New for Web: Airtight Interactive Web Galleries

Over on the Lightroom Journal, Andy Rahn has a pleasing announcement to make relating to Web Galleries.

"The authors of three excellent Flash-based web photo galleries, Airtight Interactive, have agreed to let us integrate with Lightroom!

Download Adobe Photoshop Lightgroom Web Gallery Templates for SimpleViewer, Postcard Viewer, and AutoViewer:

SimpleViewer : http://adobelightroom.com/galleries/airtight_simpleviewer.zip
PostcardViewer : http://adobelightroom.com/galleries/airtight_postcardviewer.zip
AutoViewer : http://adobelightroom.com/galleries/airtight_autoviewer.zip

Unzip the archives, and save them into the "Web Galleries" directory in your Lightroom settings folder:

Mac OS X : /Users/[username]/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Lightroom/Web Galleries
Windows XP : C:\Documents and Settings\[username]]\Application Data\Adobe\Lightroom\Web Galleries
Windows Vista : C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Lightroom\Web Galleries
Relaunch Lightroom. These should now be visible in the Web module. Enjoy!"


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Lightroom News: General Menus

Martin Evening has posted the first of his 8 part series on Lightroom 1.1 on Lightroom News. It covers the new additions to the General Menus in Lightroom. By this he means the File, Edit and Help Menus.

The first part covers a lot of detail on Catalogs, which is ESSENTIAL reading for those needing to move files between computers. I also feel these are a good too for image backup as they contain all the Edit and Development you've done with your images.

Jeff's Metadata Viewer Preset Builder

I've mentioned Jeffery Friedl and his cool tools here before. Well he's now updated his Lightroom Metadata Viewer Preset Builder for Lightroom 1.1. Quite a mouthful! So what does it do?
If you look at the Metadata Pane in Library you can see a viewer dropdown list to the right of the label 'Metadata'. It includes default templates such as All, Quick Describe, EXIF and others. Jeff's LMVPB allows you to create your own Metadata views that include the information you need to see when you look at metadata. Jeff describes the tool in great detail in the article and even if you don't feel an immediate need to use the tool, it is still quite informative and a useful read.

Jeff also does a list of his favourite new features in Lightroom 1.1.

Martin Evening 1.1 Book Update

As part of the Lightroom-News.com update announcement, Jeff Schewe reveals plans for Martin Evening to publish his book updates on the site:

"To coincide with the announcement of the Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 1.1 update, Lightroom-News, in conjunction with The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Book, will be bringing you a complete guide to the new version of Lightroom as a series of eight feature stories. These will be published over the next two to three weeks starting with a guide to the general menu items in Lightroom 1.1.

You can watch out for the feature stories as they appear on Lightroom-News, but you can also check the Feature Stories list that appears in the masthead where there will be permanent links to the stories as they are published."

The Small Stuff

The Small Stuff!

Here are some cool new 1.1 features besides the 'big ones' (i.e Sharpening, Catalogs, Clarity, etc). This is not a comprehensive list, but one I've compiled as I've found them. I will add to it though.

Cmd/ctrl ' will Create a Virtual Copy. Virtual copies can be renamed.

You can embed the RAW file in a DNG now.

You can hide photos from subitems now by unticking 'Include Photos From Subitems' in the Library Menu of the Library Module.

You can untick Print Resolution to prevent Lightroom resampling the image for print.

You can add Drop Shadows in Web Galleries.

The Metadata Browser now includes Aperture, Shutter Speed, ISO and Label data along with the original 6 items. You can also choose to exclude items in the Catalog settings.

You can Synchronise your folders to keep the catalog up to date with changes made in other Applications by right clicking on the Folder and choosing 'Synchronise Folder...'

You can now Export Original to get a copy of the original file to use outside Lightroom. While you could use Show in Explorer/Finder to do this before, this is much quicker for batch exporting.

While Exporting, you can now Export Keywords as Lightroom Hierarchy.

You can now 'Save Quick Collection'. This will put the contents of your Quick Collection into a collection that you name in the Dialog. You can also choose to clear the Quick Collection here also.

There are 2 new Defringe options: Highlight Edges and All Edges. This is very useful for Chromatic Aberrarion that was not affected by the Red/Cyan and Blue/Yellow sliders.

You can Right Click (Ctrl Click on a one button Mac) on the Left and Right pane and choose from a large collection of Panel End Marks, including None.

All Presets can now be placed in folders (only one level deep though).

In Slideshow and Web you can now decide to use All Photos or All Selected Photos. Use the Play>Which Photos menu in Slideshow and the Web>Which Photos in Web to select your preference.

