2022 Colorado Road Trip – Day 4

Well Day 4 of our road trip to Boulder Colorado started off as a rainy day in Santa Fe New Mexico. By the end of the day, we arrived at our hotel for the next few days in Westminster, Colorado. We will be there to watch Paige and her BSC Bengals 16U softball team compete in the IDT Softball Tournament.

Day 4 Video Log

On the Road Between Santa Fe and Boulder

Our trip continues with Day 5 soon. In the meantime, take care.

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2022 CO Road Trip – Day 2

This is the second day of my two-week road trip to Boulder CO to watch Paige and her BSC Bengals 16U softball team compete in the IDT Tournament there. Today’s highlight for Peg and I will be a helicopter ride from the Western Rim of the Grand Canyon. As always, we start with an unpolished video previewing the day’s activities.

Day 2 Video Log

Helicopter Ride

Our hope was to visit the Route 66 Museum in Ashfork, but it was closed. However, we did see a couple of interesting places elsewhere on Route 66 in Seligman, AZ.

By the end of a long but totally enjoyable day, we did arrive in Flagstaff, where we spent the night.

Las Vegas to Grand Canyon West

Grand Canyon West to Flagstaff

By the way, the slide shows were produced using Ashampoo’s Slide Show Studio HD 4. Well, that completes Day 2 of our journey. Check back for our next episode. Until then…

My Web Presence

Where to Find Me

I am going to be spending more adding a significantly more content to my blog, website, and my current social media pages. If you want to follow me and view the written tutorials, and video tutorials that I have already published, and those that I will be adding moving forward, there are several ways to do that. I want to spend more of my time doing that and adding content more frequently.

Here are several ways to follow what I will be posting:

Email Distribution List – Not very often, since it requires heavy maintenance on my part. If you are not on it now, feel free to email me requesting to be added. And by all means, you can use email to ask me any digital photography, iPad/iPhone questions you have, and I will promptly reply.

donstouder@ca.rr.com

My Welcome Page – Many of you are familiar with this, and it does provide links to some of my sites.

https://donstouder.com

My Blog – Probably the timeliest and most frequently updated of all my sites. I have been posting here more many years now, and there is even a Search button that can be used to get to previously published material. There is also a button that allows you to subscribe to it and get an email whenever I post something. I find this to be very useful for me when there is a bog or something similar that I want to monitor. And please hit the Like button when you find a post that is useful or interesting.

https://don26812.wordpress.com

Facebook – I actually have two (actually three of you count my Leuzinger High School page) on Facebook. One is where I generally post family stuff, but on occasion will have links to digital photography topics etc. If you are a Facebook user, please go to the pages below and subscribe or Like the page. I would really appreciate it.

More Personal Posts – www.facebook.com/Don26812

Don’s Digital Photo Corner – Don’s Digital Photo Corner | Facebook

Leuzinger HS Class of 1963 – www.facebook.com/LeuzingerHsClassOf1963

YouTube – Currently, I have a large number of videos posted on YouTube, and they are generally accessible by direct links provided from one of my other sites. If you go to one of the linked videos, which are mostly Public, you will see Like and Subscribe buttons there, similar to Facebook. Please Subscribe or Like the videos if you found them interesting or helpful. Here is a link to one I posted from a trip I took to Mammoth in 2015. From there you can view or subscribe to my videos, most or many of which are tutorials and demos.

Pinterest – On my Pinterest page you find links not only to my tutorials, but those I found interesting written by experts. There are scores of links on several boards with a variety of subjects related to my interests. It is a great please to see very interesting and helpful articles and videos that have helped me. You can subscribe to my Pinterest posts as well.

My Photoshop Elements eBook – Now for my commercial. I have written four eBooks that cover only the Organizer of Photoshop Elements. My latest one covers Photoshop Elements 21. They are all available on Amazon. Here is the link to my latest one. I suspect I will write additional eBooks in the future.

Amazon.com: Photoshop Elements 2021 – The Organizer Plus eBook : Stouder, Donald: Books

Well, there you have it.

Initially, most my posts and videos dealt with Photoshop Elements. In more recent years, I continued covering that program, but added more and more content covering Lightroom, Photoshop, as well as content on iPads/iPhones and related subjects, such I my use and experiences with my DJI drones, Phantom 2+, and more recently the Mavic Pro.

