Photoshop User Magazine

NAPP users get the joy(!) of reading a feature article on Sharpening in Lightroom by yours truly in the current issue. For those that are not NAPP members, the magazine is only one of the benefits of membership. There are active forums, portfolio pages, and of course NAPP member discounts, which can often easily exceed the cost of membership. Hop along to Photoshopuser.com to check it out.

Troy Gaul on Lightroom Development

A while back Troy Gaul gave a talk on Lightroom at C4[2]. The video is now online:



It's a bit geeky, but I really enjoyed it. Oh to have access to that IDE :)

Slow on the western front

Apologies to my regular readers, it's been busy here with work and generally just keeping up with forums. I've been away a lot recently and doing quite a few all day shoots, leaving me too tired for planning and writing posts.

I've been busy in forums instead, and have a few projects on the go, including a series of training videos for a photo training websites. More on that another time.

In the meantime, here's some links to keep you going:

An older post that'd being pushed by Brandon from the great X-equals: Lightroom Sharpening. I wonder if my comment on an article reminded him of it!

John Beardsworth has a little note on Keyword Synonyms.

Wade Heninger has his weekly 'Lightroom Tuesday' post.

John Nack shows us that Aperture isn't doing so well in the 'war', even among Mac users. Don't get me wrong, Aperture has some wonderful features that I'd love to see in Lightroom (Books!).

Lightroom 2.5 and Camera Raw 5.5 released.

After a short beta, Camera Raw 5.5 has been released, along with Lightroom 2.5. This release is basically a camera update, along with one announced bug fix.

Camera additions are:

Nikon D300s

Nikon D3000

Olympus E-P1

Panasonic DMC-FZ35**

Panasonic DMC-GF1

** This Camera has a different name in Europe and Japan and due to metadata differences will not be supported until the next update.
Release Notes:
Camera Raw 5.5 and Lightroom 2.5 include a correction to the demosaic algorithms for Bayer sensor cameras with unequal green response. Olympus, Panasonic and Sony are among the more popular camera manufacturers affected by this change. But the demosaic correction provides only a subtle visual improvement to the processing of those raw files.

Lightroom 2.5 corrects for the following problem in Lightroom 2.4. Lightroom 2.4 on Windows continued to display the import dialog when a memory card was detected regardless of the preference setting "Show import dialog when a memory card is detected."

Download:

Lightroom 2.5: Macintosh | Windows

Adobe Camera Raw 5.5: Macintosh | Windows

Photoshop User magazine.

I got word today that an article I wrote for Photoshop User, the NAPP member magazine, is in the new October issue. It's rolling off the presses as we speak. Mike McKenzie, the editor, say they really liked the article. So what's it about, I hear you ask? Well it's a look a sharpening in Lightroom and goes into more detail than I did in my book. Hopefully the NAPP members here will like it! And if you're not a NAPP member, then why not? Along with the great magazine, you get a lot of discounts that will easily pay for the cost of membership.

Speaking of my book, if you're looking for a basic guide to Lightroom that gets you started with hints tips and advice, check it out at Amazon: US UK.

TTG Pages 3.0

Matthew Campagna has launched TTG Pages 3.0. TTG Pages 3.0 is a spiritual successor to TTG LR Pages featuring many improvements, as well as integrating features from TTG Auto Index and TTG Stage. It's more powerful, more flexible and easier to use than any of its predecessors. Features include:

- Creates Home page, About page, Contact page and self-populating Album Index.
- Much improved Contact form featuring flexible visual and positioning customization and input validation.
- Full integration of TTG Stage, supporting the following Flash galleries: Autoviewer, Postcardviewer, Simpleviewer, Monoslideshow 1.x and 2.x, Slideshow Pro, FlashNifties, Dimin Slideshow, Polaroid Gallery, the Lightroom Flash Gallery and Flickr.
- Pre-built site navigation menus.
- Six new site templates.
- Includes TTG MSS2 XMLer for creating Flash galleries with Monoslideshow 2.x.
- More user-friendly for novice and veteran Web module users alike!
- Longer subscription terms for updates.

The cost is $25. Those previously subscribed to TTG LR Pages have been sent discount codes for the upgrade.

More information is available at The Turning Gate.

And a live demonstration here:
http://demo.theturninggate.net/

The Complete Picture 12

Julieanne Kost continues her Adobe TV series covering Lightroom with an episode on Catalogs. She begins with the premise that you've shot on location and then do work on the laptop, including rating, keywording and developing. From there she shows how to get these files and the work you've done into your main machine back in the office/studio/home. Finally she takes the reverse scenario, taking files from the desktop to the laptop.

Modifying the Lightroom Flash Gallery for Windows Servers.

A recurring question that I get is how to get the Lightroom Flash Gallery to work with Windows Servers. By default, Lightroom exports web images into a folder called "bin". This folder as it turns out, causes problems with Windows Servers. To get around this you have 2 options: Modify the gallery, or copy it and modify it. The latter is the safest way.

