How do you capture and process 3,000 to 5,000 shots and hand your client the image disk in a single day? Is a workflow that shoots tethered into Lightroom robust enough for professional work? How do you transport studio-quality gear to shoots across the country? These were many of the questions covered recently at the Image Mechanics workshop “Making the Transition to Digital Tech Part 1“.

I’ve long been a fan of the workshop’s instructor, Michael Britt – the managing partner at Image Mechanics. Michael wrote the original manual for Lightroom. He’s consulted for Apple on Aperture. His company has been responsible for managing literally millions of captures on professional shoots around the globe. The Image Mechanics client list reads like a Who’s Who of high-end editorial and advertising photographers.

For a guy, like me, who does not work in that realm, I could say that’s a lot of rah-rah. What’s made me a fan is that Michael does not hesitate to share what he knows about digital capture. This was the second time that I’d spent a day with Michael. (The first time was two years ago at the nearby Julia Dean Workshops.) Any industry leader who is willing to share the details of his entire workflow with anyone who is interested, gets my sincere appreciation and respect.

An Image Mechanics digital capture studio ready to roll.

Taking The Digital Capture Studio Wherever It Needs To Go

There are many benefits to shooting tethered. The first and foremost reason to shoot tethered is that you can make precise decisions about exposure. Another is that if your client is on-set, he or she can see large-scale images to confirm that you’re delivering what’s needed from the shoot. (For a detailed discussion of these and other benefits, read this Px article.)

An Image Mechanics field kit for digital capture includes an Apple 30″ Cinema Display, a G5 Tower, a MacBook Pro laptop, external drives (with multiple ways to connect to a computer), UPS battery backup and several sets of USB and Firewire cables for tethering a wide range of cameras to the computer. All of this is moved around on a special cart that converts into a computer stand.

Redundancy is the key to surviving the challenges that will inevitably pop-up in the field. Michael discussed redundancy in ways that I had never considered before (such as carrying a copy of your software and other essential files on a thumb drive in case your computer gear disappears – rent a computer in that distant city and you’re back in business).

Michael Britt talks about getting a 30" Apple Cinema Display and G5 Tower out to location shoots.

The Image Mechanics digital tech studio in action.

Using Lightroom As The Backbone Of A Digital Capture Workflow

I was surprised to learn that Lightroom is the backbone of the digital capture workflow at Image Mechanics. I figured they would use a proprietary capture system or one of the programs that costs twice the price of Lightroom. As digital capture technicians, they have to be ready to handle literally any gear that their professional clients throw at them – Canon, Nikon, Phase, Leaf, Hassy… Aside from using the manufacturer’s camera control software (like EOS Utility) to get the image from the camera to the computer, the rest of the Image Mechanic’s workflow is handled entirely in Lightroom.

One of the favorite debates among Lightroom users is whether to manage your images in one catalog or several. Given the volume of captures they manage and their need to efficiently archive their clients’ shoots, Image Mechanics creates a unique catalog for each shoot and stores that catalog with the captures. Michael shared the exact details of their folder structure for a shoot. I followed along on my laptop and headed home with a new workflow to deploy.

Demonstrating how to shoot tethered into Lightroom

Managing The Digital Archive

I shot 40,000 or so images last year. The Image Mechanics have to manage more than that every month. I’m one guy. They have to manage images for a long list of clients. Their average shoot generates more than 50 gigs of data. So, when Michael talked about their archiving system, I really paid attention. You can read the details about their approach here.

Image Mechanics stores one copy of their archive disks in custom-made, anti-static file cabinet inserts. A set of matching disks are kept off-site for data redundancy.

More From Image Mechanics

To get a sense of what professional digital capture is about, check out the Image Mechanics site.

Death To Film, their original blog, as been retired. Fortunately it remains online as it has a ton of great info.

Counter Intelligence is their new blog. It continues the IM tradition of sharing valuable insights.

Shoot Stories is where you can read the details of Image Mechanics in action on pro shoots.

