RPG KEYS. Adobe Lightroom Keyboard Shortcuts!

Photoshop User TV Plugs RPG

2008-11-03T12:56:00.000-08:00

About 6 months ago I mailed a set of RPG KEYS to Matt Kloskowski from Photoshop User TV thinking he might get a kick out of our Lightroom gizmo. It was a long shot but it was worth the price of postage for sure!

Matt stopped by our booth at Photo Plus last week to introduce himself and to see what the RPG was actually all about. Matt was quite open with me, stating that he had a lot of reservations about the keys because of the price and had yet to play with the demo I mailed him.

I was thrilled with Matt's honesty and that he took a moment to introduce himself. I explained to Matt that the RPG KEY was really designed for high volume photographers who are looking for ways to cut their editing time. Skeptical for sure, Matt watched as I demo'ed the keys for a moment.

As I edited about 50 photos in 3 minutes Matt looked like he might be a little impressed with our toy and thanked me for the demo. Honestly, I thought I would never hear from Mr. Klowskowski again. But this week in Matt's weekly video lesson Matt mentioned RPG. He stated that yes, the keys are pricy, but for high volume photographers, it would be a good investment in time savings.

Thanks for the plug Matt!

To see the section of the clip yourself, click here and play the video. If your in a rush, jump ahead to the 23rd minute. 47th second.

RPG Mini

2008-10-22T03:14:00.001-07:00

Okay, so the cat is now out of the bag!

We have been working on something new for a long time and we are ready to show the world.

RPG would like to introduce the RPG mini. This is a new RPG program and keyboard. It is wireless, has four different configurations, it's half the price, it's sleek, and may be the perfect workflow addition for many photographers.

The RPG mini was first designed for our studio's destination photography when we didn't have space on the plane for the RPG KEYs. Now we put the wireless unit in our lap, and we are set to jet. (nice pun!)

Timing & Price & Other:
#1. All people who purchased an RPG KEY before Sept 1, 2008 will be getting a free RPG mini in the mail. Its our gift to you!

#2. We have two samples to show the world at the Photo Plus Expo in NYC this week. At the show and on our website, we are taking "pre orders." What this means is that we will be filling orders for the RPG mini on a first come first serve when the RPG mini arrives from China. We had hoped the mini would be here for Photo Plus, but it just didn't work out. By taking part in the "pre order" you are getting a better price on the RPG mini because we are not 100% certain when the RPG mini will arrive from China. We are expecting the keys to arrive to us and be shipped to you on Dec 1st.

#3. Price. The price of the RPG mini is $350. However, during this "Pre Order" period we are offering the price of $299 because of the expected waiting priod.

We have an editing module option and a preset module option.

Cheers
Tim

A Great RPG Review

2008-09-04T17:09:00.000-07:00

When someone purchases the RPG KEY system we include a 30 minute over the phone lesson on how to best use the keys. As a studio owner I always hated purchasing a new product and feeling that I had to learn how to use it by reading the "destruction manual." And that is why we walk our photographers through the RPG KEY system over the phone.

Today I reconnected with Ron to help him with the free upgrade of the RPG KEYS for Lightroom 2.0. After our chat, I asked Ron to email me "two lines" about his experience with the RPG KEY.

This is what I got from him.... a little more than 2 lines.

-------------Pasted From Ron--------------------
Tim,
First of all thank you for the excellent customer support you are giving to those of us who have invested in your RPG Keys. You have been available and responsive and willing to spend all the time necessary to help get me “up and running” with this new method of processing in Adobe Lightroom.

When I first heard of RPG Keys it sounded too good to be true, so I held off buying for over six months. After hearing from fellow professional photographers (who I respect with their years of experience), that your RPG Keys had revolutionized their workflow, I decided to take a chance (noting your 30 day return policy in case I didn’t like it.)

