LADIG – LA Lightroom User Group

Nothing ruins portrait images faster than bad skin retouching – see the vast majority of portraits on the photography enthusiasts sites with that “plastic doll/plastic wrap” skin that screams “fake”!!! Frequency Separation is the most common and flexible technique that retouchers use to smooth and cleanup skin, while still preserving fully-realistic texture – and it’s not that difficult to master, if implemented correctly, and used smartly (“… with great power comes great responsibility…”)

Lisa Carney has been a top Hollywood entertainment and beauty retoucher for more years than she looks! On top of her extreme work load (some weeks she’ll grip a Wacom pen for maybe 100 hours) she is also a renowned teacher and lecturer, from Adobe MAX to WPPI to APA seminars to private workshops! How does she do it all? It’s in her extraordinarily positive attitude and “isn’t-this-fun” approach to every challenge!

Join us on Thursday evening April 18, in West Hollywood, to see Lisa Carney explain and demonstrate Frequency Separation! We’ll start at 7pm, but come at 6:30 to socialize and snack, then stay for the lesson and to have all your questions answered, and mind expanded!www.ladig.org!

We have a new location, the Community Room in the 8000 Sunset Bouldevard mall in West Hollywood. Parking is in the underground garage, and free validation is available in the Trader’s Joe or Starbuck’s!

Admission is free, but we’d appreciate a donation to help keep LADIG afloat. Every ticket bought (not the free ones….) enters you into our raffle drawing!

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!!!

We have a new location, the Community Room in the 8000 Sunset Mall! Parking is in the underground garage, and free validation is available in the Trader’s Joe or Starbuck’s!

Join us at 6:30PM for social time, and at 7PM for the presentation, with a longer time window, to allow unlimited questions and more socializing!

Admission is free, but we’d appreciate a donation to help keep LADIG afloat. Every ticket bought (not the free ones….) enters you into our raffle drawing! On March 14 you could 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: