast of our image. Since, in this case, we want to reduce it, we have to invert the layer end we end up with:

High Pass Layer - Inverted

If we now set the blending mode to this layer to Overlay the result is the following:

Resulting Image: Lowered Local Contrast

What has happened? The neutral gray pixels leave the underlying pixels unaffected. Lighter ones will screen the underlying pixels and dark ones will multiply the underlying pixels. Since pixels aren't neutral gray only at the point of transitions, we would end up with increased local contrast. However, since we've inverted the high pass layer, the local contrast is reduced.

The skin now looks smoother and you can use the high pass radius to fine tune the smoothness. However, eyes aren't sharp any more and this is something we want to avoid. Now, we have to apply this local contrast reduction only locally. How? Using a layer mask.

A layer mask is literally that: a mask, and it behaves as such. Let's imagine you take a sheet of white paper and you print your original layer over it. Now, you take another sheet of paper and you print the high pass layer over it. If you put this sheet over the other in overlay mode (assuming it would be possible), you end up with the result we just achieved. Now: you take scissors and make a couple of holes in the upper sheet just where the eyes of the model are. What would the result be? Well, the eyes from the inferior layer would be visible and wouldn't be affected by the upper layer.

Layer masks work just like that: the only difference is that you make "holes" using the black color. Layer, moreover, are more sophisticated: you can make "semi-transparent" holes using a shade of grey. Funny, isn't it?

Let's add a layer mask to our inverted high pass layer:

Layer Mask

As you can see, the layer mask is white: this means that the entire layer now contributes to the overlay effect with the lower layer. Let's now take a brush and paint over the left eye and its eyebrow. The result is:

Right Eye and Eyebrow Unmasked

As you can see, the right eye and its eyebrow have recovered all of their local contrast: pixels that we painted with black aren't affected by the upper layer any more. Let's finish painting and we end up with this result:

Final Result

You can also notice how the layer mask icon in the layers palette reflects our mask:

Resulting Mask

Conclusion

Although not available as a standalone tool, you've learnt how you can reduce the local contrast (a negative clarity, in Lightroom jargon) of a selected part of your image.

Layer mask are powerful and you can use the same technique to selectively apply any kind of effects. In this case, you could have chosen to use a blurred layer to smooth the skin, instead of going through the steps described above. Or, you could have used a bigger radius to soften the skin even more, as shown in the following picture. The only limit is your imagination.

Result with High Pass Filter, Inverted, Radius: 5 px 

With the same technique, you can enhance the eyes of the model (as described in the Lightroom tutorial), applying the same adjustments in a new layer and masking out the parts of the image you want to leave unaffected.

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Exposure Compensation in Post Production Using Layer Blending Modes

Very often I hear people complain about what should be, apparently, a very easy thing to do: modifying the exposure of an image in post production. Truth is that if the adjustment you need is relatively small results are going to be satisfactory. Unfortunately, as long as you need to push the exposure adjustment a bit farther, results are often going to disappoint you.

Why?

Usually because of two factors:

• Your image has not sufficient dynamic range to achieve the result you want (that's why you should shoot RAW if you can).
• Because people don't clearly understand the physics of the human eye.

As far as it concerns the first factor, you cannot help but repeating it over and over again: you should shoot RAW if you can. Double check it. Even if you think you cannot. Some Canon point and shoots, for example, can be tweaked to shoot RAW.

As far as it concerns the second factor, here is yet another quick wrap up.

A Word of Warning: I'm a mathematician but if this is not a rigorous post. This is a quick tutorial for you to better understand some tools that are often misunderstood.

The Human Eye as a Sensor

As we stated many ways, one of the things that photographers often overlook is that the human eye is a logarithmic sensor. But what does it mean? It basically means that whenever the quantity of light doubles, whichever its frequency in the visible spectrum, you'll notice a comparable "brightness" improvement.

This also means that if you need to modify the exposure in post production, you cannot overlook this effect. You cannot just bump the channels up and down because luminance ratios must be preserved. If you don't, the dynamic range of your image will suffer and you'll end up with a flat, hazy image.

The Problem with the Brightness Tool

The problem with the Brightness tool is that, despite the name, it is not suitable to apply such a modification. It depends on the tool you're using but as far as it concerns the software most commonly used (Photoshop and The Gimp), a brightness adjustment does not what you think it does.

Roughly speaking, the brightness adjustment just adds a correction to the pixel values:

n = o + d

where o is the old value and d is the selected brightness adjustment. It might look right, doesn't it? It does shifts the histogram left or right (depending on the sign of d). But it does not preserve ratios and, as such, it is not the tool you need to tweak an image exposure preserving its dynamic range.

Here's what happens trying to fix an artificially underexposed TIFF image using just the Brightness tool (in this post I'll use The Gimp):

Original Underexposed Image

Brightness raised to 100

This test image is badly underexposed but the detrimental effect introduced by the Brightness adjustment on an image dynamic ratio won't ever be avoided.

If you like Mathematics, try to bring d to infinity and think at what happens to the (absolute value of the) ratio between two pixels value: it just goes down to 1. That's why your images will soon start to lose contrast.

Many people will then try to fix the contrast but that won't work, either.

What Can Be Done?

Preserving the ratios! To preserve the ratio, you need to correct a pixel values using a multiplier. That's what the Multiply and Screen blending modes are made for:

• If you need to lower the exposure of your image, you can blend a layer with a copy of itself using the Multiply blending mode.
• If you need to raise the exposure of your image, you can blend a layer with a copy of itself using the Screen blending mode.

What do these blending modes do?

Basically, they're effect is:

• Screen lightens a pixel in the lower layer proportionally to the "brightness" of the corresponding pixel in the upper layer.
• Multiply darkens a pixel in the lower layer proportionally to the "darkness" of the corresponding pixel in the upper layer.

What happens if you blend a layer with a copy of itself using these blending modes? It applies the very effect we were looking for!

Again, if you like Mathematics, just think about the definition of the exponential function. What happens when you're modeling a phenomenon whose variation (derivative) depends solely on its intensity? Refine this concept: is there any function whose derivative in a point x is only a function of the value of the original function in the point x? Yes: the exponential function.

We're applying an exponential transformation on a matrix of points that will be fed in a logarithmic sensor (the human eye). Just what we were looking for.

Here's what happens when we screen the test image we used before with itself (twice):

Screen Blending Mode

This is a much better result indeed.

If you're new to layers and blending modes, well, it's time you get serious about them. Here's a screenshot of The Gimp layer palette of the previous image:

The Gimp - Layer Palette

Conclusion

The Brightness and Contrast tools are often misused and it's important you understand what's going on under the hood. If you need to apply an exposure compensation, they're not the right tools. Instead, take some time to learn about layer blending modes. The Multiply and the Screen blending modes are just the beginning. Here are some additional tips:

• You can mix and match them to achieve more sophisticated results and you can fine tune the effect tweaking the layer transparency.
• If screening or multiplying two layers is too much compensation for your image, just make the layer a bit more transparent.
• If you're looking for a way to raise the overall contrast of an image, try to screen and multiply it.
• You may also want to take a look to the Overlay blending mode, which is a mix between the Screen and the Multiply (it screens dark colors and multiplies bright ones).

If you want to help me keep on writing this blog, buy your Adobe Photoshop licenses at the best price on Amazon using the links below.