Lightroom-Blog.Com

PTLens

noreply@blogger.com (SeanMcC) — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 16:15:00 +0000

PTLens is now advertising itself as an external editor for Lightroom. While not in the same form a plugin would take, it's still quite similar to some Aperture plugins, i.e. convert the file and process it then.
For those not familiar with PTLens, it provides lens distortion corrections not currently available in Lightroom. To be precise it fixes pincushion/barrel distortion, vignetting, chromatic aberration, and perspective distortion. The corrections are automatic based on a database of lenses.

There is a trial version available, which can be converted to a full version for a paltry $15. Note that the external editor requires V2 of Lightroom.

Creating Web galleries: Calling a colour directly in a gallery

noreply@blogger.com (SeanMcC) — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 20:58:00 +0000

I'm in the middle of a standalone flash slideshow/gallery (different than the LRB XML Flash gallery!) and came across an issue which corresponds to both galleries.
Basically to make the Flash more effective I needed to be able to change the background colour of the flash. This is defined in the flash call in the HTML normally. The OBJECT code uses param name="bgcolor" value="#000000", with EMBED using bgcolor="#000000". So I just drop in a nonCSS variable to call the Web colour? Wrong.. Or so I found out.

If I define my variable in the galleryInfo.lrweb file
["nonCSS.flashBG"] = "#000000",

And then call it in my HTML using either
$model.nonCSS.flashBG
or
<%= model.nonCSS.flashBG %>

I don't get the colour appearing. I get AgColor(0,0,0,1). Now 99% of my learning coding came from looking at other galleries, but I hadn't seen a way to do the conversion from Lightroom to Web colour (or at least noticed it!). Fortunately Andy Rahn suggested using AgColorToWebColor( nonCSS.flashBG ). Now it was a bit cryptic, because it didn't tell me how to call it. Was it a string? or a quote? Eventually between digging and trying everything (literally), I came up with the answer.

There is probably a shorter way, but here's what I did:
galleryInfo.lrweb: In the model section I define 2 variables:
["nonCSS.flashBG"] = "#000000",
["nonCSS.flash.bg"] = function() return string.format( "%s", AgColorToWebColor( nonCSS.flashBG ) ) end,

In my HTML I call nonCSS.flash.bg
OBJECT
param name="bgcolor" value="<%= model.nonCSS.flash.bg %>"
EMBED
bgcolor="<%= model.nonCSS.flash.bg %>"

To give me control over colour in the Gallery itself, I define a colour chip in the colorPalette section of views:

WPGPanelUI.label_and_color_row {
bindingValue = "nonCSS.flashBG",
title = "Flash Background Colour",
},

Hopefully this will help some of you with getting on with creating your own galleries. I intend doing a series of posts creating galleries from scratch for Lightroom News soon. I did eventually find examples of where this is used inside the default HTML gallery, but didn't understand what was happening with it until Andy sent me in the right direction.

Spaces, sorts and masks.

noreply@blogger.com (SeanMcC) — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 18:00:00 +0000

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.

George Jardine says Farewell to Adobe.

noreply@blogger.com (SeanMcC) — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 16:50:00 +0000

I sent George Jardine some nice comments after his recent video from Martin Evenings Lightroom 2 book shoots. He surprised me by telling me it would be his last. He's leaving Adobe. After 4 1/2 years there, he's moving on. George's enthusiasm for Lightroom is what really got me hooked way back in early Beta 1 of version 1 of Lightroom. I think that was Jan '06 (time flies!). I've always looked forward to his posts and now they are at an end. at least from the Adobe perspective.

George, I wish you the best in future endeavours. Enjoy the break, and don't be afraid to come back to doing more podcasts!

Video Podcast #53 has been posted, with Martin Evening

noreply@blogger.com (SeanMcC) — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 01:13:00 +0000

Video Podcast #53 has been posted, with Martin Evening
While Martin is a fellow editor on Lightroom News, he's by far a more experienced photographer than I. So I have to say, it's great to see this second video on the photo shoot for material for his new Lightroom Book. Discussing the content, he alludes to the book being more workflow related. I'm already dying to read it!
George Jardine has really pulled out the stops on this. The quality of the editing and camera work is great and really fits the material. Well done lads!

