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.

Seth Resnick (D65/Pixel Genius) introduces the CC passport in the video on the website, along with showing how to use it on the shoot and in Lightroom (Wordpress won’t allow the video to embed, or I’d simply show it here!). The video is educational and well worth watching.

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.

In the TIPA awards, Lightroom 2 has just been voted winner of the Best Photo Software category.

“Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2 is the photographer’s essential toolbox for managing, adjusting and presenting large volumes of digital photographs. With enhancements such as dual-monitor support, radical advances in non-destructive localized image correction, and streamlined search capabilities, Lightroom 2 is a compelling upgrade that simplifies photography from shoot to finish.”

Shortly after the release of Lightroom 1.0, I made a video tutorial which showed how you could use the HSL panel controls to achieve improved, reduced noise Grayscale conversions in Lightroom. That particular problem was resolved with one of the later Lightroom 1.x updates and it is now fine to use the Grayscale panel controls to achieve optimum black and white conversions. In this movie I wanted to show how you can also fine-tune the Grayscale conversion setting by combining these with Camera Calibration panel adjustments.

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.

With browser makers starting to see the light about colour management, we can finally see our colours as intended online. Safari has been doing this forever, but now Firefox 3 is colour managed. Except, it’s not on by default. So here’s how to do it.
In the address bar of Firefox, type in about:config.
Scroll down to gfx.color_management.enabled. By default it’s set to false. Double click on it to change it to true. Restart Firefox. Viola.
Version 3 is much faster, which of course is another bonus. Your Lightroom galleries and exports will now look better online.

One of the most common issues Lightroom users have been having is print output. Particularly those mac users who have recently ugraded to the latest Leopard Max OS X 10.5 operating system. In this blog post, Tom Hogarty outlines some of the reasons why this can be so and points out the need to update the print drivers for your printers. If you are experiencing print output problems from Mac OS X 10.5, do read this post and use the Comments section to cross check with other users and their shared findings.

There are several comments on this blog that describe printing issues with Lightroom 1.3.1 on Leopard. For many these problems may not have existed before or perhaps the result is different from the current output of Photoshop CS3. Before I dive into the details lets clear up a few definitions:

• Application Managed Printing – this is when you set the printer profile in the application prior to printing. Typically the profiles provided by printer manufacturers are designated by printer type and paper type. You also have the ability to create custom profiles using a third party hardware device. The most common error in Application Managed printing is forgetting to turn off the color management options in the settings available in the print dialog box. I recommend this workflow to professional photographers.
• Printer Managed Printing – this is when you tell Lightroom or Photoshop that the colors and conversion will be managed by the printer. Adobe applications will send the printer a tagged file the printer will then convert to an internal specification.
• Tioga – Legacy printer driver technology introduced with Mac OS X 10.0
• CUPS – Leopard’s current printer driver technology introduced with Mac OS X 10.2

The root of the discrepancy between Pre-Leopard and Post-Leopard printing results is the behavior of the underlying printer driver technology. Prior to Leopard, printer drivers could use either the Tioga printer driver technology or the CUPS technology. With the introduction of Leopard, CUPS is required and Tioga is no longer a valid option. There was a large ecosystem of Tioga-based printer drivers available prior to the Leopard release. Leopard has been released with some CUPS-based printer drivers included and printer manufacturers are working to provide updated drivers based on the newer technology.(Epson has posted beta print drivers for its professional line here: Epson Beta Drivers) But clearly, the support for the newer printer technology is nowhere near as widespread as the previous technology. One point of frustration is that while older or partially compliant drivers can generate a print the results are less then stellar. It may be fine for anyone printing out an invoice on their black and white laser printer but for photographers who have grown accustom to extracting the highest fidelity out of their software and printer, it’s unacceptable. This is particularly true for those who use an Application Managed print workflow. Printer Managed workflows may generate ‘ok’ results but I don’t know many photographers who are satisfied with ‘ok.’

Read the full article…

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…

John Beardsworth is a member of the core Adobe Lightroom beta testing team, so as you might expect, he should know a thing or two about Lightroom and in particular how to organise photos in a catalog, which is one of his main specialities (apart from being a professional photographer too). So I was interested in the following article where John expresses his views on the usefulness of multiple catalogs.

Just because you can, it doesn’t mean you should : one or many Lightroom catalogues
Lightroom 1.1 made it easier to create and work with more than one catalogue, and it’s making some people think that’s how they should work. I’m not talking about when you’re travelling or need to move pictures between computers, but as a routine way of working. Apart from seeing it in blog posts and forum threads, I’ve been asked about it on a couple of occasions recently, and was also forwarded a discussion where one photographer quoted from my book:

Another way to think of Lightroom is as a centralized inventory system managing a warehouse – you no longer need to look through each pallet or bin to find the parts. And as your business grows, and you rent the neighbouring warehouses too, you still only need one system to keep control of your work.

The trouble is that those who are actually advocating the idea of using multiple catalogues (eg another one popped up just today at O’Reilly’s blog and has a particularly rich selection of dumb ideas) never reflect all that deeply on their true reasons for doing so. When you read between the lines, there are essentially two strands to their arguments:

• It’s a workaround for performance problems they’ve experienced with large catalogues

• They’re working “Bridge-style” and don’t really think about DAM

Looking first at the “necessity” argument, if it is indeed so, then clearly you do have no alternative. Just don’t believe, let alone advocate, that such working methods are the Holy Grail of good practice.

Is it necessary anyway? That’s a maybe. It is not yet possible to give simple guidelines (unlike iView’s 2Gb file size limit) for when a Lightroom catalogue might run up against a performance limit*. As a DAM program and image processor, Lightroom probes most areas of your computer’s operations, and let’s also allow for the possibility of some less than optimal code. Many factors other than the number of records in the database could be degrading performance, and so you may not really gain much, if anything, from splitting it up into smaller catalogues.

If performance limits did indeed force you to break your work up into multiple catalogues, there’s plenty to lose. For one thing, there is no better way to let some of your pictures slip through the cracks when you forget to import one folder, or when you add more images to a folder and forget to update the Lightroom catalogue covering those folders. As well as omitting items, you can easily duplicate them. Images may end up recorded in more than one catalogue, with adjustments and their descriptive metadata diverging, keyword spellings too, singular here, plural there. And unless your search needs are very primitive, you’re going to have to repeat searches in each catalogue file. So there’s a time cost. Frankly, while you may think you are smart enough to cope with such a “system”, few of us are, not for long anyway.

Read the full story…