Mountainstorm has released a free plug-in callet LightroomTether. This plug-in works together with another free software for Mac, called StudioTether.

Tethering your camera, fast and easy:
Taking photos in the studio is so much easier if you can see what your doing.

StudioTether is a free application to tether your camera to your Mac.

LightroomTether is a plugin for Adobe Lightroom v2 which automates the running of StudioTether and importing of these photos into Lightroom. It provides an easy to use interface which automatically configures/starts StudioTether. Due to the integrated nature of the plugin, it provides much better performance than using Lightrooms “Auto Import folder” feature.

Feature overview:

• Remote control of your camera & onscreen display of camera settings
• Nikon LiveView support at 60fps! (recording coming soon)
• Instant import of images into Adobe Lightroom; no waiting for Lightroom to detect the images
• Integrated with Adobe Lightroom; single configuration

Currently the plugin supports cameras from Nikon, Canon and Fuji (see a full list of supported cameras)

Read more and Download the software for your Mac here

Too bad I’m on a PC then…
If you’re on a PC you can try this script which is suppose to do the same job:
http://www.diyphotobits.com/2008/05/23/free-tethered-shooting-script-for-nikon

Did you know there’s a plugin for Lightroom that makes it possible for you to export your photos directly to your blog!?

Timothy Armes’, the man behind LR2/Mogrify (which I’ve talked about before) has made it again.

This plug-in for Lightroom 2 has been released very early in order to garner the feedback necessary to meet your needs. It will undergo rapid development, but needs your help to grow. What features would you like to see? Which blogs would you like to see supported? Please leave your ideas in the comments section of his related blog article.

Please note that this plugin is donationware. The trial version can only upload one image at a time. Donating towards the development of this plug-in will unlock this restriction.

Installation:

Download the plug-in
Unzip the download. You should now have a plug-in called ‘LR2Blog.lrplugin’. If your unzip program didn’t keep this parent directory, then you should create it and copy your unzipped files into it.

The plug-in is installed via the Lightroom 2 plug-in manager.

1. Move LR2Blog.lrplugin to a convenient location of your own choosing.
2. Open Lightroom’s plug-in manager from the File menu.
3. Click the “Add” button.
4. Browse to the plug-in and click “OK” on a Mac or “Add plugin” on a PC.

To get a quickguide of how to use the plug-in, please visit this page

You may also be interested in his LR2/Mogrify plug-in which allows you to adds watermarks, borders and text annotations to images as they are exported. It can be used in tandem with LR2/Blog or indeed any other export plug-in.LR2/Blog is a Lightroom 2 export plug-in that allows you to export your images directly to your blog.

Version 1.20 has been tested with WordPress (2.6 and 2.7) and Blogger (hosted blogs only) however this will soon evolve.

You can get the latest version of the LR2/Blog plug-in at Photographer’s Toolbox

Enjoy!

To be able to do this in a simple way, you can use a plug-in for Lightroom called LR/Mogrify. Timothy Armes is the developer of this great plug-in and apart from for the graphical watermark function you can do much more funny things; You can create borders, Text annotations, resize photos and sharpen them, modify color space and play with colors’ processing.
All effects are applied on export and each one of them can easily be customized to your needs.

The free version of this plug-in can export 10 images at a time but a donation of any amount will give you an unrestricted version of this software.

Here you can download the plug-in and also read the installation instructions:
»Get the Plug-in!
Be sure to download the right version of the plug-in since it’s available for both LR 1 and LR 2.

! To get this to work you also need to download ImageMagick ( Currently I have version “ImageMagick-6.4.4-Q16) which is the image engine used with this plugin: http://www.imagemagick.org

This is how I use the plug-in to put image stamps on my photos:

1. I start by making the watermark stamp in Photoshop; To be sure my stamp doesn’t get placed to close the photos corners I put 10px of margin around it. In Photoshop I make the background layer invisible and put a stroke effect with 2px on my text/logo layer. I prefer to use white color for my stamp (text) since it looks good on most of my photos. The black stroke around it makes sure it will be visible on really light photos as well.
2. To get the feeling of a soft semi-transparent stamp, I change the Opacity of my text/logo layer to 50%.
3. When I’m satisfied I save my logo as a PNG image which is a great format that can handle transparent photos with anti-aliasing edges (GIF is not an option for me here).
4. When saved, the stamp is ready for Lightroom.
5. When I have installed the LR2/Mogrify plug-in to Lightroom I simply open the Export window as usual. A few clicks are needed so I start by inserting “Mogrify Configuration” and “Graphical Watermark” from the “Post-Process Actions:”-panel (you find it on the lower left side in the export window).
6. Since this plug-in is using open source software called ImageMagic to modify the images, the path to the software needs to be added. I add my installation path of Mogrify.exe to the Mogrify Configuration panel (See, “Path of Mogrify application:” ).
7. In the “Mogrify Graphical Watermark” panel I then add the path to my stamp/logo.
8. Finally I select the position for my stamp by using the checkbox option for “Position”. This selection will place my stamp in the bottom right corner.

Instruction steps 1-4

Instruction steps 5-8

My final image exported with a stamp directly from Lightroom:

See more of Timothys work and other plugins here.

Now that I’ve just set up a group on flickr for presetsheaven, wouldn’t it be nice to be able to export your photos directly from Lightroom to your account on flickr.com? Well, actually you can!
Jeffrey Friedl is a handy man I must say. He has developed a plugin for Lightroom 1.x and 2.0 that makes it possible for the rest of us to export our images directly to our flickr accounts! Sweet!

-If you often use flickr to publish your work, this is definitely something for you.

So, how to make this work?
First of all you need to download the plugin and that is done by using this URL:
http://regex.info/blog/lightroom-goodies/flickr/
(Look in the top-right corner of the page to find the download link.)

Once the plugin is downloaded your next step is to install it.
There is no need for me to describe this part since Jeffrey has done such a great job even here. Please visit http://regex.info/blog/lightroom-goodies/plugin-installation/ and follow the instructions.

Important note!
For this plugin to work, you first need a flickr account registered. It’s free (can be upgraded) and I really advise you to get one like many other photo enthusiasts have done (including myself). It’s simply a great place to keep your favorite photos online and to share with others.

So you think plugins for Lightroom sounds great?
Check out some more of Jeffrey´s plugins.
These are just some of the plugins you can find on his lightroom-goodies page:

• Export Plugin for Zenfolio
• Export Plugin for SmugMug
• Export Plugin for Picasa Web
• Export Plugin for Facebook

Timothy Armes is another handy man who has made a couple of plugins as well. My favorite one is called “Mogrify” and it’s using ImageMagic to apply different effects on your exported images. I use it to place custom made “copyright watermarks” in my photos. The built-in function in Lightroom doesn’t fulfill my needs. Besides, it’s ugly since you can’t modify the font and positioning as you want.
Check out the plugins from Timothy here

Best regards,
Pierre