One certain type of app for my iPad that I have tried a few different apps out for is a great way to display my portfolio on my iPad. Ever since the first iPad was released one huge benefit I saw to the iPad was a really cool way to show my images to new clients. Its a great tool to showcase your work and now with the amazing retina display on the new iPad its an amazing way to really wow people. I reviewed the Portfolio for iPad app awhile back, and today I want to talk about a new app that has just been released called Portfolio Pro.

First of all the app is very straightforward and easy to setup which I do like. It has 2 main sections, the cover slideshow and then a list of galleries. The cover slideshow is similar to Flipboard if you are familiar with that app. It gives you an area at the top left corner to add some text and your logo and then has your images playing as a slideshow to fill the rest of the screen. Simply swipe from the right of the screen to flip open the app and arrive at your galleries.

Setting up the cover slideshow and the galleries is pretty straightforward. Any time you can triple tap to switch between the client view of the app and the edit view. When in the edit view for your cover slideshow you can add your own logo and text however you will only see this option to edit it when you turn the device horizontal. At first I was working with the app in the vertical view and clicked around all settings to find where to add a logo and couldn’t find it. I actually almost gave up and then by accident flipped the screen and saw the ability then.

When in the edit view you will be able to add images or videos from your iPad, Flickr or Dropbox. Adding dropbox as a way to import your images is a nice touch and makes things easier compared to a few other portfolio apps I have tried out. Once you select the images to import you can also add a title and description to the photos and organize the order of the images. Another pretty nice feature is for any gallery or even individual photo within a gallery you can “Hide” the photo or gallery. You might have a gallery that you don’t want all clients to see from the main menu so can hide it from the admin screen and then easily show it when you need to by unhiding it.

The app also has a fair amount of customizations that you can make to various things like the overall theme of the app, colors and fonts. You can’t customize the transitions of the slideshows though which I really would like along with adding audio. The audio for me is a fairly big one, whenever I show my work I want to have the perfect song playing that will add to the emotional pull people get from viewing your work. The audio is all part of the experience and important to have with a slideshow. Hopefully they will add this in a new version.

One thing I would really like to see them add is more file formats to include in the app like PDF’s. After I show my portfolio to a client I like to also have my PDF pricing list that I can review with them and keeping everything in the same branded app would be very helpful. The app also isn’t as responsive as I would like to see, sometimes there is a small lag although on the good side I didn’t encounter any crashes or major bugs that kept me from using the app. Hopefully the next version will speed things up a bit.

Overall the Portfolio Pro app for the iPad is very quick and easy to setup, gives you some nice custom controls over your portfolio and with a few small updates that I mentioned above would be a perfect app. I would give the app a 3.5 out of 5 stars and am looking forward to what they create in the future. You can get Portfolio Pro for the iPad in iTunes here for $9.99.

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I am excited today to release a new set of Lightroom presets that I think everyone will love! One of the great things about Lightroom can be how fast you can process images. I have used presets for my studio as an essential part of my workflow and it always helps to make the post production speed right by. Over the past few years I have created a few premium lightroom presets like our Instagram Lightroom presets (along with some great free Lightroom presets). Lately I have been spending a lot of time refining some of the presets that I like to use for my wedding work and created some brand new ones to offer a great new preset pack of 25 effects for wedding photography.

For the launch of these new presets we are going to be running a sale just for the 1st week. The normal price for the set of 25 is going to be just $25 but for the next week you can get the entire set for just $10! It’s a great deal and just like any of our products we have available, it helps to pay for the costs to keep the site running and keeps me writing more content for everyone to enjoy.

These give you a great range of looks from vintage to various types of black and white to give your image the perfect look. As with any presets these should be only treated as a starting “Guide” and then modified as needed based on your own style and the exact feel for that image you are going for.

To purchase just click the button below. Get them now for a great deal at $10 for the set, the sale will end on Friday May 18th. These were created for Lightroom 4 but also have been tested with Lightroom 3 and will work great.

Also here is a list of the included presets and some samples.