Organizing External Drives with Adobe Lightroom is a great value. You can buy the PDF download for only $5.95.

The challenge of shooting any event is to organize, process and distribute the photos with the least amount of effort possible. Lightroom makes easy work of organizing event photos through its keywording and file renaming options. Lightroom also handles RAW processing and image distribution through web and print media with ease.

I had the good fortune to be the event photographer recently for the 2009 Wheels of Wellness in Phoenix. The event is an important fundraiser for the Arizona chapter of the Wellness Community – which is part of the national non-profit organization that provides support, education and hope to people with cancer and their loved ones. [If you have cancer or know of someone who does, be sure to click through on the Wellness Community link.]

My assignment was to create a library of images to serve multiple masters: magazine and newspaper coverage of the event, prints for the car owners, online publicity, etc. Given that the Wheels of Wellness featured 24 vintage race cars, a dozen or so racing celebrities and loads of interested supporters, preparing the files and prints for hand-off to my client could have put me in the pits for some time. Fortunately, as a long-time fan of Lightroom, I implemented new keyword strategies that got me to the finish line much sooner than I anticipated. If you shoot events, I’m sure that you can adapt the following ideas to fit your needs.

Event Photography Workflow In Lightroom Starts With Keywords, Keywords, Keywords

The first challenge, after importing the files into a new Lightroom catalog, was to sort the photos. I  made nearly a thousand pix and wanted to sort them as quickly as possible. The nature of event photography is that you shoot when there’s an interesting meet-up between people or a moment of great light. The cars and people were not photographed in any specific sequence. Some cars were photographed six or seven times throughout the day. Owners and celebrities were in one frame, but not the next. So, I had come up with a way to gather photos spread throughout the shoot and organize them in a way to facilitate searches in the future.

My post-import Lightroom workflow for events starts with the following steps:

1. Keyword each photo with a single keyword
2. Filter the photos by keyword to pull up a specific group
3. Give a descriptive file name to each image in the keyword group
4. Regroup all the photos in the catalog by sorting on their file names
5. Add detailed keywords to facilitate other searches
6. Use color labels to mark individual frames that have a specific person
7. Add keywords to these special selections

Step 1: Managing event photos in Lightroom starts with a simple keyword. Fortunately, the vast majority of the Wheels of Wellness photos had at least one car with a number. So the first thing I did was open the Library module in grid view and keyword the cars by their number. For the handful of cars without a number, I keyworded the photos by their color or another unique attribute (one per car). For people shots without cars, I keyworded by the most famous (or infamous) person in the shot. The whole point was to get each photo tied to a single keyword.

Step 2 - filter by keyword

Step 2: In the Library module, I then filtered by each keyword. [Shown above - Library Module / Library Filter bar: Text > Keywords > Contains Words > keyword]. This enabled me to pull up the photos of each car / person as a group. I filtered by the keyword “42″ and came up with the 18 photos of the 1969 Eagle Indy car exhibited by the Riverside International Auto Museum. I filtered on “24″ and came up with all the photos of the 1962 Ferrari 250 GTO. [I did find that #28 is a popular car number as I had three #28s. As I detail below, an extra quick step was needed to sort these shots out.]

Step 3: I then renamed all of the photos pulled up by each keyword. [Library  > Rename Photo] or [hit F2] then [Custom Settings > Edit]. My file naming sequence was MyName_Event_Car-Description-Year_####. As a standard practice, I now rename all my files with MyName at the beginning. This helps me track web usage of my images. (Yes, pirates will change the file name, but my clients generally don’t.) I included the Car-Description-Year to help others find my images when they are searching for images on the web by car name. I always leave the original #### in so that I can search for images by their “Original number suffix” created at the time of capture. Every once in a blue moon this has helped me locate a file that I otherwise misnamed. (I think there were four or five blue moons during the past year.)

Step 4 - sort by filename

Step 4: Sort the photos by their new file names. [View > Sort > File Name] This is the easiest step as you’ve already done the hard part. Gathering the photos by file name will help facilitate detailed keywording as you now can select any number of photos at the same time and give them all the same keyword with just a couple of clicks.

