Action Keyword List

As you can probably guess from my recent review of the WAMP tutorial, I'm in an asset management state of mind. As part of the process, I'm starting to build up better keywording. My list is not completely flat, but it's not anywhere near hierarchical. With that in mind, I'm building lists. So here's my Action Keyword List. This is about 250+ 'ing' words, like swimming, running, crying, bobbing etc. I made this list by searching for action words. I was thinking that if you had a collection of images that contained at least one of each of the words, you'd have a good stock selection. To install, unzip and then in Library, choose Metadata>Import Keywords. The top level keyword (Action) won't export.

You can learn more about Keyword lists from Richard Earney's article on Lightroom News. Also you can get other free lists from Nick Potter. I've added to his Geography list for myself with Irish Provinces and Counties.

'Where the #%*! Are My Pictures?' Review

'Where the #%*! Are My Pictures?': Luminous Landscape Guide to Asset Management is a downloadable tutorial with Michael Reichmann and Seth Resnick. This has been on the market for quite a while, but I've not really had the time to purchase and download it until now. Weighing in at almost 3Gb, it's a substantial download. The question is, is it worth getting?

Well to answer that let's take a look at what it contains. Essentially these videos are Seth Resnick talking about how he uses Lightroom as an Asset Management tool. Michael interjects with his opinion when it suits, but essentially this is all about Seth.

The video kicks off introducing concepts and then shows Seth shooting from the roof of his apartment block. They then work through the import process and general management of the images, including filenaming, folder management, metadata templates and even Develop presets on import. Other aspects of file management get covered, like ranking, keywording and filtering are covered. There's even a section with Seth's scare story on archiving. For those mixing laptops and desktops, that gets covered also.

The tutorial is very easy to watch. The conversation is quite laid back, and everything is done slowly making it easy to take in. For me it's covering old ground in a lot of places, but hearing it from the master really helps methods sink in. I found lots of valuable tips, tricks and advice along the way. Even the longer sections seem to fly, a definite sign that Seth makes a dry topic interesting. There's a lot of banter and joking, but this all adds to making these an easy watch.

I would have no hesitation in recommending this to all users of Lightroom, no matter what their experience level with asset management. There's something here for everyone. For the record, I did purchase this myself, and have no ties or affiliation with the title.

Happy Holidays

Wishing you and yours a happy holiday. I'm staying put this year and have my mother in law visiting for Christmas. Lightroom-Blog will be quiet over the holiday season, but I'll be around on Twitter as @lightroomblog.

Lightroom 2.6 and Camera Raw 5.6 final releases available

Tom Hogarty has announced the availability of Lightroom 2.6 and Camera Raw 5.6 as final releases on Adobe.com and through the update mechanisms available in Photoshop CS4 and Lightroom 2. These updates include camera support for the following models: Canon EOS 1D Mark IV, Canon EOS 7D, Canon PowerShot G11, Canon PowerShot S90, Leaf Aptus-II 5, Mamiya DM22, Mamiya DM28, Mamiya DM33, Mamiya DM56, Mamiya M18, Mamiya M22, Mamiya M31, Nikon D3s, Olympus E-P2, Panasonic DMC-FZ38, Pentax K-x, Sigma DP1s, Sony A500, Sony A550, Sony A850,

Release Notes:
Camera Raw 5.6 and Lightroom 2.6 provide a fix for an issue affecting PowerPC customers using the final Lightroom 2.5, Camera Raw 5.5 and DNG Converter 5.5 updates on the Mac. The issue, introduced in the demosaic change to address sensors with unequal green response, has the potential to create artifacts in highlight areas when processing raw files from Sony, Olympus, Panasonic and various medium format digital camera backs.
The Lightroom 3 beta has not been updated with this new camera support. If you’re working with one of these newer cameras and the Lightroom 3 beta, please use the DNG Converter 5.6 to convert proprietary formats to DNG files that can be used in the Lightroom 3 beta.
This release includes improved camera profiles for the Leica M9 and Ricoh GXR.

Camera Raw 5.6 Download: Mac, PC. Lightroom 2.6 Download: Mac, PC.

Photo Training 4 U

Some of you may have noticed the Photo Training 4 U link in the recommended section.. Well that's there because I'm creating exclusive content for them about Lightroom. The site covers a range of photo training topics, like Portraits, Business, Photoshop etc. Andy Rouse, the wildlife photographer I interviewed a while back for Lightroom News, is also on board with Wildlife training. There is a Free View section where you can also look at certain movies for free.

Gallery Book

I've been busy over the last 10 days reediting older material to form a book on writing HTML galleries for Lightroom. I'd written quite a lot of it before, but the code base was out of date, so essentially I'm rewriting the code and adding on a lot more to it. I'll be presenting it to my publisher when complete, and if they don't want to take it, I'll look at the e-book route.
The book includes the plugins being created at various stages, so you can look at what's happening and form a reference for future plugins. It's not meant to replace the SDK, but to compliment it. I've written it to work by example, rather than hard core API material. Along the way I'm adding in tips and workarounds for things. For now this is one of 2 or 3 core projects I'm working on, so if things are slow here, you know why!

