Seth Resnick and Jamie Spritzer, the Co-Founders of D65 also announced  their new book , D65’s Lightroom Workbook, Workflow, Not Workslow in Lightroom 3. This book details everything you ever wanted, or needed to know about the five modules in Lightroom, including setting up preferences for optimal results and organizing catalogs. Included is an entire chapter which details the D-65 legendary workflow;  an advanced, yet simple workflow from capture through editing, tweaking, processing and exporting.

You might find that it is simpler to create or edit your Keyword list outside of Lightroom to speed up the process, especially if you need to create a complex list.If you are creating a new Catalog or brand new Lightroom system, you may have a set of Keywords that you have used in other applications or even a set you had left over from your archive of negatives or transparencies.

The Keyword list is simple to create at a basic level; it is a plain text file, returns separating individual Keywords and tabs allowing you to create a hierarchy.

But with the extended featureset that Lightroom offers with regards to Keywords there are a few other symbols you can use.

Let’s take a quick look at a few Keyword lists.

Here is a basic list of Keywords:

Cape Cornwall
Cheesewring
Cotehele
Eden Project
Gweek
Kynance Cove
Lanhydrock
Lion Rock
Lizard Penninsula
Minions
Morwellham
Mousehole
Newquay
Poldhu Cove
Pollurian
Pollurian Beach
Porthleven
Sennen Cove
St Ives
Trebah Gardens

and how this looks in Lightroom.

These are all places in Cornwall, so we can group them to create a hierarchy

Here is an indented list of Keywords.

Cornwall
	Cape Cornwall
	Cheesewring
	Cotehele
	Eden Project
	Gweek
	Kynance Cove
	Lanhydrock
	Lion Rock
	Lizard Penninsula
	Minions
	Morwellham
	Mousehole
	Newquay
	Poldhu Cove
	Pollurian
	Pollurian Beach
	Porthleven
	Sennen Cove
	St. Ives
	Trebah Gardens

This begins to make the list more manageable.

We can further add to this, Cornwall is in England (although many argue it is separate country altogether!) which itself is in Europe, and is a location.

Location
	Europe
		England
			Cornwall
				Cape Cornwall
				Cheesewring
				Cotehele
				Eden Project
				Gweek
				Kynance Cove
				Lanhydrock
				Lion Rock
				Lizard Penninsula
				Minions
				Morwellham
				Mousehole
				Newquay
				Poldhu Cove
				Pollurian
					Pollurian Beach
				Porthleven
				Sennen Cove
				St. Ives
				Trebah Gardens

And Lightroom displays this as shown. Note that we have created a further hierarchy with Pollurian and Pollurian Beach.

When you create Keywords in Lightroom you are offered several options at creation time.

1) You can enter Synonyms. Synonyms are related or implied keywords.

There is some confusion about the use of Synonyms. Essentially, they are a way of entering related keywords for a master keyword, then you don’t have to spend extra time entering the same keywords time after time. For example you might use the English language name for Wales, but include as a Synonym “Cymru”, or Cardiff could be given the Synonyms “Caerdydd, Wales, Cymru”. This saves you entering Wales, Cymru, Cardiff and Caerdydd (and any others you choose) each time you Keyword. Synonyms can then be included as Keywords when you export an image. 

2) When a Keyword selected in the Lightroom interface, you are given the choice to insert your new Keyword “inside” the selected Keyword; this creates the hierarchy.

3) You can add your new Keyword to all the images you have selected.

4) You can include the Keyword when you Export the image, by default

5) You can Export the containing Keywords

6) You can Export the Synonyms

These actions can be entered into our text version of the Keyword list, with the use of symbols.

Here is an example of a Keyword list with Synonyms (with all options selected when entering the Keywords.

Location
	{Place}
	Europe
		{continent}
		England
			{country}
			Cornwall
				{county}
				Lizard
					{area}
					Kynance Cove
						{beach}
						{sea}
						{sand}
						{water}

The Synonyms appear on separate lines from the Keyword (as well as indented) and are surrounded by curly braces {}.

If you want to exclude files on export then surround them with square brackets []

Using the example of the list above, I might just wish to export the final term, Kynance Cove, not all the parent terms. This would look like this.