Step 5 & 7 - add detailed keywords

Step 5: Add detailed keywords based on the file name. Down the road, I’m likely to be asked for photos that have a specific person or car in it. Or maybe I’ll be asked for photos of cars entered into the show by a specific owner. So, I first add keywords that apply to all the images in a file name group. I add detailed keywords for the car and year (in case the file name is changed), the event name, the car’s owner, etc. Again, these are keywords that apply to all the images within that file name group.

Step 6: Use color labels to mark individual frames that have a specific person or group. I then reviewed the catalog again and used color labels in the Library module to mark individual images with a certain person or group in them. For instance, after applying the keywords based on file name, I labeled all the images that had car owners in them with red labels by hitting 6 after each image was selected. This allowed me to instantly gather all the images with red labels by filtering via the Attribute option on the Library Filter bar.

Step 7: Add keywords to these special selections. A quick select all move and I added the keyword “Owners-Friends” to the whole group. I hit the 6 again (while the whole group was still selected) and the red labels were removed and ready to be used for another group – such as all the frames that have a certain celebrity in them. So, when the editor of Vintage Motorsport calls to say “we need that photo of the ‘32 Maserati,” I’ll be able to quickly pull the images up and say “the ones with or without Clive Cussler?”

Talk with your client about how they (and others) are likely to use the images. This will give you ideas about the types of keywords that you will want to include. The word “Trend” in the keywords above is for Trends – a society magazine that wanted celebrity photos right after the event. If I had not queried my client about possible usage, I would have had to burn time by going through the images again to find the celebrity pix.

BONUS TIP: Sorting Cars With The Same Number – As I mentioned above, 28 must be a popular car number as I had three cars (out of 24) that I keyworded initially as 28. I could have created three separate keywords, such as 28a, 28b and 28c. But then I would have had to remember which was 28a…. Rather I chose to keep moving very quickly and keyword just by the number on the car. After Step 2: Sort by Keyword, I then selected individual shots of a specific car while holding down the Command (aka: Apple or 4-leaf clover on Mac, Ctrl on PC) and went on to Library > Rename Photo (following Steps 3 – 5 above). I repeated this selection process for the other two #28s. Easy.

Lightroom Makes Quick Work Of Other Event Photography Tasks

Once the files were renamed and given detailed keywords, I used many other Lightroom modules and features.

• rated the photos in the Library module (1-star meant it was a keeper, 2-stars meant candidate for publication)
• optimized the RAW captures in the Develop module (color balance, black, fill light, brightness, contrast, clarity – are my most common adjustments)
• created a contact sheet with 4 photos per page and the file name underneath each in the Print module (this was then saved as a PDF, which you find in the lower left corner under the File > Print Settings > PDF > Save As PDF). I include the PDF on my client delivery disk so that they can have a quick index to the individual files.
• printed portraits of the car owners in the Print module – each 8.5×11 print included my logo in the corner (I want them to remember who I am!).
• uploaded an event web gallery in the Web module — which you can see by clicking here.
• exported the client selects as publication-ready JPEGs (quality = 100%, Adobe RGB) in the Library module. Then burned to DVD (along with the index PDF) for delivery.

Lightroom Resources

Great Lightroom Tutorials by Julieanne Kost

Adobe Lightroom 2 Learning Center at NAPP

Adobe Lightroom 2 Learning Center at Photoshop Cafe

Lightroom Journal – tips straight from the Lightroom Development team

Lightroom Killer Tips by Matt Kloskowski

Lightroom-News by the gang at Pixel Genius

Inside Lightroom by O’Rielly Media

Lightroom Help & Support at Adobe

Buy Lightroom 2 – Full Version about $266

Buy Lightroom 2 – Upgrade Version about $90

When You Want To Take Your Keywording To The Next Level…

The strategies for keywording are about as diverse as the stars in the sky. My guru for all topics uber-keyword is David Riecks. If fact, David takes the dialogue about keywords to such a height that occasionally I get dizzy. But I try to keep up. Actually, he talks and writes about the world of ‘Controlled Vocabularies’ – sets of keywords organized into systematic hierarchies. Advanced keywording is essential to those who license their images as stock photography. Keywords are typically how photo editors search for images. David runs the site ControlledVocabulary.com where you’ll find great resources on learning about the topic as well as a Controlled Vocabulary catalog that you can use in Lightroom and many other digital asset managment programs. David also moderates the Controlled Vocabulary forum on Yahoo.

