South Maui Sunset with Lightroom "Adobe Standard" Adobe Standard Camera Calibration preset.

One of the lesser known features in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom is Camera Calibration in the Develop module. Different camera sensors render color differently. Camera Calibration was developed to enable photographers to adjust the white balance, hue and saturation to “calibrate” the image so it matches more closely with what they intended when it was originally captured.

It’s an adjustment that can be done using other controls in Lightroom, but I tend to try different Color Calibration presets right off the bat to see if they get me closer to how I want to image to end up looking. If so, it gives me a different starting point for developing my image and saves me a lot of time.

South Maui Sunset with Lightroom "Camera Vivid" Camera Calibration preset.

Several presets are shipped with the product. If you shoot RAW, you’re presented with more choices of presets than if you don’t. They include ACR 3.1, ACR 4.4, Adobe Standard, Camera D2X Mode 1, Camera D2X Mode 2, Camera D2X Mode 3, Camera Landscape, Camera Neutral, Camera Portrait, Standard and Camera Vivid. Depending on what camera model you use and how you exposed your image, you’ll need to play around with them to see what they do for you.

One of the things I did a while ago was to create User Presets out of the different Camera Calibration presets, so I could simply mouse over the presets and get a preview of what the image will look like when I apply them.

To create these, choose a Camera Calibration present, then go to the Presets panel and press the “+” sign to create a new one, uncheck everything except calibration, name it with the name of the Camera Calibration preset and press Create. Then move on to the next Camera Calibration preset and do the same, and the next, until they’re all done.

You’ll find yourself using these more and more when you first enter the Develop module, and they may even inspire you to take the image in a direction you hadn’t thought of.

Try it and tell me what you think.

South Maui Sunset

My wife came in from the garden this morning, poked her head in my home office and said, “Hey, there’s a baby praying mantis on the chile plant. Interested?”

Earlier this month, I’d purchased a set of extension tubes and badly needed practice using them, so I dropped what I was doing, grabbed the camera, slapped on the Micro-Nikkor 105mm f/2.8 with the 12mm, 20mm and 36mm tubes (she said the mantis was about 5/8-inch, so if I was going to get a face shot, I knew I’d need as much help as I could get) and followed her outside.

I spent most of the morning experimenting with different exposure modes and techniques. I posted the preliminary shots on my Facebook profile to get my friends to chime in, and a couple gave me some good suggestions on different things to try.

Here are the lessons learned from today’s work:

1. Use a tripod with the ballhead loose, so you can move around but still have some stability. What I keep telling my students was true again today—no matter how steady your hands are, your tripod is steadier. You still need a fairly fast shutter speed, but the tripod helps set your focus point. A monopod might have been more flexible, but I didn’t feel like moving my ballhead over to it. Next time.
2. You’ll need a fairly deep depth of field. I started out at f/5.6, went to f/8 and eventually ended up at f/11.
3. Set the ISO as high as you can tolerate (noise-wise) to keep the shutter speed as fast as possible. I haven’t bent my head around the focal length math with all the extension tubes (anyone want to give it a shot?) but I know the “1/focal length” rule always applies in setting the shutter speed, so I just went as high as I could.
4. My instincts as a wildlife and portrait photographer told me the goal was to get sharp eyes no matter what, so I sacrificed everything else to get those. I like a lot of bokeh in shots like these anyway.

Here are some of the better ones. Thoughts? Which do you like?

Tiny praying mantis. About 5/8-inch. Nikkor 105mm with 12mm, 20mm and 36mm extension tubes.

Tiny praying mantis. About 5/8-inch. Nikkor 105mm with 12mm, 20mm and 36mm extension tubes.

Tiny praying mantis. About 5/8-inch. Nikkor 105mm with 12mm, 20mm and 36mm extension tubes.

Tiny praying mantis. About 5/8-inch. Nikkor 105mm with 12mm, 20mm and 36mm extension tubes.

The year is quickly coming to a close and many of us are thinking about shooting fireworks. Here are some tips that have served me well over the years.

First, be on a tripod. You need slow shutter speeds to get the light trails, so unless you want your photographs to come out like impressionist art (which can be quite nice), you’ll want to make sure your camera is rock steady.