[Location]
	{Place}
	[Europe]
		{continent}
		[England]
			{country}
			[Cornwall]
				{county}
				[Lizard]
					{area}
					Kynance Cove
						{beach}
						{sea}
						{sand}
						{water}

Once these have been imported into Lightroom you still have to decide whether you want the Parent Keywords exported.

And with this setup, when you Export a file, you can choose to include or exclude the hierarchy. In the case of the above list, exporting the hierarchy will export Kynance Cove, beach, sea, sand, water. Not exporting the hierarchy will just export the Keyword Kynance Cove.

With these principles in mind you can now create a Keyword list outside of Lightroom.

There are also commercially available Keyword lists, such as Controlled Vocabulary, which provide hierarchical lists of Keywords in extreme depth. You can then edit these to take advantage of Synonyms and the export controls which you prefer.

To use this new Keyword List in Lightroom, you need to have Lightroom open, be in the Library Module and select Metadata > Import Keywords… from the menu. Navigate to your newly created Keyword List, then import them.

Thanks to Eric Scouten, for providing some clarification.

Here we look at using the iPhone as a GPS device and how we then insert that information into Lightroom.One of the hot topics in Digital Photography in recent months has been Geotagging. The confluence of Digital Images, Online Mapping and GPS devices and services such as Flickr have lead to an upsurge of interest, use and software to support this need.

Cameras, such as the Nikon P-6000, are beginning to incorporate GPS chips, mobile phones are increasingly gaining GPS chips, and there are several additions to cameras that add the facility to Geolocate your images.

Geolocation can be performed in several ways. The first is that the camera can automatically write the map position into the EXIF data of your files, this occurs with onboard or built-in devices. The second is to use a GPS tracking device that will record your positional information as you take your images, back at base you have to marry up the log file with the images you shot. This needs the clock of the GPS device to match the camera’s time (you can insert a time offset if you have forgotten to do this before a shoot). It also needs some third party software to match up the log and the images and combine the information into the images’ EXIF. The third way is to use an online mapping tool such as Google Earth or Yahoo Maps and, again, use some third party software, or web service to position your images.

Lightroom supports images that have been Geotagged, but there is not a convenient way to achieve this in-app. However, Jeffrey Friedl has given Lightroom users “Jeffrey’s GPS Support” which lets you import track logs from GPS devices and match them to your images.

First of all you will need a GPS device. The market is booming and a trip to your local hiking store or a check online will overwhelm you with choice. Before making a purchase you will need to ensure that the device will create a track log as a file, that you can connect it to your computer and that your computer is compatible with the device. Macintosh support is slightly rarer than Windows support, although this is changing as the devices become more sophisticated.

I have recently started using the Apple iPhone 3G as my GPS device. Reports have been very favorable as to the accuracy of its GPS information, so I was keen to see whether there was any software that could transform the GPS device into a useful tool for the photographer. Other phones have this capability too.

A quick trip to the Apple App Store and some research offered up Felix Lamouroux’ Trails, which allows you to record, import and export GPS tracks using your iPhone. According to a German article Trails beats the Garmin Edge 305 as a GPS device. The Garmin costs approximately $200; Trails $1.99!

Trails will track your progress on a shoot, saving a GPX file of the waypoint information, which you can then set to email to you when you have finished.

The first screen you encounter is the List of tracks you have recorded. I have one from January 3, 2009 on a trip to Wormley Woods in Hertfordshire, UK. To create a new track you would hit the plus sign.

Tap the Settings button to setup Trails for a photo shoot.

There are a set of four Presets for you to use, unfortunately Photography isn’t one of them, but the nearest equivalent is Hiking. This gives an accuracy of 150m, which should be enough, but you can always adjust this down to 20m. This results in a larger file and fewer outliers (points that are guessed).

As using the GPS on the iPhone sucks the battery life, it is advisable to turn off the “Live Map”. Other recommended battery savers are to turn off WiFi and 3G and to lower your screen brightness, which can be done in the iPhone’s settings.