John Paul Caponigro will release three new training DVDs through Acme Educational next week. Orders placed before the release date will save $10.00 off the $59.95 list price. Having spent a week with JP in the Fine Art of Digital Printing workshop that he teaches with Mac Holbert, I can personally recommend the tools and techniques that you’ll find on these three disks. JP’s earlier disks, ‘Drawing With Light: 21st Century Dodging & Burning‘, ‘Color Management in Six Simple Steps‘ and ‘The Art of Proofing‘ are also favorites in my studio.

Details on each disk are listed below. To get the pre-order pricing at Acme Educational, click here. To see the many other great resources on JP’s site, click here.

Black & White Mastery

Black & White Mastery will unlock the amazing power of digital color for you and your images.

You’ll discover what’s unique about black and white images, identifying a number of unique black and white palettes that will give you a wide range of options for crafting a black and white style that’s best for you and your images.

You’ll learn how to convert color to black and white with ultimate precision and flexibility. You’ll know which methods give you the best result and when to choose a simple or a complex solution. You’ll find out how to adjust the resulting tonal relationships with unprecedented precision. You’ll understand how to adjust your images selectively to further enhance your images. You be able to add color back into your black and white images (subtly or dramatically, uniformly or selectively) to add unique expressive dimensions.

In addition to processing Raw digital files, you’ll also learn how to scan analog originals (film and print). Finally, you’ll learn easy ways to make prints of your black and white digital files either with the latest inkjet technologies or by making digital contact negatives for printing with historic processes.

Most importantly, you’ll learn to see and think about black and white images in new ways which will open up a vast world of visual possibilities for you. Put this new perspective to work for you and your images today.

introduction:

• b&w is unique
• how gray is gray
• b&w expanding definition
• unlimited palette
• b&w signature style
• b&w seeing in
• color is b&w – trichromatic separation
• b&w strategic overview
• b&w scanning
• b&w prep for conversion
• b&w many ways
• raw
• b&w adjustment layer
• dual adjustment layer
• triple adjustment layer
• channels as layers
• simulated infrared
• b&w global contrast
• b&w local contrast
• b&w adding color – multi-tone
• b&w adding color – curves and overlays
• b&w adding color – restoring original color
• b&w adding color – handcoloring
• b&w inkjet printing – 2 ways
• b&w film

Photoshop Color Strategies

Photoshop Color Strategies will help you take your color skills to the next level. True mastery of color requires not only knowing how to use the various color tools available to you, but also knowing how to choose between them, when to apply them, and why to apply them to achieve specific color effects. You’ll learn to isolate the three essential components of color (luminosity, hue, and saturation) and control them with unprecedented precision. You’ll learn about important optical effects that affect the way you and your viewers see color and learn to put them to work for you. You’ll learn new ways of thinking about color that will help you see and produce a wide variety of color effects. You’ll discover strategies for identifying and creating successful color palettes. You can combine all of this new knowledge to craft your own unique artistic signature style. Put the unprecedented power and precision of digital color to work for you and your images now.

introduction:

• color r/evolution
• color is black and white
• memory
• optical effects
• color types
• successful palettes
• association
• side-by-side
• infinite variations
• color tool survey
• editing strategy
• blend modes
• selectivity
• light filled
• increase and decrease luminosity
• reduce hue contrast
• increase hue contrast
• reduce saturation
• increase saturation
• neutrals
• atmospheric perspective
• night
• inversion
• transpose color natural match color
• transpose color synthetic gradient map

Photoshop Color Tools

Learn how to use the color adjustment tools in Adobe Photoshop CS4 to achieve unprecedented control of your images.