Consider a cable release or remote trigger for your camera. You need to see the pattern and trajectory of the rockets, and your field of view is extremely limited if you’re looking through the viewfinder.

Also, even on a steady tripod, there’s always a chance you’ll cause some vibration when your finger releases the shutter, particularly with slower shutter speeds.

You need a zoom lens (200m or better) if you want tight shots of the flares and trails. On the other hand, if you’re looking for shots of fireworks with prominent features in the foreground, like city lights, you need to go wider.

Set your camera to Manual Mode for maximum exposure control. You need some good depth of field—around f/11 should do it. Set your shutter speed to 3 or 4 seconds. Take a few test shots and adjust the speed as necessary to avoid overexposure. Set your ISO to 100 or 200 to avoid noise. Turn off the autofocus so the lens doesn’t “hunt” and set the focus to infinity.

The rest is positioning and timing. You need to anticipate where the rockets are going to explode and when to release the shutter to get the flares and trails. Check your LCD to make sure you’re getting the composition and exposure you’re looking for.

My preference is to shoot in “Bulb” mode, where you can hold the shutter open manually for as long as you want (all the more reason to have a cable release). This gives you full control over your timing—press just before the rocket explodes, release after the light trails fade. Again, take test shots and adjust as necessary.

Wishing everyone a fabulous and safe New Year. See you in 2010.

I love shooting panoramas, and decided to do one while I was shooting a sunset a couple of weeks ago. Check out Photogler for details on how I produced the image.

Fill flash used in this shot. Model: Maria Mazurova.

When I was out shooting the other day, it occurred to me that I still use a bunch of timeless rules of thumb I learned from various sources along the way; many so ingrained I don’t even realize I’m using them. I thought it might be fun to do a review.

A few years ago, I read an article in Popular Photography (that I can no longer find on their site) listing the ones I knew, and some I didn’t. Taken from my notes:

1. Sunny 16:
Bright, sunny day at f/16, shutter speed is 1/ISO. Extrapolated, f/22 at the beach, f/11 on cloudy-bright days.

2. Moony 11, 8, 5.6:
Shutter: 1/ISO
Moon Full: f/11
Moon Half: f/8
Moon Quarter: f/5.6

3. Avoiding Camera Shake:
Shutter: 1/focal length of the lens

4. No 18% Grey Card Handy (if you can’t trust the in-camera light meter):
Hold palm up facing the light, take a reading an open up one stop. (Skin tones vary.)

5. Depth Of Field:
Focus 1/3 of the way to maximize depth of field on a deep subject. The smaller the aperture, the shorter the focal length and the greater the distance, the greater the depth of field.

6. Largest Print With Digital:
Divide the vertical and horizontal pixel counts by 200. For critical applications, use 250.

7. Exposure:
Digital/transparency: expose for highlights and let the shadows take care of themselves.
Negative: overexpose 1 stop

8. Fill-flash:
Set flash’s ISO to twice your ISO, meter the scene, select f-stop, set autoflash to same f-stop. The resulting 2:1 flash-fill ratio will produce filled shadows 1 stop darker than the main subject.

9. Flash Range:
Double the distance, four times the ISO.

10. Megapixel Multiplier:
Increase the megapixels by 4 to double the resolution in a digital camera (to account for both vertical and horizontal).

11. Stopping Action:
Shutter speed 2 stops faster than the action moving toward or away from you, if perpendicular to the lens. For action moving at a 45-degree angle to the lens, use 1 stop faster.

12. Sunset:
Meter the area directly above the sun (without sun in frame). Down 1 f-stop to look like 1/2-hour later.

Did I miss any? What’s your favorite rule of thumb? Let’s see if we can start the “definitive” collection right here.

ND Grad set up on a camera with a Cokin P-mount.

One of the secrets to the success of my landscape photography is the Neutral Density Graduated Filter—otherwise known as the ND grad. I learned about them from Bob Evans at one of his (highly recommended) workshops in Yosemite in ’05, and almost always use them in my landscapes.

