Lightroom Instagram Plugin

Posted on July 13, 2016 by Andrew Astbury

Lightroom Instagram Plugin

Even though I suppose I am rather tech-savvy for an old fart, I have major head-problems with most social media.

Facebook took me years to get the hang of..

And even though I have an account, followers and everything I simply CANNOT get my head around Twitter …. it makes NO f***ing sense to me at all!

Over the last year I’ve also been aware of the growing use by professional of this other “thing” called Instagram.

About two months ago I asked my son Richard to explain how it works:

“It’s simple Dad, it’s Twitter for images”………..I couldn’t work out who to shoot first, me or him.

But, after much grief I was eventually shown how to put an image on Instagram. I have an iPhone and an iPad but bare in mind it took me ages to work out how to put pictures on them.

And ALL mobile apps confound the hell out of me – so overly-simplified I find them difficult to use and I run out of patience!

So here I am looking at Instagram and seeing that I have to send an image to my iPad then I can upload it to Instagram – WTF????

I put a single image on there – it took me at least 30 minutes, and Rich was pissing himself laughing which didn’t help!

I tried a couple of programmes that were supposed to help put images on Instagram from a desktop machine, but they turned out to be more bloody complicated than the iPad method.

Needless to say I put Instagram on the back-burner.

BUT………………..someone has done something EPIC. They’ve made a Lightroom Instagram Plugin – and it works!

It’s called LR/Instagram and you can download it HERE

Simply click the download link, unzip the the file and copy the LRInstagram.lrplugin file to your Lightroom plug-ins folder.

Open up your Lightroom Plug-in Manager and click “ADD” then navigate to the file itself

and click Add Plug-in.

The plug-in will appear under Publish Services in the bottom left panel of your Library Module.

Click “Set Up”

Assuming you’ve actually got an Instagram account (if not then get one) all you need to do is fill in your account U/N and P/W and click Login:

Once logged into your account you need to set the export preferences – I actually leave them set as above (default) with added standard screen sharpening and a custom watermark.

Simply click ‘Save’ and you’re done!

Using the Lightroom Instagram Plugin is easy if you are used to any of the other publish services inside Lightroom, but if you want to see it in action here is a short video on my YouTube channel – if you are viewing this post via email then the video will not show up – read it on the blog itself

This Lightroom Instagram Plugin seems to work flawlessly and definitely speeds up and simplifies publish images to Instagram – all I need to do now is work out an effective hash-tag method!

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Simple Masking in Photoshop

Posted on November 10, 2015 by Andrew Astbury

Simple Masking in Photoshop – The Liquid Chocolate Shots

Masking in Photoshop is what the software was built for, and yet so many Photoshop users are unfamiliar or just downright confused by the concept that they never use the technique.

Mask mastery will transform the way you work with Photoshop!

Take these shots for instance:

Milk and Liquid Chocolate Splash

Liquid Milk and White Chocolate splash together in an abstract isolated on white background

Wanting a shot to look like liquid chocolate and cream on a black or white background is all well and good, but producing it can be either as simple or hard as you care to make it.

Trying to get a pure white background ‘in camera’ is problematic to say the least, and chucking hot melted chocolate around if fraught with its own set of problems!

Shooting on a dark or black background is easier because it demands LESS lighting.

Masking in Photoshop will allow us to isolate the subject and switch out the background.

Now for the ‘chocolate bit’ – we could substitute it with brown emulsion paint – but have you seen the bloody price of it?!

Cheap trade white emulsion comes by the gallon at less than the price of a litre of the right coloured paint; and masking in Photoshop + a flat colour layer with a clipping mask put in the right blend mode will turn white paint into liquid chocolate every time!

A tweak with the Greg Benz Lumenzia plugin will finish the shot in Photoshop:

SSChoc A final tweak in Lightroom and the whole process takes from the RAW shot on the left to the finished image on the right.

The key to a good mask in Photoshop is ALWAYS good, accurate pixel selection, and you’d be surprised just how simple it is.

Watch the video on my YouTube channel; I use the Colour Range tool to make a simple selection of the background, and a quick adjustment of the mask edge Smart Radius and Edge Contrast in order to obtain the perfect Photoshop mask for the job:

Like everything else in digital photography, when you know what you can do in post processing, it changes the way you shoot – hence I know I can make the shot with white paint on a black background!

Useful Links:

Greg B’s Lumenzia Plugin for Photoshop – get it HERE – you can’t afford NOT to have it in your arsenal of Photoshop tools.

UPDATE June 2018: Greg Benz (the plugin author) has launched a comprehensive Lumenzia training course – see my post here for more information.

Masking in Photoshop – you mustn’t let the concept frighten or intimidate you! It’s critical that you understand it if you want to get the very best from your images; and it’s a vast subject simply because there are many types of mask, and even more ways by which to go about producing them.

It’s a topic that no one ever stops learning about – nope, not even yours truly! But in order to explore it to the full you need to understand all the basic concepts AND how to cut through all the bullshit that pervades the internet about it – stick with me on this folks and hang on for the ride!