Find out which tools are the go to tools (the ones you¹ll use everyday), which are exotic (the ones for exceptional images), and which are redundant and/or too limited (the ones you can forget about).

Make every adjustment tool more precisely target specific components of color (hue, saturation, and luminosity) using blend modes and easy to use selections / masks that allow you to target specific hues or luminosity values.

introduction:

• hsl
• color management – 6 simple steps
• monitor histograms
• editing strategy
• color tool survey
• blend modes
• raw conversion
• shadows / highlights
• channel blending
• levels- b&w points
• curves
• high pass contrast
• selective color
• saturation & vibrance
• photofilter & overlays
• match color
• b & w adjustment layer
• select by color range

As a professional shooter, I use Lightroom as a standard part of my workflow. Over the weekend, I turned Lightroom loose on a long-overdue, personal project. I’m now more fond of Lightroom than ever. The reason? Lightroom found photos of my kids that I haven’t seen in years.

Do you know the old saying about “the cobbler’s kids having no shoes?” Like a lot of photographers, over the past decade, I’ve stuffed photographs and scans onto many drives. As one drive would fill up, I’d add a new, larger drive to the system and keep going. Then Amy will ask a simple question like “did you find those photos from Tom’s graduation yet?” My reply before today was “They’re here somewhere… in triplicate, I’ll find them soon.”

It’s not that I’ve actually lost data. I run all my drives as mirrored RAID pairs in separate enclosures (using SoftRAID). I also have a rigorous backup system that copies all of that data onto external drives for long-term storage. [Check out Peter Krogh's DAM Book site and Image Mechanics' blog Death To Film for ideas and resources.]

My problem was the logic behind my file structure changed over the years and I never stopped to re-organize the legacy folders. I can easily locate images that I’ve shot within the past three years. Finding pix from five, seven or nine years ago… there’s the challenge.

Consolidating the old photos was always one of those non-critical (aka “non-money making”) tasks that I never got back around to dealing with. Eventually, I lost track of where I’d stuffed our earliest digital snapshots and scans. Now that I’ve found a new use for Lightroom, I’ve shed my Catholic-guilt about all of this.

How did I use Lightroom to find all of these old photos? Simple. I created a new catalog “All Pix”. Then I pointed LR to one of the six master drive pairs on my system. I did not point to specific folders on the drive – just to the drive. I then told Lightroom to “Import From Disk”. Lightroom surveyed the drive and imported all the images that it could. As the import from one disk was completed, I did the same for the next drive on the system. By the way, the importing can take hours for a large drive (like the one shown above). So it’s best to do this when you won’t need to do any other work in Lightroom.

Do I care that Lightroom is cataloging tens of thousands of images that I already have in other Lightroom catalogs? Not at all. I can edit the catalog later. What I do care about is that I can now quickly sort images by specific date ranges. Tom’s graduation? Early June, 2003. Bingo. Here’s the pix, love.

As you can see in the photo above, the catalog has more than 107,000 images in it. The current import has brought in over 28,000 images. That little 1998 family portrait has been MIA for years.

I know that when Lightroom completes it’s task of creating the master catalog, I’ll have many hours of work ahead in keywording, sort

SEO for photographers is critical to the success of a portfolio website. For almost a year, I’ve listened to what Rob Haggart at A Photo Editor says. He’s brutally honest, highly opinionated and knows a hell of a lot more about the editorial photo biz than I ever will. Rob recently launched A Photo Folio so that photographers can have websites that photo editors won’t hate. If I were looking to launch an online portfolio today, A Photo Folio would be the place I’d start.

For several years, however, I’ve been a relatively happy client of SiteWelder. So, when Rob did this blog post about how his Photo Folio site is tweaked to keep photo editors happy, I compared it to what I had going on my site.

