By Marianne Drenthe

Vintage processing seems to be the hot thing right now. Vintage washes (where the image looks like a faded print) have long been a favorite of mine. These processed images may be popular because we long for simpler times when Polaroids ruled the instant gratification world. It could also be that creating a signature vintage look that’s all your own is a quick way to customize your own work to be unique to you. Either way the trend is hot.

Yes there are tons of ways to create this look for yourself, but my preferred method is right in my workflow. There is nothing easier than having your go-to preset created in Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) and just click on the drop-down menu and batch several images right there, saving your precious pixels in the process.

I use ACR for so many conversions—it’s truly an integral part of my workflow, so quick and easy (as well as non-destructive). Here is my quick and easy method to create beautifully washed vintage photos via ACR.

This image is from an on-location session, and I used bounced flash to capture some storytelling images in this little girls’ room. Your settings vary depending on your lighting situation and exposure.

1. Open your image up in ACR. Tweak your exposure as you see fit, adjusting for your usual color workflow. You can tweak for contrast, I usually bump mine down a bit and bump my brightness up just a notch when creating vintage-look images.

Our March issue featured a useful article titled "Glamourpuss," offering bridal makeup tips from makeup artists Steve Moore of The Moore Agency in Atlanta, Deanna Rene of Scottsdale, Ariz., and wedding photographer Holly Schumacher. We encouraged readers to pass these tips on to brides and post them on your website.

Here are the tips in downloadable text form to make that easier for you: Bridal Makeup Tips. 

Adobe has released updates to the Photoshop Lightroom and Photoshop Camera Raw plug-in to correct for issues found in Lightroom 1.4 and Camera Raw 4.4. 

The Lightroom 1.4.1 and Camera Raw 1.4.1 updates are available immediately as free downloads at http://www.adobe.com/downloads. Senior Photoshop Lightroom Product Manager, Tom Hogarty, has included a complete list of the corrections on his blog.

The following list from Hogarty's Lightroom Journal blog post details the issues found in Lightroom 1.4 and Camera Raw 4.4.

Lightroom

• Lightroom 1.4 incorrectly modified the EXIF time date field of images that had a metadata update applied.  This incorrect modification does not appear in Lightroom or Bridge and is only viewable through third party EXIF tools.  This error has been corrected in Lightroom 1.4.1 and all files in a Lightroom catalog that have been incorrectly modified will be corrected on their next metadata update. (Metadata can be updated by selecting the files in the Library grid view and choosing Command or CTRL + S to save and update the metadata.)

• Olympus JPEG files could render incorrectly in Lightroom 1.4, displaying an artifact in the exported file.

• Any conversion to DNG in Lightroom 1.4 (Windows Only) would cause the DNG file to become unreadable by Lightroom’s Develop Module or Camera Raw 4.4 in Photoshop.  The issue has been corrected and files can be converted to DNG again in order to resolve the issue for existing files.  Returning to the original native raw files is not necessary.  The affected DNG files can be selected and converted again using the DNG • Converter 4.4.1 available at www.adobe.com/dng/.  This process is not required but recommended to ensure that a correct validation value is stored within the DNG files.

• Lightroom 1.4 provided degraded import performance relative to Lightroom 1.3.

Camera Raw

• Camera Raw 4.4 incorrectly modified the EXIF time date field of images that were saved as TIFF or JPEG files from the Camera Raw dialog.  This has been corrected in Camera Raw 4.4.1

• Olympus JPEG files could render incorrectly in Camera Raw 4.4, displaying an artifact in the exported file.

PPA offers discounted malpractice-type protection with its Indemnification Trust. The Trust protects you when things go wrong on an assignment, like equipment malfunctions.

Download a PDF file of the Indemnification Trust.