A daylight sky can be several stops brighter than the foreground landscape, especially if the sun is in your frame, so if you meter the entire scene as a whole, chances are your foreground elements will be end up in silhouette. This is fine if that’s what you’re looking for, but if you’re trying to highlight your foreground features, you’ll need to open up the aperture, which will result in the sky being “blown out”, or totally white.

You can see the whole scene just fine with your eyes, because they are capable of perceiving many more stops of light than your camera. Photography is sometimes the art of compromise. In this case, you have to choose whether to sacrifice the sky or your foreground.

Divers about to enter the water at the Breakwater in Monterey, California, metered so that the foreground elements are in silhouette. In this case, the silhouette is what makes the photo.

If you want both, there are a couple of things you can do. One tried and true technique that many photographers use (including me, when I’m in a bind) is to take two good shots, one with the landscape exposed correctly, another with the sky exposed correctly, then join them together using image editing software such as Adobe Photoshop.

There’s nothing wrong with this, but it can take a lot of time and skill if the break between the two photographs isn’t an easy, clean one, like an ocean and sky. If it’s a complex treeline, you’ll have to create a careful selection around it so you can do a better job of blending the two shots.

Enter the ND grad. These are pieces of glass or plastic, half of which is clear while the other half is tinted. The tinted side comes in different shades of darkness, or densities—typically 1, 2, or 3 stops (usually denoted as ND 0.3, 0.6 or 0.9, respectively). They come with either “hard” or “soft” divisions or lines between the two halves to accomodate your compositions. If your scene has a clean line where an ocean meets the sky, a “hard” ND Grad with the line placed right on the horizon will do the trick. If you have a mountain range or a row of trees on the horizon, a hard line would be difficult to place, in which case you might want to use one with a “soft” line.

ND Grads come in two main types. One type is circular and screws onto the end of a lens like any other filter. This is fine, but it forces the photographer to compose the photo with the line in the middle of the frame, which can make the photo look static and less interesting.

Singh-Ray Galen Rowell 3-stop hard ND Grad, P-mount, lens adapter.

The other type is rectangular, and slides into a slot in a holder, such as the Cokin “P” series. This holder is attached to the end of the lens by means of an adapter ring. This type of filter gives the photographer more flexibility in moving that line around than with the fixed, circular one. The filter slides up and down within the holder until the line is placed correctly.

The trick is placing that line correctly, so that it doesn’t show in the final photo. You don’t want someone looking at your photo and wondering why there’s a mysterious division between light and dark in the middle of an ocean or a lawn.

Here’s how it’s typically done:

A Maui Sunset scene metered as a whole, leaving the foreground in silhouette.

1. With your camera on a tripod and set to “Manual”, and take a shot of the scene with your light meter set to “Matrix” or “Evaluative” mode (manufacturers have different terminology) to see what it looks like. In the case of a sunset with the sun in the frame, the foreground elements will most likely be in silhouette. In other cases, depending on the intensity of the light, your sky may be blown out and look like one big “blinky” if your display is set to “Highlights” mode.

2. Set your light meter to spot metering mode and zoom in on a small area of sky. Take a reading.

3. With your light meter still set to spot metering, take a second reading of a small area in your foreground.

4. What’s the difference in the two readings? How many stops? This determines which ND Grad to use. Set your light meter back to Matrix or Evaluative mode.

5. Next, we need to decide if we should use a hard or soft ND Grad. Is your horizon a simple division between land and sky? Do you have a row of mountain peaks on the horizon? Your situation and composition will determine which one to use.

6. Compose your image again. Slide the chosen ND Grad into the holder. Now, to determine where exactly that line should go.

7. There’s a button, usually beside the lens mount, called the “depth of field preview”. When your shutter is not engaged, the aperture of your lens is wide open. Even if you’ve dialed in an aperture of f/16 or f/22, it will only take effect when the shutter is released, so you can’t really see what your chosen aperture setting looks like. This is what the depth of field preview button is for. When you press that button, you’ll notice the world suddenly go dark in your viewfinder. That’s because the aperture is now set to your chosen setting. Like being in a dark room, you need to take a few seconds to let your eyes adjust to the darkness in your viewfinder.