Here’s how I hacked two of Rob’s great ideas into my SiteWelder site. The common theme to all of this is “Photo editors work at warp speed in an environment that constantly distracts them from your portfolio. A PE will give your site a handful of seconds. Don’t waste it.“

Turn Off The Flash

Yes, Flash is cool. But, there are two big reasons not to use it for web galleries (beyond your homepage). First, if your dream photo editor gets interrupted while looking at your flash portfolio, she might miss THE one shot that gets you the phone call. Turn off the flash and force her to click through the thumbnails. This way your best shot will still be waiting when she gets off the phone. The second reason to trash the Flash is that PEs are pros and can digest pix a heck of a lot faster than us mere mortals. If your Flash gallery is moving too slow, your dream editor will move on to another site.

To kill the Flash in your SiteWelder galleries, go to the Galleries editor and click on “Slide Show Active” for each gallery. Then click on “Slide Show Disabled” or “HTML Pages With Slide Show Link”.

Make It Easy For Photo Editors To Get In Touch

Of course every good site has an “About” or “Contact” page somewhere. Why risk losing the PE’s focus over an extra click or two? As Rob brilliantly advocates, the best place for your contact info is under every photo in your galleries.

So, rather than use the photo caption for something lame like “Syl Arena California Magazine Photographer”, I now have my phone number, a live email link and ©.

I‘m not much of a coder. So, I always have to go back to this great online resource for HTML code every time I do things like this. The code for my contact info is:

Tel: 805 / 226-2794 * <a href=”mailto:studio@sylarenaphoto.com”>Studio@SylArenaPhoto.com</a> * © 2001-2008 Syl Arena

I stuffed it into each and every caption box on my site. My first strategy – putting this code into my global copyright notice box – failed as it screwed up the thumbnails in my now-not-flash galleries.

If you’ve made it this far and have not stopped to check out the links to Rob’s sites, do it now because I’m covering just two of the ten points that Rob raises. Here they are again: A Photo Editor, A Photo Folio, and the great post that inspired my hacking.

A Final Tip For SiteWelder Clients: Tweaking The Homepage Text

SiteWelder Users check out the text on my home page. Be sure to keep an eye on your vertical scroll bar while you are checking it out. Every bit of the text below the Flash gallery was hand coded. It’s there to give prospective clients several sources of info about me and to help bolster my presence on relevant Google searches. I wrote the code in Smultron (a free text editor for Mac OS) and pasted it into the “Copyright information” box on the Home Page control panel. To make this work smoothly, you have to go to the “Account Info” control panel and turn off the option to show contact info on pages. Otherwise the contact info tragically appears at a random point in the middle of my long, rambling home page text.

If you are looking to add RAM or upgrade the hard drive on your Mac, check out IFixIt.com. I have never found more detailed, free, online guides for such a wide range of Mac hardware. Following their well-photographed, how-to guide, I changed out the hard drive on my MacBook Pro in a few minutes this morning. IFixIt sells all the parts and tools you’ll need to repair or upgrade your Mac or iPod.

These guys have personality. Curious about what’s inside an iPhone 3G? Just prior to the worldwide launch, they flew from California to New Zealand to be among the first in the world to buy one. And then they disassembled it.

Like many photographers, I am a voyeur. That’s why I love to read Death To Film – the blog of Image Mechanics.

IM is the gang of superheros based in Santa Monica that’s lead by Michael Britt (the fellow who wrote the original Lightroom user’s guide for Adobe.) As digital capture specialists, these guys have to manage as many captures in a day as most non-pro shooters will create in a lifetime.

The greatest thing about the Image Mechanics crew and their blog is that they share virtually all of their secrets. Check out the latest post about their off-line archiving system. Then just start scrolling through their archives. You’ll find tale after tale about being in the trenches of high-volume digital capture. Need more? Then jump over to the IM site for another long session of good reading.

It’s always fun to watch the waves of new digital technology pound on the shore of established workflow. On June 3rd, Nikon announced the introduction of Capture NX 2 — the second-generation of its innovative approach to RAW processing. Simultaneously, Acme Educational, the brainchild of Vincent Versace, announced the release of the 2-DVD set “Unleashing The RAW Power of Capture NX 2“. So, you can get a headstart on your NX 2 workflow by getting the disks from Acme now at an early-bird price {details below}. Nikon is slated to start shipping NX 2 around June 20th.