The only other pieces of information to enter are your email address and or your EveryTrail username and password. EveryTrail is a GPS community, where you can share your GPS track information and journey information. Once you have finished tap Done.

Before use, the three things to check are, that you have a fully charged iPhone, that you have turned off Auto Lock in your iPhone’s settings and that the iPhone’s clock and your camera’s match. As mentioned, you can adjust the offset later, but this speeds up the workflow.

On the “My tracks” screen, tap the + button, enter the name of the track and a quick description. Then press Save.

You are taken to the recording screen, and when you are ready tap the Record button. Trails will active the GPS and lock on to a satellite and begin recording your trip. Once you have finished, slide the slider to stop recording. The screen shows you all the information about your trip, as well as the list of waypoints. You can interact further with Trails by viewing your route on Google Maps within the application, as well as viewing an altitude profile; for this press the globe button in the bottom tab bar.

What we really want now is the GPS information in a format that we can use to position our photos. Tap the right hand share button in the bottom tab bar, this offers the choice of Exporting your file to Email, EveryTrail or TrailRunner; tap Email. In a few moments check your email for a mail from Trials with an attached GPX file. Make you’re your spam filter doesn’t block emails from Trails <no-reply@lamouroux.de>.

A quick look at this file in a text editor shows that it is an XML file of your waypoints.

You can use this file with a variety of pieces of software. The basic concept of each of them is to select the images from your trip, import this GPX file and automatically match the time of the waypoint with the time the image was taken.

Third party software can be bought specifically for this, such as HoudahGeo on the Mac and RoboGeo  for Windows, they also offer the more manual GPS tagging by linking to Google Earth and positioning your image on the globe. This method is less accurate and does depend on the quality of the map and your memory of where you were!

For this example, we shall look at Jeffrey’s GPS Support Plug-in. Jeffrey is a Lightroom tester and Plug-in developer and has given many free Plug-ins to the Lightroom community. He is also the author of the de-facto standard book on regular expressions, Mastering Regular Expressions.

Download and Install the Plug-in as described on his Plug-in page.

Select the images from your photoshoot. From the File menu, select Plug-in Extras > Geoencode…

From the tabs, select Geoencode from Tracklog. Locate your GPX file with the Browse button, enter your Timezone and enter any time compensation you may need if you didn’t align the clocks of the GPS device and the Camera. 

Then click Geoencode Images and in a few seconds your images will be processed and you will see the results displayed in the Metadata panel in the Library.

You can also grab one of Jeffrey’s other Plug-ins GPS Proximity Search, this allows you to find Geoencoded images in your Lightroom Library that are within a specified distance from a location you choose.

Returning to the GPS Plug-in. What has been achieved so far, is to locate the images and add information to the Lightroom interface. But more useful still is to write this data to the EXIF information of the image.

One of the other tabs Write Data Back allows you to achieve this. Select the Tab, and you will see a list of instructions explaining the sequence you need to follow to ensure the EXIF is updated.

First, you need to save the Image Metadata, this is to write any Develop settings, Keywords and IPTC metadata you have previously created for the image. This is achieved, by selecting all the required images and either selecting Metadata > Save Metadata to Files, or press Cmd/Ctrl-S.

Then in the GPS Support Plug-in, click the Write Shadow Data to Files’ Image XMP Sidecars (note the wording may have changed by the time you read this), following the success dialog, you got to the next step.

This is to read the updated Metadata back into the database and EXIF. To do this, select Metadata > Read Metadata from Files.

Now you will see the information in the EXIF section of the Metadata panel. The arrow button next to the GPS information will take you to the Google Maps page for this location. Pressing Option/Alt will take you to the Yahoo Maps page for this location.

Applications such as HoudahGeo and RoboGeo use the same basic procedure and all three mentioned here allow manual positioning with Google Earth as well.

Here is a CNET story that was posted after the release of Lightroom 1.3. See also John Nack’s blog story and links: Upload from Lightroom to Flickr, SmugMug, & more including a link to Jeffrey Friedl’s site.

“Adobe Photoshop Lightroom is taking its first look at the world beyond its own photo-editing boundaries, and stock-art photographers are among those who stand to benefit.

A view of the Flickr export tool in the Lightroom developer kit.

