Export Plugin: Lightroom to Gallery2

A number of developers have jumped on board with Export Plugins for Gallery 2

Fototagebuch has a 0.1.1 version of the plugin available. It's quite feature laden for what is essentially a Beta Version of the Plugin.

Meanwhile Ubermind have their own Beta plugin for Gallery. Ubermind have created quite a lot of Aperture plugins, so it's good to see them on board with Lightroom also.

Podcast #47: Catherine Hall

Adobe Evangelist George Jardine has posted Podcast #47. It features Catherine Hall and was recorded on Wednesday November 21st, 2007 at Catherine’s family home in Lafayette, Calfornia. Catherine sits down with George to have a conversation about how her personal work inspires her wedding photography, about her personal approach to working with people, and how working with people from many different socio-economic backgrounds makes it all worthwhile.

“So much of it is having faith in your work and your vision. If you believe in yourself, and you believe in what you’re doing, and you illustrate your vision, then the money will come, and everything will fall into place.” - Catherine Hall

Muted colours and other trendy looks.

For those abounding on Flickr and other similar sites, here's a few looks that are currently popular and easy to create with Lightroom:
Let's start with our base photo:



To get a muted look, start by adding Vibrance and removing Saturation. As Vibrance only saturates colours that are not already saturated (it also protects skin tones from becoming too saturated), we can effectively remove saturation in a controlled way by applying Vibrance and removing Saturation. I use +50 Vibrance and -50 Saturation as a starting point. Change it to taste from there.



Next up we'll add some creative Vignette. Now Vignetting with Lightroom is generally only a corrective tool, but with uncropped images, it works fine for creative control. Here I've applied -100 Vignette and moved the midpoint to taste (11 in this case).



Because I've done such an extreme vignette, the skin has darkened too much. I want to retain the effect of the Vignette, so I use the Lights and Highlights in the Tone curve to taste for the image. Here I've used +28 Highlights and +49 Lights.



The image is finished for my taste, but if you like you could add a Cross Processed finish. This is done quickly and easily using the Split Tone Pane. The fastest way to use this is to by holding down the Option key (Alt on PC) and moving the Shadow and Highlight Hue Sliders to select the shadow and highlight tone colours. This set the Saturation level to 100 when you move the Shadow/Highlight Hue sliders, allowing a quick preview of the effect. With Cross Processing, the Shadows tend to be in the Blue-Green range, while the Highlights tend to be in the Yellow-Orange range. Once you've selected the colours, increase the Saturation sliders to taste. I find that lower values work better than higher values. For this deliberately green/yellow look, I've used Highlight Hue 65, Saturation 37, Shadow Hue 153, Saturation 30. You can also use the Balance slider to favour Shadows or Highlights.

New Smugmug, Zenfolio and Flickr Plugins.

Jeffrey Friedl has published plugins for:

• Zenfolio


• Smugmug


• Flickr

He has a more details on them here and here.

Jeffrey has been doing a great service with Lightroom addons, including his Metadata Viewer Presets and his Configuration Manager.

Tribute

I never mention personal things on this blog, but I'm making a small exception tonight. My Father in Law, Jim Keyes, passed away in the early hours of this morning, after spending 6 months in hospital. He was a gentle man, with a good sense of humour. His only failing was his love of golf (or at least my Mother in Law might say so). He really was a good fit for her, they complimented each other well. While not the father of my wife, he treated her as a daughter and he especially loved my son, even to the point of asking for him to be brought in just hours before he passed away. I can only hope that he's gone on to better things. He will be greatly missed.

The New Export Dialog

Martin Evening has jumped in ahead of me with a great article on the new Export dialog box over at Lightroom-News.com
I had started an article about it for cross posting, but as he's in first with this one, I'll keep it for the book instead.

Installing Lightroom Export Plugins

Jeffrey Friedl has a details post on installing Lightroom Export Plugins.

"A plugin consists of a folder worth of files, with the folder having a name that ends with “.lrplugin” or “.lrdevpluginin”. Installing a plugin involves simply moving the plugin folder to a place where Lightroom will find it, then restarting Lightroom.
The SDK zip's “Sample Plugins” folder contains a few example plugins, such as flickr.lrdevplugin. Other plugins offered for download on the web will likely be offered as individual zip files. Upon downloading, you'll want to unzip to create the plugin folder, then move that folder to the proper spot as described below."


Read the entire post.

Even if you are not a developer, you should consider downloading the SDK. Why? Because, while rudimentary (these are example plugins), the Flickr and FTP plugins are very useful. I can see the FTP preset replacing my current Transmit Droplet system. I may even look into the code to customise them (I currently don't have a clue about Lua programming, but I'm sure it's just a matter of the learning curve!

VScroll Lua gallery

As promised, here's a version 1.3 Gallery for Lightroom. It's by no means a feature complete gallery, but it should be useful to those looking to build their own. It is a working gallery though, but still pay attention to the fact that it is a 0.1 release. It contains a similar menu system to the older XSLT Not so Simple Scroll gallery.

