Lightroom Blog

One slightly different request that you may see for Lightroom is from hardened iPad fans. We’d (and yes I’m including myself) love to see a ‘Lightroom mini’ app for the iPad. The Photos app on iPad is miserable in terms of organisation. It only sorts by time, making it rather painful to built a sorted gallery. I think the only way to cheat is it to make the EXIF timestamp the same, and then it sorts alphabetically (at least I’ve been led to believe it).

Of course, Lightroom isn’t the only app people are requesting an iPad App version of. Photo Mechanic is popular with press photographers for speed of selection and output options. They have a lot to say about how hard the iPad SDK is to work with for photo import. That rather dampens the spirit when it comes to expecting a Lightroom iPad app also.
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The final version of Lightroom 3.2 is now available. You should be prompted to update when you restart Lightroom.

New cameras include the Canon 60D, along with new lens profiles that include the iPhone 4 rear camera lens.

For the full list of changes, go to the official Lightroom Journal.

My video on Slideshow is now live on Phototraining4U.com. It’s the 9th video in my Lightroom series for them, along with live videos and interviews. It covers the Slideshow module in Lightroom 3 and is slightly over 20 minutes long.

Phototraining4U is a photography training website that covers everything from business, to portraits, lighting, processing, to weddings. As well as training from Mark Cleghorn, there’s other training from the PT4U masters, including Kenny Martin and Andy Rouse. They offer yearly subscriptions, along with monthly options. You can use the discount code ‘SEAN’ to get a substantial reduction on a yearly subscription.
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Lightroom is a pretty diverse program, which is simple to start learning, but contain hidden depths. Here’s some shortcut tricks that use modifier keys to access hidden features.

1. Straighten your Photo: Press ‘R’ to go to the crop mode in Develop. Press the Control key on PC, Command key on Mac. Then click on a point and drag to a second to let Lightroom rotate to make that line straight.

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Vision & Voice is David duChemins 3rd book in his series of vision related books. Within the Frame and Visionmongers introduce the importance of vision in your work, as well as making the leap into shooting professionally. Vision & Voice is a complement to these books, in that it teaches how to bring that vision into your post processing workflow. Not just any workflow, this book is specifically targeted at Lightroom users. While the principles apply to other programs, it is through Lightroom that David show us the process of taking his images from a zero Raw file, to the final image.

While the book is written as seven chapters, it’s really a book of 2 halves. The first half talks about the importance of vision, and shooting for your vision, as well as introducing the Develop Module tools. This book doesn’t relate to other modules, so it is very heavily a post process book. The second half of teh book takes 20 of Davids photos and guides us through the thought process used to bring about the final image. Examples can often be underexposed, lacking in contrast, and David talks through fixes, often making things worse, before they get better as he applies the tools.

The book is written with David’s very laid back style, mixed with massive amounts of encouragement. He’s owns up to mistakes he’s made in camera, making this a book for everyone. I thoroughly enjoyed the book, and have no hesitation in recommending it. One thing that I felt let it down a little is that the screen captures were from Lightroom 3 Beta, so the Noise Reduction panel is outdated, and there’s no lens corrections. Camera Calibration was barely touched, and I felt a mention of Camera Profiles would have been appropriate. Still, these are minor issues relative to the knowledge that can be gained from reading this wonderful book.

Get Vision & Vision from Amazon US, Amazon UK

-Related: David also writes a number of books for Craft & Vision.

In my first Dropbox post, I talked about using Dropbox to backup your presets, but that’s not the only way to use it. If you want a viewable collections of images that are stored on your Dropbox, then using a Published Collection is the perfect way to do it.

First click on the ‘+’ in Publish Services, in the Left Panel of Library.

Gavin Siem of Siem Effects has announced the availability of his Power Workflow3 presets for Lightroom. This updates and refines the Power Workflow series, and is a free update to current users. The presets cover enhanced auto toning presets, corrective lighting presets and creative looks. Designed to be added sequentially, presets can be used on there own, or mixed for more creative effect. More from the Siem Effects website.

Update: Gavin has graciously offered all Lightroom Blog users an 18% discount with the code LRB. Enjoy!

Dropbox is a great online service, giving you access to your stuff from anywhere in the world there’s a net connected computer. Use this link to setup a free account and download the Dropbox software. (Using that link increases my Dropbox space, just so you know!).

To backup your Presets, first create and then open your Dropbox folder. Create a new folder in this, call it something like ‘LR Presets’. Now in Lightroom, open Preferences (Edit> Preferences on PC, Lightroom>Preferences). Click the Presets tab. In the centre, on the right, there’s a button marked ‘Show Lightroom Presets Folder’. This opens the Presets folder. Now copy the contents to the ‘LR Presets’ folder you created earlier. Dropbox will then upload these to your account, so they’re saved online, and you can access them from any other computer when online via your Dropbox account.

Update: Victoria Bampton has suggested in the comments that you could setup a symbolic link between this folder and dropbox, for automatic backup. I’ve covered these links in the past in relation to moving the Previews folder. While this was a Mac post, there are Win related links in the comments of the post.

Update 2: Again from the comments: http://lifehacker.com/5154698/sync-files-and-folders-outside-your-my-dropbox-folder

Skipping 3.2 to align with camera Raw 6.2, this release candidate has an extensive bugfix list, along with new camera additions. It has has Facebook Publishing as a new feature. Rather than do a cut and paste, I’m going to send you over to Lightroom Journal for the full list of bug fixes, lens profiles and new cameras.

As I sit here editing 800 odd shots from yesterdays first day of stills for a TV talent show, I’m reminded of a tiny addition that I’d love to see in the Filmstrip. Numbers. As in the current file position along the Filmstrip.
I’d really like to see how far along the current view I am, both in the cell, and in the text area above the images. Of course simply wanting a feature is not a way to get it. What I’d find it useful for is gauging time spent on the current process and use it to decide if a break is necessary. I really don’t want to jump out to Grid to see a number and jump back into loupe for making selections. I’d prefer to remain in loupe until the selects are done.

Anyhow back to the task at hand, before tonights show adds more to the edit list!