LADIG – LA Lightroom User Group

Today’s advertising images are made by very high-end (and very highly-paid) professionals, who create a crafted narrative, with camera-captured and post-processing-manipulated elements, on the way to unique, cinematic, clean and striking images! 

Come meet CJ Burton, a top advertising photographer in LA, who pulls inspiration from the world of film to incorporate constructed environments in an engaging, visual-story-telling image! Rare among photographers, CJ can sketch his ideas and present them to the client for approval – then plan the execution, with a large team, capturing as much as possible in camera, before moving to the computer, to complete and finesse the envisioned image. By keeping control of the entire process, CJ can make images that most effectively illustrate the advertiser’s concept – something that’s recognized (and rewarded) by the ad agencies! His work has been featured for years in national editorial, advertising, and TV and theatrical marketing. A graduate of the Art Center College in Pasadena, he has been working in illustrative photography since 2001. Do visit his website – you will recognize some of the ads, and be amazed! CJ will present a variety of images and walk us through the process of their creation and production, before giving us an example of how he retouches an image in post! Don’t miss this very rare peak in how true high-end pros work!!!

Join us at 6PM for social time, and at 7PM for the presentation, at our usual location, Plummer Park, 7377 Santa Monica Blvd in West Hollywood. Admission is free, but we’d appreciate a donation to help keep LADIG afloat. Every ticket bought enters you into our raffle drawing! This month, you can win a 4TB RAID bus-powered rugged drive from LaCie, a $300 value!!! Please register on the form below:

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It’s a new year, and it’s time to backup and archive your 2018 shots (and maybe organize and store your entire library, if you haven’t done it yet!) 

What’s the best strategy: a pile of hard drives? A honkin’ NAS storage array?  On Dropbox? A cloud service like Backblaze? Or maybe just use the new Lightroom CC and let Adobe deal with it?

The best answer is different for each person, and the best answer is more than one of the above choices. We’ll talk about the pros and cons of each method and give some best practices, so you can make or update your backup strategy — you do have a backup strategy, right???

This meeting will be held at Plummer Park, 7377 Santa Monica Blvd. in West Hollywood. Doors open at 6pm for socializing, and the program wil get rolling at 7pm.

Admission is free but we’d appreciate a donation to pay for snacks and help keep LADIG afloat.

Register on the form below.

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Join us for this special event focused on Printing with Inkjet! Making prints serves both as a hard-copy proof of what your images really look like, as well as making truly valuable, permanently-visible gifts!

We will have a full program, with the following presenters:

A representative from Eizo, the top monitors in the business, with the new software for soft proofing and connecting to your custom print profiles!

Veronica Cotter (Education Development Manager and Western Region Manager for Hahnemühle USA, in the photo industry for 35+ years) will show us a full range of Hahnemühle papers, some of the best available, and explain how to match paper qualities to the content and mood of the images!

Genaro Arroyo, top tech from Canon, will bring along a printer, and discuss how to technically get the best output possible!

Paul DuPont, our resident color management expert, who is also available as a custom printer for large-format images, will discuss… Color Management (why you won’t get a great print without a custom profile for your printer and paper)

George Simian, our fearless leader, who will cover Soft-Proofing both in LR and in PS, as well as Sharpening for printing, and answer all your burning workflow questions!

Bring an image on a flash drive (USB stick) and, time allowing, we’ll make a print!

This is a unique opportunity to learn from the top experts in the field!

Join us at 6PM for social time, and at 7PM for the presentation, at our usual location, Plummer Park, 7377 Santa Monica Blvd, in West Hollywood.

Admission is free, but we’d appreciate a donation to help keep LADIG afloat. Please register on the form below:

Having seen Color Grading in Photoshop at our last meeting, come to our October 30 meeting and see George Simian create similar unifying color effects, using just Lightroom! Much more effective for production (no need to go to Photoshop, able to sync to multiple images at once), the success of the process hinges more on one’s sense of color relationships, than on any specific technique. Many of the Lightroom tools will be demonstrated, from Curves, to Split Toning, and especially to the new capability of local adjustment tools (brushes, gradient or radial filters) to be masked by luminosity or color! A full and clear explanation of Color Wheel relationships will anchor our exploration, and we will color grade several images, while addressing all your questions!

George Simian is a people photographer, and educator (recognized by PDN Magazine as one of the top dozen workshop instructors in the country), a volunteer in the work for the recognition of photographers’ rights (life-long involvement with American Photographic Artists), a Phase One Certified Pro, and a frequent instructor on Lightroom and Photoshop.

Join us at 6PM for social time, and at 7PM for the presentation, at our usual location, Plummer Park, 7377 Santa Monica Blvd in West Hollywood.

Admission is free, but we’d appreciate a donation to help keep LADIG afloat. Please register on the form below:

Color has a profound impact on the story your images tell. Changing the colors of the highlights, mid-tones, and shadows will change the tone and message of your image. A strong color treatment helps tell the story more clearly and with more impact. It will elevate your images and give it a unique look, ultimately to be identified with your own brand.

In this talk Dennis Dunbar will demonstrate how to first analyze the color in your images, and then put yourself in control of color grading process, using Photoshop plus a really cool service from Adobe! Using the color.adobe.com site, together with a variety of adjustment layers in Photoshop, including Selective Color, Solid Color Layer, Hue&Saturation, and Gradient Map, along with Luminosity Maps, Dennis will demonstrate how to dramatically improve your images!

Dennis (www.dunbardigital.com) is a highly sought-after digital retoucher in LA. Working at the highest levels of the entertainment industry, he composites film posters and “improves” the images of celebrities.

Join us at 6PM for social time, and at 7PM for the presentation, at our usual location, Plummer Park, 7377 Santa Monica Blvd in West Hollywood.

Admission is free, but we’d appreciate a donation to help keep LADIG afloat. Please register on the form below: