Playing with Panels

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.

Which Collections are my photo in?

One new little feature in Lightroom 3 Beta is an answer to one of the Skribit questions in my sidebar.

Well, the answer is by clicking on the Collection Badge.

You'll then see a list of the collections a file is in.

Watermarking Web Galleries with LR2/Mogrify

One feature sorely lacking in Lightroom is a good watermark on Export. Using the fabulous 3rd party plugin LR2/Mogrify from Timothy Armes solves this issue for a straight export, but unfortunately post process plugins are not available in the Web Module. So how can we do it?

Well for my recently launched music photography website Muso Foto, I wanted nice (i.e. not the normal Lightroom one) watermarks on my images. Nothing intrusive, but something that doesn't take from the image.

Here's the steps I took:

1. Create the web gallery as you like. Leave the Add Copyright Watermark off. Also create a nice logo using the Identity Plate. Set the Quality high (like 95 or so).

2. Export the gallery to a folder (shortcut Cmd/Cntrl J).

3. In Library navigate to the folder you created via Import. Locate the folder with the large images. With LRB Portfolio, this is called 'large'. In the default HTML, this may be something like 'bin/images/large'.

4. Import this folder in to Lightroom via 'Add to Catalog'.

5. Select all the images in the folder.

6. Click Export.

7. Using Files to Disk, I set up the export as below: Jpg, sRGB, quality 80, subfolder of original folder.

8. In the Post Process Actions section, I click on Graphical Watermark and Inner Border.

9. For the Watermark, I navigate into the Gallery folder exported earlier and find 'logo.png'-the exported Identity Plate. I do this to keep the watermark and logo consistent. It helps create a 'brand'. With a little calculation, I work out a size I'm happy with and enter it.

10. I also want a semi transparent bar across the bottom which encompasses the logo. With the logo being 24px high, I opt for a 25px high Inner border on the bottom. I select Black as the colour and reduce the transparency to 50%.

11. With all this set up, I hit export.

12. From there I move the images from the subfolder up a level and overwrite the original gallery images-this is in Finder/Explorer.

13. In Lightroom I remove the still selected images from the Library with the delete key and choose 'Remove from Library' as my dialog option. After all I don't want to delete the image files I worked hard to create!

14. Finally I upload the Gallery.


Notes: Lightroom renames '-' to '_' and forces the filenames to lower case when exporting for Web Galleries. For this reason I use the actual gallery images, which will retain their correct names for the HTML files. This is the only reason why I simply don't export the files directly from Lightroom, overwriting the original gallery files.

LRB Portfolio: Adding single images to the menu

While there is an option to have either text or images in the menu in LRB Portfolio, sometimes you only need one image there. A prime example would be if you were link to an external stock site where you are represented. I'm not with Retna, the sample presented here, but I know a few people who are, so I thought it would make a nice example.

All you need to do is put the image in the resources/images folder, as explained in the User Guide. Then instead of entering text in the External Link name, add a standard img call. In this case <img src="resources/images/retna.jpg" height="25">. The image will now appear in the menu.

Saving your Virtual Copies to XMP.

As a tip that has come up again on Twitter, I thought I'd put it in the blog. This came via a tweet from Victoria Bampton originally.

By default Lightroom only store information about Virtual Copies in the catalog. This is a pain if you lose the catalog, or want to access the Virtual Copy outside Lightroom. Fortunately there is a work around. When you get your Virtual Copy to the finish point, save a Snapshot. If you now go back to the Master/Original image from which you created the copy, you'll notice the Snapshot is also available to the Master. This means the settings from the Virtual Copy are easy to recreate even if you lose the catalog without a recent enough backup.

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).

Replacing Raw with Jpg

While not a workflow I would recommend, I do get asked this question often: How do I replace my Raw files with Jpg?

Why would someone do this? Often you find it's because they have a series of family snapshots or some such that look adequate in the Raw. They don't feel they need to keep large Raw files taking up space where a Jpeg will do fine. Giving arguments about digital negative falls on deaf ears, they want rid of the Raw.

It's actually remarkably easy to do.

1. Select the files
2. Run Export from the Export button, the File > Export menu, or use the shortcut Shift Command E on Mac or Shift Control E on PC.
3. In the Export Location choose the following options: Same folder as Original, Add to Catalog. Leave Subfolder off and don't stack the images. The figure below shows how it should look.
   
   
4. In File Naming, set the naming to 'Filename' to retain the same name as the Raw.
5. Choose Jpg and the colour space of your choice in File Settings. I'd go with sRGB myself, just for web compatibility.
6. The rest I would leave blank, no resizing/sharpening/watermarking. The only exception might be to bring down a 21MP file to a 10MP file.
7. Hit export.
8. When export is completed, I would then immediately mark the currently selected images as Reject, then use Photo > Delete Rejected Photos. This is a better option that hitting Delete, which would only remove images from a collection rather than delete them. The beauty is that once the export has finished, those images that are selected are the Raw files, ready for removal.


When this is done, the folder will be full of Jpg versions of the Raw files, with the Raws removed.

Use with extreme caution. Test on one or 2 files you were probably to delete anyway to be comfortable with it.

Interim Fix for Facebook link in LRB Portfolio.

I've been aware that there is an issue with the Facebook link in the Contact section of LRB Portfolio. I thought it was due to the '?' in the profile address. As it turns out it was much simpler and much more my fault. The fix is very easy, so while I've already fixed it for a future update, you can easily fix it yourself. This will save one of the precious downloads. If in doubt, backup the gallery first.

1. Open Preferences.
2. In the Presets Tab, click 'Show Lightroom Presets Folder'.
3. This opens an Explorer/Finder Window.
4. Open the Folder 'Web Galleries'
5. Look for LRB_Portfolio.lrwebengine.
5. On Mac, right (or control) click on this and choose 'Show Package Contents. For PC users this is just an ordinary folder.
6. Locate the file contact.html and open it in a text editor (NOT a word processor).
7. Around line 90, search for Facbook and change it to Facebook.
8. Save the file and restart Lightroom.

Aternatively, the exported contact.html (or whatever you named it) will show <a href="nil">, replace the nil with the correct link.

Web Shortcut of the moment.

As I'm working on a new Web Engine, I'm using CSS Edit to check my layouts. To do this I need a rendered site, so I currently needing to Preview in Browser a lot. Rather than constantly opening the Left Panel to click the button, I'm using Cmd + Option + P (PC: Ctrl + Alt + PC). It's a great way to check how your Web Gallery looks in a browser. Once you have the Preview visible, you can cut and paste the address into other browsers to check compatibility.

White Balance via Keys.

Like pretty much everyone, I don't know everything there is to know about Lightroom. In fact, I think that there is no one person that does, but as a collective we do know quite a bit of stuff. Because I this I love finding things I never noticed, or for that matter, don't recall reading or hearing before. One shortcut that lead to a recent video was using Shift Command R (Shift Control R) to reset an image.
This time, I've found something that's probably well know, but seeing as I found it by accident, I thought I'd post it.

The video I linked to above let's you change Basic Panel controls including White Balance, but here's a quicker way. Press W to enter White Balance. This activates the White Balance eyedropper, but also some simple shortcuts. Pressing the up and down arrows will increase the Temperature, while the left and right arrows will change the Tint.
The temperature changes in increments of 50, while the Tint changes in increments of 5. As with most other settings in Lightroom, holding the Shift key will allow larger jumps. In this case, the Temperature changes in increments of 200, while the Tint changes in increments of 20.

