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Ken Milburn

Biography

Ken Milburn has been a photographer, both full- and part-time, for nearly five decades. Ken has written over 300 articles and columns for computer magazines as well as 17 books on web design, Flash, and (mostly) Adobe Photoshop and digital photography. Books currently in print include Digital Photography: 99 Tips to Make you Look Like a Pro, The Photoshop 7 Virtual Classroom, and Photoshop Elements 2.0--The Complete Reference (all from Osborne/McGraw-Hill), and The Digital Photography Bible, 2nd Edition, from Wiley. His newest book, for O'Reilly, the Digital Photography: Expert Techniques, releases in March 2004.

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Podcast Ken Milburn Unplugged
Publish Date: Nov. 1, 2006

Take a listen. The author of Digital Photography Expert Techniques, Second Edition knew Dan Rather in college, started his career taking publicity photos of Hollywood starlets, and shot album covers for Capitol Records. Ken talks to O'Reilly staffer Sara Peyton about his career, tips and tricks, and creating the wow factor.

Blog

The Power of Localized Adjustment Re-adjustment

August 28 2008

One of the few things I’ve rarely heard mentioned about the advantages of the localized corrections Brush in Lightroom 2 is the fact that you can use them to “undo” portions of an image that you’ve used the Develop Modules... read more

Keywording a Category That Just Came to Mind

August 21 2008

Much as many of us “hip gurus” have written about the importance of keywording in our workflow, some of us sometimes forget to add a keyword that might be important in the process of gathering a whole collection of all... read more

Michael Clark's Lightroom 2 eBook

August 14 2008

One of the problems with Lightroom 2 that I’ve been having to deal with may be unique to my situation because I’m currently doing all my work in Costa Rica. So even though Adobe has shipped the shrink-wrapped and “official”... read more

The Power of X

August 07 2008

Best workflow for getting rid of the useless: Make sure Lightroom is in Full Screen mode. Go to Grid mode and, in the Command Bar, drag the Thumbnails slider until you get only about 6 thumbs filling the screen. Slowly... read more

The Ideal After the Fact ND Sky Filter

July 31 2008

There’s a new feature in Lightroom 2.0 that Mikkel Aaland just showcased in his blog on creating Vignettes with the Graduated Filter. It’s a great idea and a neat tutorial. But I have to tell you that I’m really blown... read more

$15 Lightroom 2.0 Plugin that Auto Corrects Lens Distortion

July 24 2008

I am writing about this program before I’ve had a chance to test it. But if you like what it promises, you can download a copy of PTLens at http://epaperpress.com/ptlens/index.html. There’s a free trial that will for for 10 shots.... read more

AutoTone the Whole Shoot in Lightroom

July 16 2008

The AutoTone command in the Library Module and the Develop Module are much improved in Lightroom 2…to the extent that I’ve gotten in the habit of selecting everything in a shoot that I’ve just downloaded, de-selecting anything that I very... read more

Importing into Lightroom Category Folders

July 10 2008

I love to just sling a camera around my neck and go for a walk whenever I need a little exercise and some time to think. I have a list of “categories” of things to shoot that I always like... read more

Knockout Your Subject

July 03 2008

I’m not advocating violence here. In tradespeak, creating a knockout means removing the subject of a photo from its background…hopefully with all the transitional edges, such as flying hair, semi transparent areas, and surface reflections intact. The idea is to... read more

Making eMail Contact Sheets

June 26 2008

Lightroom’s Print Module, believe it or not, is a great vehicle for putting together a photo collection for a quick email. All you do is make rows and columns and space them so that when you capture the screen, they’re... read more

Thoughts and Advice on Text for Slideshows and Web Galleries

June 19 2008

I really started realizing how important it was to do keywording, titles, and captions as soon as possible, and with a plan in mind, when I started writing classes on using Lightroom’s Slideshow and Web modules. These are both incredibly... read more

Checking out the Before and After

June 11 2008

Lightroom does some things that are very useful in a processing routine, even if you do a lot of your processing (such as retouching, using filters, making composites, or correcting perspective) in another image editing program. First of all, you... read more

Rating and Flagging Images

June 05 2008

Ever since I started working with image management programs I’ve been trying to find the system by which I could consistently use a specific rating to mean specific things. I still am not so sure I’ve done that, so I... read more

Editing a Shoot in a Lightroom 2.0 Slideshow

May 29 2008

Slideshows are a great way to study a shoot/folder. You can then edit the slideshow by either putting your "picks" into a collection or by selecting your picks from a rating or color label. When you're done, there are now... read more

Changing your Background Color in Lightroom 2.0

May 22 2008

I was doing the processing for a business portrait shoot that I did last night when it dawned on me that there's an outstanding benefit to having the Localized Color Brush in combination with the Auto Mask option in Lightroom... read more
Ken Milburn