- Auto Tone & WB
- Auto Tone WB Punch
- Black and White Infrared
- Color Boost
- Color Lomo
- Cross Process
- Dark Chocolate
- Flower Power
- Light Color Bleach
- Old Movie Reel
- Purple Power
- Simple Color Pop
- Soft Chocolate
- Sunkissed
- Super Sepia
- T-Max
- T-Max 3200
- Toy Camera
- Toy camera with Light Leak
- Vignette – Heavy
- Vignette – Light
- Vintage
- Vintage Brown/Red
- Vintage Yellow/Purple
- Vintage Wash
- Warm it up

Get the presets now for only $10

I would love to see what you create with these, share some samples on our Facebook page so everyone can see.

Money Back Guarantee
My goal is to create some awesome photography products at a great value. I want to make sure that you love your purchase and will give you a refund within 15 days of your purchase if you are unhappy with these presets for any reason.

A few notes:
- These were created for RAW images and can be used with any version of Lightroom.
- Some presets have a specific version of LR4 that will be titled like this “Vintage – LR4″. The version without the LR4 was created in LR3 and both versions are included in the preset pack.
- If the preset doesn’t include a LR4 in the name they were created specifically in LR4 but have been tested in LR 3 as well.
- As with all Lightroom presets they might look different on each photo depending on exposure, contrast, etc… Remember to always use the presets as a starting point and customize from there to make the image perfect.
- If you have any questions just let me know, I can always be reached at the contact button on the top of the page or by leaving a Facebook comment below.
- If you love these presets please share them on Facebook, Twitter or +1 them on Google. I appreciate you spreading the word to your photo friends! A

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Lately my schedule has been so crazy busy that my iPad hasn’t got a ton of use and I haven’t even bought any new apps. This is pretty rare for me since I have to admit I’m an appoholic and love to check out new apps and technology once they come out. Finally the other day I have some time to check out a few apps on my list and have a couple app reviews coming this week. I wanted to start with Paint FX for the iPad which is an app that allows you to paint on special effects with your finger rather than just applying an effect to the entire image.

The app is pretty straightforward and easy to use. You start at the menu icon on the very left and are able to load an image from a few different sources including your iPad’s photo album, Flickr or Facebook. Once you have loaded up your image just tap on the FX icon and start painting away where you would like the effect to appear. There are tons of photo filters the app includes from simple things like Black and White and Cartoonize, many different types of tints to apply and even background textures like a retro starburst. You can adjust the size of the brush using the brush icon menu next to the FX menu and modify the edge, opacity and size of the brush.

All you have to do is start to paint on the photo with your finger to apply that effect. There is an erase tool also if you go too far so you can easily erase the effect from the image.
At anytime if you need to undo something there is an undo and redo button at the very top to backtrack your steps. They also created a mask feature that can be handy to see the mask where the effects will be applied to be shown in a traditional red mask color. Just draw in a mask and then tap and effect to have that be applied to the mask area. One thing that would be very helpful is when you add a new layer to have the mask still remain so you can apply another effect to the exact same masked section. Right now when you add a new layer your mask that you created is removed.

There are layers in the app but not in the traditional sense. When you click the layers button it will allow you to create a new layer on top of the existing edited photo. You can’t go back to that first layer and edit it, just think of the layers as applying these effects on top of each other. Since you can’t really edit the other layers on their own I wish they would just remove this button, when you add a new effect it will layer it on top. Much easier and removes the need for an extra button.

Once you are all done there are lots of different ways you can share the photo using Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Email, sending a postcard through Sincerely or your photo album.
Overall the app performs very well, it’s quick to respond, I had no crashes and does a great job. I would rate this app a 4 out of 5 stars and recommend it to anyone looking for a fun and simple way to add filters to your photos.

The app is $2.99 and you can get it in the iTunes store here. Also it is a universal app so will work on the iPad and iPhone.

If you like our articles remember to share them on Facebook, Twitter or +1 them on Google. I appreciate you spreading the word to your photo friends and it helps me to continue writing content for everyone!

