Bernskiold Media

Adding Lightroom Keyword Sets

Erik Bernskiold — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 14:00:56 +0000

In this tutorial, we are going to take a look at how to add keyword sets that you can use to quickly add related keywords to your photos in Lightroom.

Library Module

Click on the Library heading in the module picker to get to the Library module.

Keywording Panel

In the right sidebar, click on the keywording heading to expand it (if it isn’t already). Then look at the bottom of the panel, where you can see the keyword set part.

Edit the Set

Next to the Keyword Set title, there is a dropdown box. Click on it and from the menu that comes up, select "Edit set…".

Filling in your keywords

In the boxes that are either filled or empty, fill in the keywords that you want to make into a set. After you are done, click on the dropdown menu at the top.

Saving the set

When clicking on the dropdown menu, this menu should come right up (with the middle part being the keyword sets that you already have). What you want to click on is, "Save Current Settings as New Preset". You will then be asked for a name. After that, just click create and you have your own keyword set!

The iPhone Book, 3rd Version

Erik Bernskiold — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 19:27:18 +0000

iPhone or iPod Touch user? Then you have a device that is really powerful and can do a lot of things, so much things that you may have a hard time knowing about them all. There are a few books out there that explains every tiny detail about the iPhone and there are those who are aimed at the “just show how to do it” approach. The iPhone Book by Scott Kelby and Terry White is just one like that.

The book is written by best-selling tech author Scott Kelby together with the tech guru Terry White, president of the MacGroup-Detroit and host of the top-ranked Adobe Creative Suite Podcast. All in all from looking at this, the book should be a great read, but is it?

It is clearly divided into chapters of the major features. You can find mail to be a chapter on its own, as well as the iPod and Phone respectively and same with all major features (like Messages etc.). Since this is an upgrade to the previous edition (this is the third edition), it contains everything that was there before, updated with the new features and tweaks that was added in the iPhone OS 3.0 and the iPhone 3GS and now supports both the Touch, the iPhone 3G and 3Gs.

If you feel that you are not that technically inclined, do not worry! The book has instructions that can be used for both the complete beginner and advanced user (and everything in between).

Even if you consider yourself an advanced user, you will definitely get something out of this book, especially because of the “iTips” that are placed at the bottom of some pages, highlighting more hidden tips. These tips could be anything from further reading to shortcuts on the device or hidden features.

What makes the book ideal as a good how-to manual for the iPhone or iPod Touch is that is it easy to skip around. There is nothing forcing you to read it from cover to cover and keeping everything written in your head (although if you manage to keep everything in your head, it cannot hurt you). You could use the book as a manual and just look up features as you need to know how to delve into them, or just read a little now and then to explore something new. It is all up to you and it works both ways!

I would definitely recommend this book to any iPhone or iPod Touch owner (although more so for the iPhone owner because of the additional features there). I guarantee that you will learn something from the book, beginner or advanced. The book has something for everyone.

onOne Software Plug-In Suite 5 is announced!

Erik Bernskiold — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 15:39:15 +0000

onOne Software is known for their excellent plug-ins for Photoshop and now, they have announced their latest suite, Plug-In Suite 5. The suite consists of all their lead plug-ins that as they say, solve the six most common problems in Photoshop.

Genuine Fractals 6, lets you resize images.
Mask Pro 4, will remove unwanted background.
PhotoTune 3, color corrects your photos
FocalPoint 2, helps you put the focus where you want.
PhotoTools 2.5, getting the professional look.
PhotoFrame 4.5, adds the finishing touch.

The suite will be available soon for $599.95 but right now, you can save $200 and pre-order it for $399.95. If you already own a previous Plug-In Suite version, you can upgrade for $199.95. This sale will end on November 10 so if you are looking to get the suite, now is a good time to do so!

OpenGL Benefits in Photoshop CS4

Erik Bernskiold — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 20:56:04 +0000

With Photoshop CS4 came the ability to utilize OpenGL capabilities on your graphics card (GPU). This allows for better rendering of documents and improvements to controlling Photoshop.

WordPress 2.0 for the iPhone

Erik Bernskiold — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 18:55:05 +0000

WordPress is such a popular tool for blogging and running a website (this site is even built on it). Being able to write and edit on the go is always very neat and with the iPhone version, this has been available for some time. Today, the WordPress for iPhone team have released version 2.0 of the WordPress app, with some great new features.

Before we dive deep in with the new features, I should note that WordPress 2.0 is a completely new app and not an update to the old one. That means you will have to get it again. You can do so from iTunes (direct app link).