(Credit: Adobe)

Adobe’s software development kit for its Lightroom software, released Thursday evening along with the Lightroom 1.3 update, is only a preview edition with limited abilities, but already one potential use for the software is evident: easier photo uploads to “microstock” photo-sale sites.”

The SDK preview involves only image export from Lightroom, but it includes several features for interacting with Web or FTP sites on the Internet.

Uploading photos can be a big hassle for photographers who sell their work via the gaggle of microstock sites such as Dreamstime, iStockphoto, and Fotolia that have cropped up on the Internet. Some microstock photographers shoot exclusively for one site or another, lured by higher payments, while others sell photos at multiple sites. Either way, exporting directly from Lightroom could ease export difficulties.

Of course, it might not be the thing for everyone, including those who want to do further processing for noise reduction and sharpening in Photoshop, for example. But it’s a step in the right direction.

Likely to be of nearer-term use is a sample plug-in distributed with the kit that permits uploading photos to Yahoo’s Flickr photo-sharing site. It lets users set a variety of options, including privacy and tags, but doesn’t let users deal with Flickr sets used for grouping photos together.

Read the full story…

In part 1 of this story, which was published last week, I showed how you could use a drag and drop method to open a photo directly in Photoshop and also how to open as a Smart Object. In this second part we are going to look at drag and drop to a Photoshop droplet and how to link a photo back to a folder view in Bridge.

Drag and drop to a Photoshop droplet
In part 1 we looked at creating a Photoshop droplet for use in the post-processing stage of a Lightroom export. But you can also drag and drop from Lightroom to a Photoshop droplet. The steps suggested here are fairly similar, except you need to pay attention to how the Create Droplet settings are configured.

1. Here is a view of an Action that I created in Photoshop to resize a photo to 10” x 8”, sharpen for print output and save it as a TIFF.

2. After recording the action I went to the File ➯ Automate menu and chose Create Droplet. In the Create Droplet dialog I located the action I had just recorded, specified an output folder to save the processed files to (which I named ‘Output folder’) and saved the Droplet to the Desktop. But there are a couple of important things to point out here. In the Play section I checked Suppress File Open Options Dialogs. Checking this option would prevent the Camera Raw dialog showing each time I processed an image via the droplet. In the Destination section I checked the Override Action “Save As” Commands because the action I was converting to a droplet does indeed contain a Save step at the end and I needed the droplet action to override the save destination contained in the action and use the destination folder I had specified here instead.

3. Once I had set up the Photoshop droplet I was ready to put it to use. I made a selection of photos from the Library module and dragged them across to the 10×8-print droplet.

4. Dragging the photos to the droplet initiated the Photoshop action steps in Photoshop and when this was complete, the output folder contained the processed 10″ x 8″ files.

By the way, I have noticed a possible bug in Photoshop CS3 where if you process photos from Lightroom to a droplet where the Suppress File Open Options Dialogs is checked, this file opening behavior may remain sticky for all photos that you try to open via a drag and drop method – the Camera Raw dialog is bypassed when opening. The only way I know to restore the default behavior is to quit Photoshop and relaunch again. If you are trying to follow the steps outlined in part 1 and are not seeing the Camera Raw dialog, this could be the reason why.

Drag and drop to open a folder in Bridge

1. With Lightroom you are free to organize and sort your photos in lots of different ways that are not directly dependent on knowing how they are organized by the underlying folder structure. For example, here I am looking at a Collection of photos with a common cityscape theme where the photos have all originated from different folders.

2. If I click on the Folder Action arrow in the Metadata panel (circled in step 1 above) this will take me to a Folder view in Lightroom for that particular photo.

3. If you want to see where the photo actually lives at the operating system level, you can choose Photo ➯ Show in Finder, or use Command–R (Mac), Control–R (PC), to reveal the image file in a new finder window.

4. But there is another way, one that allows you to link back to Bridge. You can drag and drop a photo from the content area to a Bridge program alias/shortcut and this will locate the image in the folder it belongs to and display it within a Bridge window.

5. When you do this, it will open the folder the photo belongs to in a new Bridge window and highlight the selected photo.

