Lightroom-Blog.Com

In Progress

2010-02-06T19:13:00.001Z

There's been a few feature requests in the few days since LRB Exhibition was launched. I'm glad to say it's getting good reaction. Anyhow, here's the list of stuff that have been added/fixed/changed since release based on user feature requests.

1.1 changelog

Added Top Gap

Added Numbers checkbox

Added body image check box.

Fixed repeat

Changed less for fewer

Change UI colours

Added a Switch to the galleries to hide the menu and force all images into Gallery 1, acting as a single gallery rather than a website.

Added Number Height slider

Added Menu Gap slider

Menu gallery swap

Menu and Identity Plate transparency choices

Added Flickr code and made icon.

I'm sure there will be quite a few more feature requests before 1.1 goes out, feel free to add them to the comments at the end of the LRB Exhibition post.

LRB Exhibition

2010-02-02T03:04:00.001Z

Written from the ground up with new internal code and ideas, LRB Exhibition is a new 'Website in a gallery' plugin for Lightroom's Web module. From the Portfolio family, it allows the user to create home, about, contact and general use pages, along with 6 galleries and 2 external links.

The main image area in the gallery is based around a single image preview in an enclosed space. Using jQuery, each slide can be navigated to either using the navigation arrows, or numbered links to the relevant slide. LRB Exhibition is far more mature that LRB Portfolio was at version 1.0, in fact it's almost par with LRB Portfolio 2.51, and probably equal to 2.4. It does however have features not available to LRB Portfolio, such as per page image and text placement and a floating text box.

Install.

Mac: Double click on LRB_Exhibition.lrwebengine to install.
PC: In Lightroom Preferences (Edit>Preferences), click Presets. Click 'Show Lightroom Presets Folder'. Open the folder. Look for a folder called 'Web Galleries'. If it's not there, create it and drop LRB_Exhibition.lrwebengine inside it. Restart Lightroom

Intro Video.

Here's a quick look at using the gallery. Click through for the full size verion.

There will be more forthcoming.

Basics

A basic look at how this gallery works:
Create a collection of images you want on the website. Decide how many galleries you will have and then sort them into order for each gallery. You might have 35 images for the first gallery, 20 for the next and maybe 26 for the 3rd of the 3 galleries you've decided you'd like.
Next go to Web and select LRB Exhibition from the list. Make sure All Fimstrips Photos is selected in the Filmstrip, or that you've selected all the Photos. Go to the Gallery section and enter those numbers in each gallery section. Give the galleries names for the menu. Now go add details to the Home, About and Contact pages. Same for the Blank page, which can be used for pricing, or services etc. These page have individual text box sizes and locations, along with a choice of locations for the image on the page.

Once you've customised the gallery to your taste, be sure to save your settings as a Template. While Lightroom will remember the settings for the collection, if something bad happens, you're better off with a Template to get those settings back.

A lot of the internal stuff works in a similar way to LRB Portfolio, so you can access that User Guide for more details. Like I say, there will be more video tutorials to add usage.

Features

Home, About, Contact and Blank page

6 Galleries, 2 external links

Google Analytics support

SEO features built in

Custom jQuery Gallery

Multiparagraph, floating text boxes

Clean layout

900X600 images

W3C vaild (base code)

Sample Gallery
Click to view a sample gallery.

Buy
LRB Exhibition is €15 plus VAT.
For the first week of sales, you can get a 20% discount using the sales code LRBEX20. Remember to update the Cart after you enter the code, or it will not be applied. Please note the download allows for 9 updates, after which you require a new purchase.

The Future
Like any software, LRB Exhibition will take on a life of it's own in the wild. Feel free to ask questions or add suggestions in the comments.

LRB Exhibition almost ready

2010-02-01T18:24:00.001Z

My new web Plugin LRB Exhibition is almost ready for launch. Written from the ground up with new internal code and ideas, this is my second website in a gallery plugin for Lightroom. From the Porfolio family, it allows the user to create home, about, contact and general use pages, along with 6 galleries and 2 external links.