Slidehows and Impromptu Slideshows now start from the currently selected photo.

Each Module now has its own help section.

A new function that allows to you to sync your exposures to the same values is Match Total Exposures in Settings menu in the Develop Module.

There is now an editable Copyright Status field with the options 'Unknown', 'Copyrighted' and 'Public Domain'. These match the same field in Photoshop.

Metadata Presets can be edited and deleted from within Lightroom, from the menu where you create them.

Along with the previously existing 'thirds' and 'grid' crop overlays, there are now some additions: Diagonals, Triangles, Golden Ration and Golden Spiral. The non symmetric forms can be rotated.

Vibrance and Clarity appear in the Quick Develop pane. If you hold down Alt/Option, then these change to Saturation and Sharpening. The Sharpening control affects the Amount control in the Develop Sharpening.

Inside Lightroom updates Develop Presest to 1.1

Richard Earney from Inside Lightroom has updated all the free presets to be compatible with the new Version 1.1 features. He's also written version 3 of Inside Lightroom Develop Presets (formerly The Anatomy of a Lightroom Preset).

Richard has been hosting presets created by the Lightroom Community since the Public Beta and updating in his own time for free. Drop in a pick up some interesing presets and say hi to him on the way!

Lightroom 1.1 is released.

After an initial leak last night while testing the servers, Adobe has officially released Lightroom 1.1 to the expectant public. The free download for all 1.0 customers is available from the Adobe website. Announced over a month ago, with a smattering of the new features appearing in Camera RAW 4.1, users can now finally get to see the results of 4 months work fixing bugs, adding new features and general testing.

The Big Stuff
As RAW development is a key area for most users, let's cover some of the new additions here first. Clarity is a new slider, now coupled with Vibrance and Saturation in the 'Presence' section of the Basic Pane. It provides local contrast enhancement in a similar way to using Unsharp Mask with a high radius and low amount. Personally I love it. It really adds 'Punch' to an image (to use it's initial name). Like a lot of settings it can be overdone, but sometimes extreme settings can be used as an effect in themselves.

Next we have the beefed up sharpening control in the Detail panel. Gone is the single sharpening slider that lacked any control or subtlety. Instead we have 4 controls and some very useful modifiers for these. Amount is obvious, but what may not be obvious is the reason it runs from 0-150. In fact the normal range of sharpening amount is 0-100, but it was felt that some cases may require severe sharpening to salvage images, or as a creative effect. Above 100 this control can do serious harm to your image. (Of course I like that kind of thing).
Following that we have Radius, which runs from 0.5 pixels to 3 pixels. Radius controls how far out from the edge that Amount affects. Bear in mind that these controls are intended for capture sharpening, although there is leeway for more extreme settings if needed.
Detail is appropriately named, as when you move the slider to the right, the detail areas of the image start to become sharpener.
Finally Masking lets you control the area that the sharpening affects, by creating an edge mask based on the slider position. A cool way to see the mask rather than guess where it is, is to hold down the Alt/Option key when moving the slider. The image will go from all white to just the area with strong edges as you move right. This is incredibly useful for preventing sharpening in skies and on skin.
This Alt/Option modifier can also be used with the other 3 sliders. Alt/Option Amount will give a monochrome version of the image to show the sharpening at work. Alt/Option and Radius allow you to see the distance out from the edge that the sharpening is affecting. Finally modifying the Detail slider allows you to see exactly what detail will be brought out as you increase it. It looks a little similar to the High Pass filter in Photoshop.
One key thing to remember is that you must view at 1:1 to see these controls working. In fact there is even a little warning triangle in the Pane that zooms in when you click on it.
While we're in the the Detail Pane I will mention that Noise Reduction has been improved a lot since version one. It's still not in the same league as a standalone like Neat Image, but it is good enough for a lot of images. Again this needs to be viewed at 1:1 to see it working.


I'll just take a little brief run through some other features for this post. The concept of the database as a 'Library' has now been changed to 'Catalogs'. You can export images to a catalog, as well as importing them into another catalog. This is useful for a number of reasons, not least of all you can transfer edits from your laptop to your desktop. While Lightroom now runs larger catalogs much better now, smaller catalogs are faster. This means you can do a catalog for a specific job and do all the selection and deletion from there, before importing into your master catalog. This is great for backup too, because it is possible to burn off standalone catalogs with the images and previews intact. I do this by exporting to an inserted blank disk. As a side note, you need to have at least 200Mb free for Catalog Export.

