May 28, 2008
Posted by Sean McCormack
Shangara Singh has announced the release of the Photoshop Lightroom ACE Exam Aid for Exam Aids. Exam Aids have a large collection of study aids for those undertaking the ACE exams, this one being the latest. If you don’t know what the ACE program is, you can find out more about becoming an Adobe Certified Expert from the Adobe Website.
Exam Aid Key Features
Includes 226 questions, divided into 8 discrete modules (as per official exam)
All original questions based on the Prep Guide published by Adobe
Supplement answers that explain and/or clarify the concepts behind the questions
Paths to corresponding pages in the Photoshop Lightroom help file to enable further study – all paths hyperlinked to LiveDocs for easy access
A Study mode with the option of previewing correct answers and supplement answers on demand
A summary screen at the end of each module for reviewing the module content
A Practice mode for testing your knowledge in a simulated official exam environment
Mock practice tests based on the pool of questions contained in the study section
Countdown clock, flagging, and sorting that create the experience of sitting for the official exam
Scoring for each individual module and collectively at the end of each mock practice test
Option of comparing your answers against the correct answers after sitting a mock practice test
A printable PDF containing the supplement answers that you can use to study when you are away from your computer
Ability to raise the threshold by increasing either the number of questions delivered or the passing score or by decreasing the allotted time to each mock practice test
An easy to use interface, leaving you free to concentrate on the task of studying
Disclosure: I did some tech editing on the questions for Shangara, but have no commercial involvement with this project.
Read more
May 27, 2008
Posted by Sean McCormack
Joe from Lightroom Galleries has been working his way through the Release Candidate versions for LRG Complete and has announced that LRG Complete RC2.5 is released. LRG is a complete website for Lightroom’s Web Module. As this is a further stage in the process, it’s still not completely bug free. Unlike some beta software, this one does come with a manual, updated for this release. Joe encourages people to get involved to make this work for the widest range of people.
(Via Lightroom Galleries.)
May 23, 2008
Posted by Sean McCormack
Speaking of Jeffrey Friedl, he’s been busy working on V2 compatible versions of his Lightroom Plugins for Zenfolio, Smugmug, Picasa Web and Flickr. In the process he has built a far more powerful way of creating captions for the system. Currently the 1.X plugins use basic selections from Title, Caption and Headline, among others, but Jeffrey has gone back and added this new functionality to the Zenfolio and SmugMug plugins. Basically he’s created a template system for his plugins, allowing you to create complex captioning for your uploads. It’s not yet availalable for Fickr or Picasa Web, but hopefully it will be.
You can read all about it in Jeffrey’s post on Captioning for his Lightroom Plugins.
Latest versions are here
Plugin for Zenfolio
Plugin for SmugMug
(Via Jeffrey Friedl’s Blog.)
May 21, 2008
Posted by Sean McCormack
If you’ve been following either my own personal blog, or that of Jeffrey Friedl, you might have noticed us talking about Lightroom, time lapse and scripts. Now that Jeffrey has posted his script for modifying Lightroom crop metadata, I’m going to show you how I’ve been using the script.
The background to the script is that I’ve been interested in time lapse photography for a while. I’d not consider myself a videographer, or have much interest in it, but I do really love time lapse. So I’ve shot lots of sequences. But ultimately the static nature of the shot made me wish for something a little more interesting. Searching the web I came across sites that had panning in their timelapses, ‘very cool’ I thought. Then a guy called Chris Tierney showed up locally, with a bunch of cool timelapses. He’d been using After Effects to do his panning. I wondered if it could be done with some addons to Lightroom.
My pondering didn’t last long when Jeffrey came up with a Perl script that would do what I needed. Jeffrey explains the mechanics in detail in his post.
Sometimes though a video can help. So I put one together, it’s slightly rough because I’m using new software and doing it with a USB mic on my Macbook Pro, rather than the iMac I normally use. That’s because all my recent work for timelapse is there!
One or 2 quick points to note: Work with BACKUP files. While I’ve done 20 or more videos with no issues, that doesn’t mean that something won’t get corrupted. Jeffrey says the script is delicate and that means he’s not kidding. Also it may not be obvious in the video, but when I move the final crop, the aspect ratio is fixed. In fact it makes no difference if the size changes, because that will zoom the image, BUT the aspect ratio HAS to stay the same. Otherwise your video will be wonky..
Enjoy!
If you do create anything from this, be sure to post a link in the comments.
PS, Jeffrey tells me his website is pronounced reg-ex from Regular Expressions, his book, not the ‘rej-ex’ way I pronounced it.. Opps. Sorry Jeffrey!
May 13, 2008
Posted by LRN Editorial Staff
On the Lightroom Journal blog, Tom Hogarty announced that the DNG Specification has been updated. He also indicated that the DNG Codec for Windows Vista (32-bit) has been posted to Adobe Labs.
