ADOBE SMART OBJECTS CLASS - HOO RAW!

Another great day with one of my favorite teachers/instructors, Ted Dillard. Nobody I know can physically show the importance and advantages of the RAW workflow like he can.

It also show me that Adobe is starting to give Photoshop users the same RAW power that is Lightroom users have. Sweet.


A lot of the Smart Object interfaces are similar to the Lightroom controls.

We raffled off another Hunt Photo and Video card to a lucky winner as well as one of Ted’s RAW Pipeline Smart Object books.


And yet another big thank to JB from PPAM for letting me steal a couple of class pics off of him. He always has his camera at the ready.



As good as the class was I, as a host, got started off with yet another example of good old Murphy’s law in the morning.

This pictures shows both of the projectors I had on hand and that box in the middle is an extra bulb.

The night before I had BOTH working in that very same room with a witnesses. What could go wrong?

Take a guess what happened. The Epson lamp did not turn at all and the extra bulb I had was for the other model.

The other worked on my PC but did not on Ted’s Mac, where all the training material was.


GOTTA LOVE THAT! I was quite literally ready to bite my way through a freaking tree.

My last saving grace was our neighbors upstairs at Prize de Fer fencing club. The lent us there LCD TV.

Another BIG thank you to them for saving the class. A thanks goes out to the class as well for dealing witgh that situation.

Needless to say one of the class surveys asked for “better A/V prep”. Not to disagree from their perspective. I would have wrote the same thing, but damn it! From my perspective I could not have done anymore than I did. Two projector and an extra bulb! What the F&@#!

Once we were up and running it took me an hour and a half just for my blood pressure to return to normal. Another good war story I guess.

Our first class is now history!

The first class at ASA Photographic Studios is now a part of history.



Thanks again to JB of Special Effect Photograhy for his picture contributions.


Gail and I had a wonderful time hosting this first training class and hanging out for the day with other photogs.

During the afternoon break, we took everyone on a walk around the grounds. We also brought people up to the Studio. It was very cool to share it with everyone.

Some things we, as hosts, learned = )
-Ask the furniture shop above us to turn off their air compressor the night before a training = )
-When you make coffee for the afternoon session, don’t leave it in the kitchen. Put it out so people know its there (yes we read your surveys!) We're sorry about that! = )
-Labeling everyone’s lunch orders is an easy way to win points with starving students!
-Tweak lights

How good was our class? Well, so good that Mac and PC users co-existed peacfully!



From student to raffle winner! One Hunt gift card went to a Billerica native.



Overall, it was a great overview of Lightroom. It both enlightened us to a couple of features that we weren’t using and reinforced for us how thoroughly we know and use this program.

From this class we are inspired to pull together follow up power sessions that shows how we use Lightroom to significantly increase the quality, organization and efficiency of our workflow. This will be hands on workshop focusing 80-90% on the Library and Develop modules. This, for us, is where Lightroom shines…..

Let us know if you would be interested in joining us for “Lightroom for Lightspeed”. Date to be determining, but we are considering Monday/Tuesday evenings starting around 6pm.

A big thanks to everyone again for joining us at the beginning of our new venture!

Adobe Lightroom Training - Sunday March 15th

As most of you should know by now, the first class at ASA Photographic will be a full day of Adobe Certified Lightroom Training on Sunday, March 15th 9AM to 5PM.

Proudly, our first instructor we will be Jeff Shaffer of Shaffer Smith Photography LLC. You can read more about Jeff by clicking the link.

Click here for more information on the class and Jeff Shaffer.


Don't Forget! Register by March 8th to be entered into our classroom raffle to win 1 hour of one-on-one online training with Jeff. More goodies will be raffled off too!

OK, here is where I get to express my opinion without too much filtering from Gail.

George's opinion...
"Adobe Lightroom is hands down the best tool to be put out for photographers since, dare I say it, Photoshop itself! Whether you run high or low picture volumes, if you are not looking at Lightroom, YOU ARE MISSING THE BOAT!"

Yes Lightroom is a slightly different animal at first that you need to adjust to, but once you grasp the power of the workflow, you will NEVER go back. Photoshop is still as great as ever, but Lightroom takes 90% of the "normal" things you would do to an image (or to 1000 of them) and streamlines it beyond belief. I personally edited through 50,000 images last year with relative ease.

Other benefits: Organizing your images in endless ways and making them more accessible then ever. Easily keep you best work in virtual favorite folder without ever having more than the original files to reference. The printing module is a dream!

We’d love to hear your feedback and we hope you will spread the word! If you have any questions please e-mail me at george "at" asaphotographic "dot" com.