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Lightroom Dehaze – part 2

Posted on June 27, 2015 by Andrew Astbury

More Thoughts on The Lightroom Dehaze Control

With the dehaze adjustment in Lightroom (right) the sky and distant hills look good, but the foreground looks poor.

In my previous post I did say I’d be uploading another video reflecting my thoughts on the Lightroom/ACR dehaze adjustment.

And I’ve just done that – AND I’ve made a concious effort to keep the ramblings down too..!

In the video I look at the effects of the dehaze adjustment on 4 very different images, and alternative ways of obtaining similar or better results without it.

You may see some ‘banding’ on the third image I work on – this is down to YouTube video compression.

In conclusion I have to say that I find the dehaze ‘tool’ something of an anti-climax if I’m honest. In fairly small positive amounts it can work exceptionally well in terms of a quick work flow on relatively short dynamic range images. But I’m not a really big fan in general, and It’s possible to create pretty much the same adjustments using the existing Lightroom tools.

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Lumenzia – Not Just for Landscapes

Posted on March 11, 2015 by Andrew Astbury

Luminosity Masking is NOT just for landscape photographs – far from it.

But most folk miss the point of luminosity masking because they think it’s difficult and tedious.

The point, as I always see it, is that luminosity masking allows you to make dramatic but subtle changes and enhancements to your image with what are actually VERY fast and crude “adjustments”.

This in reality means that luminosity masking is FAST – and way faster than trying to do “localised” adjustments. But the creation of the masks and choosing which one to use is what crippled the “ease factor” for most.

But with this new Lumenzia extension is so snappy and quick at showing you the different masks that, if you know what area of the image you want to adjust, the whole process takes SECONDS.

Let’s look at a White-tailed Eagle taken just 15 days ago:

Straight off the 1Dx it looks like this:

RAW unprocessed .CR2 file (CLICK to view in new window)

Inside the Develop Module of Lightroom 5 it looks like:

RAW unprocessed – (CLICK to view in new window)

A few tweaks later and it looks like:

Tweaks are what you can see in the Basics Panel + CamCal set to Neutral, and Chroma Noise removal in the Lens Corrections Panel is turned ON – (CLICK to view in new window)

Sending THIS adjusted image to Photoshop:

(CLICK to view in new window)

All I want to do is give a “lift” to the darker tones in the bird; under the wings, and around the side of head, legs and tail.

Using a BRUSH to do the job is all fine ‘n dandy BUT, you would be creating a localised adjustment that’s all-encompassing from a tonal perspective; all tones that fell under the brush get adjusted by the same amount.

A luminosity mask, or indeed ANY pixel-based mask is exactly what it says it is – a mask full of pixels. And those pixels are DERIVED from the real pixels in your image. But the real beauty is that those pixels will be anywhere from 1% to 100% selected, or not selected at all.

Where they are 100% selected they are BLACK, and any adjustment you make BEHIND that mask will NOT be visible.

Pixels that are NOT selected will be WHITE, and your adjustment will show fully.

But where the pixels are between 1% and 99% selected they will appear as 1% GREY to 99% grey and so will show or hide variation of said adjustment by the same amounts…got it?

The Lumenzia D4 mask looks like it’ll do the job I want:

Lumenzia D4 mask (CLICK to view in new window)

Click the image to view larger – look at the subtle selections under those wings – try making that selection any other way in under 2 seconds – you’ve got no chance!

The “lift” I want to make in those WHITER areas of the mask is best done with a Curves Adjustment layer:

Select “Curve” in the Lumenzia GUI – (CLICK to view in new window)

So hit the Curve button and voilà:

The Lumenzia D4 mask is now applied to Curves Adjustment Layer – (CLICK to view in new window)

You can see in the image above that I’ve made a very rough upwards deflection of the curve to obtain an effective but subtle improvement to those under-wing areas etc. that I was looking to adjust.

The total time frame from opening the image in Photoshop to now is about 20 seconds! Less time than the Lightroom 5 adjustments took…

And to illustrate the power of that Lumenzia D4 Luminosity mask, and the crudity of the adjustment I made, here’s the image WITHOUT THE MASK:

The effect of the luminosity mask is best illustrated by “hiding” it – bloody hell, turn it back on ! – (CLICK to view in new window).

And at full resolution you can see the subtleties of the adjustment on the side of the head:

With Lumenzia (left) and just the Lightroom 5 processing (right) – (CLICK to view in new window).

If you want to get the best from your images AND you don’t want to spend hours trying to do so, then Lumenzia will seriously help you.

Clicking this link HERE to buy Lumenzia doesn’t mean it costs you any more than if you buy it direct from the developer. But it does mean that I get a small remuneration from the developer as a commission which in turn supports my blog. Buying Lumenzia is a total no-brainer so please help support this blog by buying it via these links – many thanks folks.

UPDATE June 2018: Greg Benz (the plugin author) has launched a comprehensive Lumenzia training course – see my post here for more information.

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