______________________________________________________

The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Book by Martin Evening is available from Peachpit, Amazon, Barnes & Noble and all usual bookstore outlets.

Martin Evening has worked on the development of Adobe Photoshop as an alpha tester from the program’s earliest beginnings. The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Book describes all of Lightroom’s features in detail, with photographers in mind. Photographers who routinely work with raw (and even jpg & tiff) images will find Lightroom–and The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Book–an indispensable tool in their digital darkroom.

Lightroom-news has a free PDF download of Chapter 1. (click here to download-4.6MB PDF).

Free Lightroom 1.1 PDF update

You can also download a free PDF update for the Adobe Photoshop Lightroom book. Go this link for the full instructions on how to access the Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Book 1.1 update.

Drag and drop opening
The drag and drop to the Photoshop application icon method of opening photos will work with any photo in a Lightroom catalog: raw, TIFF or JPEG, provided that the metadata status has been updated and saved to the file’s XMP space. The drag and drop method is really a kind of a cheat that allows you to bypass the Photo menu ➯ Edit in Photoshop step in Lightroom. It offers you a way to open an image in Photoshop without creating an Edit copy (so you can save out the file from Photoshop without adding a derivative image to the catalog). It can also allow you to bypass the File ➯ Export dialog. And instead of configuring an Export user preset with a Photoshop droplet placed in the Export Actions folder, you can batch process photos from Lightroom by simply dragging them to a droplet. But as I have said, you must, must remember to save the metadata to the file before you drag and drop. If you don’t do this, the file will open using the default or previously saved metadata settings. For example, if you have a JPEG photo in your catalog, make some Develop module adjustments and drag and drop to the Photoshop icon, the photo will open directly in Photoshop as a JPEG, without applying the adjustments added in Lightroom. However, if you use Photo menu ➯ Save Metadata to File (Command–S [Mac], Control–S [PC]) before dragging and dropping, the JPEG photo will open up in Photoshop via the Camera Raw dialog showing the exact same settings that were applied in the Lightroom Develop module.

Here is how a basic drag and drop open works:

1. Drag and drop opening can be real simple to set up. Create an alias/shortcut of the Photoshop application icon and drag a photo from the library on top of the program icon.

2. Providing you remembered in Lightroom to save the metadata settings to the file before you dragged, the photo will initially open up via the Camera Raw dialog, where if you like, you can alter the settings.

3. Click Open Image in the Camera Raw dialog and this will open the selected photo up in Photoshop. Remember, the opened image will no longer be associated with the Lightroom catalog. You can edit it and save this out as a new derivative of the Lightroom master photo.

Note: In this example I have shown how to use the drag and drop method to open a single image. But you can also select multiple photos and drag these to the Photoshop icon. This will open the Camera Raw dialog shown in step 2 and allow you to decide whether to proceed to open all or just some of the selected photos.

Drag and drop opening as a Smart Object
Here is another variation on the drag and drop method, where thanks to Ben Willmore I was reminded that there is a really neat way to open a Lightroom master photo as a Smart Object.

1. Now this will work with any photo: raw, TIFF or JPEG, but I see this as being more applicable to raw file editing. As before, I began by dragging a photo from the Library module to a Photoshop program alias.

2. As before, this will open the photo up via the Camera Raw dialog, where in this instance I did make some further tone edit adjustments to improve the contrast and lightness of the rock. But after doing this I held down the Shift key which altered the Open Image button so that it now said Open Object and clicked.

3. The photo opened up in Photoshop as a Smart Object. You can tell, because there is a Smart Object icon () in the bottom left corner of the image layer thumbnail. Next, I went to the Layer menu and chose Smart Objects ➯ New Smart Object via Copy.

4. This created a copy of the Smart Object and when I double-clicked the copy Smart Object layer, was able to create a new Camera Raw tone setting for the sky portion of the image. In the screen shot here you can see that I added a gradient layer mask to the copy layer to combine the two different Camera Raw renderings.

That’s it for part 1. In the second part we shall look at using drag and drop to a Photoshop droplet and how to link from Lightroom back to Bridge.

