X-Equals reviews LRB Portfolio

Brandon Oelling's X-Equals site has done a review of LRB Portfolio.

Micheal W. Gray gives it the thumbs up, saying "What I found amazing about LRB Portfolio is that I can create an informative and elegant gallery site in mere minutes."

Thanks guys!

Filmstrip Selection tip

I found and interesting thing today while in the Filmstrip. With one image selected in Loupe view (or Grid) using the shortcut Shift Command Down Arrow (Shift Control Down Arrow on PC) will select an additional 6 images. This can be repeated to add another 6 and so on. Using Shift Command Up Arrow (Shift Control Up Arrow on PC) will remove 6 images from the selection.
If you start with an image on the middle, then using Shift Command Up Arrow (Shift Control Up Arrow on PC) will select images to the left of the current image, while Shift Command Down Arrow (Shift Control Down Arrow on PC) will deselect them.

Update: Troy Gaul tell me the number (6 in my case) is based on the number of thumbnails in the grid row for grid view (obviously not visible in Loupe view), so having smaller thumbnails or a wider window will increase this number.

For single image additions to the selection, use Shift Command Left Arrow (Shift Control Left Arrow on PC) to add to the right and Shift Command Right Arrow (Shift Control Right Arrow on PC) to the left. The opposite arrow will deselect (i.e. if you use the left arrow to select, the right arrow shortcut will deselect).

New Lightroom Plugin: Export to Expono

Export to Expono "

is a new Plugin from Jeffrey Friedl. It joins a whole host of other plugins including Export to Flickr, Smugmug, Picasa, and a host of other like geoencoding and metadata management for export.

The Export question

Stephen Shankland from CNET has an interesting post that's been doing the rounds. Lightroom Product Manager Tom Hogarty referred to it as "Not my favourite headline this year" on Twitter. The post relates to Export not being as quick as it could be and is partially based on miscommunication, which has since been updated. Of course the furore over the post is in full swing, and a lot of the earlier readers may not yet realise there's been an update to the post.

Stephen indicates that it started with an older post from Lloyd Chambers on getting better performance in Lightroom. The post did the rounds a while back with Scott Kelby weighing in on it. One of the outcomes from Lloyds post was the revelation that running 3 smaller exports is faster than one larger export with the same total number of images. Seems odd that it should work, but it does.

Stephen approached Tom Hogarty for an explanation. Essentially Tom's response equates to saying that they want Lightroom to be capable of doing other tasks while Export is running as a background task. And that, in my rather humble opinon, is a good idea. Other programs (Aperture for example-edit version 1 did this) give total control to the exporting process, rendering the program useless for other tasks. Often I proceed with new tasks, like image tagging or development on a different image set while an Export is happening. I'm rarely worried about how long it takes under these circumstances, and am more than happy to trade a slower export with program usablility.

There are obviously times when a speedy export is needed. In these circumstances I can use Lloyds speed trick, but it would be nice if it could be automatically set in the export dialog. As each task is alloted it's own set of resources, the export can happen quicker. With Import, I've often had 3 cards on the going with an import session. Import one card, then when the previews are rendering, import the next and so on. I end up with an import and 2 preview renders running consecutively. It doesn't seems to phase Lightroom and I'm happy not to be waiting any longer with card swapping.

On the performamce matter, Lloyd weighs in again: "Today is not 2006, Adobe. I have 32GB and 16 virtual cores in my Mac Pro Nehalem, I paid a ton of money for that potential, and I did so to save my valuable time, not to watch the machine idling (which is mostly what it does in Lightroom and Photoshop)."

It's a more than fair point. When the user is doing task that are processor intensive, Lightroom should make more use of the machines ability. There will always be users on lower power machines, but this shouldn't prevent those who have paid for the privilege of having a high powered machine getting full use out of it.

Phosphors

Those of you frequenting Lightroom Help, or even Lightroom Forums might be familiar with Anita Dennis. Anita looks after Lightroom help among other things. She also has her own blog that covers Lightroom, Photoshop and Bridge. It's called Phosphors and features posts on sharing photos online, and Lightroom Help updates.
Currently Adobe are seeking Lightroom and Photoshop users to participate in a workflow/interveiw session, more details are on the blog.

From tour to home.

As a matter of course I brought my laptop with me on my recent family trip. It gives me an opportunity to play with imagery as I travel and occasionally check stuff online. WiFi access was sparse at best, but it was good to still be able to get a little editing done while on the road.
Getting home means moving everything off the laptop and onto the desktop. There are a couple of approaches that you can take. As I keep images stored on a date basis, the easiest way to get images across with edits in place is to save XMP on the laptop by selecting all the images from the trip and saving with Command/Control S. Next I can access the laptop a number of ways: With Target Disk Mode, I can directly import the images, from their dated folders on the laptop drive, to the main desktop. I can also go via my home network, but that is not particularly quick. I could also copy the files to an external disk and then onto the main hard drive.
Another option is to choose the folders and files from the trip and use File>Export as Catalog to create a copy of the settings, previews and negatives. This can then be imported with the Import from Catalog command. This is useful if you've created a series of Collections, which are not saved with the XMP.

Back

I've been away traveling through Scotland, England and Wales over the last 2 weeks, so if you thought all was quiet on the blog, then you'd be right. I didn't publicly announce it, because there have been reports of break ins due to such announcements by others. Well I'm back now, so expect some more posts this week!