RGB conversion chart

Because Lightroom use a percentage scale rather than the older 0-255 scale, a lot of people ask for such a scale to be added to Lightroom.
While in theory it seems like you just convert the numbers and you're done, it's actually not that simple.
The 0-255 scale is a measure that comes from 8 bit files. There are only 256 levels in each of the channels, so such a number can accurately describe any 8 bit colour. 16 bit colour has 65536 levels per channel. Thats a huge jump in the number of colours and a larger margin of error is we use a 0-255 scale. In truth Raw files are 12 or 14 bit, and a 12 bit file would have 4096 levels of colour per channel. Even that is an unwieldy level to use.

Lightroom founding Engineer Mark Hamburg choose to use a 0.0 to 100.0 percentage scale, which with 0.1 accuracy gives use 1000 levels of colour. Finer than 0-255, but still not in the order of 12 bits per channel colour.
The other issue with a 0-255 scale in Lightroom, is that even if you had one, it is only accurate for the Lightroom working space. To use the words of Jeff Schewe: Admittedly, since Lightroom uses an unusual color space internally (ProPhoto RGB Chromaticities and a linear gamma for processing, but an sRGB gamma tone curve for histogram display), there are no traditional color readouts to be had. Insiders call the Lightroom color space Melissa RGB, named for one of the Lightroom team members. (We like it because as far as we know, it's the first color space named for a woman.) So this would be completely inaccurate if you were exporting to any other space. Still people would ask for such a thing.

One possible compromise would be to have an option to see the values as if it were exported to an 8bit sRGB space. I'm not optimistic that such a thing would be possible, and to be honest, we do need to start thinking in more accurate colours. Anyhow, here's a rough conversion guide for % in RGB numbers. Bear in mind that when you export, these will be subject to the rendering of the conversion engine in Lightroom, and so will be different on export. Try it and see the difference.

Rough conversion between % and RGB255 numbers

Update Jao Van De Lagemaat has posted a link to his blog on the comments with conversion number for the MacBeth colourchecker chart.

Get Back

One thing that annoys me from time to time in Lightroom, is that when you import, the current view jumps to the import. I know it's going to happen when I hit Import, but still I'd rather it stayed where I was working. Importing in the background would suit me better when I'm already working on images.

Now that my rant is over, getting back to where I was is not really an issue. It's literally a simple click away. If the Filmstrip isn't open, I can click the grey arrow at the bottom of the screen, or press the F6 key. The 4th and 5th icons on the left of the Filmstrip are the Previous and Next arrows, highlighted in red in our screen capture below.

Clicking the Previous arrow will go back to whatever I was before the import began. Easy, isn't it? Using the Previous and Next arrows (or Go Back and Go Forward in the tool tips) I can navigate through places I've been working recently. Alternatively I can click on the downward pointing arrow at the end of the text (in the above image, it appears after the letters JPG). This will open a list of recent folders as per the screen capture below.

Still, I'd like an Import in background preference!

Why LR changes the settings of raw pics on import.

It's probably time to jump in on some of the suggestions you've been posting in the Skribit box. This one is an easy one to explain, but I'm not sure how satisfied people will be with the answer.

When you first view a Raw file in Lightroom, you are looking a camera rendered preview of the file, embedded in the file. This embedded Jpeg is what you see on the camera LCD as you shoot. Because it's a rendered Jpeg, it has all the camera settings like saturation, contrast, picture style/mode, etc applied to it.

The Raw file itself however has no inherent settings and is actually a pretty dull and lifeless looking file. So when you import a Raw, the preview goes from this rendered Jpeg to a preview based on whatever Develop settings you've chosen in the Import Dialog. Quite a lot of people choose the default rendering, which adds a small bit of brightness and contrast, but little else. This has the apparent effect of going from a pretty file to a dull file as the preview is created. Lightroom isn't actually throwing away settings, but it's hard to shake that feeling.

Fortunately there is a way around this. First and foremost, Lightroom 2.2 added the new Camera Profiles to the installer, meaning you can choose a setting to emulate your camera picture style/mode. Go to Develop and then click on the last panel on the right. This is the Camera Calibration panel. The first section is the Profile section.

From here look through the options, like Camera Landscape or Camera Vivid and find one that suits your photo style. Next add contrast and saturation using Basic or Tone Curve. Finally, hold down the Alt Key (Option key on Mac). The Reset Button on the bottom right of the right panel will change to Set Default... Click this button and then in the following dialog choose 'Update to Current Settings'. As you can see in the dialog this creates a settings for the camera that the shot was captured with. Repeat to get your preferred default for all your cameras.


If you feel the settings aren't working out, you can use the other option in the menu to restore the Adobe default settings, then start from scratch.

Once you've customised the settings in this way, they will be applied on Import for that camera, until you change or reset them.

Missing Pins or Spots?

A few folk seem to be getting caught with this: When using the Brush or Grad filters, the pins go missing. Alternatively the Spot tool isn't visible. The solution is easy: Press H. H is the Hide/Unhide shortcut and is useful for seeing the results of your work, while keeping the current tool active.

Cool Crop Tip

Lightroom Help Administrator Anita Dennis has just posted a cool tip in response to a help question. The question was:

How can you maintain one crop size, like 8x10 without having to select it each time as you go through a folder of pictures?

And the answer?

Use the keyboard shortcut S, which lets you crop to the same aspect ratio as the previous crop.

Bear in mind that you need to be in Develop for this to work and that you must apply a crop to the first image. The ratio in the crop is copied to the next image. It's not in the same location though. It's centered and will be the same height/width as the image depending on the ratio and orientation. To apply the same crop to a number of images (i.e. same location and size) use the Sync.. button with Crop selected in the dialog.

Where to keep your Lightroom Plugins.

There's been some questions and concern expressed in a few places about the where you should keep your Lightroom plugins (I'm not referring to Web Engines here, they do have a specific place).

The SDK tells us that Lightroom looks in a specific place for Plugins.

In Mac OS (current user) ~/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Lightroom/Modules
In Mac OS (all users) /Library/Application Support/Adobe/Lightroom/Modules
In Windows XP C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\Adobe\Lightroom\Modules
In Windows Vista C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Lightroom\Modules

Plugins located here are automatically loaded and can be both enabled or disabled by the Plugin Manager, but not removed.

This lack of removal is causing pain for a number of users, so a few Lightroom users/gurus/developers were talking about this a while ago. We bantered back and forth about how we work around this limitation. In the end we figured on a simple solution. Manually create a folder beside Modules called 'Plugins' and store your plugins there. This allows you to have a central repository for all your Lightroom plugins, and to be able to add or remove them using the Plugin Manager. This isn't any kind of mandatory or definitive solution, but may be of use if you feel you need to be able to remove plugins without losing them.

Help

It's not something I make much mention of, but I am a Moderator for Adobe with the community help. Help from Lightroom goes through the design centre, with actual help being the first link. Here's 2 options for you instead of going through the design centre.

Save the link http://help.adobe.com/en_US/Lightroom/2.0/ in your browser

Open the link and on the top right of the page click on the PDF link to download the Help file for offline reference

So why is help online? Well Adobe are hoping to make it more interactive with comments and moderators. It's not so useful in the Jungle or on Plane though, hence the PDF. But of course you need to go online to get that! At least now you know you can get it before heading in offline territory.

Getting a hard copy of your Identity Plate

So you spent a bit of time playing with fonts and colours, and you're pretty happy with the results for your new Identity Plate. Of course, if you create a new catalog, it's not there. And if something happens the current catalog (God forbid), you've lost that work. Personally I keep all the ID Plates I design in a folder called 'ID Plates', that way I can choose one as needed (remember I also use the ID plates for frames and textures in Print and Slideshow!).

Here's a quick way to get a hard copy (I'm not referring to the Save menu in Identity Plate setup here, which to me is a 'soft copy').
1. After creating your Identity Plate, go to Web.
2. With a few images selected and the Identity Plate on in your gallery, export the gallery. The Lightroom HTML gallery is a good one to use.
3. Go to the folder you just exported.
4. Open the folder marked 'contents'.
5. Inside is a file called 'logo.png'. This is a graphical version of your ID Plate. Save it to your ID Plates folder, with a new name.
6. That's it. Once you've moved the logo.png file, you can delete the gallery you exported (unless you were going to upload it of course!)