As usual the podcast can be had from George's iDisk: http://idisk.mac.com/george_jardine-Public?view=web
This podcast is labeled ‘20080312 Video Podcast - Martin Evening Book Project’ in the Public directory.
Or, it can be found on iTunes by searching under Podcasts for ‘Lightroom’. The RSS feed is:
http://rss.adobe.com/www/special/light_room.rss

(Via George Jardine on Lightroom and Digital Photography.)

SWPP: Professional Imagemaker

noreply@blogger.com (SeanMcC) — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 13:13:00 +0000

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.

Web Gallery production and other news.

noreply@blogger.com (SeanMcC) — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 11:07:00 +0000

Lightroom-Blog has been quiet recently. Trust me it's not intentional. I'm actually very busy with Lightroom related things, along with actually working!

I've gone as far as I can with the Flash Gallery I mentioned before and I'll be releasing it when I get time to write a quick readme/instructions for it. I will probably supply a logo free version file for those making donations(and then asking-helps with the mind reading!).

I'm updating HScroll to Version 2.0 at the moment. It's mostly ready, but I'm awaiting the V2 release so I can add any new gallery features that might appear.

When I initially created the menu system for both Scroll galleries, it was to ease creation of a website for users, something not possible with Lightroom default galleries. Both Matthew Campagna and Joe Capra took the menu idea a step further in the meantime with Pages and LRG Complete. Not to be outdone, I've created a single page that creates a whole website with a home page, about page, contact page and 3 galleries with 20 photos in each. There is a full menu system. This is also awaiting a V2.0 release, but I could drop code to make it 1.4 compatible easily. You can see an example of this gallery in action here.
The contact page uses a PHP form rather than a straight email address. I wrote this myself to prevent 3rd party licensing issues with scripts. I may include this in the standard HScroll gallery also. The final version of this website gallery will also have a few nifty features, so I'll probably be accepting donations for this, as it was a lot of work.
Please leave comments here, letting me know what you think. The contact form in the sample is not connected, I don't want mail from it!

I'm also very busy with rewriting sections of my Lightroom book for GMC pubs. I had it mostly finished when V2 loomed on the horizon, so I'm now hastily rewriting old sections, while adding in new things, such as Local Corrections. This is a basic book, under commission from GMC, but it does contain more advanced tips also. More details will follow as I'm allowed to release them!

During the waiting period I also started a potential eBook on creating web galleries. It's about 2/3rds done, but on hold for now. I'll get back to it after the Lightroom book is done. It's not a full sized book, so I don't think it will make the print phase at any stage.

I'll be doing more speedlink posts also, just to keep up activity here!

Moving files from laptop to desktop.

noreply@blogger.com (SeanMcC) — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 03:40:00 +0000

Over the bank holiday weekend I was in Kerry. The weather was quite variable and made for interesting shots, so I shot loads! Because I was traveling reasonably light and need to buy larger memory cards (2 Gb is really too small for a 40D), I had my laptop with me. So now I'm at home with a laptop, full of edited and selected photos. So what do I do?

1. First off I select the new folders from the Folders panel. I'm saved in 2008/06/01 order so I can pick the correct ones by selecting the right dates!
2. Then I select all, to make sure each image is selected. On the road it's better to make snapshots, rather than virtual copies as these transport more easily.
3. From the Metadata menu I use Save Metadata to Files. Control/Command S is the shortcut.
4. Next I restart my laptop in Target Disk mode by holding down T as it boots up. PC users with a firewire port can create a firewire network, or use an external drive to do the transfer.
5. I then choose Import Photos from Disk.. from the File menu. When the dialog comes up I navigate to the laptop drive icon and then choose my folders.
6. Because I've already done stuff on the laptop, I choose none from Develop and Metadata settings and Filename from the renaming menu.
7. Finally I go get a cup of tea, because there's a lot of files to copy over!

Alternatively I could choose the files and use the File>Export as catalog command. The restarting in Target mode, I could use File>Import from catalog from my desktop catalog. Because I've not made any collections, I didn't see the need for the extra time involved. Of course if I'd made previews of all the files, then it would make more sense, because I'll need to generate these on the desktop.

Gallery Resources

noreply@blogger.com (SeanMcC) — Wed, 28 May 2008 18:19:00 +0000

So you want a list of the available Galleries for Lightroom? Here's the ones that I'm aware of. I've added my current ones at the end.

If you have made some, please feel free to add them in the comments and I'll add them to the list.

