STEP ONE: Launch Photoshop (after, of course, you’ve downloaded the latest update which was released on Monday), and from the bottom of the Settings menu, choose “Camera Raw’ (as shown above).

STEP TWO: In the list of Camera Raw preferences that appear on the left side of the window, click on “Technology Previews” to bring up the window you see here. Then, turn on the checkbox for “New AI Features and Settings Panel,” as shown above.

STEP THREE: Once you do that, open an image in Camera Raw (the full plug-in, not as a filter from Ps) and click on the Crop tool. It will now say “Crop & Expand” at the top of the panel, and you’ll see some new features below. Turn on the checkbox for “Enable Expand” (as shown here), and now you’re ready to rock. In the next two steps, we’ll look at how it works now that you have it turned on.

STEP FOUR: with ‘Enable Expand’ turned on, you can now drag the cropping border outside the edges of the image (instead of just cropping in tighter like normal). So, if you wanted to make this image wide or square (instead of tall), you could drag out the side handles (as shown here).

STEP FIVE: once you have the borders where you want them, click the ‘Generate Button’ (as shown here), and it generates what it needs to fill in those empty spaces to give you the wide image you see above. You have three variations to choose from, using the Variations arrows to toggle through each to find the one that looks best. If you don’t like any of them, hit the Generate button again. And that’s all there is to it. Can’t wait until this gets added to Lightroom in an update.

Join Us For “The Wildlife Photography Conference” coming in December

It’s just a little over a month from now, and it’s two days, all online, and everyone’s invited to spend a few days with us learning, laughing, and making new connections.

The conference is Dec. 10-11, 2024 (Tuesday and Wednesday), but we kick the conference off a day early on Monday with a special pre-conference session from the brilliant teacher and photographer Rick Sammon called “WILDLIFE PSYCHOLOGY, PHOTOGRAPHY & PHILOSOPHY” and you don’t want to miss it.

with Rick Sammon?” This is such an important and eye-opening topic to kick things off, and we can’t wait to share it and 20 more classes in two simultaneous tracks with you in early December.

Plus, you get access to the entire event to stream live on-demand for an entire year!

We’ve put together an absolutely top-notch team of instructors — some of the most passionate, gifted communicators, who are there for one reason — to help you take your wildlife photography up a big notch. Here’s a sneak peek at who’s teaching:

Here’s a sneak peek:

• Scott Kelby (@scottkelby) Hey, that’s me!
• Richard Bernabe (@bernabephoto)
• Scott Bourne (@bourne.scott)
• Colby Brown (@colbybrownphotography)
• Alex Cearns (@houndstoothstudiobyalexcearns)
• Kelly Jones (@kellyjonesunderwater)
• Matt Kloskowski (@mattkloskowski)
• Erik Kuna (@erikkuna)
• Kristi Odom (@kristiodom)
• Moose Peterson (@moosepeterson)
• Ian Plant (@ianplantphoto)
• Juan Pons (@jpons)
• Kathleen Reeder (@kathleenreeder)
• Rick Sammon (@ricksammonphotography)
• Jonathan & Angela Scott (@thebigcatpeople)

This event is packed with expert-led inspiration and insights for every wildlife photography niche. Sign up today to secure your spot and save $150 (here’s the link for tickets and more details).

Have a great weekend, everybody! #RollTide and #GoBucs!

-Scott

The post How to Add “Generative Expand” to Camera Raw appeared first on Lightroom Killer Tips.

Give this one a try, and you’ll super dig it.

Thanks To Everybody Who Join Us For Photoshop World 2024

The conference wrapped up yesterday (Hurricane and all), and I’m very grateful to all the folks who spent 3+ days with us learning, and laughing, and making friends. The weather here proved to be a challenge, but our team did an amazing job of keeping the trains on the tracks. I’m very grateful to Erik Kuna, Ron Ducan, Christina Sauer, Jason Stevens, Eric Hathaway, Juan Alfonso, Dobson “Gibmaster,” Kathy P (K-Pop), and our whole crew, who worked through it all and delivered an amazing conference with lots of “Lightroom learnin’.”

Here’s wishing you a safe, dry weekend. #GoBucs, and #RollTide!

