Speed up your Lightroom workflow with Photo Mechanic and get 33% off + bonuses

I love Lightroom, but if there's one thing that frustrates me, it's the speed (or lack thereof) with which it renders its 1:1 previews. And... you need those to check for sharpness, a rather essential criterion when you're separating the keepers from the rejects.

Speeding up your workflow with Photo Mechanic

That's why a lot of pro photographers have started to use Photo Mechanic, an extra piece of software, in their workflow. In the following video, I show you what Photo Mechanic can do as a 'front end' to Lightroom.

Photo Mechanic probably has only one drawback: its price tag of $150, although in itself not extravagant, seems to be a bit on the high side if you 'only' want to use it as a front-end to Lightroom...

The Big Deal Bundle

Well, I have some good news for you: if you like what you saw in the video, I would suggest NOT heading over to the Photo Mechanic website, but to the site of The Big Deal. This is a bundle consisting of over $3.000 worth of photography related software, ebooks, training videos, Lightroom presets, Photoshop actions and the like. The bundle is currently being offered for $99. And the best thing is... Photo Mechanic is included in The Big Deal. Not an old version or a time-delimited demo, but the real, fully workin, current version 5 (*). So, instead of forking out $150 for Photo Mechanic alone, you can get it at a 33% discount and in the mean time, download a very cool Joe McNally training vide on lighting, a compositing course by compositing guru Glyn Dewis, a tonne of Lightroom presets, some other cool software, including Clarity by Topaz Labs, Tonality by Macphun and much more.

Is this a permanent deal?

No, as with most of these bundles, there's a time-limit: you have to order before July 4th. So, if you're interested, head over to The Big Deal website and find out what else is included...

And don't forget, you'll not only be saving money but more importantly, you'll be saving precious time by culling your images with Photo Mechanic. And as time is money, you'll actually be saving money twice :-)

(*) Although the software itself is fully-functional, there are two things that I do want to tell you so you can make an informed decision: first of all, you can use this bundle version of Photo Mechanic on only one computer and second, the license is non-upgradeable. However, if you'll only be running it as a front-end to Lightroom in the way I describe in the video, the current version 5 has all it takes to do that, so you would not need an upgrade anytime soon anyway!

Review: Adrian Sommeling's 'Realistic Compositions' DVD

Every year, I try to set myself a new professional goal. For 2015, I wanted to redo my blog and website. And so I did. I switched to Squarespace from Wordpress. Squarespace is easier than Wordpress, but still, I had to learn it from scratch. So, you’re looking at the result of this year's goal. I hope you like it. And if you don’t, just imagine my previous site was even worse!

For 2016, I want to get better at compositing. In preparation, I think I’ve bought just about every tutorial and book there is on the planet. And there are a lot of them, believe me!

A couple of weeks ago, I noticed Dutch compositing guru Adrian Sommeling had released his brand new (and first) English training DVD: Realistic Compositions. Adrian’s work is fantastic, both literally and figuratively. I know his work from some of the covers of the Dutch photo magazine Focus. Although they're very realistically composited, I'd rather call them 'Surreal Compositions'. A look at his portfolio will tell you why. Watching one of Adrian's composites is like watching a show by a really good magician: you know it's not real, but you can't put your finger on 'the trick'.

I was lucky to receive a review copy. So... here is my review!

Almost 5 hours in 11 chapters

In this download-only production, which is broken up into 11 chapters, you get to see and follow along with a full composite from shoot to finish. That’s already a big difference with some of the other tutorials out there, who simply start with the Photoshop process. As it turns out, the way you plan your shoot (and your lights in your shoot) is essential to make your compositing project work.

The final composite (don't be intimidated by the height of the layer stack: everything is built up in easy to follow steps). Image © Adrian Sommeling.

Another difference with some of the other training material available, is that Adrian chose a more complex shoot (including flying chickens!), with lots of challenges. That partly explains the length of this DVD. On the other hand, it also means you can really learn a lot and after following this DVD to the end, you should definitely be able to create a realistic composite of your own, especially if you're smart enough not to make your first one as complex as this one! 

Shooting your subjects and masking them

A chicken with an expensive taste in lighting equipment. Image © Adrian Sommeling.

So the first chapters are all about the shoot. Then, Adrian will teach you how to mask your subjects to extract them from the studio background and put them into their new surrounding. I was surprised to see he only uses the Quick Selection tool. And I picked up a brilliant tip on how to use it that’s probably worth half of the DVD’s price. Now that I know that tip, I can understand why Adrian only uses this tool.

You might be surprised, but cutting out your subjects from the studio background is actually the simplest part of creating a realistic composite. Image © Adrian Sommeling.

