Stoney Loc: Florida Panhandle

Really nice! Thanks for the demonstration.

CanonShot Loc: Lancaster County, PA

ATTN: photogrl57

YEP, YEP, YEP... I got it! Now, what suggestion would you have other than vary the gaussian blur? Any thoughts?

original


FIRST Orton effort!!! with help

photogrl57 Loc: Tennessee

Excellent ... you got it :) .. sure you can change how it looks by what other post processing you do to it before you add this effect. Don't be afraid to experiment ... try whatever comes to mind ... then add the orton effect ...
One of the best parts of this effect is .. if your photo is slightly out of focus ... by adding this effect .. you can't tell anymore :)

CanonShot Loc: Lancaster County, PA

Re: stone face

What in your pp image tells you the Orton Effect is there? It just looks a touch soft, but that is all I see. Did you use gaussina blur at some other number than 5.0? Maybe just the general blur?

photogrl57 Loc: Tennessee

You can add photo filters, black and white, any of the artistic filters, even try infrared.

As I was typing this I had to go in to see if infrared was possible and it is... Not sure how this guy would feel about green skin LOL but this is the same photo in infrared with orton added

Might look better if the photo isn't of people
but to get the infrared you just go to the layers pallette
and click on the circle icon on the bottom to add new adjustment layer and choose invert
then add a second adjustment layer and choose invert but on this one set the blending mode to luminosity
then flatten the image and then add the orton effect :)
Post processing can really be fun.

CanonShot Loc: Lancaster County, PA

You offer the teaching points as if you are in my shoes! That is, indeed, as special gift but I have seen you demonstrate this skill elsewhere on UHH, too.

You bring out the "stay with it" attitude and follow-up. All of this speaks loud and clearly about the passion you have for the photographic arts. Thank you, PG57.

photogrl57 Loc: Tennessee

Yes I only did a 5.0 pixels on that .. it's a choice you can go up to 25 depending on how much blur you want ...

original

photogrl57 Loc: Tennessee

Thank you that is sweet of you to say :) I do love experimenting with photography and the photos.

birdpix Loc: South East Pennsylvania

If you are importing your photos to your primary drive on your PC then the "Make Second Copy" files should go on your external hard drive. When Lightroom itself asks if you want to do a backup, which it does at least once a week, it is backing up ONLY the catalogue NOT the actual photo files. This is important! The Catalogue only tells lightroom where you have stored your photo files. When I do my weekly backup I backup BOTH the catalogue AND the photofiles. That way if my PC bites the big one, I can get back to work using another computer as soon as I have LR installed. So to answer your question directly, NO lightroom in not backing up your photos to the external storage drive. You must do that yourself.

CanonShot Loc: Lancaster County, PA

This is important info. Thanks. Follow-up question. I have tons of photos in folders on my hard drive [backed up on external, too.] Is it wise to upload all of these to the LR3 Library so I can tag them and work on them? If so, how do I do it?

birdpix Loc: South East Pennsylvania

Photogrl57:

When you import photos into LR it copies the photos into a folder to a location that either you designate or the default one for lightroom. When you edit a photo in LR it accesses the file but does not change it. It simply creates a "sidecar" file that tell LR how to display, export or print the photo using the settings you have chosen. This is refered to as non destructive editing. Most other editing programs including Photoshop, actually change the original file unless you do a "save as". In that case you now have created a second, full, copy of the file with all the edits. LR's system saves a considerable amount of disk space as those sidecar files are very small.

Lightroom also creates a "catalogue" of all your photos. That is how LR remembers where they are all stored. If you use LR to import and do minor modifications it allows you to export your photos to Photoshop or Photo Shop Elements for further editing. If you do it this way, when you save the photo, it will show up in your lightroom library as a second copy right next to the original which still hasn't been modified. If you do this any other way LR will not know where that edited photo has gone unless you import it again.

LR allows you to make "virtual" copies. But, again, they are only creating a "sidecar" file and not touching the original.

MtnMan Loc: ID

Here is one using the PSE Guided effect. As I mentioned there are three sliders. The result when you are done adds two adjustment layers: blur and focus. You can then adjust opacity on them.

For this one I didn't move the sliders so this is the default result.

photogrl57 Loc: Tennessee

Thanks for the info birdpix ... good to know .. I rarely use that program .. but no matter what I'm using or what I've done .. even just to resize for uploading here I always use save as ... That way I never mess with the original ... I never know from one day to the next what I want to do with each photo .. it's good to have options. :)

birdpix Loc: South East Pennsylvania

LR has one of the most sophisticated file management systems out there. I am a bird photographer with about 40,000 files in my library. If I want to see every photo I have of American Avocets I can find them in about 2 seconds. This is because I have tagged every photo not only with their species but many other parameters i.e. date location etc. You can import from any source, not just a memory card. So I would encourage you to go ahead and do that.

Go to your Import Dialogue and at the top left hand side you will see "Select a Source". Under that you should see every internal hard drive and any external hard drive or flash dirve that is connected to the computer. Simply open the appropriate drive, select the folder you wish to import and it should show up in grid view, just like it does when you download from a memory card. You do all the same things that you would normally do on the right hand side like name the new file etc. I would encourage you, If you already have them in folders by "date taken" to continue with this in LR. Simply include the Date Taken as part of the file name. I use the format YYYMMDD so they stay in that order.

LR allows you to apply tags as you import photos. This can be a great timesaver if you are importing by date and all the photos for that date will all have a common tag or tags: i.e. "Mary Joes Party". then when you have imported the photos you can go back and tag individual files or sub-groups with their pertinent tags: i.e. "birthday cake", Mom, Becky, etc.

As an aside, when I started taking bird photos, I used Canon's Digital Photo Professional which came with the camera. That has little or no organizing ability. When I went to LR, I imported the DPP files over the course of several weeks, as I had time. I didn't know about tagging on import so I spent a lot of extra time doing something that could have been at least partially automated.

CanonShot Loc: Lancaster County, PA

Truly appreciate your LR3 answer, birdpix.