This allows you to work on a number of designs, and can be used with a watermarking Export Plugin like LR/Mogrify.
If you want to switch to this hard copy, save the soft copy in the drop down menu, and choose 'Use a graphical identity plate' from the Identity Plate setup dialog and then choose the 'logo.png' file (or however you named it). Remember to rename if you plan on creating a few, so that you don't overwrite the older versions.

SWPP: Professional Imagemaker

All of you SWPP members should check out the new issue of Professional Imagemaker magazine. It just came in the door and I notice they printed my Lightroom Develop article! It covers the beta and includes sections on skin retouching, negative clarity and and spot removal, as well as fixing underexposure etc. It begins on page 78.

I wrote this not long after the beta came out, but I wasn't sure when it would be published. Again if you do read it, feel free to leave comments here! You can see a web version here:
http://swpp.co.uk/pi-june-2008/index.htm, but it's quite small.

Quick Navigator Tip

Sometimes you trip up over something that's been there for ages: Today was one of them.
I found if I did something in the Version 2, something cool happened, so of course I tried in in V1.41... It worked!

You all probably know this already, but my normal use in the Navigator is to select zooms (occasionally) or move about the image.

So what's the tip?

In Grid View, click and hold on the image in the Navigator. The selected image will jump to Loupe View for as long as you hold down the mouse. On release it goes back to Grid View.

A modifier to this is to Command Click (Control Click on PC) on the Navigator. The image will then open into Loupe View.

Catalog Backup in Lightroom

I have spoken about ideas for easier backup in the past, but I'm just going to give some detail on the automatic backup feature within Lightroom. To set up Backup in Lightroom, we need to open the Catalog Settings. This is located in the File Menu and can be accessed by using the shortcut Command-Option-, (Ctrl-Alt-, On PC).

Fig 1. The Catalog Settings command.

Once this has opened, go to the Backup section of the General Tab. Clicking on the drop down menu reveals the frequency of which you can backup: Never, Monthly, Weekly, Daily, every restart or just the next restart.

Figure 2. The Catalog Settings Dialog.

Figure 3. The Backup Options in Catalog Settings.

For this part of our example I selected 'Next time Lightroom starts only'. The Dialog in Fig. 4 appears when I restart Lightroom. A little trick to make the restart easier is to go to File>Open Recent and then click on the name of the CURRENT catalog. This will restart Lightroom with the same catalog we're working on.

Figure 4. The Back Up Catalog Dialog.

Looking at Fig 4., we can see 3 buttons and a check box. We can either Skip Now or Backup. We can also check the box to test catalog integrity before backup, which is wise, as a broken backup file is useless. The last button is the Choose button (See Fig 5). This allows us to select the location to which the backup Catalog is written. I recommend an external drive at minimum. If you do select an external drive and it is unavailable at backup time, Lightroom will write to the default Backups folder inside the folder where the Catalog resides.

Figure 5. The Choose button allows you to select the backup location.

If you choose a repeated option, then a fourth button appears, allowing you to skip this backup, but allow further backups to continue as normal. See the images below for a screen capture of the other available options in Backup.

Figure 6. The Weekly Back Up Catalog Dialog

Figure 7. The Monthly Back Up Catalog Dialog

Figure 8. The Daily Backup Dialog

Figure 9. The Everytime Option Dialog

When you've allowed a few backups to happen, you'll start to notice something about catalog files, especially if you have a large photo library. They can get quite big. My main Catalog file is 1.1 Gb for 70,000 photos. When you've a few backups done, I recommend you delete older ones that are no longer necessary. Also you can use either the system archiver on Mac, or Winzip on PC to compress the file down in size. The file is full of text and compresses down significantly. For example my 1.1Gb file compresses to 140Mb. Quite a difference!

Personally I have the automatic backup set to Weekly, but I do backups after major imports/edit sessions, just to be safe.

The need for Speed: Quick Develop

Why would anyone want to use a tool that provides only a limited way to handle photos? Well, the answer is in the name. It’s because they want to work quickly. Quick Develop is a great tool for balancing the look of images in a hurry. The key difference between the buttons in Quick Develop and the sliders in Develop is this: Quick Develop makes Relative changes, whereas Develop makes Absolute changes. So how does this work in practice? Well, let’s say I have a few images I’m working on. Most are at 0 exposure, but let’s say I’ve already tweaked one or 2 to have +1 stop of exposure. I’m looking at all the photos and thinking I need to lighten them all a bit, including the ones I’ve already worked on. So I reach for the exposure button in Quick Develop and hit it a few times. All of the selected images will increase in exposure by 2/3 stop (each hit is 1/3 stop). If I tried that in Develop with Auto Sync on, all the images would go to 2/3 Stop, meaning the ones that were already tweaked have darkened (because they were at +1 at the start). Not so good. Quick Develop works best there.

What I love about Quick Develop is that it’s entirely visual. When you use the tools, you can only adjust by viewing the image. Sometimes in Develop we can, too often, work by looking at the numbers. As in “I shouldn’t really push this more than a stop, I’ll tweak the brightness instead”. Nah. Just get the best level visually and deal with any noise issues later in Develop. As photographers we deal with a visual medium, so we need to base our editing on what we see and perceive, rather than looking a numerics. It can happen in other fields too, like in sound mixing where you can end up looking at meters, rather than listening to the music.

So what’s the downside? Well you can’t save any Quick Develop settings into a preset.
Wouldn’t it be great if you could have relative presets? You could add or subtract any of the basic settings by a relative amount, so the current settings are the starting point of the Preset. Great!

To end here’s a Quick Develop tip: Hold down the Alt (Option on Mac) key and Clarity and Vibrance will change to Sharpening and Saturation.

This could well be the last post before Christmas, so Happy Christmas to all Christians, and Happy Holidays to everyone else! (I am in a Catholic Country here folks!)

Import by date file structure.

A recent near miss with serious data loss has me rethinking my current import by genre strategy. In a fairly recent post on Lightroom Forums.net, John Beardsworth argues for always importing by date and using metadata to create any other required structure. The background to this post by him is that I was touting a structure like Landscapes>Ireland>Connemara>Bunowen, rather than by date.

"Unless you use a strictly date-based structure, there is always the risk of your pictures either being duplicated or falling between the cracks and being controlled only in your imagination. Where, in Sean's example, would one put a shot that fits more than one category - a portrait in a bleak Connemara landscape. In bands, or in Connemara? Why not in both? Or should it depend on the size of the person relative to the landscape. A second set of considerations is reconstruction - imagine a catastrophic system failure and what makes rebuilding easier. A subject hierarchy or simple date based folders? In other words, using your folder system to analyze your work is a dead end - that's what metadata is for."

My issue began when doing some backup. Somehow the power supplies of my archive drive and the backup drive became swapped and both drives crapped out (the somehow being my own stupidity, I suspect). I surmised that perhaps the 12v and 5v lines were swapped in each (they have identical connectors) and that by swapping the drives and the caddies, I might get one working. I was right and managed to avoid serous data loss through this. Needless to say I bought a new drive immediately and backed up the photos.
Now I did have most of the stuff on DVD also, but newer stuff wasn't there because my DVD backups were monthly at the very least. Since I changed to using 2 drives for backup, I've been lazy about using this procedure. Also the Genre method makes it hard to save monthly. I'm back to importing by date now, but with one change.

I want to have my shoots in their own folder. Sometimes I might have 3 or 4 unrelated items in one day, eg portraits during the day, band promo shoot in the evening and a live gig at night. I don't want these together in one folder, so here's where a simple bit of typing can help.