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If your business isn’t already on Facebook you are missing out on one of the best ways to market your photography business. If you aren’t sure about getting started check out this article I wrote awhile back, Facebook for Photographers – 5 tips. Today though I want to talk a little about the changes for business pages on Facebook that you have probably already seen either with other fan pages or a similar view with your own Facebook page. Awhile back when Facebook launched the new Timeline view it was only for your personal Facebook profile, however all business fan pages will be converted to the new timeline view by March 30, 2012 so there is only a few weeks left to optimize your fan page.

So what’s new with the timeline style view other than a different look for your wall? THere are some pretty important things to keep in mind while setting this up to optimize the experience. First your fan page will have a cover photo now that gives you a nice 850×315 image area to really capture your users attention. This is a great way to show off one of your favorite images and since it’s such a prominent real estate on the page a good way to make your clients feel special. One idea to keep your customers visiting the page is to let them know you will rotate out the cover photo weekly and for them to check back to see if you choose an image from one of their shoots. Everytime you rotate it out let that customer know they are featured on your Facebook page. It can be a great way for them to share your Facebook page with their family and friends.

One of the biggest differences though is the links that you used to have on the sidebar show up on the top right side. You now only have space for 8 links and they show up as boxes underneath the cover photo. By default people only see the first 4 links and have a arrow to expand this and see all 8. Because of this you want to make sure your most important links are shown in the top 4. The first link for photos you actually can’t move, that has to stay in the #1 spot but all others you can. To move these just click the arrow on the right edge to expand the selection to view all 8. Then hover over one of them to see a edit button come up in the top right corner. Click on this to switch the position with another app or to remove it.

For our page (to be coming soon, still working on a few adjustments) we have our 3 most popular links shown in this area; a sweepstakes widget, a sign up form for our weekly email updates and a link to download our Free set of mini Lightroom presets.

If you haven’t checked out our Facebook page come on over. You can find us at http://www.facebook.com/digitalphotobuzz. Come on by and start up a conversation, you can always post questions on our wall, post photos to share with others (or to get feedback) and just chat about photography. Also I want to showcase some of your best work as our cover. If you have an image that would look great just leave a comment below or on our Facebook wall and i’ll pick a few to rotate out. Add your name and link to the image so everyone will know it’s your shot and i’ll also give you a shout out on our wall whenever we use an image.

Are you already using the new timeline view for your business? If so share a link in the comments so we can all check out your page!

If you like our articles remember to share them on Facebook, Twitter or +1 them on Google. I appreciate you spreading the word to your photo friends and it helps me to continue writing content for everyone!

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One of the first things that I always do when I get a new iDevice is check out the quality of the camera. Although I was happy to see FaceTime included with the iPad 2 last year when I reviewed the iPad 2 camera vs. the iPhone camera I shared my disappointment with the camera quality but also said that you really are going to rarely use the iPad as a actual camera. I can’t see myself out with friends just hanging out and whipping out my iPad to take a few photos. That being said though over the past year I have found a few instances where my phone wasn’t on me and something really cool was going on right in front of me while I happened to have my iPad right on my lap. It was only a handful of times but still did happen and after grabbing a few images was always reminded how poor the camera was.

Even though it doesn’t get much use I was happy to see that Apple was upping the game with the New iPad camera. There really is no comparison between the 2, even in good light the new iPad camera looks much better than the iPad 2 and when you get into dim lighting situations it really is night and day the difference. The camera they are using for the new iPad is a Omnivision OV5650 which is a 5 Mp camera featuring 1.75 µm pixels. This is actually the same camera they used for the iPhone 4. The sensor supports HD (1080p) video at 30 fps.

Here are some sample comparison images to get a feel for the difference in various lighting conditions. You can click on any image to view it full size.