LRB Portfolio video

I've created a short video covering how to set up images for the LRB Portfolio galleries, along with showing how to create a gallery index page. Make sure you watch this in HD to see things better.

LRB Portfolio Featured Gallery

It's about time for a new Featured Website for LRB Portfolio. And this time it's the turn of London based photographer Robbie Ewing.

I like how Robbie has used a dark look with white bars. Simple but beautiful. I'm a big fan of simple looks for web sites. He's also used grey text which helps make the type easily readable.

Photographically, I love the night images of London, the abstracts and the still life images. The people and street images are good too, I'm just a sucker for city evening shots.

X-Rite ColorChecker Passport mini review

Colour Confidence in the UK were good enough to send me an X-Rite ColorChecker Passport to try out. I'm already a user of the Mini ColorChecker and the Eye One Display 2, so I already have trust in the company for colour expertise. Seeing the Seth Resnick video on the X-Rite site instantly caught my eye, so I've been keen to try it out.

So what is the Passport? Basically it's a plastic case with 3 charts: White Balance, ColorChecker and an adjustment chart. When combined with the X-Rite Software, it allows you to create DNG profiles automatically, usable in Lightroom for more accurate colour. It is possible to create your own DNG Profiles using the DNG Profile editor, but this is much easier. Installation is quick and painless from the disk.

Some notes: Before getting this, I'd already had a chance to use the software that comes with this product. If you create an account at X-Rite, the software is available for download (or at least it was a few weeks ago). I was able to test it using the Mini ColorChecker. I've had a chance to use this at a recent Strobist meetup. Bear in mind that the following is simply my intial use and impressions, and that I will most likely revisit this in the future.

As I was shooting, I took a quick snap with Liz, who was kind enough to pose for me for some of the afternoon. When I got back home, I brought the images into Lightroom and got started. I found the image with the Passport and crop into the passport itself. Using the neutral patch in the adjustment chart, I set the white balance. I then started Export (File>Export). From the plugin list, I selected the ColorChecker plugin.

I enetered a name, "Minisoft44_Octa", and hit Export. The progress bar let me know that a profile was being generated.

On the first go I got an error. On reading I made the decision to try again, but to crop in much tighter this time.

I'm genuinely not sure if the cropping is supposed to affect the profile generation, but this time it made a difference when I exported the second time.

Following the dialog box instructions, I restarted Lightroom. Once Lightroom had opened, I went the Camera Calibration tab in Develop where I found a new profile matching the name I had entered.

On selecting the new profile, the colours immediately shifted. To my eye the colour is richer, but redder. You can see the Before/After view below to judge yourself. While I think it's too much, it is more accurate view than the initial view.

With one or two radically different setups on the day the result was similar. I did find the result a little red, but liked the overall richness of tone. For comparison purposes, I used the same Passport image, exported to DNG, and then opened in the Chart section of the DNG Profile Editor, to create another Profile. In the image below, the X-Rite Profile is the before, and my self created profile is the After (on the right). The redness is gone, but the tones are richer. (I'll cover the procedure for this in another post in the future).

In conclusion I will be buying this product. The build and size of the case is great for leaving in your camera bag for every shoot-something I feel wary about with the Mini ColorChecker. I do have reservations about the profile from the Passport software. Some of this may be down to my use of the plugin, and preference for particular skin tone looks. I did reinstall the software to make sure that the previous version I had downloaded was not this issue, but the 2 generated profiles seem identical. I prefer the look of the DNG Profile Editor profile here, but I'll continue to use the X-Rite profile maker and report back on this. Again, this doesn't affect my thinking about the usefulness of the product and I heartily recommend it for the charts.

LrSaver announced

Nir Dremer has announced the availability of LrSaver. LrSaver is a screensaver which dynamically generates a slideshow according to Lightroom meta-data information.

LrSaver design enables key advantages such as:

Flexibility – Smart grouping of your favorite photographs according to any meta-data fields
Efficiency – Minimal resource utilization by using Lightroom cache (no need to export)
Simplicity – Simple & intuitive user-interface
LrSaver is currently available for Windows, a 14 days trial version is available for download (link).
Mac support will be introduced in few weeks. You can subscribe on LrSaver website to receive Mac support release notification (subscribe here).

LrSaver is currently available in a special introductory price of $9.99.

MInor error fixed in 2.4

A typo in the mail.html file of LRB Portfolio 2.4 can cause an error message to appear in Lightroom. A fix has already been uploaded. Simply redownload the file or edit the mail.html file, line 74 to read <% if model.nonCSS.menuBottom then %><% includeFile ('menu.html') %><% end %>
Apologies for the error. I didn't work on the file, so I'm surprised to see this, but fortunately it seems fine now.