Download

Sample Gallery

This gallery uses .lrwebengine file extension when unzipped. Mac users can double click on the file to automatically install it. You see the following dialogs during the process:



On XP go to C:\Documents and Settings\User\Application Data\Lightroom -Note that Application Data is a hidden folder, on Vista C:\Users\User\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Lightroom\ ) where User is the name you log in with. Look for a folder called Web Galleries within. If it's not there, create it yourself. Unzip the file into this folder and restart Lightroom.
The new Gallery will apppear in the Right Hand Panel, in the Galleries Pane.

Gallery Notes: This gallery uses the CSS overflow-x and overflow-y tags. Safari 2 does not support these and while not beautiful, it fails gracefully enough that the images remain visible. I can't test on IE6 or IE7, so comments are graciously received. Because the tag is new enough it fails badly on IE5 Mac. There's a silly border issue on the ID plate, that I forgot to fix on Firefox (it took longer to write about than to fix), but it's fine other than that.

Lightroom 1.3 released

With a mid November release promised, Tom Hogarty is true to his word, with Lightroom 1.3 now available.
Lightroom 1.3 is mostly a bug fix release, along with providing Leopard compatibility. It also introduces the new Lightroom Export SDK. The SDK allows Third Party access directly from with Lightroom. Sample programs include FTP and Flickr Export. Those interested in trying out the SDK should go to Adobe Labs and register to download it.

Another change is that Web Galleries are changing from XSLT to an easier CSS/Luapages Gallery. It's a little bit of a learning curve, but easier to use, especially with sample galleries and basic documenatation. Matthew Campagna from The Turning Gate will be publishing updated galleries. I have an early version of a Lua based vertical scroll gallery, which I will post soon. Another web thing is if you rename your folder with the extension .lrwebengine, it becomes a package file on Mac. If you double click on it, the OS with install it in the correct location.

Finally Lightroom now supports a range of new cameras, including the Nikons that are due today. Tom has a full list over at Lightroom Journal.

Lightroom should inform you automatically of updates, but if not, go to the Lightroom Product Page. For those who are too lazy, or can't find the link: Mac Win

Podcast #46: The Synchronize Command

Not content to rest on his laurels, George Jardine has posted a new Video tutorial, this time on the Synchronize command.

“A new tutorial that covers the Sync command, and a few ins-and-outs of working with Lightroom’s selection logic.”



Photograph © 2006 George A. Jardine

In this tutorial I outline the basics of Lightroom’s Synchronize command. You’ll learn how to apply Develop settings across multiple photos, in both the Library and the Develop modules. I also cover some of the new selection logic in Lightroom that is required to make working with large numbers of files, well…. logical!

Follow the blog link to download the file.

Podcast 45: Catalogs.

I've been a little lax with this. I actually saw the post as soon as it was posted, but was too busy to link it.

Podcast #45 is a video tutorial. In it George shows us Catalog use in detail. He takes us through from Import, showing us what Lightroom takes from the photo to how Lightroom deals with our photo in a catalog. Get the video from George's blog, or from iTunes. The rss feed is http://rss.adobe.com/www/special/light_room.rss

I'm sure the observant among you will notice the 1.3 ID Plate and the different looking Export dialog.

Podcast #43 & 44

George Jardine has posted 2 new Podcasts.

#44 is about wedding photography. It's quite funny the whole way through. I sure George had a great time in the room with this bunch of fun ladies!

#43 is with Natalie Fobes. It's a video Podcast, I haven't seen it yet, but I'm looking forward to it from the description on George's blog. Go there now and look! They were already on iTunes this time. The rss feed is http://rss.adobe.com/www/special/light_room.rss

The Catalog Conundrum

This week has seen John Beardsworth weighing in on Ken Milburns 'Inside Lightroom' post on using Catalogs. John is quick to point out some of the failings of a multicatalog approach. Ken advocates having a different catalog for each genre he would've had in a main catalog.
It's all very well in theory, but the whole idea of having a program that manages your images, is that you let it manage all of your images. John is right in saying that a central catalog is the best way.

My personal recommendation is that if you have a job that requires a speedy selection and processing workflow, by all means use a fresh catalog on a recently restarted machine. Once the selections are made and the processing is done, delete the rejects and import this into your main catalog.
There are people out there with 300,00 images in their catalog. They use fast machines and therefore have lesser speed issues.
Personally my main catalog doesn't contain all my images-yet. I need time to get them all in. Currently I've been hovering around 65,000 images. I've been deleting old rejects as new images come in and the number stays fairly balanced. Having one main Library means I can access any image quickly. I recently shot an aerial job for someone that had a Ferrari. As we discussed the aerial job, he enquired if I had any old photos of the car. I was able to tell him instantly that I had shots of it as both a red and yellow Ferrari (he had a spray job done). This couldn't happen with a multi catalog setup.

So for me one main catalog file is the way to go. I still use temporary catalogs for quick jobs and import the keepers to the main catalog for reference. I'd love a command to consolidate my library onto one chosen drive though, especially as the files out grow the mix of internal and external disks I now own.