With the depth of field preview button held down, move the ND Grad carefully up and down until the line is where you want it to be. Remember, you’re looking for the spot where it will be the least obvious in the final photo. While you have the button pressed, take advantage of the stopped down aperture to check for any stray elements in your composition you didn’t see before. When your aperture is wide open, you can’t always see distractions that might appear when your chosen depth of field is in effect.

8. Double check to make sure your light meter is set to Matrix or Evaluative mode. Remember, you’re now “re-evaluating” the whole scene with the ND Grad in place. Set your exposure.

9. Take your picture. If all goes well, you should now have a fabulous, well balanced photograph.

Same scene as the photo above with the foreground opened up thanks to the ND Grad.

You can also use an ND Grad to create effects that might otherwise be difficult or impossible, such as blurring the flow of water in the foreground during a sunset.

A Makena sunset taken with an ND Grad, allowing me to slow the shutter speed and get a wispy, blurry effect in the flowing water.

I look forward to seeing some of the work you’ve created with ND grads. Post some links in the comments and let’s have some fun.

Creating a montage with Photoshop has always been one of my favorite creative outlets. It gives me an opportunity to set my mind free and see my photography from a totally different perspective. It also enables me to use photos that are flawed, or that I might not be able to use otherwise, for whatever reason.

Here’s a step by step walkthrough of how I created a montage I call “Hidden Falls” using Adobe Photoshop.

Dusk sky at Valley of Fire, Nevada.

I started with a single photograph of the sky at dusk in the Valley of Fire in Nevada, with the outline of the rocks in silhouette. I always loved this photo, but never had the opportunity to use it.

I created a new image sized at 4800 by 6000 pixels. It’s a good idea to give yourself a fair amount of room to work when you haven’t totally visualized your creation yet.

Bonus tip: it’s probably best to work in low resolution until you solidify your ideas and know which images you’re going to use, then create the final montage in high resolution. Working in high resolution can be slow and frustrating when you’re trying to be creative.

Another bonus tip: whenever possible, make your changes non-destructively, using adjustment layers or smart objects, and label your layers, so you remember what you did. This gives you a path of retreat when you don’t like the way things are going, and enables you to make changes to any adjustments you make.

Sky photo placed in new image with a black background.

Conveniently, the rocks were silhouetted in the sky photo, giving me a blank canvas to work with, so I filled the background layer in my new image with black, then copied the photo into the image as a new layer, resizing it with Free Transform until it fit at the top. Now I had a large silhouette of a mountain scene with a nice dusk sky.

Yosemite Fall as seen from the walking trail.

I found a photo of Yosemite Fall I’d taken from the walking trail, and brought it into the montage, moving it around until I found the right spot for it.

Image of the Yosemite Fall added as a new layer.

Screen blend mode eliminated the parts that weren't black, and a brush on a Layer Mask cleaned up the remaining artifacts.

The next step was to change the blend mode of that layer to Screen, removing all the black pixels against the sky. Then I added a layer mask and used a soft edged brush to paint away the artifacts that the Screen blend mode didn’t eliminate.

The concept was starting to take shape—a waterfall hidden away between a larger set of rocks. What I needed was some rock textures that I could blend in.

Detail photo of the face of El Capitan, Yosemite National Park.

Photo of El Capitan added as a new layer.

I knew just the perfect image for that—a detail photo of El Capitan I’d taken on that same trip to Yosemite. I brought that photo into the canvas and positioned it to the left of the falls, then resized it to fit using Free Transform. Then I changed the blend mode of that layer to Linear Light, giving it a rich, warm color.

I didn’t want to steal too much thunder from the falls themselves, so I decided to tone down the rock texture a bit by lowering the opacity of that layer to about 80%.

Then I added a layer mask and painted away the parts of the rock that didn’t belong in the sky and the bottom of the canvas, and varied the opacity of the brush to create some dramatic shadows along the edges of the rock textures.

Rock piece taken from an enlarged copy of the original falls photo.

Rock piece image flipped horizontally.

Now I needed more rocks on the right side of the falls. I tried using that same image of El Capitan again, but the textures didn’t blend with the rocks on the bottom of original falls image. I couldn’t find a photo in my collection that had better textures, so I decided to use the same image of the falls again. I enlarged it and cropped out a piece of the rocks.

