Previewing Camera Profiles.

The new Camera Profiles are really great for getting a good look quickly. But you want to preview them to see what suits. Well, changing them in Camera Calibration will let you see them, but it's a bit tedious. The obvious answer is much easier than you might expect: Create a batch of Presets!

Open your image and go to the Camera Calibration tab in Develop. Option/Alt click the tab to switch to Solo mode if you want to see only this tab.

The Camera Calibration tab in Develop. ACR4.4 is the default profile for the 40D

In the Profile section, select a camera profile. Here I've selected the Landscape profile.

Right click on a presets folder and choose New folder. Name it for the camera. In my case I've called it 40D Camera Profiles.

Now use Shift Command N (Shift Control N on PC) to call up the New Preset dialog. Name the Preset to match the Profile name. Select the Preset folder you just created. Click Check None and then Camera Calibration to make sure only the Camera Calibration settings are saved.

Repeat for each Profile. When done, you will have a folder of Presets to hover over and preview the look in the Navigator panel.

As a treat to fellow 40D owners, you can download the presets I created for this tutorial here. You need the Camera Profiles installed for these to work. Update: These seem to work for any Canon camera. The preset seems to just take the appropriate profile for the camera to preview, which means any Canon camera should be previewable from these presets. I'll check with Eric Chan on this.

Update 2. I notice that the Camera Standard, Neutral, Portrait and Adobe Standard also work on Nikon Raw files also (D3 and D70 are the Raw's I have).

Update 3. Here's a set for Nikon users.

Lightroom 2 vs. CS4 & Lightroom Conspirarcy Theories

Scott Kelby has posted a video about Lightroom 2 vs. CS4 & Lightroom Conspirarcy Theories over at his Photoshop Insider blog. Basically the video is Scott and Matt Kloskowski talking about coverage of issues relating to the programs.
A very valid point is that while the majority of users don't have issues, there are some that do, and for them it's the most important thing in the world (appropriately).
Personally, I'm having a bizarre graphic issue where my screen darkens down as I move the image about the screen or scroll using any scrollbar. I move the whole window to my 2nd monitor and it rectifies immediately.
Here's the catch: to create an effective bug report that lets Lightroom engineers see the issue, you need reproducible steps. While this happens to me all the time, I have no steps. It simply happens.
Besides that I have only one minor crop issue and that's it. Lightroom is solid otherwise. The crop issue, for those that care, is when I'm in a portrait image and I use Shift to constrain a crop, it jumps to landscape when I drag a corner. It happens most of the time for me. If I use the lock it's fine, so it's not major by any means.

Update: Folks, if you're going to say you've a bug in the comments, do it the right way! List your machine and OS, the version of Lightroom you are using and the steps to take to reproduce it. If you've no steps, describe what you were doing when you see the bug.

LRB Portfolio updated to 1.02

This just adds 2 external links and a test.php to the web engine. It's only a very minor update, so you don't need to redownload unless you are using all 6 galleries and need further links. If you want it and have used the 5 downloads, reply using the download email and I'll reset it.

Help

It's not something I make much mention of, but I am a Moderator for Adobe with the community help. Help from Lightroom goes through the design centre, with actual help being the first link. Here's 2 options for you instead of going through the design centre.

Save the link http://help.adobe.com/en_US/Lightroom/2.0/ in your browser

Open the link and on the top right of the page click on the PDF link to download the Help file for offline reference

So why is help online? Well Adobe are hoping to make it more interactive with comments and moderators. It's not so useful in the Jungle or on Plane though, hence the PDF. But of course you need to go online to get that! At least now you know you can get it before heading in offline territory.

Lightroom 2.1 - Adobe Labs

Lightroom 2.1 Release Candidate has been posted to Adobe Labs.
Included with the release is a comprehensive list of bug fixes and known issues. Being a release candidate, it's undergone internal testing, but Adobe want the community to test it also. You can install this to test, but Adobe provide instructions on getting back to version 2.0. I'm finding it quite stable and have had no major issues. Import and preview rendering is faster for example.
I was in work when the release was announced on Labs.adobe.com, but emailed Martin Evening a heads up to get a note out on Lightroom News, thanks Martin!

From the release page:
"Welcome to the Adobe® Photoshop® Lightroom 2.1 release candidate on Adobe Labs. The ‘release candidate’ label indicates that this update is well tested but would benefit from additional community testing before it is distributed automatically to all of our customers. The Lightroom team would like the community to help verify the quality of this update through normal usage as this will ensure that the application is tested on a diversity of hardware and software configurations not available internally at Adobe."

Read more about Lightroom 2.1 Release Candidate.

LRB Portfolio updated to 1.01

LRB Portfolio has been updated to 1.01, fixing a width issue with the menu under IE, and changing the right click code to be compatible with WebKit based browsers like Safari and Chrome.
Additions include longer text fields for Home and About, a HTML Metadata Keywords box, Remove home page link, and a slider to set the distance from the top of the broswer. To avoid confusion with those seeing errors with not enough images selected, the Home, About and Contact pages show image 1. You will see the error on gallery pages with not enough images selected. I've added titles to each section for clarity.

Known Issues. On Mac, entering a number directly in the Image Per Gallery silder box doesn't force an update. Click on the slider to force the update. Using the Slider, or hovering over the number and dragging work as normal. I'm in touch with Adobe engineers to see why this code isn't working as normal.

To update, simply use the link you received on purchase to download the new version. Most of you have only one or 2 downloads, so you still have plenty left. Reply with the download link email if you run into trouble.

Creating your own web gallery..

While I did start with the first post on creating a web gallery here, I've decided that Lightroom-News.com is better place for it.
So here's the links to get you going:

Introduction

The galleryInfo.lrweb file

The manifest.lrweb and HTML file

Head down into 1.01

Since the release of LRB Portfolio, you might think I had a break after the development time? Well no actually. It was straight into 1.01 bug fixing and feature requests. The main bug was the menu going over too far in IE, but that's now fixed. There was also some instant update issues with some of the menu items. I replaced the variable to solve that. Images Per Gallery had a px after it. Now removed.
As to features, I've a basic Flash music player added. I also made a little music loop in Reason to demo it. Because it's Flash, it won't preview on PC in Lua galleries. That's an IE limitation due to the way it handles plugins like flash. It does show with Preview in Browser though.
Other feature requests done are: Option to remove the Home page link. Done, but you have to start on the home page.
Page Title: you can have a different title on the title bar, rather than Site title, which is used on the main page.
Logo Top Gap: Those worried that the gallery was too far down now have the option of setting this height from 0-200px (default is still 100px).
.
In Site Info I've added headers to each section for clarity.
My latest is in the hands of testers and the file will be updated when all the new bugs introduced with the features are sorted out. Previous purchasers will be able to redownload. Those that used up the quota can email in for a refill.
I don't have a time on this, because I don't know what they might find!


Update 4/9/08: I'm putting the music player on hold to get out a dot releases with more important fixes and cleanup. The music code requires the use of a) flash and b) frames, neither of which are previewing for me in XP. I've mentioned the Flash issue above, but the frames issue is a little more subtle and requires more thought..
Testers will get a drop shortly and hopefully give the okay.. Sorry it has to be this way, or you'd only be complaining more if it was broken!