Currently Lightroom only allows one set of metadata/keywords/settings at a time on Import. Because of this I tend to do multiple imports from one card if need be. So to decide my import location I now choose the 2005/December/17 style date import as per Fig 1. (I could also use 2007/12/07, but I like seeing the month name.)

Fig 1.

I then double click on the folder name that is being applied to edit it. I leave the date string intact as 2007/December/09, but I add to with a /Lights. The leading "/" forces Lightroom to create a new subfolder in the date folder. You can see the full string in Fig 2.

Fig 2.

With 2 shoots from that date imported in the same way, I have the shoots in individual, but date based folders.

Fig 3.

Of course now I need to consider how to get my older folders into this order. I have a few options: Use dates from the Metadata Browser to manually create dates and move the subfolders to these. I could simply save out all the Metadata and remove the files and reimport by date. I'd lose Virtual Copies and Collections this way though. Any option I choose forces compromise, so this will dictate the choice. As an interim option I could also simply make a date/month/subfolder option for now and add the date as time allows. I suspect the latter choice will be the easiest, with least loses.

And now John will get a chance to say 'I told you so'.

Muted colours and other trendy looks.

For those abounding on Flickr and other similar sites, here's a few looks that are currently popular and easy to create with Lightroom:
Let's start with our base photo:



To get a muted look, start by adding Vibrance and removing Saturation. As Vibrance only saturates colours that are not already saturated (it also protects skin tones from becoming too saturated), we can effectively remove saturation in a controlled way by applying Vibrance and removing Saturation. I use +50 Vibrance and -50 Saturation as a starting point. Change it to taste from there.



Next up we'll add some creative Vignette. Now Vignetting with Lightroom is generally only a corrective tool, but with uncropped images, it works fine for creative control. Here I've applied -100 Vignette and moved the midpoint to taste (11 in this case).



Because I've done such an extreme vignette, the skin has darkened too much. I want to retain the effect of the Vignette, so I use the Lights and Highlights in the Tone curve to taste for the image. Here I've used +28 Highlights and +49 Lights.



The image is finished for my taste, but if you like you could add a Cross Processed finish. This is done quickly and easily using the Split Tone Pane. The fastest way to use this is to by holding down the Option key (Alt on PC) and moving the Shadow and Highlight Hue Sliders to select the shadow and highlight tone colours. This set the Saturation level to 100 when you move the Shadow/Highlight Hue sliders, allowing a quick preview of the effect. With Cross Processing, the Shadows tend to be in the Blue-Green range, while the Highlights tend to be in the Yellow-Orange range. Once you've selected the colours, increase the Saturation sliders to taste. I find that lower values work better than higher values. For this deliberately green/yellow look, I've used Highlight Hue 65, Saturation 37, Shadow Hue 153, Saturation 30. You can also use the Balance slider to favour Shadows or Highlights.

A silly ID Plate trick

I've well documented little workabouts for various different things using the ID Plate. Usually things it was not intended for, like Print borders or Copyright symbols.. Well here's thing relating to the ID Plate that I've found this evening. Pardon me if it's common knowledge, but hey, I'm like the kid who added the extra note to the pentatonic scale and created a new rock guitar scale.
I was shooting a CD cover for someone today, and after I send off the selected image with a bit of retouching, I got to thinking about ways of adding text to an image in Lightroom. Of course this made me think immediately of the Identity Plate. I typed in the name of the artist and a title. Yes! Well except they're together on one line. It looks okay, but I'd like to have it with the name on the top and the title on the bottom. I'll need 2 ID plates, so it's not possible.

I click on the ID Plate editor and place my text cursor after the name and try a few modifier keys. Aha!

I find something that works. I used Option+Enter (Ctrl+Enter on PC-From Adler in the comments) and the title jumps to a new line. So I use the shortcut a few times until I have the gap I need. Finally I use the scale and hand tool to get the text where I want it. Now I'm not advocating a text tool for Lightroom, but it would be nice to have movable text in Print, not just at the bottom of the image!

Keeping life simple.

In my work as a sound engineer (not to mention my photography work!), I meet new people everyday. Be it bands, friends of friends or audience members, I get to make new acquaintances all the time. One of the first topics that ladies get to is my son. He's 2 and has a huge shock of curly blonde hair. So I get to break out the photos and do the proud father routine. I have a small bunch on my phone (a Nokia E61-love the big screen!), but I'm very bad at adding new ones. Tonight I bit the bullet and I set Lightroom up to get the pictures to my phone quickly and easily.

Being on an iMac, I have bluetooth built in, so this for me is the best way to do the job. First I invoked Shift Cmd B from the Finder, which is the internal command to open Bluetooth File Exchange. From there I right clicked on the dock icon and selected 'Show in Finder'. This was the quickest way for me to get to the original program icon (already knowing the shortcut).
Next I switched to Lightroom and hit Export (Shift Command E to be exact). Using the final option in the Post Processing section, I selected 'Go to Export Actions folder Now'. This opens the folder in Finder. Now I have the 2 Finder windows I need. With Option and Command held down, I drag the Bluetooth File Exchange icon into the Export Actions folder. This creates an alias in the folder.

Finally I go back to Lightroom and the close and open Export again to refresh the Post Processing menu. I then create a preset that sends a smaller size copy of my file to Bluetooth File Exchange and save it as an Export Preset.
To facilitate the speedy transfer, I have my phone and the computer paired. Now whenever I want to send images to the phone, I switch on bluetooth. I then select my images in grid and choose the Bluetooth preset from the Export Presets menu. Of course this leaves me no excuse for not having new pictures to show.

Offline Media

Lightroom photos can inhabit any drive they like, internal or external. The beauty of it is that unlike browser based photo editor/managers, Lightroom allows you to access your files when the external drives are disconnected. This is because of the database that is the heart of Lightroom. Offline drives and folders appear in red in the Folders Pane. If you have used Render Standard Previews on import or from the menu prior to disconnecting, you will also be able to work with a screen sized version of your offline image. If you have rendered 1:1 previews, it is even possible to get large size prints, using draft mode printing. Mac users can even recreate the missing image by using Preview from the Print driver to print to a new file. You can create virtual copies, add to collections and change keywords and metadata while the file is offline. One thing you cannot do though is actually edit the file. Develop creates a new preview when you change the settings and needs the original file.
This leads to one slow part of Lightroom. When you reconnect the drive to start editing, Lightroom takes a finite amount of time to check the drive when it comes online. A quick way to speed this along is a little unothodox: Restart Lightroom after you plug the drive in and it will find the drive much quicker.

Keyword Search Logic

Currently there are a few ways to find using mulitple keywords. The first one is to click on multiple keywords in the keywords pane. This acts as OR logic, ie images containing either keyword will be displayed. The AND logic is achieved by putting multiple keywords in the Find pane, in the Text box. In this instance an image must contain both keywords to be displayed. Finally, the NOT logic isn't quite as obvious. It requires putting an exclamation mark (!) before the keyword, eg If I want to see images keyworded with Majorca, but not those from it capital Palma, I would enter Majorca !Palma into the Text box in Find.
You can mix and match between these to create combinations of AND, OR and NOT logic in searching.

Free Frames

Expanding on the ability to add frames to your prints through the undocumented use of the ID Plate, Mike Wong has expanded on the information I provided in my Frames video tutorial from the day before Lightroom was released. Scott Kelby mentions this in his Lightroom book also. Again cheers to Andreas Noren for discovering this useful workaround.
Being on the onOne team, Mike has access to a load of wonderful frames that he is providing free to use. Make sure you email him if you use them!
Update: Mike now mentions Andreas in his post! Cheers Mike!