Well, after just 3 weddings using RPG Keys, I have learned enough shortcuts to Cut my workflow time by 40 to 50 percent!! I can see where other photographers who were more production-driven could achieve an 80 percent reduction in the time they spent on post-shooting processing. As for me, I am now free to do more creative versions of images and still get them delivered to the client ahead of schedule. It has literally restored much of the joy to working with the images that was vanishing due to the shear increasing number of images we have been shooting in recent years! Now I can have it ALL, higher numbers of deliverable images with INDIVIDUAL color and exposure correction, AND the time to do special creative versions that allow me to still feel like an artist. I had been contemplating having to farm out the processing work on some of my weddings, just because of the overwhelming volume of pictures to be adjusted. Now with RPG, I still do all the work in-house and I actually have time to take a day or two off every week!!

Thank you for all this has done for my business and for my family.

Ron Shaw
Http://www.always-focused-on-YOU.com
Seattle, WA

RPG KEY for Lightroom 2.0

2008-08-25T09:13:00.000-07:00

About 24 hours after Adobe released Lightroom 2.0, my email inbox was buried by RPG KEY users who wanted to know when the RPG KEY program would be upgraded to work with LR 2.0.

Current RPG Owners:

I am excited to announce that this day has finally arrived. If you are currently an owner of the RPG KEYS, this is a free upgrade for you that requires only that you download the new program. To do so, please visit the RPG KEY site, click on the live chat button and request a link to the new program.

New To RPG KEYS?

If you are using either Lightroom 1.3, 1.4 or 2.0, the RPG KEYS will help you much work faster. We stand behind our 30 day satisfaction guarantee and are confident the keys will shave hours off your editing time each day.

Enjoy!

Tim

Web Tool For Photographers

2008-07-17T07:37:00.000-07:00

Big Brother Is Watching You!

As a wedding photographer, our young brides seem to be getting more and more tech-savy by the day. These brides are more comfortable sending a text message or an e-mail asking about our prices than they are with picking up the phone. Like it or not, it’s just the direction these younger brides seem to be headed in and as business owners we need to keep pace with them if we want to succeed.

This blog entry describes a great service that gives your tech-savy clients a new way to reach you and provides you as a business owner a chance to convert leads into sales. (And so much more!)

Details:

http://www.providesupport.com/
$10 / month (10 day free trial)
Mac & PC Version Available
Requires low level html understanding or a web developers help.

NOTICE: I have no affiliation with this company, I just love the service. Having this service on my website has allowed me to convert more leads to sales and better understand what parts of my website need more attention. I hope you agree!

CLIENT BENEFIT:

This service has a small program that lives on my studio computer. When I have the program turned on, it activates a “chat” button on my website automatically. When I have the program turned off, the chat button on my site disappears. If you visit either of my websites you are going to see one of these two icons.

RPG WEBSITE SCREEN SHOT:

RILEY PHOTOGRAPHIC SCREEN SHOT:

Since installing these icons on the website we have noticed that clients almost never use our contact form as they want instant answers using our live chat feature.

When the web visitor clicks on either of the buttons they are able to send me a question. On my end, the computer rings like a phone, and I am able to have a typed conversation with a potential client or help a past client. If I am busy, I can ignore the call just like sending a cell phone call to voice mail and the person’s message will get emailed to me with their contact info so I can reply to them when it’s convenient.

STUDIO BENEFIT:

Warning, this is addictive and can eat hours and hours of your day! Use this tool to benefit your business and don’t get addicted the way I have.

As I mentioned above, this service has a small program that lives on my studio computer. One of the features of this program is that it lets you watch these visitors in real time. This is why the blog entry title refers to “big brother” because any website that has this service can actually see you surf their site in real time.

Who Cares? When I am not out shooting, I am at a computer editing or emailing. I have two computer screens so the live chat program has its own screen. It just does its thing while I work and I can keep an eye on it.

It shows me what advertising I have that is working or what wedding photos people are reviewing.
I can see when someone has trouble placing and order and offer to help.
It shows me what pages of my website people are spending the most time on.
It shows me the geographical location (country and state) the visitor is from, their IP, and what type of web browser they use.