The Turning Gate

Too Many Galleries

noreply@blogger.com (SeanMcC) — Wed, 28 May 2008 00:50:00 +0000

Sheesh.. I have more Web Galleries than templates these days.... I really need to delete some! And update others! Especially my own. I'm so busy with book writing that it's taking a lot of my time, in fact, nearly all of my spare time. Anyhow I thought you might get a laugh out of my list, especially as there is way more than this available:

Lightroom @ Outdoor Images

noreply@blogger.com (SeanMcC) — Fri, 23 May 2008 00:47:00 +0000

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.

Panning Timelapse using Lightroom

noreply@blogger.com (SeanMcC) — Sun, 18 May 2008 15:05:00 +0000

Santa Ponsa Beach HD Time Lapse from Sean McCormack on Vimeo.

When thinking about possible feature requests for Lightroom, I began thinking about time lapse photography applications. Now I'm far from an expert on this, but I have done more than enough basic time lapse videos to be familiar with it. Generally I've been using either my Canon TC-80N3 intervalometer, or using EOS utility and a Watched folder in Lightroom. When done I do a video sized export (eg 1280X720 for HD) and use Quicktime Pro to generate the actual video using Open Image Sequence.
While I'm happy with these, I've seen much cooler videos online and from my mate Chris Tierney. Chris uses After Effects to do his panning, and to be blunt, it's well beyond what I need or could afford.
While discussing this with fellow Lightroom folks, coder extraordonaire Jeffrey Friedl came up with a script that made use of Lightroom Metadata cropping to achieve what I wanted. Now Jeffrey will be blogging about the script and hosting it shortly. So by way of introduction, I'm showing a recent timelapse video that uses the panning from Jeffrey's script. I'll defer to Jeffrey on instructions, but in the meantime, check out my Santa Ponsa Time Lapse.

NAPP

noreply@blogger.com (SeanMcC) — Sat, 10 May 2008 02:19:00 +0000

I've been a follower of Scott Kelby's Photoshop Insider blog for a long time. He has lots of good links and great tips. Of course he's doing a lot of sales and marketing through the blog too, but the thing is, it's all useful and valuable. With Scott as head, I've been debating about joining NAPP recently, but have been but off by the high cost of international print members (let's face it, it's almost double that of US readers and this sucks). There's also no international eduction price. Still in the end, I wanted to join, so I opted for the $99 Digital Edition, which uses Zinio for distribution and reading.
So now you'll also find me over on the NAPP forums now, dispensing wit and wisdom (mostly wit!). I threw up a bunch of very quickly chosen images to create a NAPP Portfolio so be sure to check it out. And yes, I'm just a normal, paid up, member.

See you there.

Quick Navigator Tip

noreply@blogger.com (SeanMcC) — Sat, 03 May 2008 06:03:00 +0000

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.

Podcast #52 has been posted, with Martin Evening

noreply@blogger.com (SeanMcC) — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 01:31:00 +0000

Podcast #52 has been posted, with Martin Evening: "

A new video podcast where Martin Evening walks us through the results of a photo shoot for his upcoming Lightroom book.

This podcast was recorded on Wednesday March 12, 2008 at Martin’s home in London. It gives us a rare glimpse into the inner thinking of this talented fashion and beauty photographer, as he gives us a shot-by-shot evaluation of a recent session. This video footage was taken during a photo session to create assets both for an upcoming Lightroom book, as well as for demo purposes for Adobe Systems. In it Martin describes his approach to every element of the shoot, from the model selection, the hair, the makeup, the lighting and camera angles, all the way through to the final edit.

This video podcast can be downloaded from my iDisk. It can also be viewed by downloading it directly into iTunes (if you are accessing it by subscribing via the Music Store), or by copying it into iTunes on either a Mac or a PC (if you’ve downloaded the iPod version from my iDisk). Once copied into iTunes, the small version can be transferred to a Video iPod or iPhone, and viewed that way as well.

Special thanks to Jeff Schewe for the use of his photos in the podcast as well.

Duration: 24:23

The podcast can be downloaded from George's iDiskat:

http://idisk.mac.com/george_jardine-Public?view=web

This podcast is labeled ‘20080310 Video Podcast - Martin Evening Fashion Shoot’ in the Public directory.

Or, it can be found on iTunes by searching under Podcasts for ‘Lightroom’. The RSS feed is:

http://rss.adobe.com/www/special/light_room.rss

(Via George Jardine on Lightroom and Digital Photography.)