My overall goal is to pass on what I learn as I practice my hobby making it more understandable and easier to follow than its original presentation. Also, I am sure that I follow these topics and technologies more closely than you have the time to do. These provide the value I add to a very crowded subject area on the internet.

Collection of My Previous Posts on Lightroom Classic

I have been using Adobe’s Photoshop Elements for over twenty years to manage my large collection of photographs and videos. In 2019, I switched to Lightroom for that task. Almost three years into using Lightroom, my workflow continues to evolve. I still use the Organizer in Photoshop Elements and continue to be a volunteer beta tester for Adobe. But, now my use is generally focused on using Elements for special projects and the unique features it provides.

Lightroom Classic’s Library module and the Organizer in Photoshop Elements 2022 have many capabilities and features in common, but there is no question that Lightroom is more powerful than Elements since its target users are professional photographers and prosumers. For the past three years I have written and published here articles primarily directed to using Lightroom’s Library module.

For those of you who use the subscription version of Lightroom Classic, you know that it is constantly being updated and evolving. Hence a few of my earlier articles may not reflect exactly more recent versions. The principles remain the same. These articles are best used by new users and reflect my own experience as I get to know Lightroom Classic and become more efficient in using it. Below is a list of the blog posts I have published over the years.

Please note, these are listed in reverse chronological order, with the most recent at the top of the list, and the very first one at the bottom.

How I Get My iPhone Photos into Lightroom Classic

You do not Need a Video Editor – Use Lightroom CC Presets

Lightroom Classic Can Adjust Tone and Color of Video

Screen You Photos in Lightroom Classic

How to Use Lightroom Classic Keywords Part 2

How to Use Lightroom Classic Keyword Tags – Part 1

Importing Images from Your Camera into Lightroom Classic

Lightroom Classic Library Module Workspace Overview – Part 1

Creating a New Catalog in Lightroom Classic CC

Brief Overview of Lightroom Classic’s Workspace

Setting Lightroom Classic CC Preferences

What is Lightroom CC Classic Anyway?

I am Changing My Photo Manage From Photoshop Elments to Lightroom CC Classic

Adobe Makes Major Announcements on Lightroom and Photoshop

Working with Catalogs in Both Photoshop Elements and Lightroom

Look for more in the future. Until next time…

Just Finished a Brand New eBook

I have written three eBooks on Photoshop Elements and published them on Amazon. But the last one was Photoshop Elements 14 – The Organizer Revisited Again. Photoshop Elements (PSE) has been improved and enhanced significantly since then, and I figured it was time to write another one.

Photoshop Elements 2021 – The Organzer Plus has just been added to my books on Amazon. I have been working on it the last couple of months.

New eBook

The finished eBook has 241 pages and 315 figures. As with my other eBooks, this one essentially only covers the Organizer module of Photoshop Elements. For the most part, I leave the Photo Editor to other authors. Even if you are using a slightly older version PSE, there is still plenty of helpful information for you in this eBook.

If you end up buying it or reading it for free through Kindle Unlimited, let me know what you think.

Until next time…

Adobe’s Photoshop Elements 2021 Released

It has been sometime since I last posted anything. One would think that with COVID-19 running wild, I would have more time to do this. Not so, it seems. I have been actively pursuing my photography to be sure. For one thing I have been busy beta testing the latest version of Photoshop Elements, PSE 2021, which Adobe just announced on Thursday.

Below is a link to where you can learn about this latest version, beyond what I can cover here. It includes several videos.

https://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop-elements/whats-new.html?trackingid=XFWLHJ9Z&mv=in-product

As I generally do, I am going to provide a short description of what is in the latest version. It includes performance improvements and some new features as well.

Here are some of the highlights:

In the Organizer there is a new Catalog database only backup command.

Three new Guided Edits, Perfect Landscapes (added a more dramatic sky in this example), Creative Dualtone Effect, and Move and Scale Object.

Moving Photos (2D and 3D camera motion) command in the Photo Editor.

Fix Face Tilt option has been added to the Enhance > Adjust Facial Features command. Note, the animated GIF here is just to give the idea of the results. There is no animation.

New Creation, Quote Graphic, which is accessible from both the Organizer and the Photo Editor, which has numerous templates, including animation.