“I learnt a trick about the Quick Selection tool that by itself is worth half of the price of the DVD”

It's all about the shadows

You might think that cutting out the individual elements is the most difficult part of the procedure, but it is not. That award goes to the tedious process of creating realistic shadows. Have you ever wondered why most composites (and compositing tutorials) only work with portraits from the waist up? That’s because it’s really difficult to create realistic shadows. And this is exactly what the biggest part of this DVD is about: Adrian gives us a little theory about shadows (I love his simple yet informative slides) and then he explains how to make contact shadows and ambient shadows.

Adrian's explanation on the types of shadows, their importance and how to recreate them from scratch is simply the best I've seen in any compositing tutorial.

He really makes you see your composite in three dimensions: there’s the shadows that the sun casts on the elements in your composite, but there’s also the shadows that the elements in your composite cast upon each other. Here again, I was surprised to see how he manually paints his shadows and then refines them with a layer mask. The closer a shadow is to its origin, the harder its contour will be and Adrian teaches you exactly how to simulate that.

All the elements placed into the scene. Without shadows, it definitely looks fake. Image © Adrian Sommeling.

After adding the different shadows: not only the long shadows caused by the sun, but also the contact shadows and the shadows that the elements of the scene cast upon each other. Image © Adrian Sommeling.

Getting the 3D look

One thing that is really typical for Adrian’s work is a very threedimensional feel: the elements seem to leap off your screen. He does that partly with his lighting, partly with his choice of lens (mostly wide-angle) and viewpoint (close to the ground) and finally, partly with his postprocessing. Adrian shows you how he uses relatively simple dodge and burn techniques to make his subjects stand out better.

Finishing touches

The final chapters are dedicated to ‘finishing touches’ such as replacing the sky, making tonal corrections, adding some Color Efex Pro (one of my own favourite plug-ins) and adding motion blur.

A nice personal touch is that Adrian uses his son in a lot of his composites. I can only imagine the kick the young boy must get out of seeing himself in these super composites.

Source files included

The DVD comes with all the source files, so you can try to mask them yourself and then put them together. My own boy is two and a half years old. He’s still too impatient to model for me and that probably (and luckily) gives me a year or two to work on my composites. In the mean time, I’ll rewatch Adrian’s DVD a couple of times!

Conclusion

As you might have guessed by now, I can really recommend this DVD. 85€ is a very fair price considering the amount of info that you get and given the fact that all the source files are included. In fact, if you ever consider taking one of Adrian’s workshops, this DVD is an excellent boot camp. In order to get the most out of this training DVD, I do recommend you should be familiar with layers, layer masks and adjustment layers. If you aren’t, I would recommend taking a basic Photoshop course first. I'm obviously slightly biased but I have had some really nice reviews about my own - seven hour - ‘Photoshop for Photographers’ over at Craft & Vision. Alternatively, if you speak Dutch, the Photoshop courses Marit Hilarius and I have created for the Dutch Photography, Lightroom and Photoshop online video tutorial website Photofacts Academy. For the latter, you can get a 2 week free trial (no credit card required) here.

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The 5 Day Deal: Save over 95 percent on top-notch photography training!

Chances are that by the end of this week, your inbox will be overflowing with emails about the 5 Day Deal. Even more, I'll put in my own two cents through my mailing list, Facebook and Twitter. The reason is that if you're reading this blog, you're interested in photography education in general and in postprocessing in particular. And that's what the 5 Day Deal has to offer. In spades. It's an unmissable opportunity to learn a lot about photography and image editing for relatively little money. Oh, and in the mean time, you get to do some charity as well. Where's the catch? There isn't. Other than you'll be needing a good internet connection to download all the stuff!

What is the 5 Day Deal?

The 5 Day Deal is a bundle of photography-related training videos, eBooks, Lightroom presets, Photoshop actions and the like. These are offered at a bundle-price of $127 (+ VAT for Europeans, if you have a valid VAT-number, you can order VAT-free). So far the 'Deal'-part. The '5 Day' part means the Deal is only valid for five days: from now until September 15th.

All the instructors are big names in their field so this bundle really is 'All Killer, No Filler'. To name but a few of the 20 photographers and retouchers: Lindsay Adler and Jeremy Cowart (portrait photography), Zack Arias (flash photography) and Serge Ramelli (French Lightroom-instructor, who's worth checking out if only for his super-enthusiast French accent. It's like being taught Lightroom by 'Inspector Clouseau'!) And let's not forget Joel Grimes (flash photography and compositing in Photoshop). Even yours truly is featured in the list!

Lindsay Adler's excellent course is but one of over 40 training resources in this bundle.

When purchased separately, the total bill of these resources would amount to over $3300. Now, they can be yours for less than 5 percent of that price. Or a discount of over 95 percent! Even if you're only interested in half of this bundle's content, the 5 Day Deal is a great deal to fill your iPad with training and reading material for the coming winter. Some of the over 40 training titles separately cost more than the entire bundle.

And, as the proverbial cherry on the pie, a part of the sale goes to charity! More on that later.

Yes but is there also something interesting for me?