Quicktip: Navigating through views

One behaviour in Lightroom I find particularly annoying is that when you create a collection, Lightroom will jump to that collection. Usually I create a collection to start adding to it and need to remain in the folder I'm currently in. 2 ways I had been using to get back (which I now know I don't need to use, but I'm just pointing them out in case you didn't know) were, 1) Open the filmstrip and click the arrow beside the current item name and select the folder from the flyout list and 2) Select an image and look at the Metadata pane. In most views there is a folder item with an arrow to the right of it. Click the arrow to go to the folder.

All well and good, but marginally time consuming. I was going to request a way of getting back to the original folder, but decided to investigate a little further so I didn't look foolish (as does happen, I might add!). Whaddya know.. There is such an item and it has a shortcut. In Window we have the Go Back and Go Forward commands. These are Cmd-Option back arrow and Cmd-Option forward arrow on Mac. For PC use Ctrl Alt back arrow and Ctrl Alt forward arrow. It's much easier to use as a keyboard shortcut and saves loads of time. I'm glad I found it.

Possible Profile solution for HP printers on XP

In this Adobe U2U forum post, U2U member Joe Soaper outlines how he solved his Lightroom Print issues with his HP printer:


After much sweat, tears, cursing, and perusing of the related print quality forum threads, I seem to have solved the issue which resulted in vastly different prints from LR when compared to prints using the same colour management settings in Qimage.

I'm using an HP D7160 with HP paper & ink, and the supplied HP profiles for the media (Premium, Premium plus & Advanced paper types) but was getting a virtually posterised output from LR, even after setting the correct profiles and allowing LR to manage the colour settings.

I also tried allowing the printer to manage settings using ICM - and the result was even worse than the LR output.

However, I stumbled across a web reference to .icc & icm file suffixes for profiles. The latter suffix is needed by windows to implement the profile - and it appears that the HP profiles (installed from their driver CD) had dumped them into the windows profile folder using the .icc suffix.

Changing the the suffix from .icc to .icm solved the problem and resulted in accurate prints from LR using application managed colour settings.

I have no idea why, when the profiles worked in Qimage when they were still listed with an .icc suffix - but changing to .icm now results in acceptable prints from both Qimage and LR.

Hope this of help to all those others on the point of taking a baseball bat to their printer

Upgrading your Beta 4 Library to Version 1.

The upgrade path from a Beta Library is fraught with peril. Not really, but it does require patience and understanding, especially if you have large Library.
I've prepared a video as I do a jump from Beta 4 to V1. Before you begin your upgrade, please read the Readme and help files. Heed the warnings about upgrading therein. Unhide all image files and Import all Photo Binders into the B4.1 Library before starting. On that note, upgrade previous Libraries to B4.1 also. The process will backup the B4 library, in the event of a failure. To aid you in your upgrade here is the video: Library Upgrade Video.

Making and Using Borders in the Print Module.

As we were painfully aware throughout the Beta cycle, there was no way to add borders or frames to our precious prints in Lightroom, bar a 20 pt stroke. Well through the genius of Andreas Norén, we have found and tested a way. Sid Jervis up at Lightroom Extra has detailed one way of doing it. Here I present a way to do it in Print, without affecting your current ID Plate (that's the clue!). I'm also including my frame for you to test this.

But what about the 60px limit on Graphical ID Plates, I hear you ask? Well this is not an image limit, it a size limit based on the height of the ID Plate in the Module picker. Bigger than this and the ID Plate will not fit. But as we're not using it this way, the size doesn't matter.

Side note: I edited this in Garageband, but it threw a hissy fit so I've left in my patented 'Okays' and left out the new little jingle I wrote :(.
Update: I managed to figure a way to get rid of most of them, but no new jingle :)

OS X printing with different printing setups using Presets.

One feature that's very cool for printing is the ability to have multiple paper/printer combinations stored inside presets. There is only one trick to it though, which people can miss.
Okay. Lets start by picking a template we want to modify. I've chosen Fine Art Mat for this (should that be Matte?). I've modified and added my Identity Plate.

Next I choose my Printer Profile. I click on 'Managed by Printer' and select Other.. from the drop down menu. This allows me to select a profile to add to the list. I then click Printer and select my Epson 1290 from the list and setup the photo settings recommended by Ilford for the Smooth Pearl I want to print with.



Normally with a profile you would turn Colour Management off, but Ilford recommend a particular colour setting so I've set that. Here's the trick. Once all this is set up I hit Save. This saves to the Standard print setting. This is the key step.

Now that this is done I save the Preset.

I've also done this for another printer: The Canon CP220 6X4 printer. This has no profile control and no colour control but I've still saved it as standard. I've then modified the Fine Art Matt again for this Printer. Finally I've saved a new Preset CP220 FAM.
If you have followed this, you can see that there is a different printer in the capture from each preset. If I switch between them the print settings also change to reflect what I set as Standard for that preset.

More Webtemplate stuff.

Alright, as George Jardine would say, welcome to or new post on customising your web template.
If you're happy with the Jardine Pro template but really would like to have better HTML linking to other galleries or to parts of your site, follow this thread!
Custom Web Templates live in a folder called Web Galleries in the USERNAME/Library/Adobe Lightroom folder on Mac. This is in C:\DOCUMENTS and SETTINGS\USERNAME\Application Data\Adobe Lightroom on PC (C being to root drive and USERNAME being what you log in as. At first you'll need to create this folder. Then download the the Jardine Pro template from Georges iDisk. It's there under Example Lightroom Web Gallery. As per my last post:
"Copy the files contained in the zip file to this new folder. Open the new folder. Search for a file called galleryMaker.xml in jardine_pro. Open it in a text editor. On Line 7 change Title=Jardine Pro to Title=YourName and on line 14 change com.adobe.wpg.templates.jardinePro to com.adobe.wpg.templates.yourName. Save the file. "
If you already followed the last post, you should create a different name to distinguish the 2 inside Lightroom.
Okay, now we want to add our site HTML to the template. This is done by editing the "transformer.xslt" file. This is a well commented file and we can find where to put our html easily. On line 179 we can see a comment saying Begin Stage. This is where the thumbnails get displayed and seems like a good place to add our links. So away we go:

<a href="../index.html">Home</a> | <a href="../contact.html">Contact</a> .... etc etc

You will also need to add this code after line 960 because the "transformer.xslt" file creates the detail page as well as the index page for the gallery.
Save the file and open Lightroom. Select a few images and then go to Web. Your new gallery template should appear in the drop down menu in Gallery Style. Try it out.
You can add any HTML you want in the transformer.xslt file. I've just done a very quick start here to get you going. If you are looking for an HTML editor that's free and easy I recommend Taco HTML for Mac users out there. Anyone who wants to interject with a good PC one, feel free.

Changing Typography in Web Galleries

Currently there is no way in the program to change fonts in your galleries. It's not too hard but takes a little time to do this outside the program. Basically we need our own editable template. Fortunately George Jardine has provided his Jardine Pro gallery on his iDisk. Click the link and download Example Lightroom Web Gallery/jardine_pro.zip.
You need to create a folder called Web Galleries. On Mac create it in username/Library/Adobe Lightroom/, On PC create it in C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\Adobe\Lightroom\ where username is the name you log in with.
Copy the files contained in the zip file to this new folder. Open the new folder. Search for a file called galleryMaker.xml in jardine_pro. Open it in a text editor. On Line 7 change Title=Jardine Pro to Title=YourName and on line 14 change com.adobe.wpg.templates.jardinePro to com.adobe.wpg.templates.yourName. Save the file.
You can rename the jardine pro folder to something more usable like yourName. Inside the folder there is a master.css file located in resources/css. Open it in a text editor. On line 8 we have the font family set to Arial etc. Change the font family here to whatever you want to use. Bear in mind to choose fonts that have a chance of appearing on your viewers machine or the browser will replace it with a font of its choice. Save the master.css file.
Restart Lightroom and open Web. On the top right drop down menu your new template name should appear. Select it and enjoy.