Just as Lightroom brought a new interface to Adobe’s approach to RAW processing, Capture NX uses an equally intriguing, yet competing, approach. At the heart of Capture NX are Control Points – essentially a set of sliders that you drag to the point of correction. Think of Control Points as a heads-up display on the windshield of a jet fighter… your controls are right at the point that you want to watch.

For those not familiar with Capture NX, CaptureNX.com is the place to go for an intro. You’ll find flash demonstrations of Caputre NX’s innovative Control Point interface. You’ll also find the link to download a 60-day trial version of Capture NX 2.

New to Capture NX 2 are:

• Support for dual monitors
• Selection Control Points – enabling functions such as Sharpness and D-Lighting to be applied to limited areas
• Auto Retouch Brush – removes dust specks with a simple brushstroke
• Workspaces – set up your workspace based upon the current task at hand / Browser, Metadata, Multi-purpose and Edit are presets. You can also design custom workspaces.
• XMP Label / Rating Support
• Simultaneous Opening of Multiple Settings
• Shadow / Highlight Adjustments

As mentioned above, Acme Educational has begun shipping the 2-DVD set “Unleashing The RAW Power of Capture NX 2″. For those quick on the draw, you can save $15 by ordering now. Once Nikon starts shipping NX 2, estimated to be around June 20, the normal (and still a good value) Acme price will be $59.95. So, calculators at the ready, the early-order price is $44.95.

Unleashing The RAW Power of Capture NX 2

Disk One is affectionately called “Pixel Bootcamp 2.0″. You’ll find a dozen chapters covering every nut and bolt that makes up Capture NX 2. Even advanced photographers who think they have their head completely around the world of RAW processing will discover many useful nuggets to add to their workflow.

Disk Two “From Here to There In Less Than Eternity” covers advanced image editing workflows. Of special interest to fans of infrared photography are three chapters: Standard IR, Enhanced IR and Deep Black IR. And, this being a Versace production, new material on black & white is also included.

If you’re looking to take your Photoshop skills from the ordinary to the extraordinary, check out the interactive DVDs produced by Acme Educational. The brainchild of Vincent Versace, the Acme gang also includes John Paul Caponigro, Mac Holbert, and Lee Varis.

Do these names sound familiar? You may have attended their sessions at Photoshop World or read Versace’s Welcome to Oz, Caponigro’s classic Adobe Photoshop Master Class, Holbert’s insights in Nash Editions, or Varis’ innovative Skin. While I always enjoy spending time with a well-crafted book, I learn best when I’m seeing, hearing and doing – all at the same time. This is why Acme shines.

The benefit of Acme’s interactive approach is that you can:

• switch freely between watching the instructor and checking out what he’s doing on his computer monitor
• study when you want to / stop when you need to
• get the instructor to repeat himself until you get the point
• follow along in Photoshop on your own computer

Acme’s most recent offerings include:

• Versace: Capture NX2
• Caponigro: The Art of Proofing
• Caponigro: 6 Simple Steps To Good Color Management

Stay in touch with Acme’s latest by subscribing to the Acme mailing list.

There is no better value among photography associations than the National Association of Photoshop Professionals. NAPP is a dynamic association for users of Adobe Photoshop – and let’s face it, in today’s photo world, who does not use Photoshop?. For $99 bucks you get a one-year subscription to Photoshop User magazine, an online portfolio and access to an amazing range of online resources. NAPP also sponsors Photoshop World twice each year – on the East Coast in the spring and in Las Vegas each September.

From the NAPP website (PhotoshopUser.com)
National Association of Photoshop Professionals: Every day, we teach creative minds from around the world how to turn ordinary into extraordinary. Whether you are a professional or hobbyist, photographer or graphic designer, or, motion graphic artist or animator, NAPP is your ultimate Photoshop training, educational and news resource.