I got a couple of comments on my post about Kellie Hatcher’s Lightroom presets …

Tracie: Can you tell me which ones you used on these pictures? I am feeling like they do too much to my pictures were yours look just right.

Sarah: I just got the Kellie Hatcher presets and I agree with Tracie they look just right on yours but look too much for mine. help!

Why, thank you! And I can totally do my best to help, because these presets need to be used.

First thing, do you shoot in RAW? There is a difference on how presets work on RAW vs jpeg … presets written for RAW files end up over-exposing jpeg files. A lot. I thought there was a tutorial out there somewhere about adjusting presets specifically written for RAW to use on jpegs, but now I can’t find it. Gah. I think it just involves lowering the exposure and maybe the brightness and contrast? Anyway, just keep that in mind when shooting … most presets out there are written for RAW files [unless otherwise specified].

So in my post, I have to confess one thing … I used Kellie Hatcher’s Odette on the bear heiney images, but all of the park images are one of my own presets. But I will definitely show you how I applied the preset on Lucy’s tushy.

straight out of the camera:

Three things …

1. I tend to shoot over-exposed by a couple of clicks. I don’t know why I do it that way … I’ve just done that since I started shooting in manual.

2. I use auto-WB for pretty much everything. On this particular day, it was cloudy/overcast. No sun at all.

3. My settings were: ISO 200, aperture f/2.5, shutter speed 1/1250 sec, and I was using my 85mm 1.8 lens.

So I just applied Odette …

Even though the WB looks okay here, I usually click auto-WB in Lightroom to see what happens …

TOO BLUE! TOO BLUE! [settings were temp 3950 and tint 0]

So I warmed it back up quite a bit … temp 4650 [more yellow] and tint +10 [more pink]

Dropped the exposure to +0.40.

And finally, bumped up contrast to +80 and bumped up clarity to +50.

Voila.

In general, my top five adjustments are …

1. exposure

2. white balance

3. brightness/contrast

4. blacks

5. don’t be afraid of the HSL saturation box to get your colors just right

Hope that helps!! I think everyone who creates Lightroom presets struggles with making them as one-click friendly as possible, but it just doesn’t work that way since everyone shoots so differently.

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I bet you thought I’d never finish answering your questions, did you? We’ve been so busy … growing, teething, playing outside, teething, not sleeping … the usual.

Texan Mama (Gretchen) asked …

Do you prefer zoom lenses or primes? Why?

Here’s a biggie: what is the most common aperture you shoot at? Why? (me personally I’m always messing up between too much blurred background and not enough)

What do you think has helped you grow the most with your technical skills? Forums? A mentorship? Classes? YouTube? Trial and Error? if you have any specific references, please give ‘em up.

I have a hard time with that first question. I think if I HAD to choose, I’d prefer a prime lens, because it kind of forces me to look for the shot I want instead of zooming in or out on the “right” shot. Being forced to find the right shot really makes me a better photographer. But I also really like the flexibility of a zoom lens. I currently have a 50mm f/1.8, 85mm f/1.8 and the 24-70mm f/2.4. I love them all for various reasons, but I think I could do everything with the 50mm if I absolutely had to. The main reason I love the 24-70mm is the ability to shoot wide, because the 50mm and 85mm are not wide angle at all.

As for my aperture, I pretty much always shoot wide open, baby. I am notorious for having super soft images because I just don’t close down my aperture. Ever. That is my biggest downfall, really. I need to learn to close it down every once in a while, but I’m a 1.8 to 2.4 lover.

As for growing technically …

Forums? I am not currently a member of any photography forums. I tried one a few years ago, but my images were torn apart in the most horrid way, and I decided that wasn’t for me. I can handle constructive criticism, but I can’t handle being ripped apart.

A mentorship? I wish I could work with someone amazing, but I’ve never had that opportunity.

Classes? I’ve taken one online course that didn’t really teach me anything I didn’t already know. But it was free, so I don’t know what I was expecting?

YouTube? I use YouTube for tutorials on Lightroom and Photoshop, but I’ve never used it to help improve the actual technical side. Maybe I should!

Trial and Error? Yes, yes, YES!!! I learned how to shoot in manual by turning the dial to “M” and practicing.