______________________________________________________

The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Book by Martin Evening is available from Peachpit, Amazon, Barnes & Noble and all usual bookstore outlets.

Martin Evening has worked on the development of Adobe Photoshop as an alpha tester from the program’s earliest beginnings. The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Book describes all of Lightroom’s features in detail, with photographers in mind. Photographers who routinely work with raw (and even jpg & tiff) images will find Lightroom–and The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Book–an indispensable tool in their digital darkroom.

Lightroom-news has a free PDF download of Chapter 1. (click here to download-4.6MB PDF).

Free Lightroom 1.1 PDF update

You can also download a free PDF update for the Adobe Photoshop Lightroom book. Go this link for the full instructions on how to access the Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Book 1.1 update.

Hot on the heels of George’s video podcast about refine photos basics, comes a video podcast interview with Eric Scouten, the database engineer on the Lightroom team.

“A conversation with Eric Scouten from the Lightroom team.

Photograph © 2006 George Jardine. Special thanks to John Cornicello for additional photographs that appear in the podcast.

This podcast was recorded on Thursday, April 26th, 2007 at Adobe offices in Seattle, WA. Eric sits down with George to have a conversation about Lightroom 1.0, improvements in 1.1, about Eric’s photography, and how his personal methods of photo organization have played a role in the development of Lightroom’s database strategy.

This “video” podcast includes photographs taken by Eric Scouten and John Cornicello. It can 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 it from my iDisk). Once copied into iTunes, it can be transferred to a Video iPod, and viewed that way as well. When viewing it on an iPod, be sure to access the video from the top-level Video menu (then “Movies” or “Video Podcasts”…. depending upon how you downloaded it), and NOT from the top-level Music menu. If you access it from the Music menu, you will not see all of the photographs.

Finally, it’s possible that only the audio track will be heard on devices that do not fully support the .mp4 format, and the photographs will not be seen.”

Duration: 26:02

The podcast can be downloaded from my iDisk at:

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

This podcast is labeled “20070426 Podcast – Eric Scouten” 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

DxO Optics have just released a tips and tricks news item showing how to integrate DxO Optics Pro 4.5 (and above) with Lightroom, showing how you can call DxO Optics Pro directly from the Lightroom program.

“DxO Optics Pro v4.5 is the first major photographic software application to start building a common workflow with Adobe Lightroom. We’ve long been pioneers in establishing compatibility with Adobe technologies and this is no exception. We see Adobe Photoshop Lightroom as an important platform for photographers and our goal will be to enrich that platform and provide better value for you – the photographer.

As with all pioneering efforts we know that we are just at the beginning of this adventure. And yes there are still things that will have to be worked on from various angles until we reach a fully integrated experience. We’ve tried to document some of these in our new web Learning center. But we hope you join us on this journey and take the time to provide us your feedback, your questions, your suggestions. That’s how we’ll all move forward together.”

Read the full story…

Photographs can be quickly brought into Lightroom, bypassing the need for a camera card and having to configure the Import settings every time you import a batch of images.

This is also referred to as ‘tethered shooting’ and I say Lightroom has the potential to do this because Lightroom will need to rely on other software that can communicate with your camera and download capture files to a specified folder location.

With this in place, Lightroom can be configured to automatically import these images into the library.

Connecting the camera to the computer
To shoot in tethered mode you need the ability to connect your camera to the computer. Ideally, you want the fastest connection possible. Most professional digital SLRs will offer a Firewire (IEEE 1394) connection, which in practice will allow you to shoot and download at around the same speed as you can with a fast camera memory card. The only downside is that you have to have your camera connected to the computer via a Firewire cable and this can restrict the amount of freedom you have to move about without pulling the cable out, or worse still, pulling a laptop computer off the table! Another option is to shoot wirelessly.

At the time of writing there are wireless units available for some digital SLR cameras that will allow you to transmit images directly from the camera to a base station linked to the computer. Wireless shooting offers you the freedom, up to a certain distance, to move about without the restrictions of a tethered cable. But the current data transmission speeds with some cameras are a lot slower than those you can expect from a Firewire connection.

