I sell digital images on DVD to many of my portrait photography clients and all of my commercial photography clients. I always provide those images on a printable DVD [ Amazon: Taiyo Yuden/JVC WaterShield DVD's ] that I print directly to with my Epson Artisan printer [ Amazon: Epson Artisan 835 Color Inkjet All-In-One ]. I am incredibly happy with the results and they look very professional.

The problem is that the CD / DVD printing software that comes with Epson printers is hokey (at best), and I’ve never been able to figure out how to print directly to the DVD from within Adobe Photoshop. It always ended up off center, too big, too small, or even completely off the disc. I finally took the time to figure it out. Yay!

It turns out that the Epson printer driver requires that you use an A4 (US Letter) size print template that has the disc image positioned in just the right place. And to further complicate it Epson uses “Type 1″ and “Type 2″ disc trays that require very different placement of the template on the page. I created Photoshop templates for both Tray types and have provided them here for free for you to use.

Please use the following link to download a zip file that contains templates for Epson Type 1 and Epson Type 2 CD/DVD printer trays in TIF format. I don’t guarantee that they are perfect for all Epson printers, but they work great for me.

Download the Free Photoshop Template

• OD Epson CD/DVD Print Templates for Adobe Photoshop (Photoshop Template)

For reference here is a link to a file that contains a list of Epson Printers and indicates what tray type they use.

In general older printers are Type 1 and newer printers are Type 2.

For a long time I have had a theory that Nikon photographers are more likely to be Mac OS and Apple Aperture users while Canon shooters tend to use MS Windows and Adobe Lightroom.

Please tell us what you are most likely to use as the primary set of tools in your photography workflow:

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Polls Archive

I don’t typically get too excited about beta software, particularly for my production environment, but this is one that I’ve really been waiting for! The first public beta of Lightroom 3 didn’t get me too excited. It didn’t really offer enough new stuff for me to bother with the hassles of the fact that it was beta, and in fact it had certain features that were disabled that made it problematic to use (like luminance noise reduction). But the new beta offers several new features that I’ve been hoping to see in Lightroom and I will definitely be giving this version a full workout.

One final word before I talk any further… This is Beta software. Your results may vary, and there is significant potential that you could really do some damage to your photography collection if you use this software. It hasn’t been released for production yet because it’s not ready. Be careful.

• Video Support: We didn’t get full on video editing yet, but at least we finally have some rudimentary management tools that allow viewing, flagging, keywording, and captioning of video files in exactly the same way that still images are cataloged. I certainly hope that they expand this further to include basic edits (clipping, exporting, and global exposure adjustments) but for now this is a huge step over the old version!
• Tethered Shooting: With this version they have added support importing live images directly into Lightroom when shooting while a camera is connected to the computer. This is a studio and product shooters dream. I won’t use it a lot, but every once in awhile it will be very useful.
• Performance Improvements: I haven’t tested the new version enough to fully buy into this one yet, but I really hope that this one is true, and the new version does seem to be a little bit snappier. I will definitely be watching to see how this pans out.

For a complete list of the new and upgraded features the best place to go is the Lightroom Team Blog. You can also check out the release notes included with the update.

To download the program head on over to the Adobe Labs site.

Here are a few more sites you can check for additional information and commentary:

• Jeffrey Friedl’s: Lightroom 3 Beta 2 and My Plugins
• The Lightroom Queen: What’s New in Lightroom 3.0 Beta 2?
• Terry White: Lightroom 3 Public Beta 2: What’s New?

I was playing around in the Split Toning panel in Adobe Lightroom the other day after reading a blog post over at the X=Blog called “Making the Split – Split Toning for the rest of us” when I recalled an idea that I had previously considered that would make it easy to change the sky in an image from white to blue, but had never acted upon.

Split Toning is most commonly used in Black and White photography, and certainly the most well known use is to create Sepia toned prints. These are those old fashioned style images that have a relatively uniform brown (sepia actually) color cast across the entire image. There are many other uses, but most people have never heard of them.

