Photography | Daniel Sato

May 12, 20090

Is it photoshopped if I did it in Lightroom?

I’ve been playing around in Photoshop and Lightroom recently, in an attempt to better know the programs, color, etc. One of my favorite tutorials so far has been Scott Kelby’s tutorial on “Getting That Cool Gritty Look.” Yep, the one all the cool kids are doing, and without having to purchase some overpriced plug-in like LucasArt ($279 – $359).

Kelby lays out the steps to achieve the look as follows:

* Recovery = 100
* Fill Light = 100
* Blacks = Drag this slider to the right until photo looks balanced again, because setting the Fill Light at 100 will wash the photo out big time. In our example, I dragged it to 24
* Contrast = 100
* Clarity = 100
* Vibrance = 100
* Saturation = -81 (basically what I do here is drag the saturation all the way to the left, to -100 (which removes all color, making it a black and white image), and then I slowly drag back to the right until some of the color starts to return to the image.

This can be done in either Adobe Camera Raw, or in the develop section of Lightroom. He also recommends adding a vignette, under the lens correction settings, and softening the skin on the face with a Gaussian Blur and layer mask.

Here are a few that I did:

Mar 20, 20090

Journalism/Media Open Courseware Resources

Mark Luckie, at 10,000 Words, has a great post on where to find tutorials that will help you to add to your skill set. He writes In order to be or remain employed in this industry its essential to hunker down and learn some new skills. The following tutorial sites will take you from journalist to multimedia journalist.

During my journalism education, I found that some of my most helpful and interesting classes were taken outside of the journalism building. For that reason, I have included some links to opencourseware classes related to photography and media. They may not teach you a new skill (some may, as with the Flash classes), but might help you to become a better, more informed journalist. There are, of course, some pros and cons to taking an open courseware class. Often you will not have access to a lecture (though some provide video) and you do not always have access to full course materials.