If you have any specific references, please give ‘em up. Okay, here’s my secret. Flickr. A few years ago, Flickr was very open and people shared their EXIF data for their images. So I would see an image I liked, and then I would look at their EXIF data to see how they did it. I would put my camera into the same settings and shoot. Over time, I let go of shooting like others and found my own style, but I don’t think I would have ever really found my style had I not been able to look at what others were doing.

Now, a lot of Flickrers have turned off their EXIF data, so it’s not as easily accessible as it used to be. (But mine is always on for the images I take with my Canon!)

Jess asked …

Do you want to try to get back to the Zoo when the weather warms up? We haven’t been since the last time we met up!

You said one time that you weren’t interested in having a photography business because of the pressure you’d put on yourself to capture perfect pictures for your clients. Has your idea about that changed at all lately or do you see it changing in the future?

When I finally get pregnant, I’m going to ask you for sling advice :)

Yes!! Let’s definitely get together when the weather warms up! I would absolutely love that.

I am still not looking to start a photography business. I need to finally be completely honest about this whole photography business deal. So … here goes.

Everyone and their brother has a photography business these days. There are so many people who think that because they have a nice camera and because their mom told them that they take good pictures, they can make a little extra money being a photographer. So they start a business and charge practically nothing to do a session. But they are taking business away from photographers out there who have been working so hard and doing this for many years and that are charging what SHOULD be charged.

Now, I totally understand that every photographer had to start from somewhere. I get that. But my issue is with people who really don’t know enough about photography to be a “professional photographer” – even a beginner professional photographer. I actually created a website and a business name about 5 years ago, and I am so thankful that nothing ever came of it. I was NOT a photographer. I shot in auto mode, I didn’t know how to use Photoshop or Lightroom, I didn’t know the basic rules of photography. I seriously thought, “Well, I have a $1,000 camera – I could do that!” Oh man, I cringe just thinking about it. And even 5 years later, I honestly feel like I am just not good enough to hang a shingle.

Photographs are forever. The pictures I take of my girls will be around for generations to come. I honestly do not feel like I could hold the fate of someone else’s family pictures or wedding pictures or baby pictures that will be in their family FOR GENERATIONS in my amateur hands. I really wish people would think about that before they charge people for those photos.

Also? You have to be ON TOP OF IT to run a business. Our wedding photographer (Plantation Photography, just in case they have Google alerts set up for their business name, heh) lost/deleted/whatever 80% of our wedding photos and NEVER made it right. We fought with them for almost a year before we finally gave up. The only thing they were good at was avoiding our calls and letters and emails. It just goes to show that there is a lot of pressure on photographers, and I don’t think I could handle that at this time in my life.

But the bottom line is that I am not a professional photographer. I don’t play one on tv, and I simply cannot charge people at this point in my life. Will I ever feel like I’m good enough to be Keli Hoskins Photography? I don’t know. I may not ever feel like I am cut out to do this professionally. Not everyone who has a nice camera and who can be a decent photographer needs to be a professional.

Phew. Well, that was probably more than I should have said about that, but there you go. I feel better.

And finally, YES … please feel free to ask me anything regarding babywearing. It’s how Lucy and I survived those first few months.

Elaine asked …

I just ordered a new 50mm 1.4 lens. I’m VERY excited to get it but not really sure how to use it! Do you KNOW what settings to put your camera on for say a picture like you took of Lucy’s beautiful eyes in your recent You Capture post, or do you just shoot and get lucky? Because that is what I do right now with my basic 18-55… Thanks!

First of all, congratulations on your 50mm 1.4!! I’m totally jealous! You are going to love it!

I shoot 100% in manual. So I pretty much know what aperture and ISO I need for whatever and wherever I’m shooting, and then I set the exposure around that. For that picture of Lucy, I had her facing a window on a cloudy day, so I set the ISO to 400. Of course, I pretty much always shoot wide open, so my aperture was at 1.8 on my 50mm, but I probably should have closed down a little bit more to, somewhere around 2.8 so that her entire face and eyes would have been in focus. (See? Not professional photographer material!)

