Hi everybody welcome to another episode
of Exploring Photography right here on
AdoramaTV.
I'm Mark Wallace and in this
episode we're going to be talking about
three things that you can do to improve
your Instagram content. Specifically how
do you get your images from Lightroom
to Instagram without using your phone
and how can you break through that 15 second
barrier for Instagram videos on
Instagram stories? How can you make
longer videos and how can you create
videos and stills that are all animated
with music and post those as posts
or stories on Instagram. Well we can do all
three of those things
and we can do them
all for free. So we're going to start by
talking about Lightroom to Instagram,
an awesome plugin. So let's look at that
right now. Getting images from Lightroom
to Instagram couldn't be any easier
thanks to a plugin created by Capture Monkey,
you can get there by going
to LR/instagram.com
It'll take you to their
website and that's where you can
download and install the plugin. The good
news is they've got instructions on
exactly how to download and set
everything up. It's really, really simple.
So just zip over there and you can
get this plugin. It's absolutely free.
Alright, now once you have that setup
you're going to see that you have a new publish
services panel here. So if you don't know
what publish services are or how they
work or why they're so wonderful there
is good news for you. I have created a
video all about publish services and so
you might want to watch that first
if this is new for you. I've included a link
to this video in the description of the
video that you're watching right now so
check out this video if you're not sure
exactly what publish services are. Okay
so what we're going to do now is I'm
going to go into my quick collection in
Lightroom, I've got an image here that
I'd like to add to Instagram
and we can start seeing the the changes that this
plugin is made to Lightroom right off
the bat. If we go over to our metadata
panel. If I click on this little
disclosure triangle at the very bottom
you can see that now I have a Lightroom
to Instagram section, so if you click on
that you can see that now I have a
caption, and I've got hashtags, and I've
got a GPS location, so these are going to
show up in Instagram. So this is the
caption that I want to show
in Instagram all of the hashtags that I
want to have I've already populated
those but you can just type in your own
and then once that's done, if you have a
GPS location great if not you can add a
location later in Instagram. Once that's
done, adding this to Instagram is
incredibly simple. All you have to do
is we'll go back here to the grid view,
is I just drag this
and drop it into my publish services
just like that, click on
that and then I can click publish.
Once I do that it is going to show up on
Instagram. That's it, that's all there is
to it. Now there's one thing that's
really cool about this plug-in that
I just want to mention and that is that
you can customize the template that it
uses to populate the description on
Instagram. So in my images I want people
to know the camera and lens and exposure.
All that stuff that I use to create
the image and I don't have to type that
in every single time.
So what you can do is in the plug-in itself
you can right click on the publish service.
You can click Edit settings
and then down here
there is the Instagram caption
and you can choose custom template.
Now inside
there you can create these custom
keywords. So I've created a caption and a
hashtag that's the default but I also
want it to have the camera model
and the lens and the ISO shutter speed etc.
so you can find out what these are
and what you can put in here
by zipping over to the Lightroom to Instagram page.
Clicking on features
and there's this hashtag metadata section
and you can see there is this template tags link.
If you click on that you can see all the
different template tags that you can add
in there. So perhaps you want to add the
dimensions or the flash that was used
or not whatever it is you can use
any of these different things
and that will show up in Instagram.
So it's really a great feature
if you want to customize
how your images are showing up in Instagram
and once this is done,
you can click Save
and it will be used, it's set
up once and will be used over and over
and over until you change that again
and this is what it looks like
in Instagram itself.
Posting videos to Instagram stories
is a great way for you to interact with your
followers and drive retention.
You want to keep people coming back to see what
you're going to post day after day.
One of the frustrations with those videos
though is that they have to be 15 seconds
or less and sometimes you just
want to post a one or two minute video.
So how do you do that?
The nice thing is there are a lot of apps
that you can download for Android or iOS
that allow you to automatically chop those videos
up into 15-second segments.
I use video splitter.
Let me show you exactly how
that works. Well let's hop in first two
photos this is my Photos app
on my iPhone. I've got some albums here one of
them is one that I've called Instagram videos
and these are some videos
that I shot today to give an update on the camping gear
that I'm using on my
motorcycle. Now you notice that these are
pretty short videos but two of them
are longer than the 15-second limit.
This one is 1 minute and 7 seconds.
This guy right here and this one over here
is 32 seconds.
We need to make them shorter so
what I can do is go over to my video
splitter app and this is very, very
simple. All I need to do is click on this
big pink bar here and select the video
so I'll go in here and I'm going to go
into my album called Instagram videos
and then I'll choose this video here
that is a minute and seven seconds, so
you can preview that to make sure it's the right one.
You can sort of scroll through that
and check, yes that's the one I want to use.
