Udi Tirosh from DIYPhotography contacted me to let me know about an article on the site about Paddy for Lightroom. Paddy is an open source program that provides access to Lightroom shortcuts, presets, brushes etc, from external controllers such as the X-Keys keypad. You can even use midi controllers to provide live faders for even more tactile control of Lightroom.
This is firmly in the territory that RPG keys and Kevin Kubota occupy, but without the initial price tag. That said, these are supported products with a userbase, whereas Paddy is based on the preferences of the developer. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but Dorfl (the developer) does warn that he offers no guarantees that he’ll continue to work with this.
Overall this looks like a rather interesting project. There are a few limitations: Lightroom 3 only, Windows only. Lightroom needs to run when Paddy starts. It also doesn’t like other keystroke intrepretors being active.
If I was using Windows, I’d already have this downloaded and be playing with it!
Hi, dorfl68 here, key contact for Paddy, which now has a few developers
1. Thanks for the shoutout
2. Indeed, Windows only – this is basically an AHK programming project that got out of hand, and the way we interact with LR is windows specific
3. We have a stable Midi solution for all LR sliders now
3. We have in addition: Macros, scripting, relative presets, map any key to any function, build in support for the BCR/BCF midi controllers, and build in support for the Xkeys external keyboard that many solutions use
Check it out if you are using windows, we are very stable now and essentially ready to go 1.0: http://www.paddy-for-lightroom.com
PS: Paddy is a hobby, no guarantee for support, and windows only. If you are a professional, consider a professional solution
Really cool. But you should be ashamed – resistance will be futile for gadget freaks like me. I just ordered my BCF2000. I was surprised to see that Paddy is built on top of keyboard macros – but it looks like it works very well. I may still poke at it with some Python code. Thank you for taking the time to make and distribute your great video.
This has already been developped for MacOS : http://www.knobroom.com/
Don’t know what the differences are with Paddy except Knobroom is a plugin for Lightroom.
Paddy seems a little more mature, Vincent. That said Knobroom supports Mac. I might pull my Oxegen 8 keyboard out for this!
I use a logitech G15 keyboard, kept from my pc gaming days, and have set up the programmable keys for different functions within Lightroom and Photoshop. Really easy to do and doesn’t require a plug in. Just the software supplied with the keyboard. The software automatically detects when Photoshop or Lightroom is the active programme and switches to the corresponding profile.