Once I started shooting in manual, choosing the ISO got easier over time. Now, I do let my camera choose my shutter speed based on ISO, aperture and what exposure I have chosen.

I would say I shoot in about 3 different ISO zones – 125’ish when I’m outside, 400-640 when I’m inside, 1000-1600 at night or in dark places. Of course, I use other settings based on what I’m shooting, but those are pretty good starting points.

Okay, there are a few more questions in the original post as well as a few in my part one answers, but since this post is already so long, I’ll post it and finish up the rest of the questions over the next few days.

Thank you!!

I decided to take a few minutes and share my tutorial on how to add a watermark in Lightroom. This tutorial will follow my personal workflow, so you may not do it exactly like I’m doing it, but this should get you started.

If you don’t have a watermark, read this first. Stop at step 5. Go on. I’ll wait. And maybe take a little nap while I’m waiting.

Okay, so you have your watermark … make double triple sure that it’s on a transparent background!! Now, change the color of the watermark to white [#ffffff] and save it as a .psd file.

Download LR/Mogrify 2 (follow instructions here, including the installation of ImageMagick if you use Windows)

Here’s the kicker … the program developers do require a donation to use full features, BUT it’s worth it. They only require €2, but that’s like $3.08 in US dollars, and they deserve it for making life this much easier.

Also, my husband is a developer, and I know how much work goes into the programs he designs … I’m always willing to give back to the people who do this for a living.

Open Lightroom and use the Plugin Manager to install LR/Mogrify 2 …

[I selected the wrong plugin, but you get it, right?]

Then, you go to File — Export and you will see this …

Make sure you have “graphical watermarks” selected [the “mogrify configuration” will automatically be selected when you do that] and then scroll down until you see where you upload your watermark. Then, you can play around with the horizontal and vertical insets until you figure out where you want the watermark to go.

Personal note: I set all of my exported images to 700px on the longest side. That’s how wide the images are on my blog, and that way, if someone does steal them to print, then they won’t look very good.

I also save all of the export steps (image resize, where it’s going to be saved, graphical watermark, etc.) as “User Presets” … that has also been a huge timesaver.

Basically, when I am exporting a picture of Lucy, I have a “lucy with watermark” preset that I apply – it automatically tells Lightroom to save it to my special lucy folder, resize it to 700px on the longest side, and add my watermark. All with one click.

I have one called “tilt shift” which tells LR to resize and send it to TiltShift.

You can see another user preset up there called “christmas 2010” … it just resized and sent all of my Christmas pictures to my Christmas 2010 folder.

Anyway, by saving user presets, I don’t have to go through and change the settings every time I export an image or a group of images. Future tutorial? Yay or nay?

But back to this tutorial … the placement of your watermark via LR leaves a lot to be desired, but it’s a fun game to play around and see where it lands once you’ve exported it.

After rereading, I’m going to be honest … my tired and fuzzy momma brain just doesn’t work like it used to for writing tutorials, so if this didn’t make sense or I left something out or if you are sitting there scratching your head in bewilderment, PLEASE drop me a comment, and I’ll try to make it more clear.

Do you use Lightroom? I do.

I love Lightroom. (Well, I have LR2. Dear Adobe, you are more than welcome to send me LR3. Just sayin’)

Did you know that there are a bajillion plugins for Lightroom? There are.

I love plugins.

My latest favorite is Export to Facebook – this has really come in handy lately, because I was able to send all of the photos from Ken’s family Christmas party to the Hoskins Family Christmas album in Facebook with just one click.

Easy peasy!

I also just installed the Storyboarder plugin, and it is fabulous for making quick and easy storyboards for my blog. Now, this one requires a donation to unlock full features, but they leave it up to you as to how much you want to donate … it is definitely worth $5!!

I am supposed to need to add this disclaimer … Ken does NOT throw like a girl. He was “slowing it down” so that I could get good pictures. He did not tell me to say that. Did you, Ken? *ahem*

So I was all ready to type that LR doesn’t have the ability to apply my brush watermarks, but then I found another plugin, installed it and figured it out.

And I. Am. In. Lightroom. Heaven.