I'll choose that. It's going to compress
the video. That's the first thing it does
so take a second
and then once that's finished
what it'll do is it'll pop up here.
Now if you've paid for the app
which is 8 bucks I suggest that you do
that, you can click this little icon here
and you can change the video length
and so you can make it 5, 10, 15, 20 or 30
seconds. Well I want to make these 15
seconds videos, so that they'll work with
Instagram stories and then I just click
this big icon at the bottom. It says
splitting video and then it's going to
save this video as 15-second chunks
into my photos library,
so videos have been
successfully safe for your Photos app, ok,
let's go back, so I will go back here
just to my, all my photos
and now you can
see that we have a 15-second video here
and the one next to it is 15 seconds
so 15, 15, 15 and then the very last one
is only 6 seconds
and so it chopped them up
and then any remainder it goes.
So then you can go to Instagram and just post
these in order and they will playback
flawlessly. Sometimes it's a great idea
to create a compilation of either our stills
or our videos and add some music
and text and all kinds of things
to make those really interactive
and you can do
that using GoPros quick app.
It's absolutely free,
it works for Android and iOS.
It comes with free stock music
that you can use and you can post those
videos either to Instagram stories
or as posts, so let me show you exactly
how quick works.
When you launch the Quick app
by default you'll see these things
called flashbacks.
These are just images and locations
that are put together
automatically by the app
so for example it knows
that I spent a few days in
London last year with Gavin and Sam
or that I was in Kuala Lumpur
for a weekend last month
and so these are automatically created
by the application
and if you want to create a video
from one of these. So for example I want to
create a weekend in Kuala Lumpur video
you just click on it and it's going to
do some magic and put all this stuff
together. Now I shoot all my videos in 4k
on my phone and this app is saying
that my phone doesn't support high
performance settings. Well I can either
remove those videos or just keep them.
I always just keep them because
even though it complains it just seems to
work just fine. It's then going to choose
one of these themes, so it's choosing
flick right now and it'll just make
a video, so I'm going to change the theme.
So I'm going to go over here
and let's choose laps. I like that a little bit
better, different music, it's got a different
format and then I can go in here,
I can pause this. I can customize the duration
and music and what each of these images
is doing in transitions
and music and all kinds of things.
It's very, very, easy to use.
So what I'm going to do instead
though I'm going to exit without saving.
I want to show you how to create one
using the images that you want to choose,
not ones that it's
for you automatically.
It's really simple.
The very bottom there's a plus click on
that and then you can go into your
photos by default it's starting me in my
moments, I'm going to go into my favorites.
This is a folder that I created in my
Photos app in iOS,
then I can just choose my different images.
These are all images
of my motorcycle that I have named
shifty drifty. So we're going to make a
little video about shifties travels
around the world. I'll create that by
adding all of those videos
or all those images
and then again by default it's creating,
it's choosing a theme. Well I want to choose a theme
that I want so I'm just going to go through here.
I know that I've played this a little bit
before and I like serene.
So I'm going to choose that one
and it's pretty cool now,
one of the things that is wrong
with this, is it thinks
that this was shot in Africa
Maun but I want to show a different title
so what I can do is at
the very bottom, click on this little
icon here then I can scroll through each
of these images and customize those
including the title screen,
so I'm going to
click on that, click on the little pencil
and then what I'm going to do is I'm
going to change this,
so I'm going to change this to shifty drifty
my motorcycle visits the world.
There we go world,
the world there we go
Then I can hit okay.
Now I've got a nice title
screen, it's going to go through here the
other thing I want to do is change the
duration of this, so I'll click on
duration and you'll notice that I have
little icons here,
so I've got one that's
great for Instagram. So it knows it
should be 50 seconds. That's perfect I'll
hit OK I can customize other things.
I'm not going to spend the time to do that
right now you can experiment with your
app and see exactly what each of these
things does but the last thing we need
to do is click Save
and the cool thing
is you can integrate this app with all
of your different social media platforms
or you can just save this to your photo
library. I'll do that and then I can
share that out to Instagram or Facebook
or wherever I want to post this, it's
really awesome. Well I hope these three
tools will help you improve your
Instagram content, in fact I want to hear
about your instagram content
so in the comments below
tell us where we can find you on
Instagram, also check out Adorama's
Instagram account, it is filled with
inspirational photos and the stories
will tell you all the different
tutorials that are coming up
and workshops and all kinds of news,
so make sure you don't miss out on that
and also check out my Instagram account
and here it is right here,
you can see how I put
all these different videos tips
and tutorials into practice. I'm uploading
almost every single day and you can see
how I'm traveling around the world on
my motorcycle so don't miss out on that
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AdoramaTV. Thanks again for joining me
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