Option to save photos to the Adobe cloud. You can also edit a photo stored on the cloud.

Use GPU to improve performance when using certain filters in the Photo Editor, for ezample, Liquify filter.

Adobe Camera RAW (ACR) editor was upgraded to the new look of Version 12.4 allowing the film strip of opened photos to be either at the bottom or the left.

In the coming weeks I will be demonstrating these and other improvements to Photoshop Elements 2021, as well as Premiere Elements 2021, which also had significant new features added this round. Stay tuned.

Until next time…

360-Degree Panoramas Webpage

If you have followed my blog, you know that a lot of my posts deal with 360-degree panoramas, either taken with my drone, or more recently my Insta360 One X camera. My posts have often dealt with my efforts to stitch the individual images together and then effectively project them to be able to use the mouse to scroll and zoom.

About a month ago I added a dedicated webpage to focus on both my efforts and some of the results. Currently most of the examples were created using Momento360.com projections. The link to the webpage is shown at the top of this page. Later I will highlight other sites and software.

Stay tuned.

Until next time, stay safe.

Scott Kelby’s Latest Webinar

This morning Scott Kelby presented his latest free webinar on backing up your photos. I tuned in a bit late, but the webinar is still available at the following link.

Scott Kelby Webinar – Backing Up Your Photos

In fact, you can also view previous webinars here as well.

The webinar is focused on those who use Adobe’s Lightroom Classic. For those of you are are Lightroom users, who are familar with Scott Kelby, you may already be familar with his SLIM – Simplified Lightroom Image Management system.

There is a complete updated course on Slim on KelbyOne.com

But even if you do not you will probably get multiple tips by watching the webinar.

Some of the key points discussed in the webinar include:

• Put all of your photos on one external hard drive.

• Backup up your photos to a second external hard drive.

• Also, back up your photos to cloud Storage.

• Put all of your photos on your external drive into a single super folder. Your existing folders are then sub-folders of this super folder.

• In Lightroom Classic, use only one Catalog.

The webinar goes on to discuss additional Lightroom topics. Even if you do not use Lightroom, the above practices are worth doing.

Until next time…

 

How Photoshop Elements has Changed Throughout the Years

As I read the discussions in various forums and Facebook groups, it is apparent that many users continue to use older versions of Photoshop Elements. Many users are even using older versions than PSE 11, released in the Fall of 2012. This version is significant, because Adobe changed the complete look and feel of the program in that version.

One of the most commonly asked questions from users of older versions is whether or not it is worthwhile to upgrade to the then current version. The answer for a given user depends upon their circumstances. It is often driven by changes in the computer they use, its operating system, and/or the camera they use.

Today, we are probably about half way through the product life cycle of PSE 2020. If history repeats itself, PSE 2021 will be released sometime this Fall. So the question many users ask is should I upgrade to the latest version. Adobe has a excellent table that compares PSE 2020 features with previous ones going back to PSE 15. You can access it at the link below:

For several years now I have maintained my own table. It is more detailed than the one in the above link and goes back to PSE 11. The link below is to my current version. It is an Excel spreadsheet. 

Feature Comparison PSE 11 Through PSE 2020

If you have been struggling to decide whether to upgrade or not, I hope you found this information helpful. If so please star-rate it or Like/Share the post. Also, I am always open to comments.

Until next time…

Addendum: Some were not able to open my spreadsheet. I have converted it to a PDF file. The link to it is below.

Photoshop Elements Feature Comparison PSE 11 through PSE 2020 PDF File.

 

Creating High Contrast Landscapes Images Using Photoshop

In this post, I am going to demonstrate how to bring out detail in landscape photos using traditional/legacy commands in Photoshop.

In more recent versions of Photoshop, we have new commands such as Clarity and Texture that essentially do this. But sometimes it is fun to revert to the old way. Besides, there is always that potential to better control the final result.

In this demo, I will be using Photoshop 2020, but the same techniques can be used using Photoshop Elements as well. I learned this technique from Dave Seeram in a magazine article he wrote several years ago.

Click on the figure below to view the tutorial.

If you found this AppTip Sheet to be helpful, please give it a star rating, or click on the Like or Share buttons at the bottom.

Until next time…