There was some greenery that didn’t quite fit at the bottom of that piece, so I flipped it horizontally and positioned it where I could blend it in more easily. I brought the flipped piece into the scene and positioned it where I wanted it, to the right of the falls, then adjusted the color tones to match the rest of the canvas. Then I lowered the opacity to about 70% to blend it in further, added a layer mask and painted away the parts I didn’t need.

Time to play with the colors. I thought the sky was a little too bright, and didn’t really match the mood of the scene.

Almost done. What's missing?

I decided to try adding a Gradient Fill, creating an effect similar to using an ND grad filter in real life for the sky. I then added a Photo Filter adjustment layer to deepen the colors and give the sky a more surreal look.

I added a few more Photo Filter adjustment layers to change the colors in the rocks so that they would blend with the rest of the scene a little better. I decided to go for a warmer glow in the larger rock faces and a cooler tone in the rocks immediately next to the bluish part of the falls.

At this point, I was going to crop off the bottom part of the canvas and call it done, but the montage didn’t feel complete to me.

After some thought, I decided what the scene needed was a foreground element of some kind. I thought about adding in a grassy patch or perhaps the sandy part of a beach, but then it occurred to me—not sandy, watery. I needed a reflection.

Piece of the bottom cropped and flipped upside down.

I cropped a piece out of the bottom of the falls and flipped it upside down, then nudged it into place on the bottom part of the canvas.

I went into Free Transform and widened the bottom part of the cropped piece slightly, to give it the correct perspective (as if I were viewing the scene while standing in that location).

I lowered the opacity of that layer to about 75% (the water would be 1 or 2 stops lower exposure-wise in real life), then added a little Motion Blur and a Ripple effect to that piece, giving it a more realistic watery look.

I hope this has inspired you to try creating montages of your own, if you haven’t already. If you have any montages you’d like to share, post the links here. I’d love to see them.

In Part 1 of this series, we covered the basics of setting up a brand new Flickr account, uploading photos, organizing them into Sets and Collections, linking to them and displaying them in slideshows. In this part of the series, we’ll cover some of the finer points of getting your images noticed and interacting with other Flickr members.

Contacts
When you add someone as a contact in Flickr, you are essentially bookmarking them, so you have ready access to their photostream and can see any new images they upload. When someone adds you as their contact, it’s considered polite to reciprocate and add them as yours.

You add a contact by going to their profile and selecting “Add as contact” under their name. When you do this, you also have the option of adding them as Friend or Family.

This corresponds to the “edit who can see what” options under Your Account, as well as the privacy options you set for your photos when you upload them. Using these options together, you can make certain images available to the public, or only to those you designate as friends and/or family.

Note that if you’re trying to get attention on Flickr, keep in mind that your contacts have the option of seeing one upload per person or five. This means anything you upload beyond the first five probably won’t be seen unless they take the time to actually visit your photostream. Upload the one you want to bring the most attention to first.

Faves
Just as adding a contact bookmarks that person’s photostream, “faving” an image bookmarks it so you can easily find it again. You do this by clicking on the star above someone’s photo.

When you add someone’s image as a favorite, they see that action in their Recent Activity, along with a link back to your photostream, so faving images can be a way to bring some attention to your own.

Comments
Flickr is a social photo sharing site, and commenting on images is a standard practice. It’s a great way to give or receive feedback and build relationships. To leave a comment, simply type into the comment box below someone’s image. You can include some basic HTML tags in your comment as well.

Groups
Groups are created to collect images from several sources into a single pool. One of the best ways to give your images some visibility is to join groups and submit your images to them.

When you find a group you like, go ahead and join it. In doing so, you are sometimes presented with a page where you have to ask for permission to join. If this happens, simply type in a polite request to join the group and embed a small or medium-sized version of your image.

Some groups are invitation-only. As your images become more visible, you will eventually have visitors post these invitations as comments. It’s important to follow the rules of each group as they are set by its administrators. Typically, they have to do with the types of images that can be posted or how many can be posted in a day.

They can also include directives, such as “Post 1, Fave or Comment 2″, meaning for every image you post to the group pool, you have to fave or comment on at least 2 existing ones.

