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FOTOdigital: a Magazine Created in Lightroom 4

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fotodigital01.jpgWith 80 pages of content in the third issue, including a portfolio by Canadian photographer Marion McCristall of a trip to Portugal, along with articles about hardware, networking, and even cooking for photographers, FOTOdigital is a project I nurtured for some time and that now is in its third monthly edition. Time to share it with my readers.

I've been creating eBooks and other stuff in inDesign for quite some time now. In fact I founded and published a photography magazine in early 2000, that was used by Adobe as a case-study, because we were one of the first companies to use InDesign. So, although I am a writer and a photographer, I've been working with people that used InDesign since its very beginning, and got used to edit, adjust and in the end use it to do some of my leaflets promoting workshops and other initiatives.

fotodigital02.jpgI've also used everything I could, before and after InDesign appeared, to create electronic publications, and I was one of the first persons in my country to understand the power of creating eBooks, something I've been doing and preaching about for a long time now. I 've used Lightroom since early beta days and as soon as the program gave us a chance to create something that looked like an eBook I wrote about it. That was in Lightroom 3, and you can read my article Make Your Photobook in Lightroom 3 written in October 2010.

When Adobe launched Lightroom 4 with a simplified model of Blurb's Booksmart software I was interested. I had used Blurb's program intensively before, but because it is tied to printing through the company, I could not do much with it. Having the program in LR4 with the option to create PDF (and later JPEGs, as requested by some users) and export them opened new options in terms of work. I was already creating eBooks to support my workshops and also creating final eBooks with the best photos from each participant, with InDesign, but with the LR4 Book module I moved on to teach people how to use it to create their own eBooks.  I've created a new trend amongst people regular at my workshops and now they're creating their own eBooks, which is a good way for them to learn to edit series of images and put them together to tell stories. It's great for me to see their works growing! After all, that's the reason why I share my knowledge.

fotodigital03.jpgI love InDesign, but I love challenges even better, so the idea of creating a magazine or ezine in Lightroom 4 grew, and I've explored the program intensively in that area. There are limitations, it is obvious, but it is still fantastic to try to do something no one has done before, so after some time of work I launched, in February 2013, the first issue of FOTOdigital ezine. Somehow it is like going back to the print magazine I had for nine years, FOTOdigital, only now it only exists in electronic format.

Since 2008 I've had a website forFOTOdigital,but I've grown tired of it. Too much spam from some countries, problems with hackers, and the costs of keeping it, both in time and money. I much prefer the magazine version, and the people participating also have said they enjoy seeing their photos in PDF format. So, although I keep the website updated, in Portuguese, I've moved my writing, which is done in English, to the monthly magazine. Some of the contents are similar to what you'll find here at Pixiq, the difference is that while before I was writing texts in Portuguese and then translating them, now I write them in English directly.

fotodigital04.jpgThe option to write the FOTOdigital ezine in English was obvious to me since the first moment. And seeing that the first issues have reached an audience from Australia to Canada confirms that I made the right decision. As for the contents of the magazine, I do not try to compete with regular magazines. I only write about subjects that interest me - and that goes from cooking to music - and try to share with photographers my experiences in different areas, because I do think we all have common problems and interests. The magazine is also a way to show the work of people that somehow is in touch with me and whose work I want to share with more people. We're not talking Art, we're talking about people, mainly amateurs, sharing their visions of the world through the powerful medium of Photography.

So, here is a presentation of FOTOdigital. Use the link to check the three FREE issues and if you feel they're interesting, share them with your friends. Or feel free to participate in the monthly challenge, to see your photo published in a future edition. Above all, look at FOTOdigital as testimony that Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4 Book Module can do things that people will not, at first contact, think it can do. That's what made me want to do it. I could use InDesign, but the challenge of LR4 was always present. Now, with three months of work behind me, I can say... it can be done! And I've learned a whole lot of things in the process!

 


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