Shortcut list

I was just about to post a shortcut list but Ian Lyons has a much more beautiful set done:

From this Post: http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/webforums/forum/messageview.cfm?forumid=72&catid=590&threadid=1214586&enterthread=y

And this page : http://www.computer-darkroom.com/lightroom_b4/lightroom_b4_1.htm

You can download a PDF for Mac: http://www.computer-darkroom.com/lightroom_b4/lightroom-mac.pdf
And PC: http://www.computer-darkroom.com/lightroom_b4/lightroom-win.pdf

Emailing from Lightroom.

One much requested feature not currently in Lightroom is the ability to email files from inside the program. Or is it? With the advent of the Export Action in Beta 4, it is. Originally in this post I suggested adding you email client (Mail in my case) as an external editor, this still works but there is a better way. Create an Alias/Shortcut for your program and place it in the Export Actions Folder (see Below for the location). Now select the images you want to email. Hit CMD/CTRL Shift E to Export and use the following settings:
File Format: Jpeg, Quality:60, Constrain (ticked) Width:700, Length:700, Color Space:sRGB, dpi: 72 and in the Export action select Mail.app (or your email client name). This will open a reduced size and quality copy of your files in Mail ready to email. To reduce the size further you could try Quality 50 instead of 60.



While you can't add more than one external editor, you can export to as many programs as you like by putting an alias/shortcut to the program in you Export Actions folder in the Adobe Lightroom folder. This is in a hidden folder in My Documents called Application Data on XP and in your User Library on OS X i.e. My Documents/Application Data/Adobe Lightroom/Export Actions or User/Library/Adobe Lightroom/Export Actions

Managed Photos: Solving an issue.

Folks. Due to my having used Lightroom from beta1 on 5 different machines, I'm going to announce a silly beta 4 issue I solved for myself. The whole Managed Photos thing seemed like a really good idea. Have your drive and shoots in location sync automatically. Except of course that I could not get a single photo to go into a Managed Photos folder, in fact, there wasn't one. Not on the iMac 20" G5, the 12" powerbook, well aged but working fine, nor the iMac 20" Core duo, or even my Macbook Pro. Why oh, Why? Well I thought I knew the answer. And when I actually took time to investigate, I found myself correct.
The issue is this: My library runs from Beta 1. That means it's been upgraded from 1 to 2 to 3 to 4 and finally to 4.1. I even have a B2 thumbnails folder still there. I decided to make a clean go of it. The iMac upgrade allowed me an extra 90Gb of internal space to play with. I renamed my Lightroom folder and ran 4.1. I then did a Copy and Import the folders inside the Photos Folder. Where are all my files going. Yep, inside a Managed Photos folder. I'm willing to bet that my renaming problem is also directly related to this. Unfortunately my Macbook is too full to do this currently (100GB is too small on a laptop!), but I'll probably copy the photos to a new drive and then delete and reimport into a new library. Yes I know I'll have to redo collections etc..

Lightroom Beta 4.1

Old news that I forgot to post.. Go to Adobe to get it. It's BUG FIX release rather than having new features. This also might add weight to the 'Last Beta' comments by Michael Reichmann.

Lightroom Beta 4: The Library module

Lightroom Beta 4: The Library module
Martin Evening has just added to his Develop Module summary with an overview of the Library. It's concise and covers most of the new features in Beta 4's Library.

Rating

A combination of Raw Shooter technology and some hard headed requesting on the Adobe forums has led to a cool new feature giving us automatic image advance when rating. Previously in Beta 3 you needed to rate (using 1-5 or click the dots) and then using the arrow key or mouse to advance. Easy enough, unless that is you're rating 500 images from a shoot.
The new method to get auto advance is a 2 key shortcut. As the 1 key version is there already (press 1-5 to rate), a modifier key is used. Shift and 1-5 to rate will now auto advance the image. Very nifty. This works in Grid, Loupe and Develop. For Rating multiple images you can press the Caps Lock and then just press 1-5 to auto advance through the shoot. Thanks to Ian Lyons for the last tip.

Versions: a taste of.

While not as versatile as Apertures versions, Beta 4 of Lightroom has improved its History Snapshot feature into a usable versioning panel. It's easy really.
First edit your file in Develop. If you look at the History pane (behind Presets), you'll see a list all the actions you have taken so far. If you go down to the bottom, you'll see the Add and Remove buttons. Click 'Add' and all of these actions will compress down into a date. Now a date is not useful for versions, so we Double click on the date and it will become highlighted. From here simply rename our version to something useful. If we continue to edit, including cropping, we can Add again and rename again. If we have a few versions in the panel then rolling our mouse over the names of our versions will give a little preview in the Navigator window. Also if we change settings we don't need to create a new Snapshot, we can right click (or Ctrl Click on Mac) and update settings on our snapshot to reflect the current look.
Update: Just thinking about this further. If Adobe added a right click command to 'Show In Library' on our History Snapshot, then we would effectively have an equivalent to Apertures versions. This would be good because, although we may have multiple snapshots, we might only find one or two actually useful.
More updatesOnly the most recent history state is saved when you Export as Photo Binder. When this was mentioned in a post recently, Mark Hamberg replied stating :

"We're looking at doing versions/snapshots/renderings/renditions/whatver-it-is-we're-calling-it-today and we knew that would probably have some consequences for history so we decided to pass on writing out history into B4 Photo Binders.

Mark"
At least it a comfirmation of Versions. I'd still like to see history states being saved.

More on tethering: EOS Utility

Based on a comment in a previous post on tethering, I've done a little test run using EOS Utility with a Canon 20D and Lightroom.

When shooting tethered using the EOS Utility to get images into Lightroom, it is really important to remember that the Watched Folder (Auto Import Folder) needs to be empty. One of the settings in EOS Utility creates a subfolder by date. If you use this setting (which I think is on by default), your images will not auto-import. You need to untick all the boxes as in the screen capture above. You get to this preference screen by clicking on the little computer icon under the ISO setting. One other handy setting to change is to set the Linked Software to none, to prevent DPP or Image Browser opening once you start shooting. If we quickly examine the Utility window open on the right we can note a few things. The File type here is RAW, something someone mentioned having problems with. This certainly is working fine here. Also the camera is set up for manual exposure. All the settings can be changed either in camera or here on the computer. Lightroom has no issues with any setting once the file shows up in the correct folder on its own.

Tethered in Lightroom?

Between Beta 2 and Beta 3 of Lightroom, there was much discussion over the value of tethered shooting. Jeff Schewe announced that there would be too much work in getting all DSLR's to tether in the time frame for the V1.0 release. As has been pointed out Phase One's software allows tethering from their own cameras and that of Canon (there may be more but as I don't have experience with C1 Pro, I can't say). Bibble apparently will tether to more. Instead of getting direct tethering in Beta 3, Adobe took another route. The 'Watched Folder'.

Lightroom allows us to choose a folder that it will then watch and import whatever file appears in the folder. The way it works is simple. In Lightroom Preferences we choose the Import tab. The middle section has the information we need to apply. Tick 'Enable Auto-Import' and use 'Choose.." to select the folder you want to watch. Easy. Next we can automatically apply metadata to our imported files and rename in the process. To do this we click on "Auto Import Settings".