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iPad2 camera

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New iPad camera

This shot is in a very similar lighting situation with a large window light coming in from the left however there are lots of areas of shadows and you can see how you start to loose detail in the iPad 2.

iPad2 camera

New iPad

Where you can really see the difference is when you crop in tight. Here is a closer view of these images:

iPad2 camera crop

new iPad camera crop

Where you really start to see the difference is when the light goes down. This scene didn’t have bad lighting, again a large window but with the curtains partially closed so not much light was coming through. The iPhone 4S can actually handle a situation like this pretty well but the iPad2 really suffers in these situations and starts to become unusable.

ipad2 camera

New iPad Camera

and for comparison here is the iPhone 4S

iPhone4s

Up close again you see the weakness in the iPad 2 camera (from left to right iPad 2, new iPad and iPhone 4S)

When you get into typical indoor lighting conditions the iPad 2 got very pixelated and blotchy. Here is a comparison that had lighting with 1 lamp in the office, a window with a little light coming through and you can see the iPad 2 (on the left) becomes pretty unusable with this type of light. The middle section is from the new iPad and the right is the iPhone 4S.

iPad2 vs new iPad vs iPhone 4s cameras

Just some quick first testing from the new iPad camera. Again its going to be rare that most of us are running around shooting portraits and landscapes with a iPad (although the size is much smaller than what Ansel Adams used for those beautiful landscapes he created. Although it might not get used a lot it is nice to have a decent camera in there now just in case you need it.

More info and reviews coming on the new iPad over the next few days so keep checking back! Also leave a comment below with any questions or your own thoughts on your iPad experiences.

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As many of you know that have been reading this site for awhile I love off camera lighting and have used PocketWizards for awhile with my wedding work. They have just released an update to their PocketWizard Plus Transceiver, the PocketWizard Plus® III. It’s an update to the very popular PocketWizard Plus® II which has been a standard in the industry for awhile and an extremely reliable Transceiver. It looks like a pretty solid update to the plus II Transceiver and here some some of the key updates:

It looks like a solid upgrade on paper so once I can get my hands on one i’ll do a full review as well as compare it to the Pocketwizard MiniTT1 and FlexTT5 that I reviewed awhile back.

You can order on B&H here, Pocketwizard Plus III for $139.

Check out this great video from Joe McNally using these on cars along with an overview video of some key features of the Plus III

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I think sometimes one of the most ignored sections of Lightroom is the Web galleries module. Most of the focus on Lightroom is always with the Library and Develop tab and while those are where you can spend a majority of your time there are many other great features Adobe Photoshop Lightroom has. Today I want to talk a little bit about the ability to create Web galleries in Lightroom. It can be very quick and easy to create a web gallery in Ligthroom and i’ll walk through the steps from start to finish.

Let’s say you want to create a quick web gallery with some highlight images from a client shoot. Here is a step by step guide on how to create a web gallery from start to finish.

1) Pick the images you want for the web gallery. The first step is to pick the photos you want to include in the web gallery. When you go to the Web module to get your gallery all setup it will pull from the images that are visible in the Library module, so that’s where we will start. In the Library module i’ll rate any images that I want to include with a 5 star rating (you can use whatever type of rating you prefer here and will fit into your normal workflow). I always make sure to only show the best of the best in a gallery and images that have a little more artistic flare compared to the normal image. I want the images my clients see to have as much impact as possible. You can rate something a 5 star by just typing the 5 button on your keyboard or clicking on the star icons underneath the image.

2) Filter your picks. Next, once we have all of the 5 star ratings selected we will have to change our view so we filter only the 5 star images. At the very top of the library module you will have the various filters you can apply to the view. Just click on the Attributes button and then choose the 5 star option. This will filter everything else out and only show your 5 star images.

3) Organize and customize the captions. Before we head on over to the web module to customize the gallery options we will want to do a little bit of house cleaning in the Library section. Depending on how much information you want to show in the gallery you might want to have a caption with the image. In the metadata section of the Library module (On the very bottom of the right pane) you will have the Metadata section. Here enter in any comments you would like to show in the caption section.

4) Customize your web gallery. Now for the fun part. There are many different settings you can adjust for your web gallery. We will start on the right hand pane of the Web module. The first section called Layout Style will allow you to choose the technology behind the gallery. You can choose from 5 different styles and i’ll choose the airtight simpleview for this example which has a nice clean layout.

