Managing CMYK in Lightroom 2.0

Lightroom 2.0 (and 1.x) has no official support for CMYK files. Alot of people are not happy about it too. However Ian Lyons has detailed a workaround which allows you to manage and even edit CMYK files in Lightroom 2.0. The major limitation is that you can't export these files, but you can open them in Photoshop.
Check out his rather innovative workaround over at Computer-Darkroom.com

Pimping your Identity Plate.

I secretly have been hoping someone would ask about the cool fonts I've been using in my ID plates and Copyright Watermarks. But of course noone has. Shame really because it would lead me to telling you about my favourite place for comic books fonts on the net. They're even free..

Yep... Free. Of course they do sell fonts as well, but they have a wealth of the coolest free fonts to use to create your Identity Plate. And they are Blambot. Check them out. Cracked is one of my favourites, but isn't there any more. Recently I've been using Crime Fighter and my new, about to be released, Website in a Gallery: LRB Portfolio, uses Mainframe. Seriously though have a look..

Workflow with Smart Collections

John Beardsworth has produced a set of Smart Collections to control your workflow. Based on a 'Current Work' collection, these Smart collections allow you to see at a glance all work you've done, and still need to do, from Flagging to Metadata Entry, along with Edit Status. There's even sections to help apply the correct Noise reduction for set ISO's. All in all the set is superbly put together. This post is not a tit for tat on John's comment on my Grad Presets, I'm genuinely impressed with the list and the previews John presents of it. In fact I think his use of Smart Collections for this purpose is rather inspired. As to Price? Rather than set a fixed price, John directs those who find them useful to his Amazon Wish list.

Spaces, sorts and masks.

I'm taking a little time out from my writing cram to point out a few recent posts from other sites.

Matt Kloskowski has a great video tutorial on colour spaces with Lightroom and Photoshop, including Photoshop colour settings over at Lightroom Killer Tips.

Speaking of Matt, he also has 2 Edge Lightening presets for download.

Ken Milburn has a cool tip on using Auto Mask in brush mode of Lightroom 2 beta to extract a person off a background. The final output can be used to create a layer mask in Photoshop. Check out his tip over at the O'Reilly Inside Lightroom blog.

David M. Knoble has updated his sorting tip for Lightroom 2 Beta over at Outdoor Images blog.

Lightroom @ Outdoor Images

David M Knoble has been popping in and out of Lightroom Forums.net recently and a recent answer of his led me to his blog. Wow, what a busy guy. Using recently published figures for wavelengths of the sliders in HSL (from Chris Brandon), David created some Black and White presets that are available for download. Along with those, he also has been a prolific poster about Lightroom over the last few months. Well worth a look.

Adobe Lightroom FREE Presets

Heather Green has complied a list of Adobe Lightroom FREE Presets

It's quite comprehensive and includes Inside Lightroom and of course, Matt's presets from Lightroom Killer Tips. Also included are presets from users, as well as the free WOW! collection from onOne software.

Well worth a look.

Speedlinks.

I've done a bunch recently over on Lightroom-News, but it's time for some for me :)

James Duncan Davidson is continuing his series on photo backup and storage, over at O'Reillys Inside Lightroom.

Matt Kloskowski has new presets for download over at Lightroom Killer Tips. A day late (again-just kidding Matt!), these new presets give an older, tinted, look to your photographs.

Joe over at Lightroom Galleries has updated the LRG FSS Select Gallery to version 1.1. Check out the sample gallery.

Speaking of Galleries, Matthew Campagna has released a beta version of a gallery provisionally titled "TTG Feedback Gallery". It's based on his Selection gallery, which I really like. Find out more from this Lightroom Forums post.

Jeffrey Friedl is also updating things, this time it's adding to his recent 'Piglet' development for Export Presets. This updates adds a "Run any Command" feature, allowing you to run a command line tool (eg Exiftool) as part of your Export Plugin.

Not strictly Lightroom, but very Camera Raw, Jeff Schewe was interviewed by Bert Monroy for his Pixel Perfect podcast.

I forgot to mention it last week, but SlideShowPro for Lightroom has been updated to V1.06.

Lightroom Learn Wiki

Along with a number of well known figures from the Lightroom Community, I've been involved with a new venture from Adobe: The Lightroom Learn Wiki. This community help system is an updated version of LiveDocs, with added interactivity. Users can add comments and link to existing documents to expand and explain further. The base documentation is still controlled and supported by Adobe. Anita Dennis is the lady in charge of the whole project and has worked quite hard to bring this to fruition.

In order to keep order in the Wiki, there are a number of moderators that will keep an eye on users links and comments. These come from the Lightroom Advisors team that worked with Anita bringing the Wiki up to date. None of the Moderators are permanent, but will cycle from within the group.

Feel free to check it out, especially with all the additional resources and links that have been added to the LiveDocs.

Matt's Monday Presets on Tueday

Matt Kloskowski has posted more presets this week, rather cool (or warm) sunset presets, albeit a day late.
I know, the presets usually come on Monday but I wanted to change it up this week. Actually, yesterday just got away from me. Anyway, this week I’ve got some presets for you that are specifically geared for sunsets with lots of sky. As I was looking through my photos I realized there were basically two types of sunsets - cool or warm. The cooler ones typically had lots of blues and some reds in them. The warmer ones had more of a yellowish color to them. So I made a few tweaks in White Balance as well as HSL and saved them a while back. Now whenever I have a sunset photo I usually give these a try first and I get great results most of the time. If anything, it’s a great starting point and you can always go tweak the Temperature and Tint settings under White Balance for more or less of the effect. Have at ‘em!