Each piece of information is rather trivial, but together they paint a picture of my website visitors’ behavior that in turn helps me know what I can do to make the site better in order to make more sales and be more helpful overall.

The red arrow below points to a web visitor on the RPG KEY website from Medway, Kentucky. I watched them surf the website, view a few demos and then place an order for the RPG KEYS. Other than being a little creepy, it’s a blast to watch someone placing an order on your site.

If I see a web visitor who is having trouble with an order, I am also about to ask them if they need help. Mostly it just scares people so I don’t suggest you use this feature too often, but it is nice to have!

Conclusions

I think Google offers a similar live chat program but I don’t know much about it. Perhaps others could share their experience with the Google talk program by responding to this blog post. http://www.google.com/talk/

That’s it for this weeks post. I hope you learned something new that will help you with your business, turning those leads into sales and better understanding what pages on your website could use attention. As I look back at my 2007 sales, I can directly link over $20k in sales to the additional of the live chat to my website. Seems like a good investment to me.

Speed Up Lightroom (Free!)

2008-07-10T10:34:00.000-07:00

SPEED UP LIGHTROOM AND YOUR WORKFLOW
Without spending a penny!

While talking with people about Lightroom it has come to my attention that some of the most seasoned users are asking me questions that seem obvious to me. This article is intended to help ALL Lightroom users with a few basic concepts that will save you time and speed up Lightroom.

Step #1. Hard Drive Space:
Make sure your primary hard drive is at least 50% available. I don’t know why, but when we use Lightroom on a computer that has a full or almost full primary working hard drive, Lightroom seems to slow down considerably.

Step #2. File Location:
Hard drives have different speeds. Basically, a hard drives’ ability to respond to your requests is a function of how fast it can spin and whether it is an internal drive directly connected to your computer or an external drive connected by a USB or Fire Wire cord. While you are actively editing a group of photographs, we suggest that you house them on your fastest hard drive that is directly connected to your computer. (AKA: not an external drive) On a PC we use the “c” drive. On a MAC we use our desktop.

Step #3. Lightroom Catalog:
While Lightroom “can” manage large volumes of photographs, it tends to get slowed when you place too many images in any one catalog.

In our studio workflow we have one Lightroom catalog for each client as well as a master catalog for each of the different types of photography we do. We first edit our images in the client catalog and once we are done we will export the images and then import them into the master catalog.

The master catalog is only used to retrieve images using key words. (Read: too slow for editing) For example, I had a reception venue call the studio yesterday and ask if I had any photos of their hall with the tables all decorated and lit with candles. A quick key word search of the master library provided me with 10 images that I was able to show the individual and make a quick sale.

Step #4. File Structure:
We have found that a set file structure makes life much easier when using Lightroom. This is just a suggestion:

Client Name
RAW
LR
EDITS

We place the folder named “Client Name” on our desk top and place three sub folders within this client name folder. “RAW” “LR” and “EDITS.” We place them on our desktop because this is our faster hard drive.

RAW: We place all of the non edited files from a shoot in this folder.

LR: We place the client specific Lightroom catalog in this folder

EDITS: When we are done editing in Lightroom we will export the files into this folder.

When we are finished editing a given client’s photos we will then move the entire file tree to an external hard drive to keep our primary working drive as free as possible. By moving the entire tree of folders together, we are making sure that Lightroom will always be able to find the original raw files. If a client asks you to re-edit an image, you will be able to open the Lightroom catalog from the external drive that it is housed in and Lightroom will still be able to see the RAW files.

Importing Photos:

Step #1 File Renaming:

The file name assigned to an image by our Canon camera has an obvious sequence to it, one that any person who has ever used a digital camera could recognize. This causes us problems because our clients then realize that we are “hiding” photos from them. To keep from ever being asked about the missing photos, we rename the files while downloading them from the memory cards.

