Are you looking for a senior model program to jumpstart your senior pictures photography business? One of the most successful forms of marketing for the high school senior portrait industry has been traditionally referred to as senior ambassador or senior rep programs. However, these programs have become outdated. We have taken the changes in technology, culture and fashion and used them to create a modern senior model program for todays high school senior. The Senior Picture Spokesmodel Program is a modernized marketing strategy that will help you not only compete but dominate your senior portrait competetion. This is done through proven sales strategies, fashion-oriented thinking and by utilizing modern social networking technologies, such as Facebook. By using the marketing strategy outlined in this book, photographers have been able to quickly increase their profits from senior photography into a 6 figure income.

Senior Model Program

This E-Book doesn’t waste time repeating pointless filler text over and over. The marketing strategies are straight to the point and easy to understand. Within a couple hours you will be on your way to dominating your local senior picture market with a killer senior model program.

The XposurePro Vintage Fashion preset is one of our favorite aperture presets, especially for portraiture. This preset produces beautiful results on a wide variety of skin tones. You’ll find that it gives your boring and dull images straight out of the camera a subtle vintage kick while popping color at the same time rather than destroying it. The result is not a crazy vintage film look but rather a subtle and professional styling. Vintage Fashion is one of our aperture presets that your high school senior & fashion clients will love.

Aperture Presets

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The XposurePro Country Girl preset is one of our lightroom presets that works great for your outdoor summer portraits. It was a perfect bright day but your image is still a little dull and boring. This is one of our lightroom presets that is perfect for these summer days. We use this preset for our portrait clients photographed outdoors and they love it. If you’re looking for Lightroom Presets that gently pop the colors and add a subtle healthy punch to skin tones then you’ll be interested in the Country Girl Lightroom Preset. Like some of our other bestselling lightroom presets this one also adds just the right amount of vignette to draw more attention on your subject.

Lightroom Presets

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Installing Lightroom Presets

The XposurePro Kodak TMax 100 Sepia preset is one of our black and white aperture presets that mimics the famous Kodak film but with an additional sepia tone. Kodak TMax was an extremely popular film back in the day loved by 35mm photographers. It produces amazing results on everything from portraits to landscapes. This aperture preset will let you quickly create rich black and white sepia toned images with dramatic punch. If you love black and white sepia toned photography then the Kodak TMax 100 Sepia Aperture Preset is sure to become one of your favorite aperture presets.

Aperture Presets

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The XposurePro 1974 Vintage Aperture Preset is one of our retro aperture presets that mimics film of that era. This vintage aperture preset will help you quickly create stylish retro images that have become extremely popular in recent years. We find that the 1974 vintage aperture preset works beautifully on a variety of images but we really love the way it looks on brighter scenes. If you’re looking for stylish vintage film effects then 1974 Vintage is just for you.

Aperture Presets

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Raw vs DNG is the latest debate. What is DNG? Is DNG better than RAW? What are the advantages of DNG? I love shooting in RAW so should I convert to DNG? These are frequently asked questions that we’re going to answer right now.

What is RAW?

RAW images are basically the “digital negatives” of todays photography world. A RAW file is the unprocessed data that comes directly out of the camera. Just like a frame from a roll of film, a RAW is your original “master” file. Each camera manufacturer has it’s own proprietary RAW format. Nikon RAW files are saved as .NEF files while Canon produces a .CRW file. Regardless of what we call them, Both of these are RAW image files that contain all the original data from the camera.

What is DNG?

DNG is just another type of RAW file. However, in this case the DNG format is not a propreitary format controlled by a specific camera manufacturer. Instead it has been created by Adobe to be a highly compatible generic RAW format.

Advantages of DNG format

1. There’s no need to wait for your camera model to be supported by the software. When a new camera comes out on the market it is not always supported right away. The DNG however is already supported in all the major editing environments.
2. DNG files do not require a sidecar. When you edit a RAW image from your camera you might notice that the adjustments are being stored in a seperate XMP file on your drive. This is the sidecar. DNG adjustments are stored right inside itself. You’ll never accidently lose your adjustments from accidently moving, deleteing or from the sidecar becoming corrupted.
3. DNG files are actually capable of storing the original RAW format inside itself which can later be manually extracted if you wished to do so.
4. DNG files are smaller than RAW files from your camera. In fact, they are a lot smaller. I have read countless times on the internet that DNG are up to 20% smaller. However, in my personal experience I normally see an average of 60% when converting my RAW files to DNG.