Mark Hamburg Leaves Adobe

noreply@blogger.com (SeanMcC) — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 00:51:00 +0000

Martin Evening from Lightroom News has announced the departure of Photoshop and Lightroom Architect, Mark Hamburg, from Adobe. Mark is leaving for the rain in Seattle with Microsoft. Mark, if it's any consolation, you'll have the same weather we have here in Galway!

"News has been announced that Mark Hamburg has decided to leave Adobe after having worked at the company for over 17 years. Mark joined Adobe in the Fall of 1990, not long after Photoshop 1.0 was released and was instrumental in devising many of the ‘wow’ features we have all come to love and rely on daily when we work with Photoshop."

Read the whole article at Lightroom News.

Front Burner

noreply@blogger.com (SeanMcC) — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 00:51:00 +0000

While I've posted 2 videos on Lightroom News recently, I've been mildly, and unintentionally, neglectful here.
I've a number of projects on the go taking my time. Along with tech editing a book, I'm also rewriting my own current project for all the changes since Lightroom 2 Beta came out. This stuff takes time, especially the screen captures, which I really want to have nice photos for! I was in Portumna Forest today shooting bluebells, so hopefully they'll feature in something soon! I've also got an upcoming Develop article for the Professional Imagemaker (the SWPP society magazine) to write.

The new Flash based gallery is almost complete, actually it's more than complete enough to release, but I want to add another feature first, which means learning a little more Actionscript first!

Now a few quickies:

One of my favourite photographers is Mark Tucker. For years he provided insight and wisdom on the old Rob Galbraith forums, but left before the changeover. Now those were great forums and I loved them deeply for the wealth of talent, information and community there, but I couldn't see myself paying for them with so many free forums. Anyhow I see Mark has recently added a new gallery to his people portfolio: Mark Tucker / Little House on the Prairie. The expressions/moments he has captured are nothing short of stunning and inspirational, not to mention the sumptuous colour in his post processing (no, I don't know what he's using, but I know PS is involved in his texture based stuff). Enjoy.

Videos: What would you like to see next? Local corrections? Basic Beauty retouch? More short tips and tricks?

Visiting the west of Ireland? Drop me a line, I'll be happy to give you locations to shoot, and if I'm free/out and about, I'm happy to help.

Sneak Preview: Lightroom Blog Flash Gallery

noreply@blogger.com (SeanMcC) — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 07:29:00 +0000

I was inspired by the Flash Gallery Beta gallery that I posted about a few days ago. With the hard work of figuring out how to make Lightroom write the XML done (I'm still thanking Matthew for directions!), I figured that maybe I should actually write my own SWF. I've never done much in Flash and 30 days is a short time to get to know it, but I managed to get my website up and going, along with creating the gallery I'm about to show you.

LRB XML Flash Sample Gallery

Features so far:

Full rather than cropped thumbnails

Slideshow

Click on the left of the photo to go back, click on the right to go forward.

Title and Caption information.

Vertical images are centred, unlike Flash Gallery Beta

Scrolling thumbnails

Toggle the thumbnail bar on and off

Things to look into:

~~Transitions look better in the Lightroom Preview, even with a fast connection~~ Added a cross fade. Not 100% sure on the code, but it seems to be working.

~~Option for cropped thumbnails~~ Happy with centered full thumbs.

Full Screen Mode

~~Drop Shadows on the thumbnail bar and main slide~~ Done

Flyout with Collection Name and Description

Like I said, feedback is appreciated. And yes I'm aware I need to go back and edit the captions for typos!

Lightroom 1.4.1 Released

noreply@blogger.com (SeanMcC) — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 02:12:00 +0000

As promised, Lightroom 1.4.1 has been released. Tom Hogarty has posted all the details at Lightoom Journal, including a list of fixed issues. For example

EXIF time modification fixed

Olympus JPEG issue Fixed

DNG conversions fixed

Also import degradation in 1.4 was corrected.

If you're in a hurry you can download from these links: Mac, Win.

I've been using it and have no issues. The EXIF problem is gone and DNG conversions are fine again. I can't really vouch for the Olympus files, but the one I did get for checking is fine.

Flash Gallery Beta for Lightroom

noreply@blogger.com (SeanMcC) — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 15:04:00 +0000

Flash Gallery Beta is a project by an anonymous developer. It looks cool, but hasn't been updated recently. I do really like how it looks, despite the faults (the main one being it doesn't center vertical images). It uses an XML file to get the images, so I thought this would be a good project to get to grips with creating XML from Lightroom. Boy, was I ever right.

