Managed Photos: Solving an issue.

Folks. Due to my having used Lightroom from beta1 on 5 different machines, I'm going to announce a silly beta 4 issue I solved for myself. The whole Managed Photos thing seemed like a really good idea. Have your drive and shoots in location sync automatically. Except of course that I could not get a single photo to go into a Managed Photos folder, in fact, there wasn't one. Not on the iMac 20" G5, the 12" powerbook, well aged but working fine, nor the iMac 20" Core duo, or even my Macbook Pro. Why oh, Why? Well I thought I knew the answer. And when I actually took time to investigate, I found myself correct.
The issue is this: My library runs from Beta 1. That means it's been upgraded from 1 to 2 to 3 to 4 and finally to 4.1. I even have a B2 thumbnails folder still there. I decided to make a clean go of it. The iMac upgrade allowed me an extra 90Gb of internal space to play with. I renamed my Lightroom folder and ran 4.1. I then did a Copy and Import the folders inside the Photos Folder. Where are all my files going. Yep, inside a Managed Photos folder. I'm willing to bet that my renaming problem is also directly related to this. Unfortunately my Macbook is too full to do this currently (100GB is too small on a laptop!), but I'll probably copy the photos to a new drive and then delete and reimport into a new library. Yes I know I'll have to redo collections etc..

Lightroom Beta 4.1

Old news that I forgot to post.. Go to Adobe to get it. It's BUG FIX release rather than having new features. This also might add weight to the 'Last Beta' comments by Michael Reichmann.

Why we don't know what will be in V1: My opinion

Though the date has shifted since the release of Beta 1, I'm positive that there is an internal date set and now they just want to get V1.0 out with a set feature list. Judging from variety of posts we'll be getting a Beta 4.1 soon . Michael Reichmann mentions Beta 4 being the last Beta - I don't know if this is true. January will be here soon enough, which will make it a year long public preview cycle and the potential release time is then(Early 2007 being the 'rough' date).
So it makes sense that Adobe will lock down, finish features (versioning come to mind) and then optimise code. Soon. Maybe there will be a Beta 5, but unless there's a very quick turnabout, I don't forsee a Beta 6 in the current projected timeframe.
Any opinions?

Multiple Libraries

A few people have been requesting an existing feature in Lightroom: Mulitple Libraries. The current way of dealing with Libraries is not obvious to the uninitiated so I've done another bandwidth video eating to help.
Update: With reference to the PC Method of opening the Library Picker. Alt Clicking on the icon in the Quicklaunch bar and other single click to open locations works, as does Ctrl and double clicking on shortcuts to the Adobe Lightroom application. Double clicking and then holding Alt immediately also works. More than one way to skin a cat it seems. As johnbeardy points out you could always just double click on the Library you want to use also.

Tone Curve Video

In yet another moment of madness, I've done another 3 minute tutorial. This time it's on the Tone Curve giving a quick run through on how to use it.
This time it's a Quicktime Movie file with h.264 compression so quality should be more acceptable. Audio is still from a headset, but louder than last time. I still need to stop mumbling though :)

Lightroom Beta 4: The Library module

Lightroom Beta 4: The Library module
Martin Evening has just added to his Develop Module summary with an overview of the Library. It's concise and covers most of the new features in Beta 4's Library.