Rapid shooting via a wireless connection can work well if you are shooting in JPEG mode, but not if you intend shooting raw files only. But that may change in the future. On Nikon equipment, you can shoot wirelessly via ptp or ftp. It appears so far, that ptp is better, and should rival Firewire, since ptp should handle things much faster due to the compression built into the transmission.

Camera capture software
Lightroom is able to appropriate the tethered shooting component of the camera communication software and from there, directly take over the image processing and image management. Here’s how it works: the camera communication software can be instructed to download the files to a specific folder location and once the files appear in this ‘watched’ folder, Lightroom can be instructed to immediately copy the files into the Lightroom library. And because the files are simultaneously deleted from the watched folder, you effectively bypass the camera software and the images will appear directly in Lightroom.

At this point in time I can confirm that it is possible to use Lightroom in conjunction with the Canon Viewer software designed for the Canon EOS range of cameras. Below. I have outlined the steps that would be needed to setup a Canon EOS camera such as the EOS 1Ds MkII to auto-import the files directly into Lightroom.

Nikon users will find that Nikon Capture includes a Camera Control component that allows you to do the same thing as the Canon software and establishes a watched folder to download the images to. The latest version of Nikon Capture supports all the D Series cameras as well as the Nikon Coolpix 8700. Alternatively, you might want to consider buying Bibble Pro 4.7 software from Bibble Labs. Bibble Pro costs a lot less than Nikon Capture. It enables tethered shooting with a wide variety of digital cameras, and again, allows you to establish a watched folder for the downloaded images. As I say, I have not been able to test these other programs out yet, but you should be able to adapt the following steps to work with Lightroom.

The steps shown here demonstrate how to use the Auto Import feature using the Canon EOS Viewer utility program that is supplied free with the Canon EOS range of cameras. At the time of writing, these are the only cameras that I have been able to test shooting with in tethered mode. Although you won’t need to use the program to view and process the imported files, you need to leave EOS Utility running in the background because it is needed to interact with the connected camera.

Note: The EOS Viewer program described here is software that should have come with your Canon camera and can also be downloaded free from the Canon cameras website: www.canon.com (look for the download library section on the site). I have also tried using the self-contained Canon EOS utility program, but in my experience I have found that the combination of using EOS Viewer plus EOS Capture, has allowed me to work faster in tethered mode when shooting with the EOS 1 Ds MkII.

1. To begin with, launch EOS Viewer utility and click the Preferences button. Under Destination Folder, click Browse… to select a watched folder and click OK. Quit the program for now (you need to relaunch in order for the new folder location to be recognized).

2. Now go to Lightroom and open the preferences located in the Lightroom menu (or use Command+, (Mac) or Control+, (PC). Click on the Import tab, click to Enable Auto-Import and then click on the Choose… button to select the same watched folder as was selected in Step 1. But before leaving the Import preferences, click on the Auto Import Settings… button.

3. Here is the Auto Import Settings sub dialog, which will allow you to configure the Import settings for the auto imported files. These will be applied to all the images that are about to be captured and for the duration of the shoot (you will want to reconfigure these settings on a job by job basis). In the example shown here, I established a File Naming and renumbering scheme using the tokens available from the fly-out menu. You can select a bulk metadata template, select which custom Develop settings to use and, if you like, enter custom Keywords to apply to all the files as they are imported.

4. You are now almost ready to shoot. Make sure the camera is tethered to the computer and switched on. Launch EOS Viewer and click on the Connect to Camera button, which will launch EOS Capture. You can now use the camera as normal by pressing the shutter release, or use the EOS Capture utility to capture pictures remotely by clicking on the blue camera button in the dialog.

5. As you start shooting, the EOS Viewer utility will bring the camera files directly into the watched folder you selected in Step 1. From there, Lightroom will recognize that a new image has been added to the watched folder and import these captures as a new shoot using the Auto import settings. Once everything has been configured, you should be able to carry on taking pictures all day with the camera connected to the computer and all the images will be processed automatically using the settings entered in Step 3.

Caution! The Auto Import settings in Beta 4 do not allow you to save backup files to a secondary location, as you can with the normal Import dialog. Make sure you remember to periodically make manual copies of your auto imported files throughout the shoot.

