Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2 How-Tos: 100 Essential Techniques, Free Chapter

Peachpit have a free chapter from Chris Orwigs book Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2 How-Tos: 100 Essential Techniques. It's a tutorial on using the Adjustment Brush. I'm happy to see this out there now, as I was tech editor on this book. Chris is an excellent writer, with an easy to read style. He manages to make difficult things easy to understand and provides solid examples with his tips. I've said before that I learned a bit from the process myself, but equally so a whole bunch of my own tips were written in also. I know there's going to be an overflow of Lightroom 2 books out there (my own included), but if you're looking beyond the big 2, this is well worth a read. I may as well mention the Elephant in the room. Any book that comes out now will be compared to both the Martin Evening and Scott Kelby Lightroom 2 books. Both are available to order right now, with Martin's already published. I think Chris's book is a different focus but very useful.

Update: My copy arrived in the post yesterday... Nice to see my name inside! And Chris made a nice comment in the acknowledgments

LRB Portfolio

A comment in the HS Web post got me started thinking about creating a far more customisable and cleaner version of a 'Website in a Gallery' Web plugin. I've literally spent almost all my spare time rewriting this from the ground up since then. In fact all the code has been completely replaced the with new Lightroom 2.0 SDK code and so is brand new. Even the Contact Form has been updated to give much prettier returns.

LRB Porfolio features.

A true Website in a Gallery.

Lightroom 2 compatible-Not for Lightroom 1

Wesbite featuring a Home, About and Contact pages, along with up to 6 galleries or external links.

A PHP contact form to make you contactable, but keeping your email address hidden.

For those without PHP, a series of contact details that you can pick and choose between, including Contact Name, Email, email link, phone number, address etc.

Choose the images for the Home, About and Contact page yourself.

Colour controls for each section of the page.

Simple clean look, with scrolling galleries, a popular look currently.

All HTML and CSS, so compatible for a wide range of users.

Full User Guide (that took a bit of time!)

Controls for menu and Identity Plate placement (left, centre, right)

Full Lightroom 2 SDK code, including new Output Sharpening code.

Requires only minor HTML for line breaks, otherwise code free for the User

Requires no HTML editor

Optional Right Click and Drag Disable

There's a wealth of stuff changed from the original proof of concept code I had with HS Web. Again, as with LRB Graduated Filters, I've put a lot of work into this and approached it as a commercial venture. I am aware though that the appeal of such a gallery is relatively limited. Most people already have a website, so something that creates an entire site is less of an appeal that a simple gallery to show off. However for those looking for something quick and easy, this gallery allows you create a whole website with a little advance preparation and some text entry. To add your email address, you edit one file in an text editor once, and then export and upload.

The cost of the plugin? €10 (about $15). VAT chargable in the EU. Updates will be free to current users.

Sample Website | User Guide | Support




Update: I've added a support thread to Lightroom Forums.
Update: Now at version 1.01.

Managing CMYK in Lightroom 2.0

Lightroom 2.0 (and 1.x) has no official support for CMYK files. Alot of people are not happy about it too. However Ian Lyons has detailed a workaround which allows you to manage and even edit CMYK files in Lightroom 2.0. The major limitation is that you can't export these files, but you can open them in Photoshop.
Check out his rather innovative workaround over at Computer-Darkroom.com

LRG Complete 3.0 out of Beta

Joe Capra has announced the release of LRG Complete 3.0 final. The website gallery with Digital Delivery via Paypal is out of beta.
"We are happy to announce the release of LRG Complete 3 as a final version! Well final in that its not Beta anymore. I will no longer support any previous versions of the LRG Complete template so EVERYONE should upgrade to this new version. Please delete any previous versions of this template from your Lightroom installation and install the current version. Your user presets should remain the same and can be applied to this new version, however, there are some new settings in this new version so you will need to save a new preset to include the new settings."

Go to Lightroom Galleries to read about it.

Anatomy of a Lightroom HTML Gallery

Lightroom HTML galleries used to be written in a mix of XSLT and XML. The simpler coding in Lua makes it a pleasure to create HTML galleries with. You can write Flash galleries in Lua, but because IE doesn't allow plugin loading on PC Lightroom, you can't see them in the preview window. Hence 3rd party Flash galleries use the old method for cross platform compatibility.

Lua galleries were introduced in Version 1.3 and have matured somewhat with V2.0. The new syntax is much tidier and more compact. In fact Matthew Campagna shaved 500 lines off one of his galleries for version 2, and my new website in a gallery LRB Portfolio managed close to that also.