I've used similar presets for ages, but it's great the way he has them done as 2 levels of cool or warm.
Here's an image from yesterday that I've applied the Cool II to. (Good timing Matt!)

Monday Presets

As if he wasn't busy enough, Matt Kloskowski from Lightroom Killer Tips has added a new feature to his Lightroom Blog. It's called Monday Presets. The concept is that Matt will give away a series of presets he uses each week. 

Matt: I’m really excited to introduce a new feature on this site. Presets (or downloads or whatever you want to call them)! See…I realized I had an extra 15 minutes each week that was being wasted, so I decided to give myself one more item on the weekly “to-do” list. All joking aside, I just think presets are cool. They fit into my favorite 3 categories:
1) They’re easy to use.
2) They save me time
3) They’re fun"

This weeks Presets are Develop Presets for edge darkening, but he'll be adding Web Galleries, Slideshow and Print Presets also.

If you are interested in free presets, don't forget that Richard Earney has bucketloads over at Inside Lightroom.com

Jeff's Metadata Viewer Preset Builder

I've mentioned Jeffery Friedl and his cool tools here before. Well he's now updated his Lightroom Metadata Viewer Preset Builder for Lightroom 1.1. Quite a mouthful! So what does it do?
If you look at the Metadata Pane in Library you can see a viewer dropdown list to the right of the label 'Metadata'. It includes default templates such as All, Quick Describe, EXIF and others. Jeff's LMVPB allows you to create your own Metadata views that include the information you need to see when you look at metadata. Jeff describes the tool in great detail in the article and even if you don't feel an immediate need to use the tool, it is still quite informative and a useful read.

Jeff also does a list of his favourite new features in Lightroom 1.1.

Paypal in Lightroom Galleries

Chirs Shepherd has a new blog post on adding Paypal to you Lightroom galleries. I've only just glanced over it but it looks really good:
http://www.shepherdpics.com/Blog/2007/04/creating-ecommerce-site-using-adobe.html

Martin Evening: The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Book

As I flick through the pages of this fantastically written book, I am struck by the beauty of the images used within. The book is a joy to read and written in a straightforward, almost informal, style. Although just getting into it now, it seems no stone is being left unturned. I'm really looking forward to hints and gems that I've missed along the way. I'll report back more along the way.
One thing I did notice is my name in the Acknowledgments.. Blush..

Scroll Extra

Still messing around with XSLT/XML and HTML galleries in Lightroom.
Here's an extension gallery that uses Andy Rahns info in this blog post. Read the original article and use the new locations mentioned also. What I've added is a scrolling mechanism in CSS and made it a little prettier using snippets of code from around the net. Scrolling uses overflow in CSS, while using LI to control the look of the nav bar buttons comes from a variation on the Listmatic site.

I've created a single page scrolling gallery mostly to avoid grid coding/preview pages and pagination (areas I need to study more first). It uses ID plate/Watermarking and Jpeg Quality. I have the JPG quality at 70, but moving the slider appears to do nothing. These last features are cut and paste code from the Lightroom HTML gallery, used in a 'cookbook' form, so I may have missed something essential.

Things of note:
The background files to the page, the ID Plate and the Nav buttons are included in the gallery.xml file using the 'filePath' command. As is the CSS file.
You can, if you want to, hard code links to files on the internet, but on a Mac Lightroom will open them in a browser when you first run the web gallery. John Beardsworth says this doesn't happen on PC.

The nav bar in the gallery can have its links edited in transformer.xslt. I plan to work on code to do this inside Lightroom at some stage.
I've been up all night messing with this so I should crash before work ;)

Lightroom Tips @ Oaktree Imaging

I've mentioned a Daniel Neeley post in the past relating to organising Presets. He's now got a whole page of great Tips. Well worth a look.

Lightroom on Flickr

There is a Lightroom group on Flickr.com for anyone interested. As well as showing off images processed in Lightroom, there is an active discussion area. There are a number of prerelease testers active in the group, meaning that information can filter back to the team from there.

Richard Earney: Inside Lightroom

A long time ago I started a thread on Develop Preset Sharing on the Lightroom Beta General Discussion forum. I had found a method for sharing Develop Presets across forum threads. Richard Earney jumped in and devoted a page on his site to keeping these presets. His site has all grown up now and has its own domain now. Inside Lightroom features a wealth of Develop Presets contributed by members of the forums and by luminaries such as Martin Evening, Ian Lyons and John Beardsworth. The most recent addition was even inspired by Lightroom boss Mark Hamburg: 'Hamburg's Funky Twist".

The site is not snobbish and everyone is free to submit their own presets. In order to help you understand the nature of presets, Richard has written 'The Anatomy of a Preset'. How much is it? Well it's free actually and can be downloaded from the site.
As well as being a fellow prerelease tester, Richard runs Method Photo. He is a Licenciate of the Royal Photographic Society and is a Series Editor for the forthcoming Digital Workflow series from Focal Press.