LR/Mogrify 2

I will spare you the details on how to install this plugin (maybe a tutorial later?) but I just saved my watermark as a .psd file (straight up Photoshop) and then used the “graphical watermarks” portion of the mogrify plugin to put it on the image as it was being exported. (Somewhere in Georgia, my mom’s head just exploded from having to read that sentence … I will post more pictures later, Mom.)

Voila!

The only thing I don’t like about this is the freedom to mouse+place the watermark. I just kind of have to make a wild guess about where it’s going to land based on the parameters I plug in … so that’s kind of odd. Especially since I don’t like things centered and am no stranger to blown highlights and a lot of white in my images.

But this can be a huge timesaver when I want to do a blog post with a lot of pictures. Oh wait, that’s every blog post. Hmmm, I guess I’ll use this one a lot.

I would also love to be able to use Export to Flickr, but I prefer putting watermarks on my Flickr images due to some stealing issues I had a while back. And even though nighttime sleep is going great, my brain may still be too mushy to figure out how to do the watermark + Flickr export.

And oh yes … WE HAD A WHITE CHRISTMAS!!!

My first white Christmas ever! It was Emma and Lucy’s first white Christmas, as well, but I’m 32 and have never had snow on Christmas. So exciting!!

(For those wondering, Ken spent the first 10 years of his life in Michigan, so not his first white Christmas)

Anyway, we’re taking down the Christmas decorations today, and I’m happy. I love having them up, but I NEED my house back. I need to get these Christmas boxes out of the hallway. My depression is kicking in, and I’ve got to get this place cleaned up before I shut down completely.

We had a wonderful holiday with family and friends, and we are so very very blessed.

Miss Lucy enjoyed her first Christmas (I think) and it was so good to have her here with us. Sometimes, it just hits me in the gut how close we came to losing her, and I’m just so thankful that she’s here and healthy as a horse. And almost as big as one, too.

I hope you all had a wonderful holiday!! xo

I wrote this up for this week’s FIF over at I Heart Faces, but since the blog gurus are at the workshop, I think I submitted it too late to be put on the blog. Bad Keli! So I thought I’d post it here. Happy Friday!!

I am one of the only contributors not attending the workshop this weekend, and while I am very sad to not be attending, I have a 2-month old good reason. But I am SO there next year!!

Anyway, I decided to take this week’s Fix-It Friday image (from the lovely and talented Michelle) and do a bunch of quick Lightroom fixes. Five clicks or less. To highlight some of the amazing Lightroom presets that are available to you.

Photo Flavors

Essential Kit :: Marta Loves Presets

One Willow Studios Retro Candy by Jessica Paige

Sometimes, a great fix is only a few clicks away!

Have a great weekend!

I know this post is WAY overdue, but I had most of it written out last night when I went to bed, and then my computer updated and rebooted while I was sleeping.

Note to self: always save drafts.

straight out of the camera (sooc)

First thing I did was apply one of my own Lightroom presets called “vintage purple”

My presets aren’t really for sale or give-a-way (maybe one day) but this basically boosted the exposure, added some clarity & vibrance, took away a bit of saturation, and then I used split tones in tan (highlights) & purple (shadows).

Clearly, that made it too bright, so I wanted to work on that a little bit.

I took down the exposure all the way back down to 0 and increased the blacks to 16.

I also jacked up the highlight recovery to do away with the crazy overexposure around the top right corner of the camera.

My shadow saturation (the purple) was actually a little too purple’y, so I took it down quite a bit to make it more of a lavender.

Then, I bumped up the contrast even more.

And cropped it.

Imported that image into Photoshop Elements 5.0 so I could fix it up a little more and add a fun texture.

I immediately added a fill layer of navy blue #0f0f3d and put it into exclusion mode and changed opacity to 80%.

Added another fill layer of pure white #ffffff and changed the opacity to 5%.

Added this texture in overlay mode and changed opacity to 70% and then erased it over the camera (eraser set at 35% opacity).

Then, I copied the background (control-J) and moved that to the top of the layers and set it to soft light blending mode at 80% opacity.

Flattened the layers and TA-DA!

If you have any questions about this tutorial, please post them in the comments and I will reply there. I hope you enjoyed it!

Please add my feed to your rss reader if you are interested in seeing more tutorials like this.