An earlier prototype of the plugin was used to create SkyWaterLand.com. It's been much improved since then though. Once I get the all clear, I'll upload and launch the product. This will be the same price as LRB Portfolio (15 euro), but I will have a 20% Discount for the first week. The code for this will be announced in the launch post.

The main image area in the gallery is based around a single image preview in an enclosed space. Using jQuery, each slide can be navigated to either using the navigation arrows, or numbered links to the relevant slide. LRB Exhibition is far more mature that LRB Portfolio was at version 1.0, in fact it's almost par with LRB Portfolio 2.51, and probably equal to 2.4. It does however have features not available to LRB Portfolio, such as per page image and text placement and a floating text box.

Launch should be very soon. And no this is not vapourware!

Phototraining4U

2010-02-01T15:38:00.001Z

So my tenure as Lightroom Master for Phototraining4U.com has begun. The site has a whole series of training videos covering Wedding, Portraits, Fashion, Business, Wildlife and Photography Post Process, amongst others. It's owned and run by Mark Cleghorn, who has produced those great training videos for Lastolite. The site has a yearly fee of £199, but if you use the discount code SEAN with the link above, you'll get a whopping £50 discount as a new member. This yearly fee allows unlimited access to all the videos on the site.

There's also a FreeView section on the site to give you an idea of the videos that are on offer. There is a really broad range of training there, with new videos being added every month, increasing the value of your membership as time goes on.

The videos I'm producing for Phototraining4U.com are much longer than the ones I've done here on the blog and cover more ground.

Lightroom 2.6.1 posted for Leica users

2010-01-26T23:02:00.001Z

Adobe have posted Lightroom 2.6.1 to their servers. This is not available via the normal update mechanism.

Mac OS: http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/detail.jsp?ftpID=4644
Windows: http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/detail.jsp?ftpID=4647

This 2.6.1 update contains a single change compared to 2.6: a fix for the problem that would cause LR to crash when processing some M9 files, primarily observed by users under 64-bit, but occasionally under 32-bit as well. There are no other changes.

LRB Portfolio 2.51 update available.

2010-01-21T19:55:00.001Z

LRB Portfolio has now been updated to version 2.51. This update has substantial under the hood changes to overcome the way Lightroom generates CSS. Now when you export (or Preview in Browser), LRB Portfolio creates a new CSS file from internal settings, but based on a template CSS file. It's taken a while to get it right.

In addition there are some new features:

A Text Width slider that allows the user to set the width of the text in the Home, About, Contact and Blank pages.
An ID Plate Offset Slider that allows the user to nudge the ID Plate for better alignment
The non Gallery pages now use a separate header file to prevent an error in IE.
The code is now W3C valid. For the record, it's possible to have useless valid code, but as some people are bothered by this, it's done.
Fixed an IE bug where the ID plate could be hidden by the menu.

There are a few other bits and pieces changed, but mostly internal stuff. This was particularly hard work, with not a lot to show for it on the surface, but it was all still needed.

New customers can purchase the plugin from the LRB Portfolio Website. Current users can get the plugin from their download link, which they were encouraged to save on purchase. Support is available at the Lightroom Forums LRB Portfolio thread.

Update: Just pushed out 2.51 with layout fixes for the mail.html file page, which had orphaned CSS. I hate it when stuff like that happens.

Coding and keeping it safe.

2010-01-20T16:58:00.001Z

This is a Lightroom post in the sense that it's talking about coding plugins for Lightroom. If you're not interested in coding, you can stop right here and keep 5 minutes of your life.

I've lost track of the number of versions of LRB Portfolio and other plugins I have on my drive, both as code, and compiled. I literally have folders of them. Why? Well, because I've lost my codebase before and had to redo an update from memory, way back in between version 1.1 and 1.2. I overwrote the code with complied versions by accident. That really sucked. I called myself obscene names, but I got over it.