Of course, I cannot decide for you, but I've already had a sneek peak and below is my personal, highly subjective top-10.

1. Zack Arias - On Assignment - The Art of the Editorial
   Flash expert, Fujifilm user and all-round nice guy Zack Arias takes you behind the scenes of a couple of commercial editorial shoots. You can see how Zack tackles challenges and makes the best of a situation and an environment and turns these into really nice portraits. On top of that, this tutorial is brand new! What can I say? I love Zack! 
2. Joel Grimes - Start To Finish Tutorials
   Joel Grimes is a US commercial photographer with a signature (and oft-copied) style. He's also known for his compositing work. The 5 Day Deal brings you two of his training videos. 
3. Jimmy McIntyre - Art of Digital Blending
   This Photoshop training teaches you all about advanced Photoshop selections and masks and introduces you to the concept of Luminosity Masking. Recommended!
4. Lindsay Adler - 5 Creative Studio Lighting Setups
   Famous New York portrait photographer Lindsay Adler shows us 5 easy yet powerful lighting setups.
5. Klaus Hermann Lightroom Preset Power Pack
   The previous 5 Day Deal had Klaus Hermann's Mask it like a Pro video training which I really liked. Now, Klaus is back with a Lightroom preset pack and a 100+ page eBook that covers all you could possibly want to know about Lightroom presets. He not only covers Develop presets (the most popular category) but also metadata presets, tool presets and so on. German thoroughness or 'Deutsche Gründlichkeit', as they say in Germany.
6. Lightroom for Landscapes
   We stay in Lightroom-territory (litterally) with this Lightroom training designed specifically for landscape photographers. It covers everything from import over editing to exporting your images. Another training that by itself costs more than the entire bundle.
7. James Brandon: POST Video Tutorial
   Photoshop wizard and acclaimed landscape photographer James Brandon shows us how he processes his images with Photoshop and he throws in a bunch of Lightroom presets just for fun!
8. The Art of Sculpting Splashes by Alex Koloskov
   This is the beauty of the 5 Day Deal: the subject of this video training interests me, but I would have a hard time paying the normal $250 price tag. Now, I don't have to: I can get this training for almost half of its suggested retail price and get dozens of other books, presets and training videos in the process!
9. Serge Ramelli - Lightroom CC Complete Training
   If you think I'm sometimes overdoing it in my Lightroom edits, wait until you see what 'PhotoSerge' does with his raw files! Personally, I find his training to be very entertaining, if only for the funny Franglais.
10. The Created Image Series Volume 2
    Last but not least this one: the video recording of last year's Created Image Seminar in Vancouver, Canada. Great motivational keynotes by David duChemin and three super-interesting lectures by Steve Simon, known for his 'The Passionate Photographer' book. 

The total value of this top-ten alone is over $1.100. And there's more, depending on your interests: a newborn photography video tutorial, Photoshop skin softening actions, a Wedding Photography Planner Guide, it just goes on and on. In fact, you can find the full list of all included resources here.

Oh, and lest I forget, you also get Clarity by Topaz Labs, a fully functional Lightroom and Photoshop plugin that is like Lightroom's Clarity slider on steroids.

The full list of all the 5 Day Deal goodies.

I am proud to be featured in The Created Image video series, which is just one of the over 40 training resources. I talk about speeding up your Lightroom workflow, Dodging and Burning and Black and White conversion. The entire 5 Day Deal bundle contains 70+ hours of video, 10+ eBooks and hundreds of Photoshop Actions and Lightroom presets.

The funny thing is that even yours truly is - indirectly - represented in the 5 Day Deal: in the Created Image Video Tutorial I mentioned earlier, you'll find three sessions in which I talk about Lightroom efficiency, Black and White and Dodging & Burning.

Did you mention something about charity?

If you need an extra push, you can always ease your conscience (or your partner) with the knowledge that 10 percent (i.e. almost $13) of every bundle sold goes to the four charities the 5 Day Deal team picked. Even more, you can opt to double that amount upon checkout and you get to choose the charity of your liking, too.

You can choose to which of these 4 charities your 10 percent goes. By default, they all get 2.5 percent. Or, if you think the 5 Day Deal's actually too cheap, you can double the amount that goes to charity, too!

Last year's 5 Day Deal gathered a whopping $200.000+ for these charities and this time they're aiming at breaking the $300.000 mark. 

All 4 charities look great, but I have a soft spot for the BOMA project, if only because my good friend David duChemin already did some pro bono work for them: if it's good enough for him, it's good enough for me! Boma helps very poor women in rural African areas to the financial means to start small projects. 

I rest my case!

Disclaimer: if you purchase the 5 Day Deal bundle through the links on this page, MoreThanWords receives an affiliate commission (which cost you nothing extra, by the way). However, this does not influence my opinion about this bundle: on my blog, I only recommend things I find worthwhile. For instance, a while back, there was another bundle which I decided not to recommend because I knew this one was coming and I liked it better.