We suggestions:

(Julian Day)_(Hours)_(Minute)_(Second)

By renaming your RAW files and keeping these files names all the way to the end product, you are saving yourself considerable headache down the road if a client asks for an image to be re-edited. If this happens you can put the file name referenced by the client into the search feature of Lightroom and the image in question will come up. This alone is why we keep the above file structure intact.

Step #2. Standard Sized Preview:

Once you have imported your images from your memory card into the RAW folder, we suggest you render a “standard size preview.” Basically this will load to your computer cashe an image of your files that is sized to match your computer screen resolution. (I think). Either way, selecting the “standard sized” preview seems to be the best option for our workflow. Selecting the 1:1 preview is asking your computer to remember more detail than is really needed: Slowing things down!

Editing:

Step #1. Full Sized photos:

We suggest editing screen sized photos rather than editing thumbnails. Just personal preference but it seems to let us look at the images more critically than is possible using thumbnails. This is critical given step #2 below.

Step #2. Only Once!

Talking with many Lightroom users we have learned that most of you like to do the whittling or culling process in one step and the editing process in another step.

We understand why you do this, but think you might be better off if you didn’t. Why not edit and whittle your images at the same time. Like it or not, it takes you about 30% more time to review your images and then go back and edit them in another round.

In our workflow we see an image on the screen for the first time, if we like it we make a few edits and we move on. We will never see that photograph again. If the next image is similar or basically the same, we will do one of two things:
Option #1: Reject the image using the reject key on the RPG KEY keyboard.
Option #2. Using a preset, we will make an alternate version of the previous image such as sepia, or BW.

Of all the concepts we have shared today, the idea of only seeing an image once is definitely the one that will shock the most people. It also happens to be the one tip that will save you the most time while editing!

Good luck and please feel free to email if you have any questions.

Cheers
Tim

tim@rpgkeys.com
www.rpgkeys.com

Free Lightroom Seminar

2008-07-01T03:12:00.000-07:00

July 23rd, In New Milford, CT. (just over the NY state line)

Introduction:
As a studio owner I am in the business to make money. I get a sense of pride in creating art that people will pay for, but at the end of the day I am motivated by money. This lecture offers up some advice on how every wedding, event or portrait photographer can increase their print sales considerable.

Uncle Bob’s camera is almost as sophisticated as your camera and can, if used correctly take photographs that are just as good. Uncle Bob is also posting his photos on Kodak.com and offering prints to all the wedding guests for 19 cents a piece.

It is your job to get the attention of wedding guests and family before Uncle Bob steals the show! This lecture will explain our workflow that will have your entire wedding edited in 2 to 4 hours and online while the excitement of the wedding is still vivid in the memories of the family and guests.

Audience members will be LR and non LR users, so I will be starting with the basics and moving forward rather quickly to explain how it is that we edit our wedding images using LR.If you are interested in this seminar, please feel free to e-mail me at: tim (at) rpgkey.com

Selling more prints

2008-06-30T07:25:00.001-07:00

Money!!!!

As a studio owner I am in the business to make money. I know its a little harsh, but I didn’t get into the photography business because I was bored. I left a stable and well paying job as an engineer because I knew I could make a better living doing something I enjoyed!

As I write this reply, it is currently 10am Monday morning after a Saturday wedding. Using the RPG KEYS, I was able to edit the 2000 photographs while I enjoyed my morning coffee. I have posted the weekends wedding photographs online and encouraged a few sales by offering a 15% discount for anyone who places an order before the end of the day Tuesday.

With the help of a little web magic, I can see that almost 50 of the 250 guests have already viewed the slide show set to music and review some of the still images. By the end of the sale on Tuesday night, I can expect between 15 and 30 orders will be placed. And normally a few rather large orders from family who want to take advantage of the sale.

In comparison, if I had of waited two or three weeks to post the photographs online, the excitement of the weekend’s event would be gone! Uncle bob would have already posted his photos on snap fish.com or Kodak.com and your chance at a few extra orders is gone!

As a photographer, I know I am going to get a few orders from family, but capturing orders from the guests is all about the “hot potato” concept that Gerry Fong speaks about. Once that potato is cooled off, your sales will drop quickly.