First you need a copy of the gallery.
Mac. Control Click (or Right Click) on the Application file: Adobe Lightroom.app.
From the menu, choose 'Show Package Content".
A window will open with a folder called 'Contents'. Open this and then open 'Plugins'.
Control Click (or Right Click) on the file: Web.lrmodule.
From the menu, choose 'Show Package Content".
A window will open with a folder called 'Contents'. Open this and then open 'Resources'.
Finally open the folder 'galleries'.
Inside is a file called 'default_flash.lrwebengine'.
This is the file you need to copy.

XP: The default location for the file you need is C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2\shared\webengines.
Inside is a file called 'default_flash.lrwebengine'.
This is the file you need to copy.

Vista: I don't have Vista to check, but I think it's also in a similar location inside the Lightroom Program folder.


The location this needs to be copied to is found with Lightroom open and going to the Presets tab of Lightroom Preferences (Edit>Preferences on PC, Lightroom>Preferences on Mac). From there click the 'Show Lightroom Presets Folder" button. Inside the window that opens, create a folder called 'Web Galleries" (no quotation marks), if it doesn't already exist. Open this and copy'default_flash.lrwebengine' into.

Open the default_flash.lrwebengine folder (you need to right/ctrl click on Mac and choose Show Package Contents). Inside are a number of files, but the one we need is called 'galleryInfo.lrweb'.

In the version I'm looking at (V2.4 on Mac), lines 21 and 22 read:

	title = LOC "$$$/WPG/Templates/Flash/Bluefire1=Lightroom Flash Gallery",
	id = "com.adobe.wpg.flash.bluefire1",

Change these lines (they may be different line numbers for you) to

	title = LOC "$$$/WPG/Templates/Flash/Bluefire1=Lightroom Flash Gallery MOD",
	id = "com.adobe.wpg.flash.bluefire1mod",

Then after Line 45

	[ "photoSizes.tracking" ] = false,

Add the following lines:

		["photoSizes.large.directory"] = "large", 
		["photoSizes.small.directory"] = "small", 
		["photoSizes.medium.directory"] = "medium", 
		["photoSizes.thumb.directory"] = "thumb", 

What we've done here is to give our copied gallery a new identifier for Lightroom, and a different name that will appear in the Engines panel of Web. The 4 new lines create new folders for the generated images for the gallery, and are not inside a 'bin' folder.

Save the file, and then restart Lightroom. A new gallery should appear in the Engines panel of web called 'Lightroom Flash Gallery MOD'. Use this to generate your galleries. Please bear in mind any of the Flash Web Templates will call the default gallery, so make sure the Engines panel reads Lightroom Flash Gallery MOD if you apply a Template.


And now for the fun bit:
Disclaimer: This information is provided 'as is' and may or not work for you. You agree to hold Sean McCormack/Lightroom-blog.com harmless for any damages that may occur due to use of, or inability to use, this workaround. Using this information is entirely at your own risk.

Lightroom and Snow Leopard

After a comment by Derrick Story on Twitter, Tom Hogarty (Lightroom Product Manager) posted an announcement on installing Lightroom under Snow Leopard. Due to an incompatibility between the original installer for Lightroom 2.0, Lightroom cannot be installed from the disk. While this issue was fixed with Lightroom 2.1, you'll still be better off downloading the current version from Adobe and using that to install. Each version is a full installer, so you would be downloading this file to update from the disk version anyhow. All you'll need then is your serial number and you'll be good to go.

Portraiture 2 now available for Lightroom

Portraiture 2 from Imagenomic is now available as a plugin for Lightroom. This retouching plugin is designed to reduce the time it takes to retouch a photo, and being a Lightroom plugin, means one less trip to Photoshop for retouching. This is an 'Edit In' or Export plugin and works on a generated image, rather than being Metadata based editing. Once an image is opened in Portraiture 2, it can be edited in the same way as in the Photoshop Plugin version (bar the ability to add the results as a new layer). All the processing and masking features are available in the Lightroom version also.

Portraiture 2 costs $199.95. A video tutorial explaining how the plugin operates is available also. For new users, Portraiture 2 can be used on a 15-Day Free Trial basis.

LRB Portfolio now at 2.3

Version 2.3 of LRB Portfolio has been uploaded. The main change with this version is the addition of controls to have the menu over or under the main area, along with an offset to control the exact location of the menu.
It's a requested feature and while it might seem like a small addition, it took a lot of rewriting under the hood.

In addition a new Web Template 'Wintershade' has been added to show an example of the menu up to with an offset to help it sit in line with the Identity Plate.

As with all updates so far, this is free to current users, via the download link you received via email on purchase. Because this is a small change to the plugin, you may decide to skip this version if you're happy with the menu on the bottom!

New customers can purchase LRB Portfolio from the LRB Portfolio Website for €15. Not bad considering you can create an entire website from this product. More information is available at the website.

There will be a tutorial video to go with this release coming shortly, as time allows.

Update: 2.31 has been pushed out to solve an issue with the generated mail.php file.