After that you can choose a title for your gallery and then a color scheme. For this style you can also customize where the thumbnails appear and how many columns and rows you have. I’ll set the appearance to show the thumbnails at the bottom with 2 rows and 10 columns. You can experiment with this and it will change your preview live as you make updates.

Next you can choose to display the caption that we created earlier in the Library module or you can also include other options like custom text, date, exposure, etc…

The last part to customize will be the size of the main image and borders. You can also disable the ability for users to right click and save the image which is helpful if you are showing photos to a client but don’t want them to be able to download the images. Once you have the template of your web gallery all setup you will want to save these settings in case you want to use them again in the future. Just go to the Template Browser section on the top left of the Web module and click the + button. Enter a name for the template and this will save these settings in your template gallery.

That’s it, pretty quick and easy way to create a web gallery using Adobe Lightroom.

Each different style of web gallery will have their own settings you can customize. Experiment with the different styles and have fun! Once you

Also check out our series on how to create a slideshow in Lightroom! What do you want to learn more out in post production? Leave me a comment below and i’ll add it to my list of topics to cover for the new year!

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As the year is coming to a close I wanted to share some articles that many of you might have missed. It’s been such a busy year for me on the site, I have written a few hundred articles and all thanks to the great suggestions that everyone has had. This site was created for you and I always want to be creating the best tip and tutorials out there to help you in your artistic journey. From some of your great feedback I got I spent a lot of time this year creating Lightroom Tutorials. There were so many readers who wanted to get a good handle on Lightroom so I created a bunch of Lightroom tips and tutorials for everyone. Here are some of the top articles you might have missed.

5 Quick Tips for Adobe Lightroom for Photographers

Understanding catalogs, collections, and folders in Lightroom

Top 5 Tips to Optimize Lightroom Performance

Creating slideshows in Adobe Lightroom

Free Vintage Lightroom Presets – One of our top downloaded sets of free Lightroom presets.

Shortcuts and tricks in Lightroom

What do you want to learn more about next year? Let me know by leaving a comment on our Facebook wall, or @digitalphotobuz on twitter or +Digital Photo Buzz on Google +.

If you like our articles remember to share them on Facebook, Twitter or +1 them on Google. I appreciate you spreading the word to your photo friends and it helps me to continue writing content for everyone!

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One type of article that I love to write is tips for Lightroom and Photoshop. These programs have so many little known features, shortcuts and tips that can really save you time. Part of using Lightroom that I had struggled with for awhile was the performance. I used camera RAW for years for my post production and loved the speed of it compared to Lightroom. But just like anything there are many different ways you can boost the performance with Lightroom and today I want to cover a few tips to optimize the performance of Lightroom.

Lightroom Performance Tip #1 – Build 1:1 Previews from the start.
Lightroom uses previews of your photos when you are viewing thumbnails in most of the views of the application like the Grid view, Loupe view, Develop, Slideshow, Print, and Web modules. When you first import the images you have the choice of setting the preview type, I always choose to have my previews built as 1:1 previews. This will take longer when first importing your images but allow you to move through the photos when working on them much quicker. I always import my shoots into Lightroom at the end of the day or before I am going to work on something else. This way I don’t mind that the import takes longer and have the previews all built in the best quality size.

You can also set the standard preview size by going to Lightroom –> Catalog Settings –> File Handling. Here you should set the standard preview size to be the closest amount to the longest edge of your screen resolution. You can also set the preview quality which I set to medium and how long you would like to keep the 1:1 previews. If disk size isn’t an issue you should keep the previews for at least 30 days or indefinitely.

Once the previews are discarded nothing happens to your images but Lightroom will need to build the previews on the fly when you go to view the images so will slow things down at that time.

Lightroom Performance Tip #2 – Increase the Camera RAW cache.

Another really quick way to increase the performance is to up the Camera RAW cache. To modify this go to the Lightroom –> Preferences –> File Handling tab and enter any amount in the Maximum Size field for Camera Raw Cache Settings section. You can also change where this cache is stored. I store mine on a internal SSD drive and have 50gb of space reserved for this Cache.