Lightroom only allows one AddGridPage, which is where the photos get created and assigned in the Grid. I'm not using a grid for this, but I still need the images created. The trick was to create a dummy page and then have the real page with the flash file rename to index.html. I also had a little help from Matthew Campagna with the XML creation. I was on the right track, but Matthew gave me the right turnoff, directing me to his XML Shadowbox Index.

This version for Lightroom is quite basic. It has Background Colour control, Jpeg Quality, Identity Plate and Copyright Watermark support. I've no access to the .FLA file so I've no control over the gallery features. The swf file weighs in at 11k so it's tiny! Other features are a full screen mode and thumbnail scrolling.

Download | Install Instructions | Sample Gallery

Warning: Due to the way Lightroom handles Flash in HTML galleries, this will preview on a Mac, but may not preview on a PC. Finally, the crop ratio inside the gallery is 4X3, so you may want to crop to this to fill the gallery screen. Enjoy.
Update: I've justed added a Page Title Control and the About Menu.

A quick look at Collections in LR2 Beta

noreply@blogger.com (SeanMcC) — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 14:54:00 +0000

I've put together a short video on using collections in Lightroom 2 Beta. It covers Collection Sets, Smart Collections and module based collections. While I show how to create a module based collection in Slideshow, you can also do it in Print and Web. Enjoy.

The video is in m4v, iTunes video format. I've played around with getting the size vs performance right, this is done using the desktop video size.

A Short Intro to Collections

Catalog Corruption

noreply@blogger.com (SeanMcC) — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 13:22:00 +0000

In the midst of all the Beta 2 excitement, I've a post on a version 1 issue. Beta 2 is not ready as a production tool so I've still doing my work in V1.0.
I've finally gotten a mix of time and motivation to finish a new site for my main website, that is until Lightroom started doing very strange things. I've noticed a slowdown recently, so I figured I could do with optimising the catalog. I'd skipped the backup when I last started (I know, I know), so I let it run this time just in case.

Lightroom went through the integrity check slowly, in fact so slowly, I opted for bed rather than wait on it. As I said in the Beta 2 post, I decided to sleep out the announcement. When I woke this morning and checked the computer, I was greeted with this ominous message:

I checked the technote by clicking on the link. It leads to this page. An interesting read. I've had a lot of catalog churn recently with organisation, along with Web Gallery creation, so I've been restarting and occasionally having to force quit Lightroom. Somewhere along the way the catalog had become corrupted. Knowing that Dan Tull has put a lot of work into catalog rescue, I figured that either the repair would work, or Dan would have another test catalog. I wasn't worried as I have a recent backup. So I clicked 'Repair Catalog' and let Lightroom work away.

After a while the delightful news came back:

Phew. I'm glad my faith was justified! Instances like these prove that even with a good system, things can fail, so back up!

NAPP Releases Lightroom 2.0 Beta Learning Center

noreply@blogger.com (SeanMcC) — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 10:11:00 +0000

Scott Kelby has announced the launch of the NAPP Releases Lightroom 2.0 Beta Learning Center

NAPP has just released a free Lightroom 2.0 Public Beta learning center, with loads of videos. Scott presents along with Matt Kloskowski. Hop along for a look.

Here’s the link to NAPP’s Lightroom Learning Center.

(Via Photoshop Insider.)

Lightroom 2 Beta Preview

noreply@blogger.com (SeanMcC) — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 08:32:00 +0000

Announced at 5am local time for me, Adobe launched the beta preview of Lightroom 2. I opted to sleep this one out. Any Lightroom 1 owner can download the time limited preview to try out and comment on the new features (Expiry is Aug 31st). While there are tonnes of new features, UI changes and enhancements, the real biggie is the new Retouch Pane (shortcut 'K'). This pane allows for local corrections. While this does allow for superb Dodge and Burn, it is far more than a Dodge and Burn tool. The 5 main things that can be changed in each correction are Exposure, Brightness, Clarity, Saturation and Tint. While the initial mask is created with one of these settings (either postive or negative), you can edit the changes to include all of them. That means you can burn in an area and then tint and desaturate it for example.

The Retouch brush has a number of options: Brush Size, Feather Size and Flow. Size is controlled by the shortcut keys [ and ]. During this phase of the Beta the shortcut key for feather is Alt [ and ] (Option on Mac). This should change to Shift [ and ] to match with Photoshop's Hardness shortcut. Feather is the opposite of hardness so the shortcut is kinda the opposite to Hardness, so it works in the opposite direction, ie increasing Feather reduces the hardness of the brush. Opacity change the strength of the brush.