There are loads of little things that make life easier, such as in Web or Slideshow, you can choose to use either all photos or selected photos to make a gallery/slideshow. Impromptu Slideshow starts from the currently selected image. You can choose to show photos in subitems or not (I know loads will be delighted with that!). DNG conversion can now embed the RAW. Presets can now go into folders to tidy them up. In fact there's probably over a hundred changes in these small things. I'll cover a lot of these in another post.
In the meantime I'm sure the download is done, so get cracking on this update!

New Lightroom Galleries template

Joe and Matthew over at Lightroom Galleries have been busy working on a brand new template that they've just released.

"Once again we are very happy to announce the release of our latest template LRG FlashFlex! This is the first Multi Gallery export template! To organize your images into different galleries or categories all you need to do is fill in the Category IPTC and your images will be organized into separate categories/galleries!

This template is HIGHLY customizable. Basically every color, size, and text can be changed to fit your needs. Included in the downloadable zip file is a readme file that shows you what options/colors are where within the template so customizing is easy.

This release is a beta release. Everything should be working correctly, but if you run into any problem PLEASE let me know so i can fix them. PLEASE let me know what you think of this template as well as any suggestions you have.

ENJOY!"

The gallery looks very cool. Well worth a look and a play with.

Keeping life simple.

In my work as a sound engineer (not to mention my photography work!), I meet new people everyday. Be it bands, friends of friends or audience members, I get to make new acquaintances all the time. One of the first topics that ladies get to is my son. He's 2 and has a huge shock of curly blonde hair. So I get to break out the photos and do the proud father routine. I have a small bunch on my phone (a Nokia E61-love the big screen!), but I'm very bad at adding new ones. Tonight I bit the bullet and I set Lightroom up to get the pictures to my phone quickly and easily.

Being on an iMac, I have bluetooth built in, so this for me is the best way to do the job. First I invoked Shift Cmd B from the Finder, which is the internal command to open Bluetooth File Exchange. From there I right clicked on the dock icon and selected 'Show in Finder'. This was the quickest way for me to get to the original program icon (already knowing the shortcut).
Next I switched to Lightroom and hit Export (Shift Command E to be exact). Using the final option in the Post Processing section, I selected 'Go to Export Actions folder Now'. This opens the folder in Finder. Now I have the 2 Finder windows I need. With Option and Command held down, I drag the Bluetooth File Exchange icon into the Export Actions folder. This creates an alias in the folder.

Finally I go back to Lightroom and the close and open Export again to refresh the Post Processing menu. I then create a preset that sends a smaller size copy of my file to Bluetooth File Exchange and save it as an Export Preset.
To facilitate the speedy transfer, I have my phone and the computer paired. Now whenever I want to send images to the phone, I switch on bluetooth. I then select my images in grid and choose the Bluetooth preset from the Export Presets menu. Of course this leaves me no excuse for not having new pictures to show.

Podcast #32: Eric Meola

George Jardine has posted Podcast #32 through his Blog. This Podcast features Eric Meola as George's guest.

“Up until this point, I have not been happy with digital, and the way it reproduces color. And part of that is just my own sensibility about it. I wasn’t realizing that it was there. Part of it is that I think the raw engines have gotten better. And part of it is that it is a different palette. And if you’re used to shooting in film, it’s going to look different. I can’t always quantify it, and up until recently I’ve felt that film was probably better at reproducing certain things, in maybe 30 - 40% of the time. And that’s kept going down, the more digital I shoot, and as more time goes by.” - Eric Meola

This podcast was recorded on Tuesday May 22th, 2007 in New York City. Eric sits down with George to have a conversation about his photography, his passion for color, and how he approaches the challenge of making authentic photographs when working in indigenous cultures.

Duration: 47:54

The podcast can be downloaded from George's iDisk. This podcast is labeled “20070522 Podcast - Eric Meola” in the Public directory.

Or, it can be found on iTunes by searching under Podcasts for “Lightroom”. The RSS feed is:

http://rss.adobe.com/www/special/light_room.rss

More free borders

Via Scott Kelby.

640 pixels have some free Grunge Borders for Photoshop, but they will also work in Lightroom.

Grunge Borders are all the rage these days. They can make the right type of pictures stand out if used correctly. They're featured everywhere - in movie posters, magazines, brochues, in photography books and all over the internet.

I have been searching high and low for decent grunge borders and managed to find these free borders created by Andrea Rascaglia - the best I have come across so far. I thought I'll share these free grunge borders with you as they are real hard to come by unless you are willing to pay for something similar.

Credit goes to Andrea Rascaglia (Rome - Italy)

You'll need to go to the page and download the files individually. The files are PSD files, so they will need to be converted to PNG files to be usable.