First up we have our renaming section which gives us a fair amount of tokens to choose from including filename, date, shoot name and sequence. We can also set a start number here too. Next we select a shoot name and can select a containing shoot. We can automatically set deeper containing shoots by using '/' between our containing shoots, e.g. 2006/aug/studio/fashion1. Next we can apply a Metadata or Develop Preset to our image. Finally we can keyword our new images.
For Auto Import to work the chosen folder that we want to watch must be empty. It will not work otherwise. I know, I've tried it. When Lightroom imports the file into the library it then deletes the original and waits on the next image to show in the folder. It was able to cope no problem with a burst from my 20D.
To actually make use of this form of tethering we must run our camera's capture software, which in the case of Canon is now EOS utility. We run EOS utility in the background and then let Lightroom take care of the importing. When a file is imported it simply goes to the Grid view. A few of us have asked for it to update the image in Loupe view to give a full screen view of the image, Adobe responded well to the suggestion so fingers crossed for Beta 4.

Matching Shoots and Folders

People are very concerned about the use of a database vs a browser for finding and accessing their files. Being a database, Lightroom is not optimally setup to act as a browser. There has been much discussion on this is various forums from Adobe to Pixmantec and a lot of people want a file browser. While this is not currently possible you can make your folder structure match your shoot hierarchy, with a little work on import.
Assuming you've been using 'Copy to Library' from the beginning, your files reside in the 'Photos' Folder of your Lightroom directory. If you're referencing files you may already have a structure and are most likely using another way of importing your files off of your cards. You can still makes the shoots match by using the naming convention I'm about to describe.
For those using 'Copy to Library', here's the skinny. Insert your card/card reader (Camera import is not fully supported yet) and the Import dialog will open (assuming you've this set up in your preferences). To get our shoots to go into both a selected subfolder and a matching shoot we use the '/' delimiter to define our containing shoot. Each '/' makes a new containing shoot. Let's say I'm importing a new studio session and I'm using a year/month/genre/shoot structure. Without selecting a containing shoot in the 'Segment by' box, I name my shoot 2006/08 Aug/Studio/EmmaD. When I check my shoots after import, I can see that I have a new shoot in 2006>08 Aug>Studio called EmmaD. Clicking on an image in this shoot using CMD-R for Mac to Open In Finder or Ctrl-R for PC to Open In Explorer shows me that the folder structure matches my shoot hierarchy.
If you are referencing files you can use the naming convention with the '/' to type in a shoot name that matches your previously allocated shoot location.

Slideshow

The Slideshow module is the third module in Beta 3. As the name implies it is a viewing tool for presentation of our images. When combined with a projector or a large screen we can certainly impress friends and clients with our images from within the Slideshow module. There has been ongoing discussion in the Forums as to the use and value of a Slideshow module in the first place. As I can only answer from a personal point of view and I have to say I like it and can only hope it will grow into fully fledged slideshow generator in time.
Not all images are destined for print, nor do all live for Web presentation either. Slideshow gives us an alternative way of outputting our images for presentation. Looking at our screen capture of the Module we can see the now standard view of our top Navigation bar/Identity Plate and the Filmstrip at the bottom. The central view here is the Grid Mode of Slideshow (shortcut key Shift-S). In this mode we can see our slideshow images inside their slideshow 'coats' as it were. All the parameters we select in the right hand panel affect how these look. Double clicking on one of these thumbnails or pressing Shift-E will open the image in Slide Editor view. Here we can get a better view of how the parameters affect the look of the image in our slideshow.
For a change we'll cover the right panel first as we're already discussing parameters. The first pane we encounter is the Image Settings pane. The Zoom and Crop tickbox enlarges our image to fit the maximum cell size possible, while ignoring our image size ratio (normally a 3:2 ratio on a DSLR), based on our 'Slide Layout Tools' settings. Once ticked we can then move our image inside the box by clicking and dragging the image. Next up is the Stroke tool that allows us to add a coloured stroke around our image. While we can select a colour, it would be nice if we could also select a size for our stroke. This would allow us to give our image a large border is we so desired. The next tool in the pane is Slideshows version of 'Drop Shadow'. Here we can set a shadow behind our images in the same way that drop shadow works in Photoshop. Opacity sets the level of visibility of our shadow. Offset is how far our image appears away from the shadow, while Radius sets how soft or hard the shadow edge is. Finally Angle controls the apparent angle of the light casting the shadow. One thing that might be nice in this pane would be a sloppy borders setting to give us some paintbrush style edges for example.
The 2nd pane we encounter is the Slide Layout Tools menu. We've already mentioned this in the Zoom and Crop section a little. These controls let us set the maximum cell size our image takes up on screen, but is dependent on the crop of our image. Our long side will scale to fit the margin, while the other side will be constrained to fit this scaling. The Guides tickbox lets us see where these margins are on the screen.
Our 3rd pane is the Overlay Options pane. Here we set up our Identity Plate. We can use the same Plate as our Navigation bar or create a new one from the drop down menu to the right. After this we can set the opacity and scale up or down the ID Plate. The 'Place behind images' does as it says and puts the ID behind the image. Currently the Identity Plate is only on the Mac Beta. Next we can show our ratings in the image we are displaying and select a colour for our stars. I find a grey colour helps the ratings appear in most shots when viewing many varied images. Scale allows us to change the sizes of the rating stars. Show Custom Objects is tied to the Add Text button under the image. It affects whether or not the text appears on the image. Also Place behind images affects this text too. Add text simply allows us to add text or certain tokens to the image. These token include a range of Date, EXIF and IPTC information including Caption and Filename. Clicking on one of these text boxes lets us select edit to change what's in the box. The Rotate Left/Right buttons change the orientation of the text. Also under the image are 2 small icons for Grid View and Slide Editor view and a playback control panel for the slideshow. The playback panel is pretty straightforward and covers Return to Start, Back, Play/Pause and Forward.
The 4th Pane is Backdrop Settings and controls the rear of our image. Our initial control is 'Set Backdrop Color' which sets a fixed tone background to our image. This fixed tone can be modified by the next control 'Apply Color Wash'. Here we select a 2nd colour and together with the Opacity and Angle controls we can apply a graduated fill to cover our background, similar to a Gradient fill in Photoshop. Next we have 'Apply Image to Background'. This allows us to take an image from the Filmstrip and place it under our image. This image remains the background image for the whole slideshow. It may only be me, but I find that although this image looks fine in preview, when you run the Slideshow it is extremely pixelated. This may be a bug.
The final pane is the Playback Settings which give us our slide running times and our transition times between slides. Both slides are visible during this time. One control not featured that is a staple of the twin slideshow AV brigade is the third image setting. When 2 transparencies are projected at the same strength at the same time they can combine to give an image that never existed. For example we could have a moon shot followed by landscape. When both slides are mid transition they give us a shot of the moon over the landscape. It could be achieved by having a hold time slider for the central portion of the transition. Next is the 'Randomize Slides' tickbox to give us a surprising slideshow. Finally we have (in the Mac version at least) the 'Play Music' tickbox. This allows us access to out iTunes playlists to add music to our Slideshow. Beside this is a dropdown menu listing all our playlists and a refresh playlist menu item. This is handy as we can go to iTunes and create a new playlist and then refresh Lightroom to allow us access to the new playlist, without the need to restart the program.
The last things in the right hand panel are the Preview, Play and Export buttons. Preview allows us to see the slideshow in a miniature version of itself in the central window. Play gives us a fullscreen view of our slideshow. When we have another monitor attached we also get an option to show the slideshow in the 2nd monitor. Export lets us export a PDF version of our slideshow, which can also be uploaded via FTP using FTP presets (editable in the dialog box). I'd like to see Quicktime movie export and, perhaps, DVD output.
The left hand pane is quite basic and contains only a thumbnail view of our 'most selected' image and a list of templates in the Templates Browser. The '+' beside the title gives us a clue that we can add our own templates to this menu. Any changes made in the right panel can be saved to a template in this part of the left panel. If you run your mouse over the list, the thumbnail updates to give a preview of the template. So do I think anything could be added here? Well yes I do. I'd like a tab that lets us save slideshows. I'd like to save everything that would be in the template panel, along with the list of images that are in the slideshow and in their correct order.
Well hopefully my efforts are not in vain here and you found some useful information here, or even a few typos to correct in the comments as is the norm here. My next post will cover the Print Module and I'll follow that with Web. From there posts will probably be shorter and more concise.