Disadvantages of DNG

1. Converting RAW to DNG adds additional time to your workflow. Although, I will say that it does not add much time. Mostly effecting photographers who need to have large amounts of edited images ready for a client within moments of finishing the photo session.
2. At this time, DNG will remove some unrecognized metadata from the original RAW, such as Active D-Lighting.

Should I use DNG or RAW?

That’s entirely up to you. There is no right or wrong answer. Personally, I am a huge advocate of the DNG format and all of my images are converted to DNG as soon as they come out of the camera. My older archives were also converted over to DNG shortly after it was first introduced. I do not choose to save the original RAW formats. This saves me a huge amount in terms of storage space. I also have one simplified file with no sidecar to worry about. When converting my older archive a number of sidecar files were missing or corrupted so I like the idea of one file.

If you’re still not sure about what to do I recommend trying it out yourself. Start a test group of personal images converted to DNG. Then see who wins you over in your own RAW vs DNG experiment.

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Bugs Fixed in Lightroom 3.6

• Rapid advancement through the grid can make the preview processor die
• Lightroom does not write to the correct metadata fields after editing capture time
• Lightroom crashes when saving keyword to file
• Certain JPG files appear to unsupported or damaged upon import into Lightroom
• Publish to HD fails in LR 3.5 for publish collections created in 3.3 or earlier
• Entering a custom aspect ratio in Quick Develop leaves the Crop Ratio menu black
• Default scrolling behavior on OSX 10.7 makes non-scrolling mousewheel actions work backwards (Mac only)
• Incorrect aspect ratio displayed in menu when crop is copy/pasted or applied via Previous button in the Develop module (Mac only)
• Copy/Pasted Crop Aspect Ratio lost on edit
• Copy/Pasted/Previous crop loses aspect ratio lock when adjusted in the Develop module
• Tethering doesn’t work with the Nikon D3x
• Error thrown when exporting video from slideshow and Lightroom is running as a 32-bit application

New Camera Support

Camera Raw 6.6 Fixes

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Optimize Lightroom Catalog

The Lightroom catalog is a databse and over time this database can grow very large and become confused from all the operations you have performed on it. Without making it sound more confusing than we need to, it basically needs to be cleaned up from time to time. This will help optimize Lightroom in order to make Lightroom 3 faster and there’s even a built-in tool to handle it for you. From the File menu select Optimize Catalog. From the popup click the Optimize button.

This process might take a minute or two depending on the size of your Lightroom Catalog but is a great way to help optimize Lightroom.

Avoid Multi-Tasking

Lightroom is a little piggy and wants a good deal of your resources to itself. Some of your other programs probably have the same attitude. You might need to free up some resources by closing those other programs out. Don’t make the mistake of thinking a simple application, like a web browser, is ok to keep running. When it comes to memory, your web browser might be using more resources than Lightroom. This will not only make Lightroom 3 faster but is also a great rule of thumb to improve performance on your entire system.

Increase the Camera Raw Cache

Here is another great way to optimize Lightroom and make Lightroom 3 faster. Dive into your Lightroom File-Handling Preferences. You will find Preferences under the Lightroom menu (Mac) or the Edit menu (Windows). Now move to the File-Handling tab. At the bottom you will see Camera Raw Cache Settings and this is probably set to the default setting of 1.0GB.

You can go all the way to 200GB but chances are you have no need to do this. Try increasing this amount to 20GB. This can optimize Lightroom and give you a performace boost when generating previews in the develop module. You can also move this cache to a faster device, such as an external SSD drive. Simply select the new location using the choose button.

Computer Tweaks to make Lightroom 3 Faster

1. Avoid Fancy visuals. It’s cool to tweak your computer with all the fancy background displays, widgets, animation effects, etc. However, all those little things offer no benefits to performance. All they do is use more resources. So if you’re needing to make Lightroom 3 faster, you might want to start disabling all the fancy gadgets.
2. Maximizing Your Hard Drive Space will make Lightroom 3 faster. If your primary hard drive is maxed out then this is probably a major factor in why Lightroom is running slow. Just because you have all that room doesn’t mean you can fill it up to the brim. This goes for any application, Lightroom included. Install only the applications you actually use on your computer. Do you have 20 apps that you haven’t ran in the last month? Get rid of them. Remove everything you don’t use. Are you storing all your images on your internal hard drive? If so, go buy an external drive and get them off your system. They don’t need to be there and should be backed up for safety. If you look at your hard drive and you only have 10GB free .. yeah that’s a sign you got too much crap. Adobe recommends that the drive be at least 20% free.
3. Defrag Your Drive. This is more for Lightroom users on a Windows PC and not a Mac. Windows can leave your hard drive extrememly messy. Depending on how much you use your computer, you’re probaby going to need to defrag that bad boy on a regular basis.
4. Have a good Anti-Virus in place. Again, this is for those of you on a Windows PC. Mac users will be thinking .. Anti-What? Well those little viruses that are flooding the internet can really drain your resources. You need to keep all of them in check and your computer virus-free. They can kill your Lightroom preformance without you even realizing they’re there.