So what comprises a Lua Gallery? Well the absolute minimum a gallery can contain is 3 files: galleryInfo.lrweb, manifest.lrweb and a HTML file. Let's look at them in a little more detail:

galleryInfo.lrweb: This is the heart of the gallery and the file Lightroom uses to define the internals of the gallery and the contents of the panels in the Right panel. In this file you define the control variables, the checkboxes, the sliders and all the other controls of the gallery. You can create custom style sheet through the code here (however, it's not truly a Cascading Style Sheet as it doesn't output in your assigned order).

manifest.lrweb: This file tells Lightroom what files to include with the gallery, along with the HTML pages used. You can include image files, CSS files, Javascript files and others with this file.

HTML file: This is the base file for the gallery. It makes calls to variables defined in galleryInfo.lrweb and the custom.css file that is created from it.

The mix of all three is what builds the gallery. You can add your own CSS files and site HTML to the HTML and easily integrate it into your current site design. We'll be looking at this in more detail in future posts.

In the next post, we start looking at galleryInfo.lrweb in more detail.

Pimping your Identity Plate.

I secretly have been hoping someone would ask about the cool fonts I've been using in my ID plates and Copyright Watermarks. But of course noone has. Shame really because it would lead me to telling you about my favourite place for comic books fonts on the net. They're even free..

Yep... Free. Of course they do sell fonts as well, but they have a wealth of the coolest free fonts to use to create your Identity Plate. And they are Blambot. Check them out. Cracked is one of my favourites, but isn't there any more. Recently I've been using Crime Fighter and my new, about to be released, Website in a Gallery: LRB Portfolio, uses Mainframe. Seriously though have a look..

Getting a hard copy of your Identity Plate

So you spent a bit of time playing with fonts and colours, and you're pretty happy with the results for your new Identity Plate. Of course, if you create a new catalog, it's not there. And if something happens the current catalog (God forbid), you've lost that work. Personally I keep all the ID Plates I design in a folder called 'ID Plates', that way I can choose one as needed (remember I also use the ID plates for frames and textures in Print and Slideshow!).

Here's a quick way to get a hard copy (I'm not referring to the Save menu in Identity Plate setup here, which to me is a 'soft copy').
1. After creating your Identity Plate, go to Web.
2. With a few images selected and the Identity Plate on in your gallery, export the gallery. The Lightroom HTML gallery is a good one to use.
3. Go to the folder you just exported.
4. Open the folder marked 'contents'.
5. Inside is a file called 'logo.png'. This is a graphical version of your ID Plate. Save it to your ID Plates folder, with a new name.
6. That's it. Once you've moved the logo.png file, you can delete the gallery you exported (unless you were going to upload it of course!)


This allows you to work on a number of designs, and can be used with a watermarking Export Plugin like LR/Mogrify.
If you want to switch to this hard copy, save the soft copy in the drop down menu, and choose 'Use a graphical identity plate' from the Identity Plate setup dialog and then choose the 'logo.png' file (or however you named it). Remember to rename if you plan on creating a few, so that you don't overwrite the older versions.

TTG Shadowbox Gallery Updated to 2.7

Matthew Campagna has announced that TTG Shadowbox Gallery 2.7 is now available. This update requires Adobe Lightroom 2.0 and contains the following changes:

• Upgraded to Shadowbox 2.0 and Mootools 1.2.


• Shadowbox GUI now supports 29 languages.


• Implemented BoxOver hovers on thumbnails, color labels and selection checkboxes.


• Automatically reads Color Labels and Color Label Sets from the Library module.


• Revamped the selection gallery.


• Added optional thumbnail ID plates.


• Added Output Sharpening.


• Ratings are out in favor of the improved color label support.

There are a few other changes. Because Shadowbox 2.0 is quite different from 1.0, skins are out until further notice and a few options that are either no longer relevant or no longer options were removed.

Keyword Export issue fix

Adobe has published a technote containing a script that fixes the 'Include On Export' issues users are seeing with their keywords. The note details ways of solving the issue with or without the V1.x Catalog available.

A quick thanks to Matt K.

A quick shout out to Matt Kloskowski from Lightroom Killer Tips for mentioning the HSWeb gallery!
Cheers Matt!

Workflow with Smart Collections

John Beardsworth has produced a set of Smart Collections to control your workflow. Based on a 'Current Work' collection, these Smart collections allow you to see at a glance all work you've done, and still need to do, from Flagging to Metadata Entry, along with Edit Status. There's even sections to help apply the correct Noise reduction for set ISO's. All in all the set is superbly put together. This post is not a tit for tat on John's comment on my Grad Presets, I'm genuinely impressed with the list and the previews John presents of it. In fact I think his use of Smart Collections for this purpose is rather inspired. As to Price? Rather than set a fixed price, John directs those who find them useful to his Amazon Wish list.