Lightroom: Develop Overview

The Develop module is the heart of the image processing in Lightroom. Here is where we can work on individual images and take them to their finished state. All edits in Develop are non-destructive and are simply metadata information stored in the library file. You can also choose to store your edits in sidecar XMP files by ticking box in Preferences. Using XMP files makes edits more transportable in that if you import a folder of images with their XMP files into another Lightroom Library (on your laptop or desktop for example), then your edits and ratings will show there too.
Looking at our screen capture we can see that the layout is similar to the Library module. The Nav bar at the top is the same (with Develop highlighted now) and the Filmstrip at the bottom is also the same. The central part is now dedicated to our chosen image. Develop refreshes the central image each time we edit, unlike Library and the Filmstrip which use cached copies of the image. Below the image we have a toolbar with icons running across.

From the left we have Loupe View which is the image in its current After view. Next is the Before view which shows us the unedited state. After that we have 2 different Before and After views, one for vertical and one for horizontal. The final icon on this side is the Crop Overlay, which puts the crop box around our current image. Towards the centre we have the RGB data view, which gives a % view of the colour at that point. The two final icons on the right are the hand tool to allow us to drag the view about in any of the zoom views. Finally we have the white balance eyedropper which neutralises colour casts in our image.
On the Left of the Module we have a thumbnail view on the top left and below this we have 2 tabs, Preset and History. on the top left of the thumbnail we have a little menu that allows a number of zoom modes: Fit, Fill, 1:1 and 4:1. They're pretty intuitive as to their sizes and the Cmd/Ctrl +/- keyboard shortcut will zoom through the modes. Onto Preset and History.

Preset is a great feature, whereby when we do a series of edits that we like, we can store these edits for use on other images as a Preset. When we hit the "+" key we get a dialog box that allows us to select which of our edits get used in the Preset. Presets are just text files and can be copied and emailed or even passed around on the Lightroom Forums.

Next up is History. In History we can see the all the steps we've taken so far in our edits. We can jump back to any point in our editing or hit the + key to save a snapshot of the image at any point.

The real meat of the Develop Module is on the Right Hand side. Here we have the image processing tools in Lightroom. Looking at the screen capture we can see that we have: Basic, Tone Curve, Crop and Straighten, Greyscale Mixer, Split Toning, HSL, Detail, Lens Corrections and Camera Calibrations. These are similar to the tabs and tools in Adobe Camera RAW but with a few twists. At this stage I'd highly recommend viewing George Jardines Video Tutorials as I can't get in as much detail in text as you can in a video. Basics lets us set the White Balance/Tint and Saturation first. From there we can set our white point with Exposure, our black point with Blacks and our midpoint using Brightness. Finally we have Contrast which effectively pushes a 'S' shape into the Tone Curve. Next is the Tone Curve. Brightness and Contrast are mirrored from Basic and they match any move from Basic. First up we need to look at the bottom of the Tone Curve display. At the bottom there are 2 triangles, the 1/4 tone and 3/4 tone points. These set where the sliders operate from and can be moved to change what the sliders affect. Back to the sliders and the Highlights sliders first. The Compression slider lets us boost or cut the tones above the highlight tone point. Luminance on the other hand lets us boost or cut our curve centered on our highlight tone point (our 1/4 tone). For the Shadows Compression works in the area below our 3/4 tones and Luminance offers control centred on the 3/4 tone. Like I've mentioned we can changed how much are gets affected by moving the tone points. Next up is the Crop and Straighten. This is very straight forward. From here we can specify a free crop or even a preset crop. One thing to note about crop is that we move the image into the crop, not the crop around the image. Although it feels odd initially it's actually much easier when you get used to it. We can straighten by dragging the image around the box or by holding our Cmd/Ctrl key and drawn a line along a part of the image we know to be straight and Lightroom will automatically straighten our image for us. Greyscale Mixer: This does what it says on the tin. There is a great auto mode and moving the sliders gives great control over our Black and White tonal balance. It is very easy to use and really makes B&W a doddle. Next up is Split Toning which allows us to set different tonalities for our highlights and shadows. Used with Greyscale Mixer it can give fantastic toning emulation (eg Selenium, Sepia) or on Colour images can even emulate Cross Processing.
I'm going to just mention the next lot briefly as this post is becoming really much longer than I anticipated! HSL is the Hue Saturation Luminance sliders pane which allows us full control over the colour in our images. It really is fantastic and by careful examination of our film prints we can emulate the colour of these using HSL and contrast. Detail gives us control over Sharpening, Smoothing and De-Noise. Sharpening is a little underwhelming in its control and hopefully will be beefed up. Smoothing could be very useful if given local editing, but suffices to help with general noise and softening while De-noise removes colour noise effectively, but does lose detail.
Lens Corrections includes Chromatic Aberration tools and a Vignetting control which removes vignetting. In theory it can be used creatively to add a Vignette but wont work properly like this on cropped images. Finally we have Camera Calibration which allows us to create a rough colour profile of our camera. I hope you made it this far, due to the length of the post. I'll cover Sildeshow Print and Web shortly, potentially in one post unless it gets very long like this one! In the future I'll also be expanding on things we can do inside develop. Update: I'll probably do seperate posts..

So what is Lightroom? Introduction and Library.

Lightroom is a new program in development by Adobe as a workflow solution geared towards Professional Photographers. Built in a modular layout it currently brings the user from import to final output, be it Slideshow, Print or for the Web. Currently in Beta 3 there are 5 modules on the Mac(4 on Windows). These are Library, Develop, Slidehow, Print and Web (being the one missing from Windows). They follow what is a fairly normal workflow route for most photographers. Briefly these are used as follows:

Library

In Library we can Import, keyword and organise our photos in shoots and collections. Each image imported resides in one Shoot only, but can be in many collections. From here we can view our images in thumbnail grid, individually in Loupe mode or multiple images in compare mode. This is the central point for accessing our images. Looking around the screen we can see 5 parts to the screen. The central working area contains our images, either in grid or individual form. To the left we have the main file access panel where we can see and select our shoots and collections. Also there is access to our full library, last import and the current quick collection. Next we have a library filter which lets us search in filenames and by ratings. On the subject of ratings it is possible to rate an image in Library, Develop and Slideshow by pressing the numeric keys 1-5. On the top we have the main panel allowing us to change modules. Also featured is the Idenity Plate which lets us add our own name to the program. On the bottom is the Filmstrip which lets us have quick access to all the photos in the currently selected shoot or collection. Finally on the right we have our large thumbnail with histogram. Below this is the Quick Develop pane which lets us do quick adjustments to exposure, white balance, cropping etc. We can also apply Develop Presets here too and copy and paste settings from and to other images. Next up is our info panel which contains our Keywords. Finally we have Metadata, which lets us view and edit Metadata like EXIF, IPTC. We can use Metadata Presets here to apply any IPTC data to a file without the need for retyping. Next post will be a quick overview of develop

Lightroom Blog

I've gone off the rails a bit here. I'm not posting much to my normal blog but yet I'm starting a new one. I feel given my usage of Lightroom it might be time to start a blog and add any helpful info I find on Lightroom to it. There will be links to posts on the forums and to other sites as well and tips and tricks and workarounds. Hopefully someone will actually read things here and find them helpful.
In the meantime heres a little collection of link to posts by the big movers and shakers in the Lightroom world that frequent the forums with their advice and wisdom.

Ian Lyons
Jeff Schewe
George Jardine
Martin Evening