Run Lightroom in 64-bit Mode

This goes beyond any trick to optimize Lightroom. When you run Lightroom in 64-bit mode, it has access to more than 2GB of RAM, the limit of a 32-bit operating system. By giving Lightroom access to 4GB or more, you will see a very nice boost in performance. This might mean upgrading your computer but if making Lightroom 3 faster is a big issue then it might be time to bite the bullet and make the upgrade.

Upgrade Your System

1. Expand your memory. Upgrading your computers memory is a cheap solution that might give you huge results. If you’re running on 4GB or less of memory then I strongly advise throwing another chip in there and bumping that up to at least 8GB of memory. You should see an instant result in overall computer performance, which in turn makes Lightroom 3 faster.
2. Buy a faster hard drive. Many Lightroom users complain about how slow their images are being accessed but fail to consider the fact that they’re using a standard (slow) 5200 RPM hard drive. A 7200 RPM or SSD drive is the only way to go if Lightroom performance is a top priority.

Render 1:1 Previews during Import

This is my favorite way to optimize Lightroom. Before importing your images into Lightroom look at your File Handling options. Your Render Previews are possibly set to Minimal. Changing this to 1:1 will slow down the importing process but the benefits to your actual editing workflow makes the wait well worth it. If you do not render these during import then Lightroom will be constantly trying to build them while you are editing. This is a great way to make Lightroom 3 faster.

Automatically Write Changes into XMP

You can optimize Lightroom and make it run faster by telling it not to automatically write changes into XMP. From the Lightroom menu (Mac) or Edit menu (Windows) select Catalog Settings and then move to the Metadata tab. Make sure that the option is not checked.

Doing this will dis­able the cat­a­log from updat­ing the XMP Side­car file. It will improve performance but any changes made in Lightroom will not automatically be visible in other applications. If you choose to update these metadata changes you will need to do so manually. Select one or more images in the Library module and press Command+S (Mac) or Ctrl+S (Windows). If you’re working with DNG then you will need to choose Update DNG Preview & Metadata from the Metadata menu in Lightroom.

You should note that you only need to update manually if you want the changes to be visible in other applications. Most photographers can uncheck the option to write changes into XMP, in order to make Lightroom 3 run faster, and then completely forget about it and never update images manually.

Restart Your Computer

Everybody needs to take a nap from time to time. Giving your computer a fresh start can clear up resources that are being tied up for no reason. It’s amazing how many photographers leave their computer running all the time and never think to do a simple restart. If you notice things bogging down and need to make Lightroom 3 faster, sometimes a quick reboot will do the trick.

Update Lightroom 3

This should be obvious but there’s a reason why software developers update their products. They do it to fix bugs and improve performance. Keep your product up to date with the latest performance fixes. Doing this along with everything else listed above will help you optimize Lightroom and make Lightroom 3 faster on your computer.

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The XposurePro Pastel Summer preset is one of our lightroom presets that works perfect for those outdoor summer portraits. This lightroom preset takes a natural and often dull outdoor scene and gives it a special foliage treatment. This lightroom preset was developed for compositions containing a good deal of greens. We use this preset for our portrait clients photographed in gardens, grassy and other natural environments during both the spring and summer. This lightroom preset is not recommended for autumn scenes. If you’re looking for something for the fall season take a look at the Autumn Punch Lightroom Preset.

Lightroom Presets

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Installing Lightroom Presets

The XposurePro Ilford Delta 100 preset is one of our black and white aperture presets that mimics the famous b&w film. Ilford Delta black and white film has always been extremely popular among portrait and landscape photographers. This aperture preset will help you quickly create rich black & white images for a dramatic impact. Everybody loves black and white photography and the Ilford Delta 100 Black and White Aperture preset is sure to become one of your favorite presets.

Aperture Presets

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