Talking with other developers, I heard about different ways to manage code. One of them was Subversion, but it seemed too complex for the simple codebase I have. Coda, the software I use for coding plugins and websites, has subversion built it, but it seems really geared to websites, and not good for plugins. It may well be fine, but I couldn't get my head around it. My interest was purely academic, and I'd no reason to find a particular product.

Then something terrible happened. Somewhere between LRB Portfolio 2.3 and 2.4, an entire block of code, in the main file of the plugin, got overwritten by text. I literally have no idea how it happened. I just opened the file to edit and half of it was gone. I was able to replace the bad bits with the 2.3 code, but all the new stuff was gone. That sealed the deal for me, I had to find a way to keep my code safe always, not just when an update was launched.

After much seeking, I found a really cool piece of software called Cornerstone, from Zennaware. It does full Subversion, but I only need a tiny part of the functionality. Normally you would use a server, but I'm just using a folder on my drive. The 15 day trial seemed more like 15 days of having it open, than 15 successive days. Still they proved I needed the program, so I parted with my $60 happily.

Here's my workflow.

I have a repository on the drive and I have a working copy checked out. I do all my edits in Coda and Cornerstone keeps track, making new copies in the background as I save. I can always step back to a previous version at any time. When I get to a point where I want to test the plugin, I commit my changes. I can choose to add text to a log file, helping figure out which previous version I might need in the future. Next I select the working copy and click on the 'Export' button. I've set this up to create a copy in the Web Galleries folder of Lightroom. While the export is happening, I restart Lightroom. The export is fast, so when Lightroom reopens, I can immediately see the changes.

What's great about this is that the version in Web Galleries is no longer a precious commodity. I simply export the current working copy. Because Coda is working on a safe copy, with automatic backup, this working copy is used to make the compiled version of the file for beta testing. I have a script that copies the folder specified, and tags .lrwebengine to the name. It then opens this new folder and compiles the 2 .lrweb files, leaving the plugin ready for distribution. At this point, there's a compiled version, the working copy, the copy in Web Galleries, and of course all the versions in the repository. Because of this I can then continue working on the plugin, knowing that finally, the code is safe.

Accessing the Resources folder inside LRB Portfolio

2010-01-14T17:42:00.001Z

Here's a shot video for those wondering how to access the Resources folder in LRB Portfolio to add avatar and background images.

Click through and select HQ to see the higher quality version.

Practical Presets

2010-01-12T01:40:00.001Z

Presets are great for a number of reasons. Easy to get a look, Easy to preview using the Navigator, and repeatable would be high on the list. It's wonderful to get a look and save it as a preset. But sometimes, you apply that to another image and.. Ugh.. it's terrible. Why?
Well if you did a lot of work to get to that point, the base settings may be too much for an ordinary image.

For presets to be universally good, there are some basic things we need to understand. First off, presets for Raw and JPEG/TIFF that use all the settings need to be different. Lightroom applies +50 Brightness and +25 Contrast to Raw files by default, while JPEG/TIFF is left at 0. This makes a big difference in the look, requiring different presets. There is another option of course, and one that I think is the universal way to approach preset creation.

For every look you want to create repeatably, start work on an image with the exposure and colour corrected. When you want to save the preset, only save the the settings that create the look, but not the settings that fix the exposure and colour. For example, let's say I add +0.5 stops to my exposure and then take 500 degress off my temperature to correct an image. I then do some split toning and add a tone curve to create a cross processed look. If I then save this as a preset with all settings on, and then apply it to an image that is corrected take, then the look will be brighter and cooler than wanted. So instead I save the preset with Split Toning and Tone Curve only selected. This means the look can be created independently of the original images exposure issues.

For ease in finding the correct exposure, make a folder of presets that have different exposure levels in 1/3 stop increments. When you save these presets, make sure only Exposure is ticked in the New Develop Preset box. This way you can simply hover over the exposure presets in the left panel and see which one looks correct for the image via the preview in the Navigator.