-Scott

The post How To Turn Any Collection Into a Favorite appeared first on Lightroom Killer Tips.

It’s the longest I’ve been away from home (and work) – a whole month, and while I had an absolutley fantastic time, it’s great to be back.

First, I taught a workshop in Norway, then after a few days with some dear friends in England. After that my wife flew over to London to meet me, where we boarded a cruise ship for a trip around England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland, and Northern Ireland, and back to Norway to celebrate our 35th wedding anniversary.

I put together a Web page (using Adobe Express) with some of my favorite images from before the workshop (during our scouting days) and then from the workshop (including lots of behind-the-scenes images). Lots to share and the story behind it all, if you’ve got a sec.

Here’s a link to the images: https://new.express.adobe.com/webpage/r3WsEHRGQfqdj

Thanks for giving ’em a quick look.

It’s great to be back, and I’ll be hitting ya with some more Lightroom tips later this week.

Cheers,

-Scott

The post I’m Back From Norway (and here’s some photos) appeared first on Lightroom Killer Tips.

I’m up here with my dear friends (and KelbyOne Instructors) Mimo Meidany and Dave Williams, doing a hands-on travel photography workshop for 12 photographers from the US and UK, and we are already having a ball.

ABOVE: That’s Mimo, me, and Dave somewhere in Lofoten.

Yesterday and today, we have just been scouting locations all over Lofoten for the workshop. Then, the workshop kicks off tomorrow night at a great local restaurant where we’ll have a tasty dinner as a group and lots of wine, then we’ll give our first official briefing for the next day’s shooting adventure. I just cannot wait! This place is just otherworldly. Indescribable beauty (right now, there is a little bit of rain, too – but with any luck, it will have mostly moved on by tomorrow afternoon. At least, that’s what we’re hoping).

So, not much Lightroom stuff to share today, so I’m hoping Rob will sweep in and save the day with this column (as he so often does), but I just wanted to say hi to everybody and here’s wishing you a week of great images, no matter where you are.

-Scott

The post Howdy, From Norway’s Lofoten Islands! appeared first on Lightroom Killer Tips.

Super handy stuff – the masking tools are a real game-changer. Thanks, Terry.

Have a great Monday, ya’ll.

-Scott

The post Using Lightroom’s Masking Tools for Adjusting Clothes and Facial Hair appeared first on Lightroom Killer Tips.

She. Is. Awesome, and her courses are brilliant! Here’s a link to her 12 (that’s right, twelve) full-length KelbyOne courses. You can buy any one of them for $29 or join, become a member, and watch them all).

Thanks, and have a great weekend, everybody (and yes, football is back!).

-Scott

The post Awesome Video on Enhancing Portraits in Lightroom appeared first on Lightroom Killer Tips.

Let me know if you agree, disagree, or if you’re dealing with noise in a different way, etc., down in the comments.

The Photoshop World Conference 2024 is coming up next month!

It’s back again on Sept. 24-26, 20204, and it’s three full days, multiple training tracks, all online, featuring your favorite Photoshop World instructors and the Photoshop World experience, complete with an opening keynote, the attendee party, the Guru Awards — the whole nine yards and it’s going to be awesome! Don’t miss out – register now and save a ton on your ticket. Go to PhotoshopWorld.com and save your spot for the Lightroom, Photoshop and Photography online event of the year.

Have a great week everybody – I’m taking a few days to take my awesome wifey on a trip to celebrate her birthday, but I’ll be back shortly (well, if all goes well. LOL!). Have a great week!

-Scott

The post Some Straight Talk About High ISO Noise (and dealing with it) appeared first on Lightroom Killer Tips.

If you do regular backups of your catalog (and I’m hoping you do when you see that dialog above, which appears when you quit Lightroom Classic), it will make a COPY of your entire catalog. Each time you hit that ‘Back up,’ it makes yet another backup copy. Sure, it compresses that backup quite a bit, but still…those backups can get really large in file size. Worse yet, after a couple of weeks, they’re so outdated that those older ones become useless anyway.

If you did wind up with a corrupt catalog (rare, but it can happen), you would restore from your most recent backup, right? So, what are you doing with all those old updates from months ago, years ago? Nothing. They’re just eating up space for no reason, and that’s why today, Friday, is the perfect day to “Delete your old Lightroom backup catalogs.”