Photographers who want the RPG KEY but don’t already own the system keep asking me how it is that I am able to sell the RPG KEYs for almost $700. Photographers who are using the RPG KEY system and getting their images online while the “potato” is still hot are realizing that the keys paid for themselves very very quickly.

New Products!

2008-06-20T04:31:00.001-07:00

A few weeks ago we sold out of the RPG KEYS and I even shipped my personal set of keys to a client who needed to have their keys ASAP. I was stuck with no RPG KEY and I had 5 studio shoots and two weddings to edit. Basically I was stuck using Lightroom with no speed help from the RPG KEY.

After about an hour of editing using my mouse I got so upset at the lack of speed and how long it was taking me to edit the photos that I gave up. It was just not worth the pain!

I spent the rest of the day editing the RPG KEY code so that it could be driven by my normal PC keyboard. The result is two new product. Preset'ER and Edit'ER.

#1. The Preset'ER programs allows the user to activate a few basic functions of LR like the all important "paste last" feature and the next photo feature as well as redo/undo and color/BW toggle. But the staple of this mini program is that it lets the user activate 20 of their favorite presets quickly. Check out this little video to see if this less expensive alternative might work for you.

#2. The Edit'ER program allows the user to activate most of the features mentioned above but the presets have been exchanged for the Quick Develop settings. So the number pad on a PC keyboard can now make image editing changes in library and develop mode just like the RPG KEY system does. Check out this little video to see it in action.

Both of the programs above are less than $250.

Cheers
Tim

About RPG KEYS

2008-03-13T12:11:00.000-07:00

What is RPG Keys?

2000 photos edited in 3 hours

The Problem

It's all quite simple. We got sick of spending so many hours editing our images, so we purchased Adobe's Lightroom and then got sick of the lack of speed and keyboard shortcuts. As a studio our workflow used to include one program for finding the images we wanted to show our clients and another program for editing those selected images. Lightroom allows us to do both tasks in one step but until now it lacked important keyboard shortcuts for editing images with speed.

The Solution

Enter RGP Keys. Our keyboard takes advantage of many of Lightroom's shortcuts and also creates shortcuts for most of the key tools of Lightroom. Coupled with a specially designed keyboard, editing images and navigating Lightroom is now as simple as a single push to our keyboard keys. With the RPG keys you can edit photos in Develop mode and Library mode and even edit images while the image editing panel is out of view.¹

With the RPG Key system your workflow will now include reviewing / organizing and editing your photos all in one step. Gone are the days when you needed two or three programs to complete your image workflow.

Quick Access

The key to your improved workflow is that all of the controls you need are right at your fingertips. No longer will you have to reach for your mouse to move around the Lightroom interface. No longer will you have to reach for your mouse to adjust sliders. You can now make your image adjustments, navigate the Adobe Lightroom interface, and organize your shoots faster than you ever thought possible. Features accessible by RPG Keys include:

12 of the Adobe Lightroom standard presets
- Black & White High Contrast
- Black & White Low Contrast
- Aged Color
- Mono Color
- Punch
- Direct
- Auto Tone
- Zero
- Gray
- Sepia
- Cold
- Selenium
20 of your favorite Lightroom presets. Even ones you have purchased.
Flag / Unflag
Star (Increase or Decrease)
Red & Blue
Next Image / Last Image
Library / Develop Mode
Hide / Show left + right panel
Grid View
Survey view
Compare view
Select All
Loop View
Quick Collect (MAC ONLY)
Virtual Copy (MAC ONLY)
Saturation + / -
Sharpness + / -
Tint + / -
Contrast + / -
Black + / -
Exposure + / -
Fill + / -
Recover + / -
Vibrancy + / -
Brightness + / -
Temp + / -
Clarity + / -
Auto White Balance
Go to White Balance
Crop
Red Eye Tool
Clipping
Edit in Photoshop
Increase & Decrease Thumb Size (PC ONLY)