Here is a short outline on what is new (click the read more link for the full log), from the official blog:

A new, more efficient user interface that makes it faster to switch between comments, posts, and pages.
Various user interface refinements and bug fixes
New Comments interface, with Gravatars and the author URL shown in the comment list
Passwords are now stored in the keychain
Posts are now automatically saved and restored if network connection is lost during publishing
Added persistence, so the app re-opens in the blog you last used
Added an interface for manually entering the XMLRPC endpoint for non-standard setups
Fixed rotation-related visual glitches
Fixed errors where malformed XML prevented access to XMLRPC endpoint
Fixed edge case where local drafts were sometimes not saved
Fixed the order of photos so that they’re displayed in the order they’re uploaded

Adobe announces Public Lightroom 3 Beta!

Erik Bernskiold — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 05:05:37 +0000

Adobe has today announced the availability of a public beta of the new Lightroom 3. You can download the beta from the Adobe Labs site. Here are some of the new features (from the Adobe Labs page):

Brand new performance architecture, building for the future of growing image librarie
State-of-the-art noise reduction to help you perfect your high ISO shots
Watermarking tool that helps you customize and protect your images with ease
Portable sharable slideshows with audio—designed to give you more flexibility and impact on how you choose to share your images, you can now save and export your slideshows as videos and include audio
Flexible customizable print package creation so your print package layouts are all your own
Film grain simulation tool for enhancing your images to look as gritty as you wan
New import handling designed to make importing streamlined and easy
More flexible online publishing options so you can post your images online to certain online photo sharing sites directly from inside Lightroom 3 beta (may require third-party plug-ins)

Installing WordPress Themes

Erik Bernskiold — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 15:33:09 +0000

Learn how to install themes to your WordPress website and where you can easily find them, in this tutorial.

Welcome to the new Bernskiold Media!

Erik Bernskiold — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 04:00:43 +0000

Let me be the first to welcome you to this brand new iteration of Bernskiold Media. If you have been here before, welcome back. If you are new to the site, welcome! What you will mostly notice on the new site is of course the new look. We’ve been working hard in order to present to you a brand new site that is easier to browse.

We’ve made it much easier to read the reviews and tutorials and we are adding a lot of new tutorials now, every week, with the goal of being the one go-to place for fully free, high-quality tutorials, both in text and video format. We have a wide range of topics for these tutorials, from using the Adobe Creative Suite Applications to Code and even Photography!

We will also be posting some articles or interesting industry news on the blog, throughout the weeks as well as generally interesting things!

Go ahead, check out the new site, familiarize yourself with it, check out the new tutorials and let us know in the comments how you like it.

Simple, Stylish and Glossy Image Frame

Erik Bernskiold — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 12:00:26 +0000

There are loads of different types of frames that you can show off your photos in. This is a type of frame that isn’t suited for print but for use in graphical design where you place images. It can be done both with and without a shiny effect, that makes it look like light is falling onto it.

Step 1 – The Document

Create a new file. I made mine 500×200 to give me some space to work with, at 72 pixels per inch resolution. Fill the background to white.

Step 2 – Frame

Create a new layer and draw a rectangle, about the size I’ve done below with the Marquee tool (Keyboard shortcut M). Fill that with a light grey such as #dddddd.

Step 3 – Stroke and Shadow

Hit deselect (Ctrl + D on PC, Command + D on Mac). Then go into Blending Options and apply a Drop Shadow with an opacity of 25% and a 8px White, inside, Stroke.

Step 4 – Duplicate and Rotate

Duplicate the layer with the box on (Ctrl/Command + J) and then bring up the Free Transform tool (Ctrl/Command + T). With the free transform in place, rotate the image around -5 degrees (to the left), until it looks like my image below. You can also use a little rotate on the box on the layer below, using the same way but to the right.

Step 5 – Dropping Your Photo

Open a photo you want to use. I’m going to use one of a garden that I took myself. In your frame file, select the top layer by Ctrl/Command clicking on the layer icon of the top layer. Then drag it over to the file with your image in, you will get the very same selection over there. Then copy and go back to your frame file and press paste. You will now have a third layer on top of the other two.

Step 6 – Copying Styles

As you now see, the layer doesn’t have the layer styles we created before (the drop shadow and the white border), so to make it look right, right click on the frame layer or its copy, and copy the layer style. Then select the top layer with your photo and press paste. Also delete the layer copy, since we don’t need that one, now that the photo has taken its place. It should now look like below.

Step 7 – Making It Glossy

We could stop here, since we have the basic frame, but we also want it to have a glossy look to it. So open up the blending options for the photo layer and under Gradient Overlay, add a foreground to transparent (making sure foreground is white) gradient, make sure the white is on top of the photo and lower the opacity to about 50%. That will leave us with a glossy looking photo in a frame, hopefully looking as the below one.

I hope you have enjoyed the tutorial and learned something from it. This can of course be used with many different images inside and it suits great on websites on any background.

Installing WordPress

Erik Bernskiold — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 19:21:09 +0000

Before you can run WordPress, you need to install it. In this tutorial, we go through the rather simple setup process of WordPress and touch on setting up databases and users as you need for the installation to work.