Lightroom Performance Tip #3 – Run Lightroom in 64-bit mode. This only applies to Lightroom 3 and depends on the operating system you are running. This allows Lightroom to access more RAM so can really speed up performance. In 32-bit Lightroom you can only access a max of 2 GB of RAM but with a 64-bit machine this limit is removed. Now you can have 4GB or more of RAM which will help speed up Lightroom a lot. Lightroom should automatically be in 64-bit mode if your computer is 64 bit capable and running a 64-bit operating system. You can verify that it’s running in 64-bit mode by doing the following:

To check this on Windows:
Open up Lightroom and view the title bar.
See if “x64″ appears in the title. If so you are running the 64-bit Lightroom.

To check this on Mac OS:
Go to the Applications folder and click Adobe Lightroom 3.
Click on Command + I.
In the General options, make sure that Open In 32-Bit Mode is deselected.

Lightroom Performance Tip #4 – Leave autowrite XMP turned off.
Since Lightroom is a non destructive way of editing your photos all of the changes you make are stored in a XMP file. You can have Lightroom write the changes you are making to the XMP files as you work or manually. Setting to manually save the XMP data will give you a speed boost and can be done in the Lightroom –> Catalog Settings –> Metadata menu. From here just click off the Automatically write changes to XMP box.

What I do is once I finish the shoot and before I export the files i’ll select all in the Library module and click Command + S. This will quickly write out the XMP files.

Lightroom Performance Tip #5 – Go SSD. SSD or Solid State Drives have been falling in price lately and offer an amazing performance boost. It really is amazing how much of a boost you get with performance with a SSD drive. I didn’t measure anything when I made the change but would say that overall my machine has a 4 times increase in speed with my SSD drives. It’s almost like getting a new computer and I definitely recommend it.

That’s it, a few quick ways to improve the performance you get when using Lightroom. If you try these out let me know how it goes in the comments below.

If you like our articles remember to share them on Facebook, Twitter or +1 them on Google. I appreciate you spreading the word to your photo friends and it helps me to continue writing content for everyone!

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Time for another little fun Facebook contest. I have been getting some awesome feedback from people who have purchased our Instagram like Lightroom presets and really thank you all for writing in and sharing! It makes my day to get feedback on things I have created and am happy many of you love these. Some of the premium products that I create help to pay the costs of running this site and gives me a chance to focus on creating more free articles and tutorials for everyone, so thank you thank you thank you for all who help support the site!I had these at a low introductory price at the start and am getting ready to raise this to its full price soon. But before I thought it would be fun to have a little sweepstakes and raffle off some of these for free!

Here is how the sweepstakes will work. Just head on over to our Facebook fan page http://www.facebook.com/digitalphotobuzz and first like the page if you don’t already. Then click on the Sweepstakes button on the left side of the wall. Enter your info on the entry form and click submit. And don’t worry your info is always safe with me, I won’t spam you, share your info ever, i’ll keep you safe.
Also if you want to share the promo to people in your network that would be awesome. On the entry form page there is a Share button at the bottom, just click that to post a message to your Facebook friends so they can sign up for the sweepstakes also.

You can enter anytime up until the end of the day this Friday (PT). Starting on monday we will pull one person a day until friday from the entries, post the winners on our Facebook wall, and email you out your presets. We will also throw in our Hipstamatic like Lightroom presets also to all the winners!

Also running contests like this can be really easy and there are some great ways you can do this with your photography business to bring new people to your page. I’ll cover how to do this and some tips very soon, check back later this week. Also if you don’t want to miss any of our posts add your email to the subscription box at the top right of the page. Make sure you never miss a great photo tutorial or tip.

If you like our articles remember to share them on Facebook, Twitter or +1 them on Google. I appreciate you spreading the word to your photo friends! Also remember to always start a conversation by leaving a Facebook comment at the bottom of the page. I love to hear from you!

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