Tips when using Lightroom in tethered mode
It should be possible to configure the Auto Import settings once at the beginning of a shoot and everything you photograph subsequently will be handled completely automatically. But of course, things can never be guranteed to run so smoothly. One thing to watch out for is if you update the Develop settings used in the Auto Import, you will need to reselect this again before you continue shooting. If the camera becomes disconnected, or the battery runs down, you may not always be able to plug it back in and carry on as before. In Beta 4 at least, you may sometimes need to create a fresh shoot via the Import preferences.

When you shoot using the tethered mode it is useful to see new images appear at the top of the content area as they are imported. To enable this, go to the View menu and choose Sort ➯ Descending. You may want to switch the sort order back to Ascending again for normal editing.

Further information about wireless shooting
Here is an interesting technology to look out for in the future: Eye-Fi are about to introduce a product called Eye-Film, which is a media card incorporating 802.11b/g Wi-Fi and 1 GB of Flash storage. Eye-Film will come in the form of an SD card (a Compact Flash Type-II adapter will allow digital SLR users to put these in cameras witout an SD slot). Once you start shooting the card will transfer photos from within your camera to any computer with Wi-Fi support. With Eye-Film, the originals remain on the card as well as transmitting to the computer. So far it is known that only JPEG files can be transmitted in this way. For more information, go to: www.eye.fi.

The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom book
Peachpit will be publishing The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Book by Martin Evening. Martin has been working with Lightroom from the beginning, providing feedback to Lightroom’s development well before the public beta and monitoring the product’s development. The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Book describes Lightroom’s features in detail and with photographers in mind. The book is aimed at photographers at all levels: amateurs as well as professionals and will offer a comprehensive guide to everything you need to know about the program. Photographers who routinely work with raw images will find Lightroom–and The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Book–an indispensable tool in their digital darkroom.

The book is also currently available as a Rough Cut version (updated for Beta 4)

ROUGH CUTS BOOK: The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Book
by Martin Evening
Publisher: Adobe Press
Pub Date: February 14th, 2007 (est.)
Print ISBN-10: 0-32-138543-8
Print ISBN-13: 978-0-321-38543-7
eText ISBN-10: 0-321-45003-5
eText ISBN-13: 978-0-321-45003-6
Pages: 352 (estimated)
List Price: USD $40.00 (when released)

Special Rough Cuts pricing on Safari:
Print Book and Online Access Bundle USD $54.00
Online Access Only USD $28.00
Print Book Only USD $28.00 (normally $40.00)

Peter Krogh, author of The DAM Book: Digital Asset Management for Photographers has added a new video companion for the book on his DAM Useful website.

Complete RAW workflows for pro photographers
Peter Krogh provides an in-depth, 4-hour presentation of his proven workflow featured in The DAM Book: Digital Asset Management for Photographers. This video training covers two end-to-end RAW photo workflows that include editing, file conversion, adding metadata, client feedback, backup, archiving and more.

These workflow videos feature the following software:
• Adobe Bridge
• Adobe Camera Raw
• Adobe DNG Converter
• iView MediaPro, iView Catalog Reader
• DAM Useful plug-ins: RapidFixer, Rank and File

Workflow tasks featured:
• Import from camera
• Batch rename
• Batch metadata
• Review a shoot and rank favorites
• Fast adjustments in Adobe Camera Raw
• DNG file conversion
• Create catalogs with iView MediaPro
• Organize photos in DAM catalogs
• Email photos
• Create slide shows
• Create Web galleries
• Share catalogs with your clients

The DAM Book Workflow Video are availalbe for $99.95 plus shipping.
• 2 CD-ROMs packaged in a standard DVD case
• Approx. Run Time: 275 minutes
• Requirements: QuickTime 6+ for movies
• Language: English

Video Table of Contents or Watch sample movies

About the author
Peter Krogh is a professional photographer and author of The DAM Book: Digital Asset Management for Photographers (O’Reilly Media, Nov. 2005) and co-creator of DAM Useful software. Peter is the former chairman of the American Society of Media Photographers’ Digital Photography Standards and Practices Project and regularly conducts seminars and workshops on digital asset management.