Only choose the necessary setting when creating the preset

This can also be done for White Balance Temperature, allowing you to get a rough White Balance visually (assuming you haven't used a colour chart or gray card).

A final option is to have a series of contrast curves saved with only Tone Curve selected when saving. This method of building up looks means you can quickly find a combination of presets to give you a final look for your image in Lightroom.

Action Keyword List

2009-12-30T18:28:00.001Z

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

2009-12-29T00:34:00.001Z

'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

2009-12-23T20:36:00.001Z

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

2009-12-18T05:13:00.001Z

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

2009-12-15T12:15:00.001Z

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

2009-12-15T12:00:00.001Z

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

2009-12-04T15:22:00.001Z

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

2009-12-02T17:35:00.001Z

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

2009-12-02T14:59:00.001Z

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

2009-12-01T15:56:00.001Z

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

2009-12-01T03:44:00.001Z

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.

LRB Portfolio updated to 2.4

2009-11-26T14:29:00.001Z

Normally updates to LRB Portfolio are monthly, but this time I've had 2 code setbacks, meaning I had to go back twice and restart the update. I'm currently trialing a versioning system to prevent this from happening in the future. Mixed with a lot of other commitments, including new plugins and galleries, it's been tough to get this one out there. Hopefully I haven't introduced other bugs in the process of fixing the ones here.

Fixed issue where the menu offset could force the gallery to the right with Cmotion in Safari.

Fixed IE issue where there would be a gap at the bottom of images. (further work may be needed)

Changed Contact form so you no longer need to edit mail.html to get the correct email address)

There are other minor changes, but these are the main ones.

As with all updates, these are free to current 1.x & 2.X users of LRB Portfolio via the download link they received on purchase. New customers interested in buying this plugin can do from from the LRB Portfolio Website.

The updated User Guide is with the plugin, but can also be downloaded from the website.

Add your LRB Portfolio gallery.

2009-11-25T15:07:00.001Z

Hi folks,
It's past time for a new featured gallery, so if you have a finished website make with LRB Portfolio, please add a link in the comments and I'll pick out some for the next few features!

And yes 2.4 will be out soon.

LR2Pikchur Plugin Launch

2009-11-25T13:29:00.001Z

In my ongoing roundup of Twitter related photo hosts, I'm very pleased to announce the launch of LR2Pikchur, an export service for Pikchur.com, which also can post a message on Twitter after upload. With a successful upload the URL and message information are available via a custom Metadata Field List in the Metadata Panel. Price=Coffee for me €2.50.

Details on installing, using and a demo version are available from the LR2Pikchur page.

Playing with Panels

2009-11-18T03:00:00.001Z

Lightroom makes extensive use of panels in order to simplify workflow. Often we're in and out of panels all the time without making the best use of them. So here's some tips on improving your panel usage.

Command(Mac)/Control click(PC) on any panel to collapse all the individual panels. Especially useful if all the panels are open and the one you want is at the bottom.

Option (Mac)/ Alt (PC) click on a panel header to activate 'Solo Mode'. In Solo Mode, only one panel at a time is open. Repeating the Alt/Option click will deactivate Solo Mode.

Hovering on the inner edge of a panel will turn the cursor into a double headed arrow. Click and drag to change the panel width. There is a fixed limit to how wide the panel can be.

By right clicking (or control clicking on Mac) on a panel, you can bring up a menu where you can remove or restore panels.

To hide/view the Left and Right Panels, simply press the Tab Key. (Shift Tab will toggle the Filmstrip and Module Picker also).

You can control how the panels react on mouseover by right clicking (or control clicking on Mac) on the outside of the panel scroll bar. From there you get options to Auto Hide and Show, which is the default behaviour of opening and closing as you mouse on or off the edge of the scroll area. Auto Hide means you have to click on the triangle in the middle to open the panel. Mousing away lets the panel close automatically. Finally Manual forces you to click on and off the panel every time. There is one more control, and that is Sync with Opposite Panel, which is useful when you want to apply your settings to the other panel.