October 30, 2008
Posted by Sean McCormack
Lightroom Forums Guru Mark Sirota has written a most excellent tip over at Lightroom Forums
“Since the very early pre-1.0 betas, I’ve wanted to organize my files by date, but using a hierarchy unavailable in Lightroom — specifically, YYYY/YYYY-MM/YYYY-MM-DD. In other words, shots from today would go into 2008/2008-10/2008-10-30.
Lightroom offers eight different ways to organize by date, but this isn’t one of them. I’ve just discovered how to do it.
The Trick:
October 29, 2008
Posted by Sean McCormack
The man with the insatiable appetite for improving Lightroom via plugins has struck again. Jeffrey Friedl has announced ‘Jeffrey’s Lightroom GPS Support‘ plugin for Lightroom. The plugin doesn’t allow you to directly enter GPS data into the Lightroom GPS metadata field (which is invisible if no GPS information was imported with the file, or after using metadata via a 3rd party app that wrote to the EXIF). But it does use a method that is equally as reliable and usable.
That method is ‘Shadow’ GPS data. A new metadata field is created which can have GPS data attached. The data can come from a GPS unit’s tracklog, or Google/Yahoo maps. On Export you can invoke the GPS data and write it into the exported file as real GPS data.
Jeffery goes into a lot detail about it on the announcement page.
October 29, 2008
Posted by Sean McCormack
Timothy Armes has now released version 3.50 of LR/Transporter. This version allows photographers to import metadata into the Lightroom database from a CVS file.
There are a number of features:
The “key” field that maps CSV records to images can be defined by the user. It can match multiple images.
Any number of mappings from CSV records to Lightroom metadata fields can be defined.
The same CSV field can be mapped to multiple LR fields
Several different CSV fields can be mapped to a single Lightroom field through concatenation (with a user defined prefix)
This may be very useful for those who rely on external companies for caption and keyword writing.
Timothy has also overhauled the “Change Metadata” feature that was recently added. The user now has far more flexibility in the choice of fields that can be changed, as well as the number of fields that can be changed in any one go.
October 23, 2008
Posted by Sean McCormack
Lightroom 2.1 is now available by automatic update or from directly from Adobe: Mac or PC. Version 2.1 provides support for 15 new cameras: Canon EOS 1000D, Canon EOS 50D, Fuji FinePix IS Pro, Kodak EasyShare Z1015 IS, Leaf AFi II 6, Leaf AFi II 7, Leaf Aptus II 6, Leaf Aptus II 7, Nikon D700, Nikon D90, Nikon Coolpix P6000, Olympus SP-565 UZ, Pentax K2000, Sigma DP1, and Sony A900. The release also parallels code changes in Camera Raw 5.1, also available for download: Mac or PC.
Lightroom users, please note, you do not need to download Camera Raw to update Lightroom. Camera Raw is a Photoshop/Elements plugin.
As well as additional profiles for the new cameras, DNG profiles and the DNG profile editor have been updated to beta 2. More details can be had from http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/DNG_Profiles.
October 20, 2008
Posted by Sean McCormack
Timothy Armes’ LR/Transporter has just been updated to version 3.00. This version addresses the needs of those who wish to update certain metadata fields with data from other fields. For example, you may like to update the IPTC title field to be the same as the filename (with or without extension). Another use may be to update incorrect copyright statements to reflect the correct year. The list of uses goes on and on.
As usual this plug-in is donationware and is a free update for existing donators. It may be downloaded from here:
http://www.timothyarmes.com/lrtransporter.php
October 19, 2008
Posted by Sean McCormack
Author of much Lightroom plugin goodness Jeffrey Friedl has launched a new plugin for Lightroom 2.0. It his Lightroom “GPS Proximity Search” Plugin. Taking the GPS coordinates from an image, it will detect other images taken in the immediate area. For it to work, you need to have GPS coordinates stored with the images. Jeffrey offers clues on how to geoencode your images in the plugin post, but it’s all based on workarounds, due to the lightweight handling of GPS in Lightroom. If GPS is your thing, pop over and check it out.
For Jeffrey’s other plugins, check out his Lightroom Goodies page.
October 19, 2008
Posted by Sean McCormack
A few people have expressed an interest in how Lightroom will handle the installation of Photoshop CS4. When CS4 is installed, Lightroom automatically detects it and updates the Edit in Photoshop menu to reflect this. No user intervention should be necessary. There are quite a few changes in Photoshop CS4, so users may feel the need to leave CS3 installed. You can still use CS3 as an External Editor, in which case the old ‘Edit with Lightroom Adjustments’ dialog will appear, and an intermediate file will be created.
October 19, 2008
Posted by Sean McCormack
In our previous installment we discussed adding Styles to our gallery, but discovered that we needed to restart Lightroom to see the changes. Now we look at automatic refreshing in Lightroom.
October 16, 2008
Posted by Sean McCormack
Taking a novel approach to updates, Todd Dominey has a version of SlideShowPro for Lightroom 1 and 2. The Lightroom 2 version takes advantage of Lightroom 2 features including output sharpening, and the ability to more intelligently enable/disable customization controls depending on other (related) choices made when editing a slideshow.
SlideShowPro is Flash gallery builder for Lightroom, with a lot of versatile features and customisability. More information from the wiki or from the SlideShowPro for Lightroom webpage.