There is usually some HTML code provided that they will want you to include in your comments. All you have to do is find that code in the group’s front page, then copy and paste it into the comment box.

Explore
Last but not least, the Explore section on Flickr is a collection of the images with the most Interestingness on any given day. Interestingness itself is a secret algorithm that Flickr uses to determine which images should be highlighted in this section. While the exact method used in this determination appears to be a closely guarded secret, it’s not hard to guess what it does in broad terms.

If your image gets the right kind of attention, meaning it gets a certain number of views, comments and faves, there’s a possibility it will appear on Explore. The higher it ranks on Explore, the more people see it. One of the easiest ways to track your images on Explore is to use the Scout application from Big Huge Labs.

Please let me know if this two-part series on Flickr was helpful to you. If you feel there was anything I didn’t cover, or if something wasn’t clear, I’m happy to fill in any gaps.

Flickr is one of the today’s most popular photo sharing sites. Whether you’re a professional who wants visibility and honest feedback on your work, or an enthusiast who just wants your photos to be seen and enjoyed, Flickr is a great place to share your images and engage in discussions about them in a non-commercial setting.

Despite its popularity, the finer points of using Flickr to its full potential and bringing visibility to your images can be illusive. This is the first of a two part walkthrough that explains how to take full advantage of your Flickr account.

With a free Flickr account, you can upload two videos and 100MB worth of photos each calendar month. You can also organize your photos into three photosets and post them in up to 10 groups.

For $25 per year, you get a Pro Account, with unlimited photo uploads (20MB per photo), unlimited video uploads (90 seconds max), unlimited bandwidth and storage, unlimited photosets, archiving of high-resolution original images and the ability to replace a photo. You can also post your photos in up to 60 group pools and view your count and referrer statistics. You’re also able to browse and share ad-free.

The Basics
After you sign up, there are some housekeeping decisions about your account you should get out of the way, so you don’t have to think about them later.

Under the “You” menu, select “Your Account”. On that page, the two sections you need to take care of first are under “edit who can see what” and “if it’s searchable”. Change the options as necessary.

In the “Your Flickr web addresses” section, set the name you want to use. This is the URL you will be sending to your viewers so they can see your images. If you don’t set it, then your URL will have your actual Flickr user ID , which can be hard to remember, such as 24392742@N06. Think carefully about this, as cannot be changed once you set it!

Then go back to “Your Account” again and click on the “Privacy & Permissions” link. Set the options to suit your comfort level.

Set any other options you like in “Your Account” and “Your Profile” (under the “You” menu). When you’re done, click on “Home”. You are now ready to upload images to your Flickr account.

Uploading Images
To upload images, click on “Upload Photos” on the home page. Then click on “Choose photos and videos”. Navigate to the location of your photos and select the ones you want to upload. You can select several at once if you like.

When you have selected your files, you can set the privacy options for those images, such as whether they’re visible only to friends and/or family, or to the public.

After they have been uploaded, you are presented with the option to enter titles, descriptions and tags. Set those to your liking and click on “Save”. To help bring attention to your photos, take the time to create clear, meaningful titles, write good descriptions and tag your images carefully, so that the search engines can find them more efficiently (SEO). Voila! You now have images in your Photostream.

At this point, you can select “Organize” in the menu bar to put your images in Sets, or you can create Collections of Sets if you have several you want to keep together.

Linking To Your Images
You can obtain a static link to your photo by clicking on All Sizes above the image. This brings you to a page where you can select the size of the image you want to display or download. Copy and paste the URL corresponding to your choice. You’re also given a block of embed code you can use in a website or a blog, with a link back to the photo’s page.

Note that the Flickr Community Guidelines specify that if you post a Flickr photo on an external website, the photo must link back to its photo page, so even if you grab the individual link rather than the embed code, it’s up to you to make sure it points back to the source.

Slideshows
Your Photostream can be viewed as a slideshow by pressing the “Slideshow” link at the top right of your page. Any set you create can be viewed that way as well.

If you mouse over your slideshow while it’s running, you’ll see a menu of options across the top. One of those is the Share option, which gives you a link to the show that you can give to people, and embed code you can use to incorporate the slideshow into your website or blog.