Quoting from the X=Blog article I referenced above, the Lightroom Split Toning panel is very simple, and “all it really does is produce a uniform color cast over an image’s highlights, shadows or both.” You don’t have to do anything to the shadows if you only want to impact the highlights, or vice versa.

For example if you have an image that includes a white (or very light) sky that you would really rather be blue, you can apply a uniform blue color cast over only the brightest parts of the image, called the highlights, while leaving the shadow areas alone. This will predominantly affect the white sky, but may also impact any other light colored areas of the image. This trick also works very well if you want to make water in your images look more blue if it is white or gray (possibly due to glare or reflections of a white sky).

Example Images:

The first example is an image where I used the effect to turn a white sky blue, as described above.

The second example is an image where I used the effect to add a little bit of blue to the water to give the image some punch. This use is much more subtle, but I love the power that it adds to my toolkit!

“OD Vivid Sky” Lightroom Develop Presets – FREE

I have created a series of Lightroom Develop Presets that make use of this effect, and I’m providing them here for free for your downloading pleasure. There are three different strengths to make your skies Blue, and another three to add a sunset glow to your images. Note that these presets are just starting points and you may have to salt them to taste to make them work with your images.

In particular you may find that anything in your image that is on the lighter side of average will end up with a color cast. to help combat that I have also provided a free Local Adjustment Preset called “OD De-Bluify” that you can use with the Adjustment Brush to counteract the blue color cast in specific areas of the image. I used this to De-Bluify the Swainsons Hawk in the first example image, but did not use it on the power pole. If you look you will easily see the blue color cast on the effected areas of the pole. This may bother you, or it may not. It’s up to you whether you feel the need to fix it. I also used it to clean up the Red-necked Grebe in the second example image.

Download the Free Lightroom Presets

• OD Vivid Sky (Develop Preset)
• OD De-Bluify (Local Adjustment Preset)

Each of these downloads includes a readme file that includes some information on how and where to install these presets. For more information you can simply do a Google Search for “Install Lightroom Presets” and you will surely find dozens of articles that will help.

Please feel free to ask questions or provide some feedback about how you are using these presets, or if you have any suggestions to make them better!!

Updated 2009-09-30 I got an email from Amazon.ca today saying that they had screwed up on the price, and that they had cancelled my order. Fail.

Updated 2009-09-29 Sorry, this deal appears to have ended… Try checking back later to see if they revive it.

There’s a great deal on right now at Amazon.ca for pre-orders of Adobe Photoshop & Premiere Elements 8. The MSRP is $149.99 (USD) for the bundle, but if you order right now you can get them for $52.99 (CAD), and Adobe has a $30 (USD) mail-in rebate that will also apply. That brings the total price down to approximately $20 (CAD) depending on the exchange rate. Wow!

Alternatively you can pick up Photoshop Elements 8 on its own for only $24.99 (CAD) and use a $20 (USD) mail-in rebate to get Photoshop Elements for less than $5.00. Another wow!

Either way, Photoshop Elements is basically free and Premiere Elements is very cheap. Compare this to $738 for the full version of Photoshop CS4 and you’ll know that you’re getting a deal. Sure CS4 has a few more features than Elements, but if you’re using Adobe Lightroom or Apple Aperture as your main photo processing tool and you only need to do the occasional local edit that Lightroom can’t do, Photoshop Elements presents a pretty ideal alternative to CS4. Most photographers really have no need for the full set of features of CS4.

From Adobe:

Adobe Photoshop Elements 8
Adobe® Photoshop® Elements 8 combines power and simplicity so you can make your photos look extraordinary, share your life stories in unique print creations and web experiences, and easily manage your photos and video clips. New options enable you to create perfectly lit shots, recompose photos to any size without distorting key subjects, and quickly find your highest-quality shots or shots of specific people.

Adobe Premiere Elements 8
Adobe® Premiere® Elements 8 makes it easier than ever to create incredible movies, enhance your stories with professional style, share virtually anywhere, and easily manage your video clips and photos. Now you can easily manage all your clips and photos from a powerful, convenient new Organizer; add fun graphics and effects that automatically follow the motion in your scenes; and much more.