Once you've create a mask, a button (or pin if you like) will be created. Hovering over the pin will show the mask you've created. Clicking it, or clicking the Edit control in the Pane will allow you to make changes to the correction. You can also change the amount of the correction (like Fade Filter in Photoshop, or Layer Opacity). So that's a very quick look at Retouch.

I have to mention that these changes are stored in the Metadata and do not require conversion to another file format like Apertures Dodge and Burn tool. That tool creates a new file and the changes are made to that file. Not the Original. In case anyone is being fooled, you can do this with Edit in Photoshop, except that you have the full power of Photoshop available to you. If you want to keep the adjustments with the original file: you need to use Lightroom. Yes, I'm being a fanboy, but here I have a good reason.

Other features include: Multi Monitor support, with the new Live Loupe. We can finally put Lightroom on more than one screen, without stretching. The new live loupe feature is very cool. Turn it on and then run along the Filmstrip or Grid to see a Loupe sized preview of the image. If you zoom in and move around the thumbnail, you move around the image. This is not like Aperture, but shows the full screen rather than a small portion of the image. You can also use this while in Loupe View, to show a zoomed in version.

Smart Collections are in. As are Module based Collections. If you save a collection in Slideshow, Print or Web, Lightroom remembers all the settings for the Module and will open the module when you double click on the collection. So you can save your slideshows!

The Metadata Browser is gone, replaced by the new Filter Bar at the top. You can filter down through a mass of keywords and metadata to get exact image matching. The shortcut for this is \.

Output Sharpening. Jeff Schewe from Pixel Genius consulted on the creation of this addition to both Print and to Export. A few seem to have missed this for export, but it really rocks. The sharpening has 3 settings Low, Medium and High, and is based on size and resolution of your output. Screen output requires different sharpening to Glossy Paper (or Matte) and this feature correctly handles the change of sharpening per media type. Appropriately, you can select Screen, Glossy and Matte for this.

Print to Jpeg, with selectable profiles, is now available in the Print Module. In Print Job, change the engine from Print to Printer, to Print to JPEG file.

If you looked at Retouch above, I'm sure you'll have noticed the move of the Red Eye, Crop and Spot Removal tool to under the Histogram. This allows for additional tools and for more controls in the future. The toolbar location was a bit limiting in what could be controlled. Personally I really like it here.

While no Book module has been added, there is a new section in Print: Picture Package. This allows any shape or size of one photo to be placed on a page. So you can finally have 3 6X4 images on on A4 sheet (albeit the same photo!). The image cell is drag-able and can be reshaped and sized to your hearts content.

The Detail Pane has a new preview window along with absorbing Chromatic Aberration. The fundamental thing linking the tools is the need to view at 100% to see the changes.

Lens Corrections has change to Vignettes. Yep that's a plural. You can now add a Post Crop vignette in addition to a corrective Vignette.

Photoshop support has greatly increased, including the ability to not create a TIFF for every image sent: you can now Open as Smart Object, Merger to HDR, Merge to Panorama, or Open as Layers. Yes! You need 10.0.1 for this to work though. Speaking of Panorama, Lightroom has now increase the Size Limit to 30K pixels, rather than the original 10k Pixels. So anyone shooting 900MP square format photos can now rest easy ;)

Another cool Export feature is Exporting to Current location with the option of a subfolder. You can also opt to import the Export automatically, as well as stack it with the original. I can see a few people jumping up and down with this one!

There are other changes, such as the simplification of the Library Panels, Suggested Keywords and a new Auto Tone algorithm, but go to the official Lightroom Journal post by Tom Hogarty for more.

Folks, I'm delighted to have gotten this far with it. It's really a fantastic bit of work from the team, who have been busting their proverbials working on this. They are quite a small team, so congrats are well in order for them getting this out to us as a Public Preview. They could simply have went on and finished without further input, but they've opted to get public input on it, so go get it!

PSE 6 for Mac

noreply@blogger.com (SeanMcC) — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 12:41:00 +0000

While obviously not Lightroom news, I just wanted to mention that Photoshop Elements 6 for Mac is finally available. It's a great complementary program for Lightroom, especially for the budget conscious user. Featuring a cut down version of Bridge (rather than the Organiser), the Mac version has similar features to the Windows version.