If you haven’t already opened a Flickr account, go ahead and give it a try. Set your privacy options as described above, upload some photos and have some fun. In the next post, we’ll cover adding Contacts, Faves, Comments, Groups and Explore.

Ever since I created my Facebook page, I’ve been looking for a way to embed a Flash slideshow into it. Facebook doesn’t allow embeds, so I looked at a lot of different applications, and MagToo was the closest I could come to a decent solution.

The thing is, I use my Flickr account as a kind of hub to display my work, so the ideal thing would be if I could find a way to use their embed code in Facebook.

I was browsing some Facebook pages and came across one with Flickr slideshows embedded in a tab, and decided I had to know how it was done. From past experience, I knew it had to be Flickr’s embed code wrapped somehow inside FBML (Facebook Markup Language). I looked around and managed to find a good forum thread started by the page owner, and a succinct introduction to FBML. Learning FBML has always been on my list anyway, so I dug in.

Here’s how I made it work:

1. Go to “Edit Page” in your Facebook page.

2. Go down to “More Applications”, mouse over to the little “pencil” symbol on the right and select “Browse More”.

3. Search for “Static FBML”.

4. After selecting the application from the search results, click on “Add to my Page”.

5. When the selection window comes up, choose the page it should be added to.

6. Go back to your page and “Edit Page” again.

7. Look for the FBML application, mouse over to the right and select “Edit”.

8. Here’s where it gets tricky. You need to convert the Flickr embed code for your slideshow into FBML. This was the original code for my slideshow from Flickr:

<object width="700" height="525"> <param name="flashvars" value="offsite=true&lang=en-us&page_show_url=%2Fphotos%2Fpeterliuphoto%2Fsets%2F72157605677028199%2Fshow%2F&page_show_back_url=%2Fphotos%2Fpeterliuphoto%2Fsets%2F72157605677028199%2F&set_id=72157605677028199&jump_to="></param> <param name="movie" value="http://www.flickr.com/apps/slideshow/show.swf?v=71649"></param> <param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://www.flickr.com/apps/slideshow/show.swf?v=71649" allowFullScreen="true" flashvars="offsite=true&lang=en-us&page_show_url=%2Fphotos%2Fpeterliuphoto%2Fsets%2F72157605677028199%2Fshow%2F&page_show_back_url=%2Fphotos%2Fpeterliuphoto%2Fsets%2F72157605677028199%2F&set_id=72157605677028199&jump_to=" width="700" height="525"></embed></object>


And here is the same code in FBML:

<fb:swf
swfbgcolor="000000" imgstyle="border-width:3px; border-color:white;"
swfsrc='"http://www.flickr.com/apps/slideshow/show.swf?v=71649'
flashvars='offsite=true&lang=en-us&page_show_url=%2Fphotos%2Fpeterliuphoto%2Fsets%2F72157605677028199%2Fshow%2F&page_show_back_url=%2Fphotos%2Fpeterliuphoto%2Fsets%2F72157605677028199%2F&set_id=72157605677028199&jump_to='
imgsrc="http://[location-and-name-of-your-image]"
width='700px'
height='525px'
waitforclick='true'
/>

Feel free to copy and paste this code. Simply replace the location of my slideshow with the one Flickr gives you for yours (“page_show_url”), and update the width and height parameters accordingly.

9. One last thing: as you can see, this code includes an “imgsrc” parameter near the bottom. This is because of a quirk in the platform where the slideshow object appears blank, and you have to put a “cover” image where the object is. It’s awkward, because your viewers will have to click on the image, then click again on the slideshow to start it, but it’s unavoidable right now. Let’s hope they improve the platform going forward. I simply created an image in Photoshop with the same dimensions as my slideshow and uploaded it.

10. Fill in the “Box Title” with the label of your new tab, then press the “Save Changes” button on the bottom.

11. Go back into “Edit Page”, mouse over to the right of your newly created FBML and select “Application Settings”. You will see a choice to make your new application available as a tab on your page.

12. Go back to your page, and you should see a new tab labeled with the name of your application. Sit back and enjoy your new slideshow.

As a live example, here’s the one I created on my page.