Look inside your Lightroom folder (the one where your catalog(s) are stored) (mine was inside my Pictures folder on my Mac), and look for a folder named “Backups.” Inside that folder, see if you don’t have a whole bunch of backups that are way out of date (as seen above) and just eating up hard drive space for no reason.

If you don’t see a folder named ‘Backups,’ that’s because you don’t have any backups (ack!), so if disaster strikes (your catalog gets corrupted), you will be starting over from scratch in Lightroom. For more information on backing up your catalog, check out this article we did on backing up your catalog (why you should and how to do it), and hit this link.

I still had some old backups from June of 2023 hanging around. If somehow my catalog got corrupted, I would want to use a backup from Late July of 2024—not one from a year ago and so on. So those outdated backups are doing just one thing—eating up space. Now’s the time to pitch ’em, seeing as it’s ‘Delete Your Old Catalog Backups’ Friday!

I hope that this process frees up some space for you. If you looked in your Lightroom folder and didn’t even see a folder named ‘Backups,’ maybe it made you quit Lightroom. Then go and hit that ‘Make Backup’ button so you at least have one on hand in case disaster strikes.

Here’s wishing you a “Football’s almost here” type of weekend!

-Scott

The post It’s ‘Delete Your Old Lightroom Backup Catalogs” Friday! appeared first on Lightroom Killer Tips.

Above: Here’s the image we’re going to work on, and while there are a number of things I would probably remove along that left wall, I’m mostly concerned with that bright spot at the bottom of the stairs, right in front of the vase (it looks like a light beaming through kind of a crescent-shaped opening.

STEP ONE: We head to the Develop Module and I’m going to zoom in tight on the area we’re working on. Next, I click on the Remove Tool in the toolbar (it’s shown as circled here in red. Its icon looks like an eraser). Then, I painted over the bright spot with the tool, as seen above).

STEP TWO: And here is the result, which is pretty bad, but that’s often what you get with this tool (at least, that’s been my experience. Sometimes, it works pretty well, as long as what you’re removing is really simple, but it really falls down on more complicated fixes.

OK, let’s hit “undo” (Command-Z on Mac, Ctrl-Z on Windows) and try again, but this time, we’re going to turn on the Generative AI checkbox (as seen circled above in red).

STEP THREE: With Generative AI turned on, you use the tool like you always would, so I just painted over the bright spot again (as seen above). Now click the ‘Apply’ button to let it do its thing.

Above: After a few seconds, here’s the first result. I say “first” because it gives you three options. The first result is pretty darn good.

Above: To see one of the other results (called ‘Variations’), click the left and right arrow buttons in the Remove panel (circled here in red). I usually find that the 2nd or 3rd variation looks best, but every once in a while, #1 wins out. That’s why it’s important to view all three.

You can clearly see how vastly better this new AI feature makes the removal process, so I leave that checkbox on all the time—I don’t see any reason to go to the “worse result” version of the tool. High-five to Adobe for bringing this to Lightroom. It’s a game-changer when it comes to removing distractions.

Travel Photographers: How to Shoot Like a Pro On Your Next Vacation

We just released a brand new course on how to shoot travel photography like a pro, and we shot the entire course on location in beautiful Santorini, Greece (even though it’s shot in Santorini, the techniques are not about shooting in Greece – you’d apply these same techniques no matter where your travels take you. Check out the official trailer below (it’s just 60-seconds, but you’ll get the idea):

You can buy the course for $29 or watch it and all our other courses on travel photography (and everything else, including a ton of courses on Lightroom) by becoming a KelbyOne member for just $20 a month (cancel anytime and it’s 100% money-back guaranteed!).

Here’s the link to the course.

That’s it for today – hope you have an awesome Monday!

-Scott

The post Does Lightroom’s Remove Tool’s Generative AI Feature Really Make a Big Difference? appeared first on Lightroom Killer Tips.

Told ya it was short (and sweet), and I hope it was helpful.

Have a great weekend, everybody!

-Scott

The post Great Little One-Minute Video For Help in Setting Your White Balance appeared first on Lightroom Killer Tips.