I’ve had many people ask me to share my processing techniques for my images. Funny thing is, I don’t really do the same thing every time, and most of the time, I just play until it looks good. So it’s hard to just say, “Well, I did this and this and this.” But for you … I will try. ;)

Note: I process all of my images in Lightroom and Photoshop Elements 5.0

So we’re going to start with this image …

I know what you’re thinking. Um, dude? That’s blurry. Well, yes. I decided to use a particularly bad image to show you how drastic just a few changes can be. But I actually like the movement in this picture since she’s running around so carefree. I think it adds to the image.

It really does work. You’ll see. (Don’t go scrolling down to see, yet — be patient!)

We also have that horrible blownout light across the top of the image, and it’s just not composed very well AT ALL.

I’ve been a little obsessed with square crops lately, so I did that, purposefully keeping Jessie in the shot, because our dogs rarely get camera time these days, poor things.

Then, I just applied my “in shades of brown” preset.

Without just giving away my “formula” this preset basically warms up the image, adds a little green tint, bumps up the exposure, bumps down the saturation, and then split tones it with some tan highlights and light purple shadows. Among other things.

But. It still isn’t “right.” It looks like it’s just blurry, ya know?

So this is where textures come into play. I love textures. I love how they can totally add a completely different element to an image. It’s a whole other layer, both literally and figuratively.

On this image, I stuck with Florabella Textures, which were recently featured on I ♥ Faces. She has done some amazing things with these textures, and I can almost guarantee I’ll find the texture(s) I want when I open up my Florabella folder.

I used …
antique square in overlay mode @ 100%
champagne square in soft light mode @ 100%

I also copied the background image and put it into multiply mode @ 50% because the 2 textures had lightened it up significantly.

And then I added the creamy white border to add an even more vintage flair, kind of like those old polaroids.

After all the textures are added, and the image meets my approval, I just go to layer -> flatten image, then select -> all.

Image -> Resize -> Canvas Size

With these settings …

By the way, this is also a great way to add a black border without cutting into your image.

And here is the final product …

It’s amazing how much difference a little crop & texture can do to an image!

And here you all thought I was a decent photographer. ;)

You’ll notice in a lot of my pictures that I use rounded corners — I love the retro feel and uniqueness.

Uniqueness … is that a word? I’m not getting a spell-check notice, so I guess it is. Cool.

Anyway, I have a few people ask me how to get rounded corners, so I’m going to give you three ways to put rounded corners on your pictures.

The first way is the easiest … Picnik. It’s a {mostly} free online photo editing program — I say {mostly} because you can do a whole WHOLE lot for free. Or you can pay a small fee to have even more editing options. But the rounded corners option is free …

Anyway, it’s listed under the “Create” tab as a “Frame.” You can adjust the radius to make it either a little rounded or a LOT rounded.

The second way is also quite easy if you have Adobe Photoshop Lightroom.

Just go to the “Develop” section, and then to “Vignettes — Post-Crop”

amount: +100
midpoint: 50
roundness: -90 (you can adjust this number to make it less or more rounded)
feather: 0

If you are putting the image on a black background (like a photo blog?) then just set the “amount” to -100.

And finally, this is how I do it in Adobe Photoshop Elements. Now, I don’t have Photoshop CS because I chose to purchase Lightroom instead. I honestly don’t know if it’s the same in Photoshop CS, but I’m sure it’s close enough.

step 1: open your image …

step 2: choose the “rounded rectangle tool” under shapes

step 3: set the radius to 90px

You can change that number to make it more or less rounded – I almost always use from 90px to around 94px.

step 4: draw the rounded rectangle around the entire image

It doesn’t matter what color the rectangle is, because you’re going to fix that in the next step

step 5: set opacity to 0%

step 6: while still having the “rounded rectangle tool” selected, right click on the image and select “make selection”

step 7: make sure you have “feather radius” set to 0px and check “anti-aliased”

step 8: go to “edit” on the menu bar and select “copy merged”

step 9: go to “file” and select “new -> image from clipboard”

step 10: save it and you’re done!

Now. Go have fun making rounded corners!! I love taking pictures and applying vintage’y presets or actions and then using the rounded corners … it takes me back to my childhood pictures.